The Saint Lucia National Reparations Committee (NRC) and the National Preparatory Committee (NPC) for the 2020-2021 monthly National and Regional Schools’ Online Reparations Lecture Series will host the 10th National Reparations Lecture on Thursday June 17.
The theme is ‘John Quinlan’s Roles in the Quest for Reparations for Saint Lucia’s Ex-Slaves’ and the lecture will be delivered by veteran trade unionist Lawrence Poyotte.
Mr Poyotte will seek to draw national and regional attention to another Saint Lucian whose early contributions to the Reparations cause — like Sir Arthur Lewis — were significant, but remained largely unknown.
Quinlan was an activist Saint Lucia-born land surveyor who also made a presentation to the West India Royal Commission of 1987, during their visit to Saint Lucia, on the crisis facing the sugar industry and its implications for the then British West Indies.
Mr Poyotte has spent close to five decades in the trade union movement, mainly in the leadership of the National Workers Union (NWU), where he engaged in mobilization, education and representation of workers island-wide.
He’s researched and presented talks on regional and international working class struggles and industrial relations history through workers educational and sensitization activities with union branches across the island.
Meanwhile, Thursday’s lecture will also be accessible to households on TV, thanks to another new NRC stakeholder partner, Calabash Television (FLOW Channel 110), which started live transmissions of the two May lectures.
Calabash TV will also broadcast the regional online schools’ history lecture to be delivered directly to the region’s secondary schools a week later, on Thursday June 24, from 10am to Midday.
Mr Poyotte’s June 17 lecture will be aired live from 7pm to 9pm on the following UWI Open Campus and Calabash TV platforms:
YouTube: www.open.uwi.edu/livestream
Facebook: www.facebook.com/uwiopencampuscaribbean
Calabash TV: FLOW – Channel 110