GREAT BAY/MARIGOT (April 26, 2000)–Publisher and political scientist Joseph H. Lake, Jr. is busy completing the manuscripts for two books, says House of Nehesi Publishers president Jacqueline Sample.
One of the books is an exiting journal-like account of St. Martin’s labor uprising in the 1970s and the burning of the Lt. Governor’s office on Frontstreet. The other book is on St. Martin’s political culture.
Lake’s labor manuscript was the first of the two accepted by House of Nehesi Publishers. The island government and community-minded businessmen contributed publishing grants for the labor book, which also chronicles developments of UFA, WIFOL and labor leaders such as Alrett Peters, Willy Haize, and Rene Richardson. The last chapter of the book is an overview of today’s unionism in the South of the island.
According to Sample, at least one of the books are expected to be published in 2000 and the other in early 2001 “but we are being encouraged by the author to work for a 2000 publication for both titles.” Lake, publisher of the Newsday newspaper, has been reporting and editorializing mostly about political and social happenings in St. Martin for nearly 30 years. In the early 1970s he joined the Windward Islands Opinion of his father José H. Lake, Sr.
Lake says that the Executive Council’s contribution provided the most solid fund with which to develop the labor manuscript, which, he asserts, has to be accountable not only to the writer’s point of view but mostly to the people who made the history being researched and written about. He singled out Commissioner Sarah Wescott-Williams for her leadership in securing the grant toward a unique area of education and national development.
Private-sector grant foundations and another set of community-minded businessmen have within the last few weeks contributed toward getting the manuscript on St. Martin’s politics off the ground. Lake has high praises for the patrons of the arts and the contributors “who have the courage to stand up as St. Martiners and invest in the freedom of expression and the healthy competition of ideas, because democracy is not free.” This is the first time that Lake will be authoring a book.