Hi CB:

I apreciate your approach, to question what you don't know and not assume if you don't know it it does not exist. My CV, CB? (sorry could help saying that...) In the 1970's I had dropped out of an Art college to become a photo journalist and because of my family background in Irish music, I found myself covering the war in the North of Ireland. I first met Travellers at that point, and didn't know much about them, but felt a certain cultural link. I found that they were a great repository of Irish music, and though difficult to get to know, when you did, they were interesting and loyal friends, unpredicable and always good for a laugh.

When I hitched up with the woman who is with me, now my wife, she did not want me to cover wars any more, and I put more and more into my studies of Irish culture, becoming the founder of a historical society which preserved Irish maritime history. At this time, I spent about 10 years travelling about Ireland learning about Currach building and mostly travelling on foot with my wife, and getting by through the traditions taught me by my continued and continuing contact with travellers. I would set out with a small ruck sack of clothes and my pipes, at first war pipes, busk my way up and down the coast of Ireland.

During that time, I first experienced, personally, the discrimination against Travellers, when I, sometimes mistaken for a Traveller, was not served in public accomodations.

In the late 1980's a racisit event to do with racing Irish currachs, in the US, sent me back to college then to law school. In law school, I was contacted by American Indian friends, (another long story) and was asked to help with issues that led to my work in Federal Indian Law.

In my last years of law school, I was already becomeing known among Fed Indian law practitioners, working in recognition of unrecognised Indian nations. During this time I was contacted by a Romani Kristiory (judge) and asked to help secure rights for his people. This led to an intence time of study and work, where I learned conversational Romaness, the language of Eastern European "Gypsies...".

In looking at discrimination against Roma in the US, I was contacted by and took up as part of the same fight, people who were racialised as Gypsies, Irish Travellers in the south and western US. I did field work among, for example the Irish Travellers of Murphy Village, where I met wonderful caring people, and found that there are still laws, such as the one in the county next to them which unambigously states, "Gypsies are not permmited in the county.".

That is the introduction to my expertese, in my capsity as a political scientist working on these issues I became known to, and have been told, respected for my knowlege of the subject, by folklorists and sociologists, and hisotrians working in these communities, who I have brought into rights cases defending these people.

I continue to coordinate rights cases, and often I am contacted when cases turn bad due to prejudice. My colleagues and I are often contacted late, for two reasons. First, Travellers and Roma try to avoid the subject thinking that they can fight the simple issue, like an aligation of child abuse, but soon in most cases, it turns into a defense of their right to be who they are...

I have to get off line, but this is the story in brief.

Cheers, Larry