The summer 2019 issue is the first issue of the new Peace Chronicle magazine. The transformation of this publication from a newsletter to a magazine has been a massive undertaking that involved a team of dedicated volunteer editors, an intern, the PJSA’s executive director Michael Loadenthal, the PJSA publications chair Michael Minch and research chair Amanda Byron, and Lea Rekow, who designed the new PJSA and Peace Chronicle website.
In the last three months we have had multiple conversations about what we want this magazine to be, what issues we want to cover, and how we want to do the work we’re doing. We’ve come up with many ideas and ideals. We’re excited for our membership to take part in our new vision and mission, and help us craft a publication that can excite, entice, stimulate, create conversations, and spur collaborations.
We want this publication to cover rigorous research as well as activism and art that deals with social justice and peacebuilding. We want to amplify the voices of people from different backgrounds and walks of life. As a volunteer-based publication, we faced challenges creating a first issue that is as diverse as we hoped it would be, but we hope to keep making progress in this arena as we get to know the PJSA membership better and as our readers become more involved in the publication.
When we first began talking about a theme for this summer issue, the New Zealand mosque shootings had just happened. We wanted an issue that looks at white supremacy in a productive way. While work on that issue was underway, the Sri Lanka massacres happened. We saw similarities between the March events and the April events, and felt that we could not talk about one without the other.
The themes for the upcoming issues are dignity (winter 2020) and decolonization (spring 2020). Please send us your articles, your poems, your art, and your photography. Please see our submission guidelines for more information. As we work on topics that are outside our own areas of expertise, we would be grateful for the expertise of PJSA membership. We will be calling on you to help us make decisions, be more inclusive, and answer questions.
We look forward to hearing your thoughts on this issue and seeing your contributions for future issues!
