Full episode
224: Middlemen
Act Three

What It Takes To Tromp Through The Desert

Al Jurczynski is the mayor of Schenectady, New York. For the past year, he's embarked on a strange recruitment campaign, to convince Guyanese immigrants living in Queens, New York, to move upstate to Schenectady. He walks through the streets of New York City with a megaphone, inviting people to sign up for semi-monthly charter bus tours of his city, which he provides free of charge. Producer Wendy Dorr spends a day on the tour bus, to see how the mayor serves as middleman between Guyanese-American families in the Bronx and Queens, and his economically troubled, white-ethnic town upstate. (19 minutes)