Chairman/Editor-in-chief:
Rovan G. Locke, Ph.D.,
Consulting Editors:
Professor Ali A. Mazrui and
Lloyd B. Smith,
Pesident:
Malik E. Locke
Senior V.P. Operations/
Finance:
Reichland Anderson,
Senior V.P. Marketing and Sales:
Carolyn Kenedy,
V.P. Informational Systems:
Leona Minto,
V. P.  of Marketing:
Leroy A. Gordon -Jamaica;
Paula Powell: Editorial Consultant and Sanchia Allen-Sports/Public Affairs,
Design & Production:
Norris Grandison,
Secretary/Treasurer:
Winsome Vaughn Burke,
Business Development Consultant: 
Ashton Douglas,
Special Consultant Circulation/Distribution Coordinator:
Trevor "Peppa Rock" Wynter
Publisher: The Michigan
Communication Group.

 

 
 
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                 PUBLISHER'S PERSPECTIVE

What role should the Afrocentric Print Media play in the remapping of the political landscape in South Florida? Shouldn¹t it be an aggressive agent of change against racial inequalities and economic disparities which have subjugated ethnic minorities to the lower layers of the pay scale? Isn¹t it an abdication of journalistic integrity when a handful of Afrocentric practitioners in the media industry compromise their investigatory journalistic pursuits due to their personal and political relationships with the Caribbean and South Florida¹s corporate giants and political elites? Can there be exciting intellectual discourses within the ethnic Black Communities in South Florida when the media practitioners allow umbilical naturalistic bonds to influence their thinking on those political candidates and incumbents who have ³stepped up to the plate² to become power elites within South Florida?
Why is it that the Caribbean media specialists in South Florida are so conspicuously silent on the $9 billion dollars (Ja) owed by Gordon ³Butch² Stewart to the Jamaican Taxpayers? Is Air Jamaica a private entity or a public entity due to the nepotism taking place within its corporate headquarters in Jamaica and South Florida? Is the chairman of Air Jamaica engaging in transparency and a level playing field when he allows his executive staff to engage in discriminatory behavior against Caribbean publishers who question his preferential arrangement with the Patterson regime which allows him to run the National Airline as his own fiefdom? Isn¹t the Patterson regime engaging in vulgar double standards by keeping quiet on the $9 billion (Ja) guaranteed to Gordon ³Butch² Stewart and on the other hand saying it had an ³obligation to protect the public purse² when it comes to the Opposition¹s Leader Edward Seaga¹s huge debts of $443 million (Ja) to the Jamaican Government for outstanding liabilities of his company, Town and Country Resort, for unpaid statutory deductions and taxes. Prime Minister Patterson engages in ostrichnified behavior when it comes to his friend, Gordon ³Butch² Stewart but has unleashed the Attorney-General Department against Mr. Seaga because he had an obligation to protect the ³public purse². Where is this obligation when it comes to Air Jamaica a ³public entity² where its chairman has arbitrarily removed the marketing/advertising contract from the Manhattan based firm of Jensen-Boga and transferred it to his paramour. Furthermore, he has doubled this contract from $2million (US) to $4million and we have not heard any objections from Prime Minister Patterson, Minister of Finance, Dr. Omar Davies, Audley Shaw, the Chairman of Parliaments Public Accounts Committee, Edmund Bartlett, the Opposition Spokesman for Tourism and Aloun Assamba, the Minister of Industry and Tourism.
Certain influential voices within the Patterson regime and within the Jamaican Labor Party would like to get Mr. Seaga out of politics by declaring him bankrupt. It must be borne in mind that there is a clause in the Constitution which clearly declares that no one who has declared bankruptcy can serve in the revered House of Parliament. It will be interesting to see how the Patterson regime deals with a similar case in terms of the former Minister of Water and Housing, Dr. Carl Blythe who through his ³creative² Central Westmoreland Constituency Trust Fund, owes the Government over $300 million (Ja) for infrastructure work on his interlocking public/private housing projects in Grotto, Sar-La-Mar and Torro in Burnt Savannah. This Vice President of the People¹s National Party created an upper class garrison in Llandillo on the former captured property once owned by the Eric Clarke¹s Plantocracy. He had the full support of Prime Minister Patterson and his former Cabinet colleagues in building this garrison and on the two other aborted projects at Grotto and Torro.

THE PEN VERSUS CAPITAL

There are bruised feelings, as expected from the biting criticisms of this column in regards to the March 9, Lauderdale Lakes¹ Primary. One of the most disappointing developments within the Caribbean Community in South Florida is the ³thin skinned² personality of some of our political, financial and civic-oriented elites. Anytime this column takes them on they engaged in puerile behavior and character assassinations. This paper has lost advertising contracts due to the biting pieces on Air Jamaica/Island Grill interlocking directorates which led to the more than $500,000. (US) Jamaican Government/European Union¹s preferential loan to the entrepreneur/socialite/diplomat extraordinaire Mrs. Thalia Lyn. We still have not been told by Honorable Philip Paulwell, the Minister of Commerce and Technology, if this loan is paid off. What is most disturbing is that one of our opportunistic media personality had on his talk show, the present chairman of the City of Lauderdale Lakes¹ Community Redevelopment Board who seized the opportunity to criticize his predecessor, Commissioner Hayelle Rogers for extending a grant of $150, 000 (US) to the proprietors of Island Grill. And yet no mention is made by this media personally that it was his ³financial godfather² who played a significant role in Ms. Thalia Lyn¹s ambitious but very controversial entrepreneurial involvement in Lauderdale Lakes and Pembroke Pines.

                                        
It is quite bothersome that the publisher of the Observer Newspaper in Jamaica, Gordon ³Butch² Stewart allows his editor, Paget de Freitas and Sunday Columnist Mark Wignall to engage in a vicious journalistic campaign on the Leader of the Opposition, Edward Seaga, but he and his senior executives and puppeteers ³get their jaws tight² when this particular writer exposes his preferential treatment in our society at home which makes a tycoon at taxpayers¹ expense. Where is the accountability on how Jamaican taxpayer¹s dollars are spent so that the National Airline is used to take tourists at a low price to his all exclusive hotels- Beaches and Sandals? In retrospect, it can be said that Gordon ³Butch² Stewart ³tricked² Prime Minister Patterson in 1992 when he stabilized the Jamaican dollar at the exchange rate of $1.US equals $22 JA for an entire year. Political analysts and journalists need to research that particular corporate intervention to get a better understanding of what really took place in the Jamaican financial market. It led to Mr. Patterson¹s re-election and set the stage for his historic ³three-peat². However, there is overwhelming evidence that Gordon ³Butch² Stewart had more of a rapacious design rather than a nationalistic rescue mission when he stabilized the Jamaican dollar. 

                                               

BLACK HISTORY MONTH AND MARCUS GARVEY¹S ROLE

We need to understand the critical role of Carter G. Woodson as the Father of Black History Month. On a sad note, Caribbean residents living in North America do not embrace the importance of such a development within the American body politic. 

They continue to live the ³Big Lie² that the Caribbean is a region of racial harmony. And yet, at Justice Ira Rowe¹s Memorial Service on Sunday, January 9, 2004 at Holy Sacrament Episcopal Church in Pembroke Pines, we were told by his son, David, that his father broke the color bar at Munro College, one of the most prestigious high schools in the country. For this singular feat, Justice Ira Rowe, deserved a State Funeral. Unfortunately, Prime Minister Patterson who capitalizes on his color against his Lebanese, Boston, USA born opponent, Edward Seaga, missed an opportunity to demonstrate to the nation that ³a Black Boy² who rose to judicial pre-eminence is most worthy of such a National honor. It will be interesting to see if Chief Justice, Zacca, a white Jamaican, will be given such an honor whenever he goes on to meet his Maker.
It is a case of supreme hypocrisy for anyone from the Caribbean to spread the view that the region is a rose bed of racial harmony. This is far from the truth and in the Caribbean and South Florida we see the same vulgar class/race and caste attitudes amongst the various ethnic groups. Some of our professional and Civic Organizations are dominated by sons and daughters of the Cane-field experiences who embrace the entrenched racial, class and caster attitudes of the plantation and colonial masters. 
How many inter-racial marriages do we see between South Florida¹s Caribbean Blacks and the other Caribbean ethnic groups, Chinese, whites and Arabs? Why is it that the top layers of Air Jamaica, Sandals/Beaches Hotel Chain; Super Clubs and their advertising agencies dominated by Europeans, White Americans and Caribbean Whites and Mulattoes? Why is it that the offsprings of Black Jamaicans at the Broward Community College, Miami-Dade Community College and Barry University aggressively dating Hispanic female students. It is still a glaring case of the colonialized mindset which the Franz Fanon, the Martiniquan addressed in his magnum Opus. Black skins/White Mask. Interracial dating and marriage must be seen as positive developments within the global village. However in the case of a majority of Caribbean people it is an attempt to remain close to the Eurocentric World Order. Fifty years after Adult Suffrage in Jamaica and one hundred and seventy years after the Emancipation Proclamation and almost two centuries after the Abolition of the Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade (1808) the Caribbean people at home and in South Florida are still prisoners of the Plantation Œs cultural and class arrangements. 
For Caribbean nationals who lived and studied in America during the revolutionary 1960¹s era, there is a vast difference in their thinking than those who came over the past two decades and are reaping the benefits of the African-American Civil Rights Movement. This latter group, whether in New York, Hartford, Detroit, Washington D.C. and Atlanta lack a racial awareness of the frightening and fiery developments which culminated in the 1965 Voting Rights Act and Affirmative Action. 
Unlike the Hispanic and Jews who are full fledged participants in the American political landscape, the Caribbean immigrants, especially those from my own beloved country- Jamaica- try their best to delink from immediate societies when it comes to political involvement.

                                           
In the case of Broward County, Dale Holness and Barrington Russell should be favorites to win their seats on the Lauderhill and Lauderdale Lakes¹ Commissions respectively due to the marjoritorian populations in these areas. Unfortunately, this is not the case and they have to develop electoral strategies with white candidates in their attempts to become victorious on March 9, 2004. This sad development results from the low political activity in the Caribbean Community in Broward County. Equally significant, a large percentage of Caribbean residents in Broward County and elsewhere in the Country, remain permanent residents in spite of the fact that Jamaica allows dual citizenship. These Caribbean residents are ambivalent on their roles in America, and to a great degree see it as only a place to work so that they can send money to their relatives at home and to buy nice homes here and abroad.
On a disturbing note, we need to ask the planners of Black History Month, throughout this country, why there is hardly any mention or pictures of Marcus Moziah Garvey in this Month of Celebration. It must be borne in mine that Garvey rose to Global pre-eminence as one of the Fathers of Pan-Africanism, in New York and not in Jamaica. Indeed, it would be most appropriate if the African-American research Library and Cultural Center on Sistrunk Boulevard, downtown Fort Lauderdale, is named the Marcus Moziah Garvey ­ W.E.B. Dubois Library. Any discussion of the death of the Old Negro Syndrome and the birth of the African-American personality has to begin in 1914 with Marcus Moziah Garvey¹s emergence on the New York political arena, where he repeatedly reminded Black Americans, migrating from the Southern belts of this country and Caribbean immigrants that they must rise up and get rid of their mental inferiority complex. His clarion call of rise up, you mighty people was captured in Robert Nesta¹s ³Tough Going² Marley¹s Rasta Man Vibrations where he sang about the deleterious effects of mental slavery on Black people and the urgency to engage in mental emancipation.
We hope that you will agree with us that this newspaper, is a leading force in shaping new attitudes amongst Caribbean-Americans and Africans-Americans so that in the very near future there will be more inter-racial dating and marriages across narrow nationalistic barriers and broader political alliances unlike what we are now witnessing in the Lauderhill and Lauderdale Lakes¹ March 9, 2004¹s Primary elections. 
That is the bottom line.

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