Friday, Jan. 27, 2017, at Our Lady of the Presentation Church in Brownsville, family, friends, colleagues, politicians and probably more than a few enemies gathered to honor the life and work of master investigative reporter, editor and stalwart word wizard Wayne Barrett. The standing-room-only crowd included luminaries such as Sen. Chuck Schumer, Gov. Andrew Cuomo, former Mayor David Dinkins, Representative Carolyn Mahoney and Tom Robbins, Peter Noel and countless others from The Village Voice vanguard.
A couple of days prior, I had been given the charge of writing my thoughts about my experiences with Wayne. Quite simply, it was the best of times; it was the worst of times. Writing about it was very easy to do, yet at the same time very difficult. Wayne Barrett told New York’s tales of two cities, navigating through and showing the connections between both. While I compiled and conceptualized for this article, Wayne’s spirit whispering in my ear caused conflicts in confidence in my competency.
There was so much I had planned for this piece. I wanted to show off the training drilled into me at Wayne’s private Parris Island of an office in The Village Voice headquarters at 36 Cooper Square. I wanted to get big boldface names for sources, make sure I found new angles to deliver fresh perspectives to the readership. After all, Wayne always said that one of our duties as journalists was to expand the pool of knowledge. Wayne always rode for the truth, and I saw it as incumbent upon me to communicate a truth about the institution of Wayne Barrett that only I could deliver.
Then again, said the Barrett-faced shoulder angel sitting with wings, harp and halo on the other shoulder, Wayne had always said that many times we fall victim to over-reporting. At some point, you have to write the damn thing. But over-reporting wouldn’t be a problem here and by extension, nowadays journalists barely report at all. Wayne would spend months or weeks working on a piece with a team of interns, a syndicate of sources and regiments of researchers. What justice could I do with only a weekend to tell the intertwining of our narratives?
At Wayne’s services, as my soul was stirred by the sounds of the St. Marks Gospel Jazz Ensemble and I fought against the tugs at my heart strings, I reflected on my journey in journalism. I’ve been a writer for as long as I can remember, and being born the same year as hip-hop, we grew together and fused in essence. I started my career declaring I would roam in zones where Bonz Malone once stood alone. Troi “Star” Torain gave the “Reality Check” that influenced my intellect and afforded me my first column. Professors Bridgett Davis and Roslyn Bernstein instructed me in the fundamentals of the trade, but it was Wayne Barrett, along with Thulani Davis, who elevated me from being a mere mortal of a writer and put the “journalist” into the literary graffiti of my hip hop journalism.
At the turn of the millennium, I was a full-time journalism student at Baruch College, CUNY, working on campus, and a radio personality on The Star & Buc Wild Morning Show on Hot 97. There was a lot on my plate. I needed an internship to complete my major. It was through Alisa Solomon, a Voice staffer who was on the Baruch faculty, that I was able to connect with Wayne Barrett. She told me of his reputation and how difficult it was to work with him, but the way she described it made me want to be down even more. It sounded like a journalistic boot camp, and I was a willing recruit. This introduction was 16 years ago, so the details are not in the sharpest of focus. I remember the daily distribution of tasks by the lead intern, Anna Lenzer, and how we recorded everything we did, every call that we made and everything that was said in those calls in daily memos, which were in turn collected in “day folders” that Wayne would collect in the evenings.
There were tasks we completed that Google champ researchers just wouldn’t understand. Things such as going to the Department of Buildings to find property titles, showing up at meetings of obscure sub-committees of a task-force of an unpopular department of government, personally picking up a piece of paper from this or that politician’s office because for some reason or other, we wouldn’t get it otherwise. This world was not a world for “seat-of-the-pants” journalists, those who just sit down and hit keys but never hit the concrete to catch a story. Back then, one intern remarked to me that Wayne never yelled at me. I didn’t think much of it, but given his reputation and passion, I now look at that as a badge of honor and a sign of his respect.
I recall when I was going for my first byline at The Village Voice. It was a piece on Charles Barron’s first run for New York City Council. By then I had moved on to the Minority Writing Fellowship under the auspices of Thulani Davis, but, once a Barrett intern, always a Barrett intern, and back then I still consulted with Wayne on a regular basis. We were in his office. He was sitting down, holding the posture of a man with the weight of the world on his shoulders. He spoke to me slowly, deliberately. He asked me to carefully weigh my decision. This name was going to set the tone for and follow me for the rest of my professional career. Was I sure that I wanted to go with Dasun Allah and not my given name? I responded with one of my bandage-for-every-sore quick-draw retorts that I had already considered it all. I was absolutely certain.
I would see Wayne from time to time in the hallowed halls of 36 Cooper Square. We’d have chats by the tailgate of his Subaru station wagon. I personally thought he was one of only four or five people in New York City who drove one, and he always appeared glad to see me, drawing out my name with a smile in his voice, whether in person or on either one of his two home phone lines.
In 2005, when I became Editor-in-Chief of The Source magazine, we had a long talk at the office. Thulani had no doubt that it would happen. Wayne didn’t think that I was ready. He wanted more seasoning on me before I took on such a responsibility. Just as sure as I was of my byline, I was sure that I was ready for the stewardship. Time will judge whether Wayne was right or not, but the world kept turning and we stayed in contact through the ups, downs and all-arounds.
When I visited him at his home in the Windsor Terrace section of Brooklyn last year, he was telling me of Anna Lenzer’s work on the socio-political and economic mechanisms behind the premium bottled water brand, Fiji. He suggested I look her up. We talked of the trials and tribulations I had been through, where I wanted to go with my career, and why I wasn’t getting there. He had many ideas for leads, dark corners of corruption that needed a flashlight, his read on the political landscape and who were the players to watch and why. He was a living LexisNexis when it came to New York’s power and political structure.
After our meeting, I hit him up occasionally. We talked about my using a residence he made available to his interns as a privilege of service. We bounced around story ideas and magazines that we could match them to, places where other interns were in position and to whom he could offer introductions. But when it came down to it, foot dragging was my personal dragon blowing smoke in the path. One does not imagine a world without one’s mentors or that soul with whom you had a genuine connection. But then one day you find yourself scrolling through phone contacts and see names of those who saw enough potential within you to give you of their invaluable time, but whose time has passed before you made good a return. You see names such as Manie Barron, Sam Greenlee, Mel Sachs and Louis Reyes Rivera. You think that what you are doing is precisely what Wayne would term as “spinning your wheels.”
Wayne and I had many discussions about individuals such as the Reverend Jesse Jackson, the Reverend Al Sharpton, the late great Amiri Baraka, the Honorable Abubadika Sonny Carson and many others, some of whom I even researched as part of my journalistic duties at The Village Voice as his intern. These were also sometimes individuals I knew personally and had revered. One target of a Wayne Barrett investigation was to become my future employer. Wayne took pains to insulate himself from bias, undue influence and conflicts of interests and taught me the same. The greatest lessons these discussions and investigations taught me was the true meaning of objectivity, practical applications of critical thinking and coming to your own conclusions on character based on the collusion and collisions of informed opinions, unearthed facts and actual actions.
His astute lessons in journalistic judgment coincided with the tenets I was internalizing as a young Five Percenter—namely, never take anything at face value, everything is subject to show and prove and it must come out right and exact. If a politician or public servant wasn’t just and true and had unrighteousness within, they were beaten with many stripes from Wayne Barrett’s pen. Nowadays, there are myriad opinions, but in a world of “alternate facts,” not many are informed. Critical thinking is a lost art; the educational system and media drumbeat what to think, not how, and with so many living a reality show life, what are actual actions?
It has been written and said that the world is in dire need of more Wayne Barretts. The reason for this need is because there is a need for more truth. Wayne often clashed with the personalities of principalities not because he was merely brash, but because he sought and fought for the truth, and in doing so, he kept the power players honest to the degree that he was able. Throughout his memorial services, many things were revealed. I never knew of his history with and support for the Black Liberation Army until his son Mac alluded to it during his poetic tribute, but one thing stayed consistent—a testimony to Wayne’s dedication to the pursuit of truth.
A muckraker is a detective for the people. Wayne Barrett’s service was a call to action and a call to arms. For those who are qualified to lift the smog of mere blogs and go beneath the surface, it is for us to not just concern ourselves with scoops but excavations of truth. His brother said that Wayne was an idealist. Well, it’s time for all who have been touched by his philosophy and mindset to stand tall before the man.
Wayne Barrett’s passing is not a time of mourning. It is time for action.