Donovan Reynolds is the founder and CEO of Kingstonmouth.com. He is a trained Diplomat, Social Worker, and social activist based in London, United Kingdom.
Social Entrepreneur
He is a social entrepreneur and independent writer who manages and founded Kingstonmouth.com.; an international online magazine whose core business is to create content on social media platforms to promote human rights, campaign to improve global governance and the protection of the global environment. The company also makes documentaries and provides Public Relations and communication consultancy services. Kingstonmouth.com is a charity registered limited liability company in the United Kingdom.
Academic Involvement
Donovan Reynolds attended Calabar High School in Jamaica and graduated in 1980. He studied Social Work at the University of the West Indies in 1992. In 1999 he attended Kingston University, UK, where he pursued undergraduate Studies in Criminal Justice and a Diploma in Social Work. In 2003 he graduated with BA hons (CJS) and a Dip. SW. He has a certificate in Management Studies from South Bank University. He completed post graduate studies in Human Rights law at Birbeck University. He also holds an MSc (hons) in Diplomacy, Statecraft and Global Governance from the Institute for Diplomacy and Global Governance (IDIG) at Loughborough University UK.
Politics
He describes himself as a progressive left leaning eco-socialist. He is an adherent of green politics with clear and outspoken anti-capitalist views. He was an avid supporter of the British Labour Party for over 10 years, and Momentum, the group that supported Jeremy Corbin’s leadership. After Jeremy Corbin was suspended from the British Labour Party he discontinued his support. He is now a supporter and member of the British Green party.
He was previously an active member of the Jamaica Labour Party (JLP) in his native country for almost 30 years but left to support the Peoples National Party, (PNP) citing ideological and doctrinal differences.
Social Influence
Donovan Reynolds has a number of people that have inspired his political leanings. They are first and foremost his adopted mother, Rose E Reynolds, a Jamaican school teacher and a delegate of the Peoples National Party.
His adopted mother met Amy Jakes Garvey, the Jamaican-born journalist and activist wife of Marcus Mosiah Garvey, and Edith Dalton-James MBE CD (February 1, 1896 – November 5, 1976). Edith Dalton-James was a Jamaican educator and politician. Edith Dalton James was also a founding member of the People’s National Party (1938). His mother was a member of the UNIA, a Marxist, and a delegate of the Jamaica teaches association JTA.
Social Activism.
Her nephew is Dr Winston Davis, a former Ambassador to Cuba and served as Jamaica’s Ambassador to the Organisation of American States (OAS) and Cuba. He retired in recent years as Senior Assistant Registrar of the UWI. Winston Davis was influential in assisting with admission to Calabar High School that was central to his elevated self-esteem.
Other persons who contributed directly or indirectly to his life and political outlook are: Dr. Anthony McKenzie (childhood friend) Adrian Frater (Jamaican journalist), Walter Rodney (Guyanese historian, political activist and academic.), Mutabaruka (Rastafarian Dub Poet), Professor Stuart Hall (British Cultural Theorist), Bruce Golding (Politician & former Jamaican Prime Minister), Yanis Varoufakis (Greek economist and politician,) Johann Hari (British-Swiss writer and Journalist), John Maxwell (Jamaican Journalist ), Ann Smith (British Educator Feminist & Social Activist) , Simone de Beauvoir (French existentialist philosopher and Feminist).
Early Life
Donovan recollects his early life as a perplexing period. He describes his adopted mother as the hands that guided his birth. Rose E Reynolds was an Educator who married his father, Samuel Reynolds, a working class farmer in West Rural St Andrew in Jamaica. This he described jokingly, must have been drunken choice made during good sex that led to a mistaken wedding ceremony between them. ‘All they had in common was my sister and I’. The revulsion between them was palpable and it led to a turbulent and unhappy childhood experience.
His adopted mother left child bearing until late and found out that she was infertile, so arranged with his biological mother to have two children with his father – a brave decision when there was no fertility clinic. He owes his birth to this bold decision as he considers himself lucky to be a part of a powerful existence that come out of pain. This struggle has informed his quest for human rights, political action and environmental justice.
He describes his father as a tough working class man who was physically abusive, yet his adopted mother was a loving woman who was intelligent, political and had an affinity for the performing arts. Because the communication had broken down between them, Donovan became the person whom she tested her education on, and encouraged his love of reading and poetry. By the age of 12 years he had already discovered Marxism and Pan Africanism as a result of his mother tutelage.
His early years of school were boring; he was already reading Times magazine and Newsweek and the only subject he was interested in was history. He topped his class in history at High school but otherwise he was an average if not below par student. By the time he left Calabar high School it was self-evident that he had sabotaged his education out of boredom and a selfish desire to rebel against his physically abusive dad.
He recalled with sadness, the tears in his mother’s eyes, the shout and squealing sound that she made when she saw his school report. This first experience of failure turned his life around; from there on this early academic disappointment made him a hard-nosed academic.
Pacifism and Social Action
Donovan locate his political activism from his mother and also Alice Walker, author of The Colour Purple who famously opined, “Activism is our rent for living on planet earth”. He was conditioned by his mother into believing that no one has ever become poor from giving. Throughout his life activism and charity this has brought richness and satisfaction to his inner core.
His social activism began at the age of 15 years when he became Vice President of a Youth Club in Zadie Gardens, St Andrew Jamaica, where his friend Michael Myrie lived.
At the age of 24 he was working as a government Public Servant in Negril Jamaica where he formed a Police Youth Club. He worked with children from an urban blight community to form a football club, a netball team, a drama club and was able to get youths from the community to participate in community development, cultural activities, drama, and sports. Some went on to participate in youth exchange programs in London and Toronto.
The community Sports Complex behind the Negril Police Station bears testament to his community involvements. He continues to be revered in the Negril Community. The Negril Sports Complex was his project proposal when he completed Social Work at the University of the West Indies in 1992. Recently the Jamaican Government, through the Sports Development Foundation, upgraded the Negril Mini Stadium in White Hall, at a cost of $83 million Jamaican dollars.
After leaving the JCF he was involved with the Jamaica Labour Party, where he was at one point caretaker for the Sheffield Division, and later, for a short period, as Constituency caretaker for Western Westmoreland. This was cut short by a period of illness.
Whilst a member of the JLP he struggled with the conservative ideological doctrine of the JLP but admired Bruce Golding, the chairman of the Jamaica Labour Party (JLP). In 2002, Golding re-joined the JLP and in November 2003 was again elected chairman of the party.
Golding served as eighth Prime Minister of Jamaica from 11 September 2007 to 23 October 2011. Reynolds credited him for the re-introduction of free education and free health care for Jamaicans and, despite his misgiving, he pursued a progressive agenda.
Donovan’s left leaning tendencies collided with the JLP lurch to the right. His doctrinal criticism of the JLP under the current leadership is well documented in an article entitled, The JLP: Staying the Course of a Difficult but achievable Reform Agenda. This can be viewed at Kinstonmouth.com. So when he announced on his Facebook in February 2023 that he no longer supported the JLP it was not surprising as this is more in line with the values of his mentors and the anti-establishment views Kingstonmouth.com
Social & Political Activism in the UK
In 1997 he migrated to the United Kingdom to pursue studies, in line with his political and charitable aspirations. Unable to curb his activist appetite, Donovan Reynolds was the leader and student representative of his student year group at Kingston University between 1999 and 2003. NUS is the national union representing university and college students across the UK. As a student he was drawn to the NUS aspirational fight to make education free across the education spectrum.
Student activities brought him in contact with the British Labour party and Jamaican born British Marxist sociologist, cultural theorist, and political activist, Stuart Henry McPhail Hall. Left leaning social activist groups in the UK and Stuart Hall helped to refashion his political views. Hall regards language-use as operating within a framework of power, institutions of politics/economics. This view resonated with Donovan Reynolds. In 1999 while in the UK he met Professor Hall at a function at the Open University, Hall encouraged jokingly him to become the mouth of Kingston. That was where the first idea of Kingstonmouth.com came from.
Donovan Reynolds is a pacifist influenced by Henry David Thoreau, also referred to as anarchist pacifism, a school of thought that advocates for the use of peaceful, non-violent forms of resistance in the struggle for social change. To this end he has been involved with the Stop the War Coalition (STWC; informally Stop the War). A British group created on 21 September 2001, shortly after the September 11 attacks. STWC it was created to campaign against what it believes are unjust wars.
Kingstonmouth.com is part of the anti-nuclear movement in the United Kingdom that consist of groups who oppose nuclear technologies such as nuclear power and weapons. He has led Kinston mouth delegation on a number of public demonstrations in London.
Kingstonmouth.com supports the anti-poverty alliance and supports the anti-austerity movement in the United Kingdom on and offline. A reoccurring theme of is writings is that the last two decades have seen an increased collusion between establishment politics and media about the necessity for austerity, a set of political-economic policies that aim to reduce government budget deficits through spending cuts, tax increases, or a combination of both. Kingstonmoth.com hold the view that reduced government spending has resulted in higher unemployment and a widening gap between the rich and the poor.
He is best known for first coining the idea of “Techno Billionaire Slavery”, which he describes as a modern day form of slavery perpetuated by the techno billionaire class. This is supported by a global education system that seeks to funnel workers, especially the millennial generation, into an ICT/AI based education system that produces mostly low paying employment, a global virtual gulag controlled by techno billionaires.
In response to Conservative-Liberal Democrat coalition government’s austerity measures – which saw significant reductions in local council budgets, increasing of university tuition fees and reduction of public spending on welfare, education, health and policing – Kingstomouth.com was involved in an anti-austerity demonstration on the 25th of June 2015. Between 70,000 and 150,000 estimated persons marched in Central London in protest of the anti-poverty legislation.
The protest was organised by the People’s Assembly against Austerity and a number supported of activist coalition, a groups including CND, Unite, Just Stop Oil and Extinction Rebellion. On reaching Downing Street, Donovan Reynolds laid down before Number Ten Downing Street with other protesters who called for the end of austerity and increased funding for the NHS, the end of a Tory government and to ‘tax the rich not the poor’. The police intervened to arrest him but after an intervention by his partner Ann Smith and evidence from his online writings blogs and YouTube documentaries to advocate for a global tax on the billionaire class to alleviate poverty funds, he was moved on by the police. These days he is more reserved with his activism preferring to use peaceful methods to achieve change.
Secularism
Donovan Reynolds is an agnostic and secular humanist who is respectful of other faith beliefs. He believes in a plural, open society where people follow many different religious and non-religious ways of life. His personal believes in a secular state guaranteeing human rights, with no privilege or discrimination on grounds of religion or belief. He is extremely proud of the fact that the volunteers and leadership of Kingstonmouth. come from various faith organisations.
Online Publications
Donovan Reynolds is the CEO / Independent Writer at Kingstonmouth.com
Kingstonmouth.com is an international charitable on-line magazine, founded in 2011, dedicated to the promotion and advocacy of climate change, human rights and political issues.
The aim of Kingstonmouth is to promote social and climate justice, target universal issues and the underlying causes of poverty and global human rights problems. Kingstonmouth.com maintain a respectable global online magazine brand that has published 350 articles and several widely circulated documentaries.
The general mission and mandate at Kingstonmouth.com is to create content for its valued customers that is awe inspiring. The overall aim is to produce content that promotes human rights, improve global governance and to promote the protection of the environment for current and future generations.
Contacts
Kingstonmouth.com can also be located on:
kingstonmouth63@gmail.com
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/kingstonmouth
Twitter: https://www.twitter.com/kingstonmouth
Instagram: Google blogspot:https://dannygerm.blogspot.com/
https://kingstonmouth63.blogspot.com/
