Host: Howard Jordan

Website: howardjordan.net

Phone: (718) 518-6587

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Program description

An East Harlem-born educator, lawyer, journalist and Latino activist Howard Jordan brings a wealth of experience and understanding to the crucial issues confronting people of color and distressed communities in the United States and within the international arena. His show provides listeners with information about the issues and events that shape the reality of the nation's growing and increasingly diverse urban communities. It also offers hard hitting commentary from a diverse, multicultural point of view on news, politics, and issues that affect the quality of our lives.

According to the recent U.S. Census Latinos are the nation's largest minority ethnic group. The Latino populations numbers 46.9 million, or 15.4% of the total U.S. population up from 35.3 million in the year 2000. While The Jordan Journal is issue driven, and Howard defines himself as an internationalist, his approach to topics provides particular insight into the open veins of the Latino barrios traditionally "invisibilized" by mainstream media. Jordan adds "with the alternative view provided by WBAI the day may come when we Latinos are no longer on the outside looking in."

Host/producer profile

Howard Jordán is an educator, attorney, journalist, and political activist. He is a tenured Professor in the Department of Behavioral and Social Sciences at Hostos Community College and teaches in the areas Public Administration, Criminal Justice, and Legal Studies.

Mr. Jordán has a distinguished record of public service. From 1987 to 1991 he served as Executive Director of the New York State Assembly Task Force on Immigration, a 25 assembly member commission addressing regional immigration issues. He also worked as Legislative Assistant to former New York Governor Mario Cuomo's Advisory Committee on Hispanic Affairs, at Harlem Legal Services, Inc. and the law firm of Franco & Anderson. He is a graduate of Yale University and New York Law School. During 1996-97 Mr. Jordán was a Charles Revson Fellow at Columbia University researching the “relationships between communities of color.”

Mr. Jordan has also been a long-time contributor to the New York alternative media. He was the Editorial Page Editor of The Latino News, the first effort to establish a Latino interest English language newspaper in New York. For several years he appeared as a regular columnist for Hoy, a Spanish daily and as a bi-monthly guest contributor to New York Newsday. In 1994 he co-founded along with political scientist Angelo Falcon Crítica: A Puerto Rican Journal on Politics and Policy and served as its first managing editor.

Howard has an extensive history of activism. In the early eighties he was a founder of Latinos United for Political Action (LUPA) an organization dedicated to electing progressives to political office. Along with the late Richie Perez, he was also a founder of the Latino Coalition for Racial Justice committed to combating police brutality in New York. In 1987 he chaired The Latino Rights Project an organization dedicated to servicing victims of racial violence and police misconduct.

During his college years Jordan directed Despierta Boricua, the Puerto Rican student organization at Yale University and today continues this work as a key member of the Latino Yale Alumni Association (LYAA). Mr. Jordan is also active in the Afro-Latino movement in New York assisting pioneering groups like the Afro-Latino Forum and the Caribbean Cultural Center in promoting and recognizing the African heritage of Latino communities.

During the height of racial apartheid in South Africa, Mr. Jordán founded Latinos for A Free South Africa bringing together Latinos of every stripe to combat this invidious segregation. The NYS Assembly Immigration Task Force he led also spearheaded the release of the first report on Dominican immigrants in the United States and organized the first Puerto Rican-Dominican Dialogue in New York sponsored by the National Institute for Latino Policy and Alianza Dominicana (the largest Dominican social service agency in the United States).

As he reflects back on his life and modest contribution Jordan’s greatest source of pride is his ongoing efforts to build bridges between diverse communities. He often remarks “our enemy is disunity and divisiveness -the key to any real change -un cambio de verdad- is the ability of our communities and it's progressive leadership to transcend their particular arena of struggle and join in a broader movement for social justice.”