No Date Amnesty International Article on Bob Marley

“Until the philosophy which hold one race

Superior and another inferior

Is finally and permanently discredited and abandoned

Everywhere is war, me say war

That until there are no longer first class

And second class citizens of any nation

Until the color of a man’s skin

Is of no more significance than the colour of his eyes

Me say war

That until the basic human rights are equally

Guaranteed to all, without regard to race

Dis a war.”

Through these words sung by Bob Marley in the 1976 song “War,” I first seriously thought about the concept of human rights. I was in Paris in 1980, a year before Bob Marley’s death from cancer. He had just completed his Babylon By Bus tour and Europeans were jammin’ to the hard beat and harder words of this revolutionary prophet from the Trench Town ghetto of Kingston.

Jamaican reggae music captured the soul of this young community activist. It was through reggae culture that my passion for social justice went global, connecting to Africans around the world.

I remember traveling to Bluefields on the Atlantic Coast of Nicaragua in 1981 to meet with young political leaders during the war against the U.S. government-supported Contras fighting a counter-revolution against the Sandinistas. The Bluefields leaders were mostly black English-speaking descendants of Africans either escaping bondage in the Caribbean or, after slavery, seeking work. After a hundred years, the people of Bluefields were isolated from other English speaking Blacks. They were surrounded by a Spanish-speaking Ladino majority, and Sumo, Miskito and Rama Indians also fighting the Nicaraguan government. 

I found out they only had country western music by hanging out with them after the meetings. I thought this was strange. They explained that the only English language music they had was left by white merchant marines who mostly listened to country music.

Now I’m not knocking country music, but I was shocked! So I left them my small collection of reggae music, specifically my Bob Marley tapes. That should have ended the story. But I returned to Bluefields two years later. A big mural of Bob Marley standing with his outstretched arms copied from his “Uprising” album cover was painted on the side of City Hall. 

Roots reggae music is the cultural heartbeat of the human rights movement for me. Human rights – the notion that all people have the same rights – is expressed powerfully through reggae music because these are the songs of peoples’ pain. Its message of universal love while denouncing universal suffering speaks to the perfect vision of human rights. 

Bob Marley was paraphrasing Haile Selassie’s 1935 futile plea to the League of Nations to stop Italy’s invasion of Ethiopia. Selassie himself was a quintessential human rights paradox – a victimized violator capable of domestic repression of his own people while at the same time a victim of an imperialist invasion.

I learned a lot about human rights listening to Bob Marley. He wasn’t perfect but he didn’t have to be. His mission was perfect. Political repression generated timeless apocalyptic truths he shared through his music. I try to remember that as a human rights activist – we don’t have to be perfect because we have a perfect cause. We are all victimized violators trying to de-tox from oppression. I will stop remembering that I’m black when people stop reminding me. But until that day, One Love. Thanks, Bob.