Dear readers,
We at Ecotone stand in solidarity with those protesting police brutality against black people, Indigenous people, and people of color, and fighting to eradicate the systemic racism endemic to the United States. We endorse and are thankful for the statement offered by the Offing. It reads, in part,
We stand with the Black Lives Matter movement. We stand with the grassroots organizations who have been doing this hard work. WE STAND WITH THE PEOPLE.
We are mindful, too, of the less-visible slow violence that pushes social and environmental harms disproportionately onto BIPOC. We are mindful of the entrenched inequities in publishing, ones we work, and will keep working, to help change.
Over the past weeks, we’ve been gathering a series of entries in our Various Instructions department, in which writers and artists offer lists, how-to’s, formulas, prompts, and the like. Both past Ecotone contributors and writers new to the magazine have offered their instructions. They’ve inspired in us hope and rightful anger, the desire to act, to write, to mend, to move. We will begin sharing work in the series next week. We hope it will offer inspiration and support to our readers as well, in the form of strategies for both action and rest.
In the meantime, in case you haven’t seen it, we want to recommend some recent work from another magazine made in this place now known as North Carolina. Scalawag, as their mission states, “is a journalism and storytelling organization that illuminates dissent, unsettles dominant narratives, pursues justice and liberation, and stands in solidarity with marginalized people and communities in the South. Online, in person, and through our family of engaged members, Scalawag reimagines the roots and futures of the place we call home.”
Recent work we’ve loved includes an article on Black Lives Matter in the South, a set of five fundamentals for white people reckoning with white supremacy, a photo essay on protests in Raleigh in solidarity with black lives, and poems on video, including closed captions.
And we’ve posted some resources for supporting folks who are protesting, and folks who continue to be disproportionately affected by COVID-19, on our blog.
Black lives matter.
Be well, and take care,
Anna Lena Phillips Bell
for the Ecotone team