Slingshot Box

Slingshot is an independent, volunteer-run, more-often-than-quarterly radical newspaper published in the East Bay since 1988.

The profusion of flowers, the days staying light until later, the warm temperatures — spring is so amazing. A time to reorganize, refocus and clean house. This is a good time to refine our experiments at combining personal lives filled with excitement, freedom and pleasure with the struggle for social progress. It can’t be a trade-off, where we have to choose between grim activism and private escapism. That is a false choice. In fact, living a full life amidst an impersonal system of death, toil and boredom is subversive. How can we share and spread our subversion this year?

Let us count the ways: * Our collective is looking forward to a retreat this month to talk about long-term vision. We’re excited to be publishing more often with more contributors — who knows what other improvements and projects we may conjure up?!?

* Some members of the collective are looking forward to the summer travel season — experiencing different ways of living and getting to see the efforts of other radicals around the world — plus adventure & romance!

* This issue features Xarick’s second installment in his series on global warming. We hope we’ll see more activism — and individual behavior change — in response to global warming. Global warming is the mother of all environmental threats — almost every industrial activity that supports the modern way of life contributes to global warming. Continuing with business as usual — living the way you grew up and the way your parents lived — is simply not a sustainable, long-term option. Addressing global warming means attacking the centralization of power in the hands of the techno/industrial elite. How will we live better, more simply and less materialistically in the future?

* Finally, along with new struggle, new adventures and new plans, some of us in the collective have been experiencing up close the amazing part that death plays in the cycle of life and change. It hurts and is disorienting to lose people we love, but like spring, death can offer us an opportunity to look back on where we’ve been and think ahead to what we might be able to do with the time we have left. Death teaches that our lives are short, and that we have to make each moment count. And it underlines the things that are really important — the way we love each other, our capacity for pleasure and creativity, and how amazing it is to just wake up in the morning.

Slingshot is always on the lookout for writers, artists, editors, photographers, translators, distributors and independent thinkers to help us make this paper. If you send something written, please be open to editorial changes. Note: because of the large volume of submissions we receive, we may not contact you back if we don’t use your submission.

Editorial decisions are made by the Slingshot collective, but not all the articles reflect the opinions of all collective members. We welcome debate, constructive criticism and discussion.

Slingshot New Volunteer Meeting

Volunteers interested in getting involved with Slingshot can come to the new volunteer meeting May 8 at 1 p.m. at the Long Haul in Berkeley (see below).

Article Deadline and Next Issue Date

Submit your articles for issue 87 by May 28, 2005 at 3 p.m. We expect the next issue out in mid-June.