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Hosting the Caribbean Dialogue over the past year and a half has been my consummate pleasure and if you have been before you know it is something I am committed to doing and in a number of the people who attend with the fervor of the Dialogue Junkie I am, then it goes without saying the Dialogue is a necessary thing.

I will say though that ever so often the Dialogue has to answer to the question, particularly from the Newbies (New attendants) as to what it is and where it is headed…what is its real purpose and what then is it’s end point, where will their participation in it take them?

The questions are valid and it is with patience that I answer them recognizing that people have a right to know particularly if they want to take the step of committing to the Dialogue (and I know that it does take commitment….every Thursday at WBAI on Wall St. in lower Manhattan 7-10pm, who am I kidding?!!!).

So with the help of the faithful we posit the whys and the wherefores of the Dialogue as we forge the whereto.

By way of Background, here is how the Dialogue started:

The Dialogue came into being in December 2003 as a result of a feeling of loneliness on the part of Ian Forrest (Dialogue founder) who while in Jamaica was always not more than a telephone call away from a conversation on things affecting the country, region, world…such conversations were in the taxis, on the buses, in a plethora of places, solicited and not….here in NY, to find people with interest in the first place and knowledge in the next instance was to say the least a challenge.  So utilizing the power of the airwaves, Forrest decided to put the word out that at WBAI, the Caribbean Dialogue was going to kick off with a discussion on Grenada, 20 years in the aftermath of the US led invasion….Joachim Mark, Grenadian Historian served as the Dialogue’s first guest.

Since then the Dialogue has hosted a number of significant individuals from diplomats, to authors, from child care workers to anti-incarceration activists, from independent filmmakers to politicians.

It has done informal explorations of University of the West Indies subject matter looking at Politics and the conduct thereof in the Caribbean. It has done a film series featuring the definitional work on globalization by Stephanie Black, “Life and Debt”, the film debut of Patrice Johnson with “Kings County” and then another debut by photographer cum film documentarian, Rex Miller, “I’m Walking a journey through Parchman”.

The dialogue has featured writers such as Colin Channer reading from and discussing what was his latest book project at the time, “Passing Through” and Glenville Lovell of Barbados with his book “Love and Death in Brooklyn”.

To the Dialogue’s credit, all its meetings have at least 6 individuals in the room ready to talk, and among that group there is always a female presence and 90 percent of the time there is a newcomer to the discussion.

Over the year and something now that the group has been meeting, snippets of a significant number of the presentations made at the Dialogue have made it onto the airwaves of WBAI (with more to come) and that to my mind is significant to say the least as issues of relevance to the community seem to only be able to make it on the airwaves sporadically (i.e. outside of Dog-Fraid hours).

But what really is the Dialogue in a nutshell?

The Caribbean Dialogue is primarily a discussion space, where members of the Caribbean Community here in the Diaspora come to, as it were, “change thought” on their individual and collective experiences and realities. It is meant to be a learning, sharing space wherein people feel free to express themselves about the things which interest and affect them.