Vilified, isolated, pariahs on the national and international landscapes, Linden, as Buxton once did, has assumed an identity of notoriety almost similar to the “Taliban” in the normal Guyanese consciousness; but spare a thought for the besieged, law-abiding citizens of this community, and similar communities that have, time and again, been betrayed by their political leaders.
In Buxton Donna Herod was a mother, doing the things all mothers do when she was killed by a bullet.  The ensuing animosity against the police was a palpable force that threatened violence.  The average Buxtonian and Lindener is a father, a mother, a brother, a sister, a grandmother, a grandfather, an uncle, an aunt, a child, a friend, a neighbour; but today, as Buxtonians once were, Lindeners are cut off from the wider society through no fault of their own because, while it is easy to say, from the relative safety of other communities, that they do not expose the criminals so they are complicit in their activities, we should look at what happened to those who spoke out, including respected Buxtonian village elder, Eusi Kwyana, as well as the now rabid David Hinds.  They had to run away from the violence in their own community of Buxton. Today they are encouraging Lindeners to engage in the same destructive actions from which they ran in their own communities.
Take a look at the unenviable position in which the army and police personnel are placed..  They are committed to upholding the law and protecting the innocent; but within the community of Linden how do they identify the innocent from the culprit – a situation they were faced with not so long ago in Buxton, especially when some of their seniors – as was later proven- were complicit with the actions of the criminals?  Many instances would naturally ensue when the innocent may be treated like a culprit; and just as naturally much animosity would result from these encounters.  The distrust and dislike are mutual and are escalated by the day, especially in Buxton after the deaths of Donna Herod and the young soldier, Ivor Williams; and in the instance of Linden, the three men killed under suspicious circumstances, because ballistic tests have shown that the bullets that killed those men were not police issued.
The hardships facing the average householder in the country are compounded by a multiplicity of factors in the case of the law-abiding Lindener today, who had no hand and were essentially victims of the criminals who went on a rampage that set the town back decades in development; but where could they run to? Where could they find sanctuary?
Fear stalks their community.  Their children are daily exposed to scenarios and experiences that will shape their personalities – in which direction, especially since their school and other care facilities were wantonly destroyed?  What must be their trauma at being collectively blamed, as a community?
During the “Buxton resistance” when babies and other innocents were wantonly gunned down in their beds, including a Cabinet minister and his family, police on and off duty were killed like so many flies; an old man in a wheelchair set afire immediately after he had buried his wife; little Christine Sukhra shot in her home; parents killed in front of their children and vice versa and dozens of others blasted to death while going about their lawful business. Buxtonian and Lindener mothers and fathers must have mourned along with the rest of the nation, but how could they have shown their solidarity with the bereaved without being spurned; or worse, placing themselves in danger?
Their enforced isolation has put them in a position where their primary access to leadership is directly in the hands of those who are exploiting their vulnerability in order to promote their own interests by touting shared power; but power for whom?  And to empower whom?  Those leaders who are encouraging supporters to flout the law and destroy their lives, along with the lives of others, had power for decades; but what did they do for their people?  They disempowered their own supporters the most.  They gave their own people the status of beggars by freezing  Public Servants’ wages at G$2,000 and destroying the bauxite industry, jailing, beating, and tear-gassing bauxite workers when they protested.
They are putting their supporters in the line of fire so that they can attain even more power for themselves, and maybe their people are aware of this, but to whom can they turn for help? Because if anyone within the communities they target reach out to administrative systems other than the parliamentary terrorists, they most likely will be identified as turncoats and called ‘houseboys’, as others have been, and be put at risk, along with their families.
It was heart-breaking to see the faces of the people who have genuine concerns, who most likely wanted to engage with government officials on a one-on- one basis so that their concerns would be met, but who were most likely forced to follow the architects of death and destruction in their orchestrated campaigns of death and mayhem while they were sidelined by their so-called leaders, all of whom are grinding their own axes.
The government owes these Buxtonians and Lindeners, all of whom want to live normal lives once more, who want their children to live normal lives and continue to achieve the high scholastic awards they have been achieving of late, who want to go to bed and wake up without fear, as do the residents of Lusignan, and every Guyanese community.
Buxtonian and Lindener mothers need to take their children to and from school without fearing that a bullet from a police/bandit encounter will not snuff out their lives in an instant.  The primary statistics and real victims of the bandits are the children because, while bullets may not take a child’s life in most instances, the trauma and resultant negative lifestyle changes from being orphaned, or from witnessing so much lawlessness entrenched as a norm as either a direct or indirect consequence of the depredations of the bestial gangs will definitely impact their lives in  myriad, negative ways.
Most members of the joint services probably found it distasteful to fire teargas into crowds, and invade homes and privacy, even while they recognise the stark necessity for so doing; and most probably regret the necessity for these very essential exercises, because not everyone is the enemy; but how could they protect and serve the nation if, because they allow their human and social instincts to prevail, they fail in their mandated duty and even more lives are lost as a result.
The dichotomy needs to be recognised – all the tangibles and intangibles, and addressed by all stakeholders so that the peaceful Buxtonian and Lindener can begin to identify the members of the joint services as the nation’s protectors.  The trauma is real because the experiences are devastating, but Buxton and Linden are great and progressive Guyanese communities and should not be isolated and left anymore to the mercy of the predators – those who hide in the backlands and those who walk the halls of the Parliament Building.
The President’s visit to that community after so much destruction and mayhem is highly laudable, as is his promise of additional developmental initiatives needed in the ocean of caring and attention that these communities require in order to restore the self-respect of the citizens, and consequently the respect of others for the communities because, while other communities may have concerns of equal import, they have not been held to ransom by beasts, nor have they been inflicted with the enforced association with robber gangs as an unending sore in their socio-psychological identities; and they have not become the bane and perceived enemies of the nation’s protective forces.
But above all is the burning question: where next would the predators that stalk the corridors of Parliament Building turn their incendiary devices, foremost of which are their oh-so believable lies to a gullible support base?
But while the Buxtonians seem to have learnt their lesson and have rejected the racist, divisive and inflammatory rhetoric that once incited actions that practically destroyed their community because they are now seeing progress in their community, the Lindeners have now realised that they have allowed their leaders to aggravate their sensibilities and cause destruction in their community that will take much more that was required to re-build Buxton.