“We are already living in two worlds. One world moves ahead by inertia from the past, like a massive luxury liner drifting at sea, while the other steps into the unknown, like a child entering the woods for the first time. On the front pages of newspapers and on the evening news, the first world gains the lion’s share of attention. A new crisis deepens yesterday’s crisis in Africa or the Middle East. A fresh humanitarian outrage taints a faraway society. One war replaces another. Despite the sameness of these events, they constitute the news of the world as far as the mass media shows it. Yet this world of inertia and non–change is deceptive. Beyond crisis–driven news, another world is rising.”
-Deepak Chopra
I see that another world is rising, from beneath the shadow of corporate, “crisis-driven” media. The Sasquatch is on the cutting edge of that world. And it’s not alone. Hundreds of independent, locally accountable and community-based media outlets around the world are innovating their way into the public eye, and slowly gaining the attention and trust of people like you — people who are seeking something more honest, more thoughtful and more real in the media they consume. These recently revitalized forms of media include community radio stations, non-profit newspapers and magazines, worker-run TV and radio stations, grassroots media co-operatives, and a variety of other colourful forms. (For more information on the transformation toward community-based media, see Jacqueline Cusack McDonald and Steve Anderson’s article, “Corporate Crisis, Community Opportunity” in the September/October 2009 issue of Briarpatch Magazine.)
The Sasquatch and her companions in the media revolution are like that child entering the woods for the first time, noticing the world with fresh new eyes, hearing stories that the adults of the media industry can’t or don’t hear, and sharing them with you.
Most media, like that luxury liner Deepak Chopra speaks of, allow readers the luxury of distancing themselves from the news. As the new editor of The Sasquatch, I want the stories we publish to both reflect, and help you to engage in, your reality. I don’t expect you to agree with everything you read in The Sasquatch (in fact, I’d be disappointed if you did), but I do want to inform and energize you, with news that resonates with your reality, honours your intelligence and challenges your perspective.
In this issue, you’ll find loads of stories that will do just that — from Larry Powell’s story on the link between pesticides and declining honeybee populations (pgs. 1 & 7), to an interview with Margaret Akan that urges us to think more holistically about the HIV crisis in First Nations communities (pg. 4), to our two-page spread on the nuclear debate (pgs. 8 and 9). On page 13 Erin Laing undresses the Twinkie, and on page 10 Jenn Ruddy tells us the dirty truth about private utilities in Alberta. Michael Bell reports on an unexpected rise in school enrolments in Regina on page 5, and on page 6 Jim Harding provides a historical perspective of nuclear development in the province.
It’s been an honour and a pleasure to work with the creative and intelligent writers and photographers whose work appears on these pages, and the volunteers and colleagues that helped put this issue together.
Thanks for reading,
Shayna Stock, Editor