Tune in After the Break
Wow! These past 14 days have been something else, right? From the US president admitting he tested positive for Covid-19, to climate change finally taking its due place in election politics, to the uncovering of a domestic terrorist plot to kidnap Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer — it feels like big, mostly not-so-great news has been coming at us so thick and fast that it’s hard for my pandemic-wildfire-hurricane-political drama-fatigued brain to make sense of it all.
As I’ve been scouring headlines, reports, and Twitter feeds trying to process all that’s happening in our drastically-altered world, I have been thinking, again, about just how important good storytelling is. Because, in the end, that’s what all good journalism is about — producing solidly-reported, honest stories about what is happening around the world; stories that help inform us about local, national and global politics, society, environment, and culture, and help us understand the connections between all of these.
I once heard the incredibly insightful author Rebecca Solnit say: “Storytelling is remembering. To RE-member is to put back together,” to understand the meaning a particular incident, or a particular community, person, or place, might have. If we want to save our places and people and plants and animals — as I think most of us do — we have to take the time to listen to and retell their stories. Especially stories of communities — human and nonhuman — whose voices don’t get heard. That’s what we try to do, here, at the Journal.
It’s hard to cut through the noise and information overload right now. And perhaps, like me, most of you feel like tuning out. That’s ok. Switching off from time to time is healthy and necessary. But, I daresay, tuning back in is important as well. Because, as Milan Kundra, yet another author I admire, wrote: “The struggle of [wo]man against power is the struggle of memory against forgetting.”
And holy moly, aren’t we all enmeshed in that struggle right now!
Sending you all strength and resilience.
Maureen Nandini Mitra
Editor, Earth Island Journal
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