New ACS Secretary General to deliver inaugural reparations lecture

Saint Lucia will take the reparations message to the rest of the Caribbean next week when one of its foremost scholars will deliver an inaugural lecture in an educational series to be launched here on Wednesday.

The new Secretary General of the Association of Caribbean States (ACS) Ambassador Dr June Soomer will deliver a live public lecture on the topic The Reparations Movement: “A Ragtag Collection of Racial Malcontents Matching to the Beat of Their Own Drum.”

A former Saint Lucia Ambassador to CARICOM and the OECS, Dr Soomer is expected to draw the link between Slavery and Emancipation, Garvey and his struggle for Repatriation. She is also expected to explain why it is important for Saint Lucians and Caribbean people to support and carry on the CARICOM quest for Reparations for Britain, France and other European states for Slavery and Native Genocide in the Caribbean.

A former student and lecturer at the University of the West Indies, Ambassador Soomer was also responsible for Saint Lucia’s Regional Integration and Diaspora Affairs before being selected to head the Trinidad & Tobago-based ACS.

Dr Soomer, who has already taken up her new post, is also a former founding member of the Saint Lucia National Reparations Committee (NRC). The Saint Lucia lecture will be the first by the prominent Saint Lucian lady envoy in her new post.