nice talking on the telephone but yes indeed you know with the camera working very much the public access well thank you very much indeed mr channer it's a pleasure i've long admired your work well you know and it's a pleasure to be here well ok good and walking walking very much it's a great growing audience and so forth and you welcome viewers to come for say that you very much thank you ok i wonder if you could share your own background born and raised you've got an interesting background and then we'll talk about the human condition and the state of politics and so forth but your own background please sure i'm not very good at talking about myself so please feel free at any time if there's i don't mission that you know just might be glaring feel free to to to nudge me in that direction i was born in guyana yeah which your  yes that's right or as far as sherlock point out in in their short history of the west indies which is one of the textbooks that i had to use in the very early seventies when i was in high school what columbus did was that he discovered he x he he disclosed to europeans of the existence of a country that already had been there that already had been populated of exactly prior to his a raw you know it's really interesting in a way because we all come out we're all african we're all come out of africa in two hundred thousand years ago and there were migrations moving eastward in the peoples that had gone eastward had gone something like ninety five percent of the way around the world toward the east across the bering and down into the american indian people in brazil are gone ninety five percent of the way around the world the european based culture is different nations a extensions of mankind in the bahamas and in the caribbean yes indeed quite so and you know one of the fascinating things about about global anthropology is the degree to which people are so much more alike than we are different unfortunate in contemporary political discourse and economic discourse we tend to focus on the differences but once you get into societies and you take a look at the society the way societies are organized indigenous social and political and economic arrangements and institutions there's a remarkable degree of commonality between among societies throughout the world everything is interconnected to everything else right through time and it's all one system really that exists in terms of this universe yes and it is the universality about things like that but it is interesting also i find out a written research about it it was british brit you had mary and me and people there and then you had and you have a large mixture of hindu or indian yes and also another subgroup that was it's only something like twenty percent or which the experience of enslaved africans shaped not only the united states but all of the americas because of the ten or twelve million and slave africans who were brought to the new world  largest african presence outside of the continent of africa but then so through slavery the enslavement of africans you had an african presence there the british formally abolished slavery in eight hundred thirty four ok that's right although there that was followed by something they called the indenture ship system becomes a little technical but the whole thing was aborted in eight hundred thirty eight and  of indians who were force of a time coming from the from the nation india which was the jewel in the crown of the british empire you know having been promised that if they would work for a certain amount of time they would get certain benefits and they would also be allowed to repatriate that never took place now but we also have portuguese and chinese who also were brought to the country as indentured laborers so it's quite an odd mixture as you as you way out of it eventually so it's a little less it's a little less onerous then let's just say the marxist would talk about wage slaves as they were there really more like wage indentured to their in dentured by a system that treats them responsible and in a state of submission to the people who have the major powers are more than political and he's around the world a little distinct just thinking oh yes or no at all that you have a huge population of guyana as indeed has been the case as well from much of the english speaking caribbean in fact i often remark that diana and the countries of the caribbean are net exporters of human capital because  probably our number one export you know in in some countries in guyana for example and in jamaica it is estimated that well over eighty percent of people with a tertiary level of education live outside of the country interesting now one of the reasons for that of course is the well it's not just it's not just bangalore zero is it has to do with the fact that the intentional under development of these colonies you know by the british resulted in a situation after political independence in which you did not have the economic structures to accommodate  degree in a pretty good education system because in guyana and in the caribbean because of course unlike the united states the british were largely absentee landlords they needed to have a local population that could s as producers of raw materials not the finished products so you have the upsurge situation in which a country like guyana would export rock site which is very valuable mineral resource you of course as a geography introduction of family family based immigration system here are you and you've had quite an out quite an out migration from ghana and elsewhere to america to the united states before that it was to britain because of course after the second world war which a former foreign minister of guyana rashly jackson used to refer to as the last european civil war after the second world war of course there was a great need for labor in in in britain so britain opened the doors to the former colonies because they wanted to have that they needed labor from from india from  the public conversation focusing on issues of democracy what ended up for for people who had been traditionally excluded from the mainstream here what ended up happening quite inadvertently in a sense was that the civil rights movement in this country created an opening for many immigrants who were skilled immigrants coming from the caribbean teachers  as health care professionals and so on my own the very first member of my family who came here in the the one nine hundred sixty s came here to accept a teaching appointment brought her daughter who came who accepted a nursing appointment and so up and go across the ocean and make a venture some move into a new way of life in a new environment many of more forced by political or religious oppression or something yeah a bit like outsiders in a certain sense from the established you know the british had the system of letting go very gradually so you had this system of internal self self government you had a premier and so on preceding political foe political independence at the time a full political things now as far as again as concerned did you go to school there yes and your own background and your background ok and then let's try to interlace it with the political evolving of the country of guyana and the one you were in station with and move it sort of toward the contemporary ok great yes i did go to school there in fact in fact i moved to this country in broadcasting is with the exception of a ten year eight or nine year hiatus when i worked as a legislative and communications director to two members of the new york city council continue in nineteen ninety is you continue and i had been right in the middle of my second semester my mother died so i left to take care of my younger siblings now the head of a household and i have been very very fortunate because right after that i was given a series of opportunities as i've had the opportunity not only to work in the field of broadcasting and journalism but i've also been given the opportunity to t ravel extensively on assignment to various parts of the world to meet colleagues and and also to study with a number of a number of very influential influential to  cynthia henry who is originally from believes she was the head of the caribbean radio unit been lead taylor who is originally from trinidad and tobago and who was the deputy head of that unit these are  him so with the understanding that once you were in you would they would take you on a guided tour and you would have to leave on the on the flight coming out and would like handlers that's right  conspired we were not going to come back on the return flight the thing is that most of the handlers are americans and most of them were white and i'm a johnson well which was that he and the cooper was the person who brought a lawsuit against he brought up he brought the lawsuit that created the twelfth congressional district in brooklyn that led no i don't i don't remember the wording right right now you know but anyway we'll find it yeah that's right i'm sure it's a good it's a good thing we could pick up on now that right yet another another tidbit here is that s relations between the between the african american community and the community in fact a professor winston james he used to teach at columbia university he has a book called holding a loft the banner of the o p o video yet holding aloft the banner of ethiopia in which he writes he documents extensively the very very close relations and the role of of caribbean immigrants in the early twentieth as the interim bureau chief of the into press service news agency in diana ok now the into press service news agency is an international news agency headquartered in rome here in new york the global information network is there for fishel distributor it is i think the sixth largest news agency in the world it's very interesting and i was the interim bureau chief in guyana so what i came to the to the u supplements dealing with specific issues for example there is you why you got a lot of that's right you know i work very closely what would happen is we'd create this special assignment and focus on it for a couple of weeks and about the very early one nine hundred ninety is i think maybe nineteen ninety one or thereabouts i went to work for you and clark now you know clarke was the first woman from jamaica the first jamaican born member of the new york city council the first person born in jamaica and elected to the new york city council good for her yes now so for a period of about and communications director first for you want to clark who represented the forty fifth district council district in central brooklyn and then for dr lloyd henry who was also a city council member and which there was the mayor there was the city council and there was something called the board of estimate the art of estimate was made up of representatives of each of the five baros and the board of estimate was where the locus of power populous has about three million people queens about two and a half million people staten island just about five hundred thousand so someone challenge the constitutionality of the composition of the board of estimate because each of the borrowers hadn't had one vote on the board of estimate and it was found by the supreme court to be a violation of the one person one vote principle because of the disparity in the size of the populations so the board of estimate was abolished  the city council which at the time was thirty five members what do you now know fifty now fifty one did you want that's right the city council was expanded from thirty five to fifty one members in a very major historic redistricting process and part of that allowed for the creation of these districts such as the fortieth and the forty fifth in which the majority population or or  significant politically significant percentage of the population was of be in heritage more ancestry now this whole question of heritage and ancestry of course is a tricky one because it doesn't mean everyone came from the car b and we're also talking here about people who identify with a car or be in heritage although they would be baby first story from second generation americans born to a caribbean parents and immigrants  i did legislative analysis which means if someone suppose you believe that there was an issue that required attention of your consul member and you approached the council member on has a staff of attorneys and an analyst who policy analysts who specialize in this field there is a process that has to occur before the legislation is actually drafted there's the whole be something that would have attracted you or yes yeah and good use of your training yes i mean it was a great opportunity i thought and every every journalist who covers politics should have an opportunity and i thought it was a great opportunity to to look at how the sausage is made on the other side that's the thing we're not supposed to ever look at yeah i know you don't want you to see that i know that's right or how or how legislation that's right because when you spend your life covering the political process most people have not most reporters who cover the political process have no idea what goes on really really within the political process mr lyndon johnson used to not because it's a union job she could not continue to do that job and i was and i i had on occasion before substituted for her so she asked me whether i would do that  that's why i came to that position although i had done some substituting before and also a couple of special programs for the public affairs department working with people like sally o'brien when she was stations and we also have more than two hundred affiliates and these are all the radio stations that do not belong to the pacifica foundation but to wish to carry our programming and wish to be associated with our programming president who introduced the whole idea of listen to sponsored radio right which is what it is about ninety percent of our funding comes directly from our listeners so we hold fundraisers on the air and the last people to send money and they do and this is a wonderful thing in this way we were able to retain our editorial independence because we're not beholden to any of the cooperate or commercial interests you don't  people laid off from there was a big fight was that is that we're talking about as you were just well the real problem or dan i think was let go and amy were goodman was well i guess it would probably be worth talking about except that i would not be the best person t requires me it requires me to to to challenge the conventional orthodoxies of both the left and the right you can make enemies all over the place yes indeed but that doesn't bother me any you know you're making the enemy you know you're doing something wrong no you're doing something right right that's right because when i started the program many people wanted to know what i thought my opinion of yeah i thought i could bring side are you know why it is not important and i think you examine the issues on their merit you know whether it is an issue like same sex marriage or abortion whether it is an issue of foreign aid developmental  ideologues but but it does not mean that that that we do not have an opinion or that our opinion cannot or should not be part of the public discourse is different things in our in journalism in general there's general reporting what sure of yourself in your own editorial sure sure or your own news reporting or advancing of a progressive understanding is sure sure i started like most good reporter you should it allows you to divorce yourself and it requires all compels you to divorce yourself and your own experience from the quote objective facts yeah now a little later on in the process  h one does come to the realisation and one comes to embrace the realization as i have that objectivity is is it might be a goal or an ideal but it is it is certainly not something that   i have a position and what i do is i i harness i harness the facts and i analyze the data with that position in mind and let me see if i can think of a very practical example right now for working on a couple of presentations i'll be doing over the course of the next several months i one of the recurring themes in those presentations is the notion that there is no such thing as a neutral public policy that public policy regardless of the intent of those who design it nevertheless has disparate consequences for different say that there is a part of the environmental debate that is not engaging the mainstream media that has nothing to do with whales and monckton's and pristine and pristine mountain tops and so forth the preservation of trees it has to do with the density of particularly emissions outside of people's homes with the noise pollution with the high rates of lead contamination of asthma and all of the  related consequences of a toxic environment and it has to do with the fact that some communities are more likely to have recycling and garbage disposal facilities sewage treatment plants and so on y and whatnot these things and these things are placed in these communities as a matter of public policy but now public policy has real and in this case very negative and in some cases disastrous effects on the lives of the people who live there and some more than others and somewhat alarming animal farm some people are suffering more than i was more than others yeah right that's right right right so advocacy journalism says there's a certain set of facts about the environment and it is important that we recognize them and it also says let us see how this environmental debate how the environmental movement is addressing this particular set of circumstances in this particular community this particular constituency and how can we and how can we reform that public policy so that it is not only cognisant off but also responsive to the concerns of that underrepresented constituency do you ever take into account like zero zero zero some is it one gains and others who lose trying to find solutions within a designer or an application  context where everybody wins or is that something that is being is that just idealistic to think we can have patterns that can take into account all of the constituencies so nobody loses or is the is that fought for for every glass of water that that you drink it is one glass of water less available to me that's you know but it doesn't but that's in a larger universal sense you know i think many of point is so large here and changing and changing that that it does not it didn't we don't we do not have to settle for a situation in which there could be a bust up or in my neighborhood or in your neighborhood that does not it does not have on ninety nine point five point five on your listeners supported radio dial you can do better that's right i don't live in a w b four and you'll be able to see him here and be hopefully more and more on public access cable television i think we're in the time any time because you have this very fascinating life that i've been reading about it all well it just goes on and on and yeah so thanks