Dear Progressive Reader,
Our Progressive Media Project began in 1993 with a goal of diversifying the nation’s print media by training new writers to create op-eds, and then distributing these to newspapers across the United States. In 2020, we distributed 135 op-eds by 114 different writers to more than 3150 news outlets.
On April 26, New York Times Opinion Editor Kathleen Kingsbury announced that her paper would no longer use the word “op-ed” to describe these pieces of writing, preferring to dub them “guest essays.” In an unrelated decision, this year we have decided to change the name of our project to Progressive Perspectives to better reflect the content of these pieces of writing, which we will continue to call op-eds in spite of the change made by the Times.
Last Tuesday, our staff provided a virtual training to members of the national grassroots organization Health Care Voices, whose mission includes the sentence: “Telling our personal health care stories publicly makes a difference by changing minds and hearts.” Thousands across the country viewed this training and have been inspired to craft their own op-eds or letters-to-the-editor. “This was such a useful training,” said one viewer. “Excellent presentations and wonderful Q&A. I learned a lot and I am inspired to start taking action in this way!” Please feel free to contact our office if you are interested in scheduling a training session for your group or organization.
The big news in Washington, D.C., this week was the punishment meted out against U.S. Representative Liz Cheney for her outspoken stance in opposition to Donald Trump’s lies about the 2020 election results. Cartoonist Mark Fiore illustrates Cheney’s ouster, noting “If you thought Trump and his creeping autocracy were a thing of the past, think again.” Fiore ominously continues, “Stay tuned for more voter suppression and more purges. It’s going to get uglier.”
Former intelligence analyst and whistleblower on the U.S. drone warfare program Daniel Hale is awaiting sentencing for revealing secrets of unquestionable public interest. As Sarah Cords reports this week, “Hale acted as he did because he believed the public had a right to know how the drone program operated.” But according to the 1917 Espionage Act, under which Hale has been charged, he was “prohibited from offering an explanation of [his] actions to the jury deciding the case.” Drones continue to be used by both Republican and Democratic administrations as a tool for targeted assassination of “bad guys,” but as Hale’s leak of information has shown, “the program’s unintended victims [are] mostly civilians: during one five-month period between 2012 and 2013, nearly ‘90 percent of the people killed in airstrikes were not the intended targets.’ ” In a related story, renowned peace activist Kathy Kelly writes this week about an installation by artist Sam Durant planned for New York City’s High Line that “seeks to raise public awareness of the anonymous killing machines.”
In international news, Jeff Abbott describes the ways in which U.S. policy is creating a more dangerous situation for migrants in Central America. “The countries of the region,” he notes, “are indeed quickly militarizing their borders to stem migration to the United States [and] this militarization has pushed migrants into taking more dangerous routes.” Meanwhile, Eleanor Bader reports on a hopeful project of solidarity between healthcare personnel in the U.S. and El Salvador that seeks to support victims of trauma caused by the twelve-year-long U.S.-funded civil war in that country. The El Salvador Mental Health Project, she explains, “is committed to ensuring that psychological support services are available and accessible to all.” And finally, in an op-ed for our Progressive Perspectives project, Amitabh Pal writes about the tragedy currently occurring in his home country of India. “The media reports are almost unbearable, with accounts of patients literally gasping to death due to lack of oxygen supply,” he says, but “a huge portion of the blame for all this suffering lies with right-wing populist Prime Minister Narendra Modi and the administration he has helmed for the past seven years.”
Keep reading, and we will keep bringing you important articles on these and other issues of our time.
Sincerely,
Norman Stockwell
Publisher
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