Press Releases

ST. CROIX –Virgin Islands Congresswoman Stacey Plaskett gave the following remarks honoring the life and legacy of St. Croix Labor Leader David Hamilton Jackson during the centennial celebration of “Bull-and-Bread Day” today in estate Grove Place.

We gather here today in celebration of the legacy and achievements of an extraordinary man.A son of the soil, D. Hamilton Jackson’s ideas and advocacy are responsible for much of our socio-economic and political progression through the 20^th Century.Our celebration of D. Hamilton Jackson, however, is not just about the man, but the ideal of Liberty.

For today is not only a day to commemorate the centennial anniversary of Jackson’s crowned achievements, but also an opportunity to learn and apply the lessons of his legacy to our present-day challenges.For today is Liberty Day. And liberty is a more sophisticated and powerful concept than freedom. It is the power of a people to act and speak freely, to organize and chose, and to do and create what they wish.Liberty is a right. It is what comes after freedom.

We have forgotten that Virgin Islanders come from a lineage of extraordinary resilience and self-determination.

Before Hamilton, St. Croix or Ay-Ay, was one of the sights of the first resistance to subjugation in the New World when Carib people—descendants of Igneri and Taino—fought Columbus in 1493 to retain their liberty.

Also before Hamilton, St. John in 1733 was the sight of one of the longest slave resistance when 200 Akwamu slaves held off Danish, French and Swiss troops for almost a year in their attempt to regain Liberty.

Before Hamilton, General Budhoe led thousands of our ancestors, risking their lives in rebellion to end slavery in the Virgin Islands, strengthening the legacy of extraordinary resilience and self-determination and obtaining our freedom, the bedrock of Liberty

When Queens Mary, Mathilde, Susana and Axeline led that fiery revolt through the streets of Frederiksted, it was not just for better wages and freedom of movement, it was for Liberty.

When D. Hamilton Jackson founded the first labor union in the Virgin Islands, petitioned the Court of Denmark for a free press and pushed for our citizenship as Americans, it was for us to have liberty; the overwhelming thirst and hunger not just for the basic life of free serfs, but also for the mature, sophisticated learned responsibility of Liberty.

In my own family, many of you know my Uncles Raymond and Malcolm Plaskett walked cane fields in the 1950s and 60s organizing cane workers for Liberty. They were proponents for the right to organize and speak out, for holding politicians accountable and for ensuring the mechanisms of government work for the people.

The fact that we as a society still struggle with many of the issues Jackson, and the Virgin Islanders both before and after him have fought for, should serve as a searing indictment on how complacent we have become as a people.

Somewhere along the way, we seemed to have taken our eyes off of the hard-fought prize of not just our freedom, but liberty.

That issues of income-inequality and poverty are still an issue for working-class Virgin Islanders more than a century later is an indictment on us all.

That public corruption and gun violence lead the headlines of our newspapers is an indictment on us all. That Virgin Island families continue to struggle with stagnant wages, soaring energy, healthcare and food costs more than 130 years later is an indictment on us all; particularly those of us in leadership roles in our community.

I commend the distinguished members of the 31^st Legislature for taking steps toward lifting working-class Virgin Islanders from the grips of poverty in moving legislation to increase the local minimum wage.

Recently in Congress, I fought in Committee with my counterparts who want to tie school lunch programs and feeding children to—what that Congressman and others like him determine to be—the responsibility of that child’s parents.

In a country that throws away tons of food and feeds the world, what does feeding our own children have to do with parents being single or unable to find sufficient or well paying jobs to support their families.

I have fought with other Members of Congress who want to cut off health services in needy communities and who believe reducing educational programs is a viable option to solving fiscal issues.

I am fighting for equal wages and raising the minimum wage for American workers and for the rights of Virgin Islanders to Vote.

I say that to say; we have an opportunity here today, to unite as a community, just as our ancestors did in this very park a century ago when they posted the Herald on that Baobab tree and celebrated the achievements of the man they called the Black Mosses.

We have an opportunity to begin to confront these issues not just as lawmakers or individuals but collectively, as a people, as a community.

We know that much of the D. Hamilton Jackson’s work and advocacy was for the advancement and empowerment of his people. Let us continue to build upon his legacy to ensure a better and brighter Virgin Islands moving forward into the next century.

God bless you all and God bless the Virgin Islands.

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