The intellectual authors of the Brooklyn boycott are enemies of Afro-Guyanese progress

Dear editor,
Rickford Burke and Mark Benschop, under the guise of advocating for Afro-Guyanese rights, have consistently engaged in tactics that, paradoxically, erode those very rights they claim to defend.

Their recent demand for a boycott of Guyanese businesses in Brooklyn—simply because these businessowners engaged with President Irfaan Ali underscores their narrow self-serving and destructive agenda. A boycott against one’s own people, for the mere act of engaging in dialogue with their nation’s leader, strikes at the heart of the type of skewed democratic values and freedom of expression that underpin the political ideology being cultivated by the unpatriotic anti-Guyanese activists.

Let it be clearly understood from this boycott call, that individuals who resist the allure of hollow rhetoric find themselves unjustly punished and tarnished, facing what can only be described as a public lynching orchestrated by the racists and propagandists.

This campaign of defamation and intimidation against those who choose to think independently or seek unity across divisions is a stark reminder of the dangers posed by those who wield misinformation and fear-mongering as tools of control in furtherance of their sophistry and divisive political aims.
These tactics are contrary to the interests of the Afro-Guyanese community, which Burke and Benschop claim to champion.

We must unequivocally reject this poisonous strategy of pitting our countrymen and women one against the other, and call on all leaders and activists at home and across the diaspora to adopt and embrace approaches that truly enhance justice, equality, and progress for all Guyanese.

Let us not be deceived by those who scampishly exploit genuine grievances for their personal gain.

Hon. Kwame McCoy
Minister within the Office of the Prime Minister