Dear Reverend Foster,

“The old world is dying and the new world is struggling to be born. This is the time of monsters.” — Antonio Gramsci, who was imprisoned during the fascist dictatorship of Benito Mussoliniin Italy in the 1920s and 1930s

I write you — beyond the grave — regarding two globally significant circumstances that took place over the past week. Given your life journey, championing justice — including a pivotal chapter in Bermuda — I know you would be deeply interested in both.

First, let me introduce your transformative legacy in Bermuda to the younger generations. You served your maiden pastorship at Vernon Temple AME in the early 1950s, transforming a tiny congregation into a major community hub. The benefit of that burgeoning campaign financed the college education of numerous young people in the west of the Island — Stanley Lowe, Reginald Burrows, Cecil Smith and Edwin Wilson, to name a few.

You were subsequently relocated to St Paul AME, continuing that momentum, before being transferred to your hometown, New York, where you served the Big Apple — and beyond — for decades.

This past weekend reflects some of the darkness of the old world dying with the kidnapping of the President of Venezuela and his wife by the United States military. Columbia University’s Professor Jeffrey Sachs, in a submission to the UN Security Council, described this as “a blatant international and US federal crime that also violates the US Constitution”. The Venezuelan couple were taken to New York and charged with narcotics trafficking.

Ironically, only a few weeks ago, President Donald Trump ordered a reprieve after only a year of incarceration — from a 45-year sentence — for the former president of Honduras who had been convicted in New York of smuggling 400 tonnes of cocaine into the US. It is noteworthy that the US Drug Enforcement Agency’s quarterly report clarifies that 85 per cent of the illegal drugs enter the US via Pacific routes — and reports negligible amounts from Venezuela.

That said, President Trump, a master of propaganda, has admitted that the illegal action occurred to take back “our oil” from that country.

Reverend Foster, your work with the global anti-apartheid movement addressing the then-US government’s complicity with the apartheid regime of South Africa would have familiarised you with how propaganda is deployed to justify actions that run roughshod over international law. Of course, gold was the resource being coveted in the South African circumstances.

The success of the global solidarity that fostered the new world in South Africa offers some guidance for leveraging an international movement to address this current time of monsters.

On January 1, we witnessed glimpses of the new world, struggling to be born during the Inauguration of the mayor, Zohran Mamdani, at New York’s City Hall. That venue is familiar to you, having served as the Bronx’s first Black city councilman — for 23 years. Zohran, the first Muslim, began his term as New York’s mayor having won an election against massive odds, only through the effort of 90,000 volunteers with a commitment to justice and working people.

The opening prayer of the ceremony captured something of a vision of the new world. The propaganda attacks, funded by millions, against Zohran, in addition to weaponising his being Muslim, included attacking his principled stand opposing the genocide committed by the Israeli regime. With New York having the second largest population of Jewish residents, propagandists conflated opposing the live-streamed inhumanity visited on tens of thousands of Palestinians with anti-Semitism. A significant segment of New York’s Jewish community — especially the younger generation — refused to be hoodwinked, ergo the people’s victory.

While the chairman of the Islamic Centre, surrounded by six other faith leaders, was delivering his wonderful sermon-cum-prayer, the television camera caught the face of the female rabbi (Jewish faith), whose smiling radiance said it all.

The thousands gathered in the sub-zero weather at the City Hall to urge on the birthing of the new world reflected the diversity that seeds the solidarity that will be needed for the difficult journey forward.

Martin Luther King Jr reminded us that Injustice anywhere is a danger to justice everywhere. This wisdom is offered to help today’s generations across the globe and in little Bermuda to navigate our way forward through some difficult seas.