For this final issue of WIN, we thought it would be useful to take a look at the processes of putting out activist news and analysis and the thinking that went on around that task. So we
asked five experts to discuss the subject as they experienced it—five former editors of the three magazines published or co- published by WRL between 1966 and 2015:
MURRAY ROSENBLITH, from the original WIN Magazine. Murray was was a member of the WIN staff from 1974 to 1981 or so and then served on WIN’s editorial board until the magazine ceased publication in 1983. He served as executive director of the A.J. Muste Memorial Institute from 1985 to 2008. He is currently a director and fund manager at New Alternatives Fund, the oldest U.S. mutual fund investing in renewable energy and energy conservation. A long-time WRL activist and member, he has served on the National Committee and the former Executive Committee and is still active as a member of WRL’s Finance Committee.
RUTH BENN, from The Nonviolent Activist. Ruth is the Coordinator of the National War Tax Resistance Coordinating Committee, co-writes the annual Pie Chart flyer for WRL, and is active with New York City WRL. She edited The Nonviolent Activist from June 1987 to June 1993 and served as director of WRL’s National Office from 1994 to 2000.
ANDY MAGER, from The Nonviolent Activist. Andy has been an organizer, trainer, activist, writer, and speaker in movements for peace, social justice, and environmental protection for more than 35 years. Andy edited The Nonviolent Activist in 1994-95 and worked on the team for the War Resisters League organizer training program from 1989 to 1993. He now works as the sales manager for Syracuse Cultural Workers.
FRANCESCA FIORENTINI, from the new WIN. Francesca was hired in 2005 to replace outgoing Nonviolent Activist editor Judith Mahoney Pasternak and the next year conceived and oversaw the transition from the NVA to WIN through nonviolent revolution. She’s now a host and producer with the online news channel AJ+ of Al Jazeera Media. She also moonlights as a stand-up comic. She lives in San Francisco.
CALVIN REY MOEN, from the new WIN. Calvin followed Francesca as editor from 2008 to 2012 and has remained on the publications committee since then. He was a facilitator and organizer with the Icarus Project in New York City and continues to investigate grassroots alternatives to mainstream mental health models. He currently works doing outreach and advocacy with psychiatric survivors in hospitals and communities in southern Vermont.
THE ROUNDTABLE
WIN: What was/were the magazine’s most significant contri- bution(s) to the theory and/or practice of nonviolence, peace, and war resistance? To other social justice movements?
Murray: In the early years, WIN served as the voice of a non-violence movement emerging from the counterculture. It was looser, irreverent and certain-ly more profane (just like the ’60s) than the publications and style of established organizations like the Fellowship of Reconciliation, War Resisters League, and various Quaker-inspired groups. It represented a mostly younger crowd of
peace activists who were nurtured by these same organizations but who also embraced a more “hippie” approach.
WIN also served as a bridge from the previous generation of nonviolent activists who had emerged in the post-World War II years from the prisons and Civilian Public Service camps and who became active in the civil rights movement, campaigns against nuclear weapons, and anti-colonial struggles in Africa, Asia, and Latin America. These were the folks who started the Committee for Non-Violent Action, A Quaker Action Group, and Peacemakers, among other groups, to promote a greater direct action approach to their nonviolent activism.
Originating in the New York Workshop In Nonviolence (NY WIN), a local group that staged direct action protests at the an- nual Veterans Day parade and the civil defense drills of the early 1960s (and co-published by WRL), WIN started as an irregular newsletter in which workshop participants would report on their actions, discuss tactics, promote upcoming events, and even tell jokes. Soon activists in other parts of the country were send- ing in reports, and the publication became the place where you could find news from dozens of small and larger actions. Once WIN settled into being a regular, weekly publication, it became the place that tied the national and international peace movement to local movements and groups.
Ruth: WRL News, published from 1945 to 1984, was WRL’s house organ, an eight-page newsletter that kept members in touch with activities, from the national office to local organizing. WRL News also served as a forum for presentation of arguments within the organization, such as WRL’s role in electoral politics or the pros and cons of war tax resistance. The great WIN magazine, founded in 1966, was close to WRL but editorially independent; after it folded in 1983, many felt the loss of a news magazine from a pacifist perspective.
The Nonviolent Activist: The Magazine of the War Resisters League was created to combine these missions and publish WRL news along with journalistic articles of importance to the nonviolent movement around the world. The first issue of the NVA was published in December 1984. The first editor was David Croteau, and my first issue as editor was June 1987. We were challenged to inform WRL members and produce a magazine that might inspire a casual reader toward nonviolent activism and to join WRL.
Compared to the cultural breakthroughs of WIN and the intellectual contributions of the earlier Liberation Magazine, the NVA cannot claim such fame. However, looking over a pile of magazines, there’s a helluva lot of valuable information, along with striking art, photos, and graphics; inspiring stories; and contributions by nonviolent activists from every corner of the earth.
For instance, the cover of my first issue as editor included these lines (and a few more) from Wilfred Owens’ poem, “Dulce et Decorum Est”: “If in some smothering dreams, you too could pace/Behind the wagon that we flung him in...” It seems appropriate to note this at this time of events marking the centenary of WWI. In a few lines Owens made vivid the horror of war. The poem accompanied an article about Veterans For Peace, still a partner with WRL in the struggle to end that horror.
We also sought out writers and reports from activists representing many organizations, which facilitated and strengthened networking. It’s impossible to say if the NVA brought in new members, but it certainly played an important role in connecting people once they got on the mailing list.
Andy: My activism was born in the late 1970s/early 1980s movements to stop nuclear power and prevent the reinstitution of draft registration. As a college student, I came across WIN magazine and found it to be an invaluable source of ideas, information and inspiration on the power of active non-violence. As I grappled with the decision about how to live out my refusal to register for the draft, I found my way to the War Resisters League, which served as my philosophical and activist home for many years.
When WIN folded in 1983 and WRL launched the Nonviolent Activist to replace both WIN and WRL News, the NVA sought to balance the dual role of movement magazine and organizational newsletter. I believe that an admirable job was done over the years in maintaining that balance. The NVA included a robust section of concise reports, updates and upcoming campaigns from around the globe (Activist News). The dialogue that took place in the letters column provided a forum for thoughtful, and at times pointed, exchanges of ideas and perspectives.
WIN/NVA/WIN placed active nonviolence in the forefront, advocating for a model of organizing and activism that we believe is most principled and effective for creating the just, peaceful, and creative world we seek. As part of that, we were a primary source for information about the struggles and occasional triumphs of war resisters and conscientious objectors around the world. In this case, as in most, we linked information to action. WRL and the publications served as a challenge to broader movements for social justice to dig deep and consider the long-term ramifications of the tactics and strategies we chose.
Francesca: So much of the magazine was about sustaining WRL members’ appetite for movement news, political discussion, and antimilitarist analysis. But a moment when we really broke out of reaching the usual suspects—our membership—was in 2007, when we decided to conduct a series of interviews with various movement leaders in what we dubbed the “Listening Process.” The energy of 2003-2005’s antiwar movement had largely petered out, and many antiwar forces were trying to regroup and figure out how to build for the long haul. Our way of doing that for WRL was to showcase various activists in a “cross-pollination of ideas” to reflect the “wisdom from an array of sectors and perspectives.”
That meant hearing from racial justice, climate, veteran, student, and immigrant rights organizers. It was a rich experience for the magazine and WRL as a whole, and one that certainly brought up more questions than it gave answers. It’s much easier to interview and opinionate and much harder to implement a political action plan for a then-84-year-old organization.
Calvin: The guiding social justice principle, in theory and practice, during my time at WIN was (and continues to be) intersectionality. To focus on any single organizing topic, like resisting war, and ignore how war affects communities based on race, class, gender, citizenship status, sexuality, etc., is to recreate the same colonizing dynamics that we purport to resist. What we did in the second incarnation of WIN with the themed issues was to dig deep into the root causes of war, which the WRL pledge identifies as “racism, sexism and all forms of exploitation,” and find where those different roots were tangled up with militarism, imperialism, and a global war economy.
This was at a time when WRL organizing was making a conscious shift into connecting with and supporting the work of people-of-color-led grassroots groups in the United States and internationally: Iraqi labor unions, U.S. immigrant youth, resisters in occupied Palestine, indigenous activists in uranium-impacted communities in New Mexico, and queer organizers in the South, to name a few. The magazine endeavored to be an organizing tool, both to introduce new voices and visions to WRL members and WIN readers and to build bridges between struggles on the ground. We occasionally got some pushback (“I thought we were an antiwar organization. Why are we talking about farming?”), but overall, the responses—from incarcerated people, environmentalists, vegetarians, boycott-divestment-sanctions supporters, classroom teachers, trauma survivors, and others—were of mutual recognition, of seeing and being seen.
WIN: During your tenure, what issues/topics emerged as the most pressing, and how did the magazine respond (or fail to respond) to them and to specific historical moments?
Murray: For most of its original existence (1964-1983), WIN was pretty non-ideological. Although it was affiliated with WRL for most of its existence, the main criterion that was loosely applied to the articles was to promote nonviolent action in the pursuit of social change. This included, at times, a vigorous debate as to whether this was possible and also what constituted nonviolence—i.e. was property damage violence? If forms of oppression were expressions of violence, what is the best way to counter them? WIN was born out of the growing anti-Vietnam War movement, but had a historic tie to earlier political movements, and so these discussions were carried out across the spectrum of issues emerging from the mid-sixties and onward— the Black power movement and civil rights, women’s liberation, gay rights, indigenous rights, prison and death penalty abolition, the nuclear and conventional arms race, nuclear power, tax resistance—name the issue and campaign and you would likely find a lively discussion of the politics and tactics of it taking place among local organizers in the pages of WIN.
Among the notable achievements in the early years was a special 1972 issue containing the entire contents of the FBI files stolen by the “Citizens Commission to Investigate the FBI” from a branch office in Media, Pennsylvania, in March 1971. These documents were the first revelation of a concentrated effort by the FBI to spy on and actively disrupt social change movements across the country.
I joined the WIN staff in late 1974, as the war in Vietnam was winding down. WIN had never been solely focused on the antiwar movement, but it had formed the overarching concern during the magazine’s existence to this point. Over the next few years, there was a parade of issues and campaigns across our pages reflecting the organizing work taking place in communities around the world. The list could take up ten pages, but among them were: liberation struggles in Latin America, the anti-apartheid movement, economic inequality (sound familiar?), the second and third waves of the feminist movement and the rise of the so-called men’s movement in support; the continuing growth of gay and lesbian activism, the reinstatement of the draft, growing threats to civil liberties, and, as always, the ongoing efforts to halt the nuclear arms race and impede the spread of militarism internationally.
One of WIN’s notable contributions during the mid-to late 1970s was to serve as a crucial news source and communication tool for the direct action movement against nuclear power and the dozens of local “alliances” across the country that carried out occupations and blockades of nuclear power plant sites. I’ve come to believe that WIN provided a valuable bridge between the established movement against nuclear weapons and the new activists opposing the spread of nuclear power reactors.
Ruth: Over the six years I edited the magazine, we wrote about war toys, third world debt, apartheid in South Africa, the death penalty, Israel/Palestine, disarmament, nuclear power, peace politics in Japan, the first Gulf War, military resisters, legacy of the war in Vietnam, racism, vegetarianism, gay rights, Sudan, arms race in space, and on and on. There were arguments over things like vegetarianism and “nonviolent lifestyle” vs. nonviolent action as a force against war. Is “war” armies on a battlefield or does it include the “war at home” perpetuated on communities of color in particular? Do gay rights, abortion rights, or animal rights need to be discussed in a primarily antiwar organization? What about wars of liberation and nonviolent philosophy?
I see the recurring theme as the role of nonviolent activists in all these struggles. As the only national secular pacifist organization, WRL has a unique voice in progressive struggles. The magazine was a place both to present that voice and to act as a forum for debates. The decision-making bodies of the organization could take guidance from the responses that came as letters to the editor (or dropped subscriptions!).
Most important, I think, was to help individuals feel more connected to a wider movement—whether we all agreed or not— by telling the stories of nonviolent activists and giving readers inspiration to push on in our Sisyphean task.
Andy: During my brief tenure editing the Nonviolent Activist — summer 1994 to fall 1995 —the question of “humanitarian” intervention was a major issue facing the left. War in the Balkans, genocide in Rwanda and U.S. intervention in Haiti were the most visible examples of the government’s effort to portray the United States as using its military power to help those facing violence and persecution. Many progressives were swayed by President Clinton’s rhetoric and supported such policies. As part of analyzing and debunking this approach, we published several “think pieces” that looked at the “Spectator Culture” that emerged with the election of a Democratic president following 12 years of Republican control of the White House.
After decades of imprisonment, Nelson Mandela was elected President of a non-racial South Africa during this period, accompanied by thoughtful analysis of the progress that had been made and the long struggle still to come before true equality was achieved by that nation’s black majority.
The 50th anniversary of the end of World War II, including the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, occurred during this time. We developed a special section of the NVA throughout 1995 that addressed the Holocaust, Japanese internment, the firebombings of Dresden and Tokyo, the atomic bombings, reflections of WWII resisters, and more.
On the other hand, the horrific genocide in Rwanda took place in spring 1994 and didn’t get the attention it deserved, part of a larger pattern of relative inattention to Africa.
During the same period, by the way, the NVA and WRL saw the retirement from the paid staff of our beloved Ralph DiGia. Ralph was one of the WWII total resisters who played an often quiet, but central role for WRL over 40 years. In the end, his “retirement” consisted entirely of no longer drawing a paycheck; he continued as a volunteer, working almost full-time for more than a decade, until a 2007 fall that broke his hip and led, eventually, to his death at the age of 93.
Francesca: When I came on as editor it was becoming clear that grassroots organizing for the peace movement meant organizing with veterans’ communities and youth who were being poached by the military. Lifting up the stories of vets was critical, as was the resistance of youth via counter-recruitment — specifically resistance of Black and Latino youth. At that time you didn’t see or hear the stories of Iraq and Afghanistan War vets the way we do today. Nor was there was as great an understanding of the so-called “poverty draft” in the military, which still has yet to enter popular consciousness when it comes to the military recruitment.
We highlighted intergenerational organizing. I was the youngest person on staff at the time, new to an organization whose members held so much movement history and knowledge. I was constantly learning from older membership, and also felt empowered to offer up my own ideas and insights. I hoped and tried to cover that crucial intergenerational conversation in the magazine. The first issue of the re-born WIN featured a roundtable on intergenerational movement building, complete with the wisdom of the inimitable WRL legend, Ralph DiGia.
Calvin: Spring 2011, otherwise known as the Arab Spring, saw the eruption of the biggest, most inspiring nonviolent revolutionary movement a young generation had ever seen. There was no way we were putting out that quarter’s issue without devoting the majority of it to the uprisings happening in North Africa and the Middle East. “Rising Up” also covered the union-led occupation of the Wisconsin State Capitol building following Governor Scott Walker’s attacks on labor unions, Medicaid, public education, and transportation. Tying the two together was a letter of solidarity to the U.S. labor movement from the president of the Iraqi Federation of Oil Unions, with whom WRL national organizers were building connections. Sadly, because of our tight production timeline and the limitations of our publishing software, the Arabic version of the letter (we had printed the original Arabic and its English translation in two adjacent columns) became garbled and was ultimately illegible. No one caught it until after it was printed.
One year later, we covered Occupy Wall Street, the encampment that had taken place the previous fall in Manhattan’s Zuccotti Park—less than two miles down Broadway from WRL’s national office — and the subsequent national movement. The contributing writers were also close to home, organizationally if not geographically: National Committee member Isabell Moore shared her open letter, “Why I Occupy,” Matt Meyer of the Administrative Coordinating Committee wrote about his Brooklyn-based anti-racism group’s participation in Occupy Wall Street, and then-development intern Isham Christie contributed a piece informed by his international solidarity work connecting U.S. Occupy with global resistance groups. Providing context and a broader conversation was an expanded reviews section that made up the second half of the issue, which we called “Occupy Reading.”
Comparing the Arab Spring and Occupy issues, we had it easier with the second one, both because of the timeline and because of our proximity to the source. A lot of the action had taken place months before, and we were able to comfortably reflect on and analyze the impact of the initial encampment on the ongoing movement. Much of the content of the Arab Spring issue relied on connections through field organizer Ali Issa, while the Occupy issue drew from among familiar WRL voices and adjacent organizations. With “Rising Up,” we were taking risks necessary to show up as allies to an international struggle against U.S.-supported imperialism, and we may have been in slightly over our heads, as shown by the botched printing of the letter in Arabic. But even highly visible, embarrassing mistakes like that one can be chalked up to growing pains, evidence that we were stepping up to our responsibilities while learning our limitations — as long as we stayed accountable for our mistakes.
WIN: What challenges did the magazine(s) face, and how did it/they respond (or, again, fail to respond) to them?
Murray: WIN’s greatest challenge, which eventually led to its demise, was its inability to survive financially. Like so many institutions of that period, it was almost founded on a whim and relied on a devoted group of people who were willing to be self-exploited to keep publishing. Although we tried many different forms of fundraising and marketing to sell subscriptions and advertising, none of our efforts ever provided more than a temporary fix to a constant lack of consistent funding. When WIN was founded, it was relatively inexpensive to maintain production. People could also live on relatively small incomes. Our passion for the magazine’s mission led us to sometimes work second jobs when WIN couldn’t bring in enough money for pay-roll. In the end, it was not a sustainable situation.
Ruth: While I edited the magazine, I was also a full-time staff member and part of all the organization’s decision-making meetings. Therefore, it’s impossible to separate challenges to the magazine from organizational challenges, which have been many—money, political disagreements, debates over tactics, personnel changes, the deaths of too many wonderful people (quite a few much too young), and the powerful web of institutions and structures that we’re up against.
Since I touched on editorial responses in the previous question, I admit that what first came to mind were the technological challenges. At the time I took over the NVA, the WRL office had one computer for the database. The magazine was sent to a typesetter and the galleys were pasted-up on “boards” and sent to the printer. I don’t miss the struggles as we shifted everything to computer (the damned thing crashed ten times a day), but in the process I became lifelong friends with Rick Bickhart, the terrific graphic artist and designer who has volunteered his skills — and high-quality work—as layout artist, designer, and desktop publisher to WRL for decades.
Whatever the challenges, when you look back it is the people that are most important. Looking at the magazines there are so many names of others who continue as friends and colleagues in the struggle for peace and justice. The magazine was something members could participate in with their reports and writing, and one of the tools for maintaining and building the beloved community.
Andy: I was hired to edit the NVA following staffing problems in the national office. I worked primarily from my solar powered, wood-heated home in an intentional community in rural upstate New York, traveling to the office for several days each month. That was a challenge in some respects, but working within it, I built a base for the magazine in my community, with a group of longtime activists meeting to proofread each issue and share ideas for future content. I found this to be very helpful in providing a broader vision for the magazine, which I often perceived to have a very New York City-centric approach.
Francesca: The biggest challenge was the major rebranding the magazine underwent halfway through my time as editor. We wanted to revamp the look and feel of The Nonviolent Activist — add more images, color, better paper — and change the name to be something more appealing and accessible. Whether or not we succeeded is another question.
The internet isn’t the only reason print is dying. It’s expensive to produce a magazine! We brought the magazine closer to the 21st century, but not all the way into it. It was a time that I think exposed a fundamental question about the project: Was it more of a WRL newsletter for members, or was it meant for the general antiwar public, both active and not? To fully do the latter I think required more resources and staff time. We kind of straddled the divide and that was a huge challenge.
I think fundamentally a magazine is only as strong as the community of writers and readers that contribute to it and in some way feel ownership of it. And while we certainly brought new voices and writers into the WRL fold during my time, we weren’t able to create a new crop of committed readers and writers who felt that ownership. Or maybe we didn’t connect well to the readership we already had.
Calvin: It always weighed heavily on me that there was no money in the budget to pay contributors, either authors or artists. I believe strongly in paying people for their work, and writing and illustrating are work. The challenge for the Publications Committee, in seeking out authors, was always, “Who can we get?” Particularly with authors, we risk favoring two types who will often work for free: writers or organizers who will put in the time and effort in order to get broader recognition for their own work or their organization and therefore are not providing an objective, nuanced analysis or perspective; or well established writers or experts who will do it out of fondness for or allegiance to WRL or WIN but are not offering a fresh take on a subject or exploring a topic more deeply than they have previously. The challenge as editor was to work closely with them, asking questions that would elicit unique, thoughtful pieces while respecting the fact that they were donating their time.
WIN: Finally, given the profound shifts in the role of print communications vs. the internet and its wide range of communication media (e.g., organization websites, blogs, ‘net magazines and journals, social networks, etc.), what do you see as the optimum mode(s) of communication between and among WRL and its present, future, and potential member- ship/constituents? How do you think WRL can continue to share new, outside visions and ideas with members and sup- porters, and how can we continue to draw visionaries and activists to our work and keep building those relationships?
Murray: I guess I’m still old fashioned. I believe that good organizing and direct actions are still the best way to build our movement. Of course, effective communication and publicity play an important part. There seem to be an increasing number of venues to get our message out and I don’t know that I’m qualified to evaluate which ones—blogs, Twitter, other social networks, email, web sites, and yes, even printed matter—work the best. I suspect it’s a balance. It does seem to me that all this new communication technology has made the dissemination of information more decentralized and democratic.
The final challenge (well, that may be a little dramatic — a big challenge) is instilling a long-term vision to a new generation of activists who are growing up in an environment where everything seems to happen faster. We know that our vision of a nonviolent world is still a long term project. But it’s one that will be made up of thousands of small steps. With commitment, hard work, and more than a little luck, we will find the right combination of communication to show people that each of these steps is taking us a little further along the right path.
Ruth: In July 1993, John M. Miller (this issue’s desktop publisher) wrote an article about a new thing called Peacenet that WRL had joined. He printed our first email address and explained a bit about the internet and the wonders of instant connection to a worldwide network of activists. A magazine that came out monthly at most (during my years there were eight then six issues per year) could not offer much of a discussion platform. With that first email address the discussions began to take place instantly, but it is also easier to leave people out (yes, there are still some who avoid all this technology). Online forums have the potential for wide input, but it’s easy to jump from one place to another and never fully absorb anything. It’s easy to get your message out, but not have a channel coming in that is shared, like the letters-to-the-editor section.
In this information-glutted world, maybe it’s more important to promote and provide opportunities for face-to-face interactions: conferences, trainings, dinners, protests, civil disobedience actions. Lifelong friends were made in WRL training programs, workshops, jail cells, and even during endless meetings. A new print publication may return to the organization’s priorities in time. For now, I’ll mourn a little the loss of a WRL print publication, but Joe Hill’s voice is calling: Organize!
Andy: I haven’t been active with WRL or the NVA/WIN for the past 15 years and wasn’t part of the decision to cease publication, so can’t comment on the factors that led to it, or the wisdom of the choice. In my organizing work, which has continued throughout that time, I continue to believe that we need to utilize all the mechanisms available to communicate with our constituency, to recruit new activists, and to speak to the general public. Social media and the instantaneous communications available now can keep our message and work before people on a daily or even hourly basis. However, those media offer little opportunity for the more in-depth analysis and discussions that are so important for building powerful social movements. I believe WRL still has a significant older membership, many of whom find Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram to be completely foreign. If we are to remain relevant, we need to reach young people for whom these are primary sources of information.
Years ago WRL did more to directly engage people through speaking tours and national organizers’ meetings with activists and organizations around the country. Despite the opportunities afforded by digital technology, face-to-face organizing remains critical, and I’d like to see that prioritized in the coming years at the same time that new media help us connect with people around the country and the globe.
Francesca: I think the WRL has and will always draw visionaries and activists with or without WIN, based on its history and current work. But one of the most amazing things for me during my time was stumbling on the archived volumes of the first WIN, beautifully illustrated movement relics from the ’70s and ’80s. Those volumes, the Nonviolent Activist, and the new WIN should certainly be archived online in a way that can be readily searchable.
Having a regular online presence on social media is indispensable for building and sustaining the message and membership of the WRL. Facebook, Facebook groups, Twitter, Tumblr, Instagram, and other NSA-approved communication go a long way to growing and keeping WRL and antimilitarist politics alive.
More than a magazine, a solid movement media strategy I believe is so key for the organization. Just as in any successful nonviolent direct action, getting the coverage is nearly half the action itself. This messaging should be part and parcel of WRL’s organizing work, and lift up the past and present heroes and sheroes of nonviolent resistance. As we’ve seen with #BlackLivesMatter, #YaMeCanse (Mexico), and other movements partly born from online action, we shouldn’t underestimate how a strong and clear message can galvanize a nation and the world, and push this revolution of values to its brink.
Calvin: The most compelling argument for keeping WIN in print as long as we did, despite budget concerns and subscription tracking complications, was getting the content into prisons and other places without internet access. Otherwise, it’s easy to point to online resources that cover the same topics, or even to WRL’s own website and blog, as filling the gap left by a print magazine. So it is imperative we not forget about members, resisters, and other revolutionaries on the inside and that we continue to nurture those connections and lift up those voices. Consider supporting (or starting!) a local chapter of Books to Prisoners or Black and Pink, which supports queer and trans prisoners by connecting them with pen pals on the outside and publishes a newsletter featuring queer and trans prisoners.
In addition, we need to work to ensure net neutrality and greater access to technology. I had the good fortune recently to attend a panel discussion by #BlackLivesMatter organizers from Western Massachusetts alongside an audience of mostly middle-aged white folks. Others in attendance were asking how they could know when they were being called to support the actions of the young organizers, who communicate with their networks exclusively via Tumblr, Facebook, Twitter, and text messages. Some of us 30-somethings began to see a potential role for ourselves as educators, bridging the gap between the tech-immersed millennials and our parents’ generation, rather than insisting that these young, capable organizers cater to their elders’ existing skillset. If you know how, consider teaching a baby boomer to tweet!
Francesca: One final comment: What an honor it is to have worked on WIN! What an honor to inherit the magazine’s editorship from the fierce and skilled Judith Mahoney Pasternak, who was a superb coach and mentor, despite leaving me the biggest pile of papers I’ll ever see in my life. What an honor to work with the members of the Editorial Committee like John M. Miller, and to be given the reins and the opportunity to re-envision the magazine. Thank you all. It’s was a great run.
Onward!
