I’m on the island now and thought I’d pass along some info. I was driving through Simpson Bay last evening with the radio tuned to 105 listening to a bouncy Caribbean tune when I realized that the song was about the French side protests. How someone wrote and recorded a song that quickly I have no idea, but it was very clearly within the last day or two because the lyrics were talking about burning cars and blocking the bridge in Sandy Ground. They were also about how frustrated and angry the people are.

None of that is news at this point, but what was news to me was the racial tension expressed in the song. The chorus of the song spoke about how the government only works for white people, that it doesn’t work for “the colors” and that if you want government to work you have to be “whitey-tighty”. Those are quotes from the song.

Keep in mind this was being sung by a St Martiner to other St Martiners.

These protests are not just about PPRN. There is a racial aspect to the unrest that shouldn’t be ignored. One of complaints mentioned in the articles about the protests was alleged unfair treatment of locals relative to “metropolitans”, i.e. French nationals from the mainland. It makes the earlier comment about encountering a local on the French side who said “I actually like Americans” a little more understandable. It also puts the video of the attack by the bridge occupiers on a tourist ferry in a different perspective.

This tells me that whatever the trigger of the protests was, the underlying tensions run much deeper, and will be much more difficult to resolve than just fixing the PPRN. It also explains why the reaction by the Gendarmes has been relatively restrained. The gendarmes are all metropolitans - there are no local police on the French side - so a strong reaction by the Gendarmes would only feed the sentiment that the government is biased in favor of the metropolitans against the locals. The French government is almost in a no win situation. As of right now, the protestors run the French side, and unless cooler heads prevail soon, any escalation by authorities could make the situation a lot, lot worse.