Happy 6 month anniversary! September marks half a year of monthly publication from your friends (or maybe enemies, I don't know) at Dissonant Times. Whether this is your sixth or your first issue checking out what we've got to say, we want to say THANK YOU for joining us and dedicating your time and attention to our scrappy publication.

This issue might have been the easiest one to pull together yet thanks to the volume of thoughtful, informative, and engaging submissions we received-- thank you so much and keep it up! This month we're featuring Willamette Valley Crisis Care, a follow-up on the Thousand Acres encampment, an antifascist analysis of the 9/13 march for Charlie Kirk, and a community alert on the proposed Amazon fulfillment center in West Eugene. Our regular columnists Eric King, Darling Tonia, Strawberry, and Praise continue to share their wisdom, and we've compiled a bunch of upcoming events that y'all can attend and share in communities of resistance against injustice & fascism.

All of these topics tell a broader story of ever-growing economic disenfranchisement and fascism in late stage capitalism. Within that, they are testaments to community-led efforts to resist and persevere through this broader web of injustice folks are experiencing both locally and around the world. And at risk of sounding overly utopian, it doesn't have to be this way. One of our primary motivations in starting Dissonant Times was -and continues to be- to publish regular reminders of alternatives to the death march of the current socioeconomic system. It'll take more than a small number of journalists, poets, and artists to change course. It'll take more than the various grassroots groups we feature and it'll definitely take more than just reading monthly editions of DT.

This is why we push this concept of "participatory journalism" so hard-- it is not just journalism written by folks who have firsthand experience of the issues central to any given piece, it is also journalism that inspires readers to do more than just close the tab on their computer when they're done reading. It is the type of reporting that grows movements. It's the stories that moved me, Joy, to become a fighter and an advocate and it's writing that I know can encourage others to do the same.

That alone makes DT and other movement journalism platforms different from more mainstream outlets. And if you haven't noticed by now, we write from a pretty clear perspective with a clear goal in mind-- we write because we believe that justice and liberation from oppression isn't an impossible future. We believe that this "myth of objectivity" that's rampant in major news companies does more harm than good. As independent journalists, we think it's important you know who your news is coming from and what outlets have at stake in platforming it.

We write because we urgently believe that environmental destruction, gender and racial inequality, war, and poverty -and those in power that enforce these conditions- is bad, actually. We write from a perspective that we believe more journalists ought to: those who hold power should be subject to the upmost criticism, not the least.

The old adage goes that history is written by the victors, and that's why we write the stories we do. Because despite losses along the way, we believe that truth and justice are on the winning side.

And while one day we hope that money won't dictate every aspect of our lives, today we confront the reality that in order to have printed newspapers and solid, consistent reporting we need to have money to pay for that.

If our work speaks to you, and you haven't already, consider becoming a monthly or one time donor. Even $1 a month can help us reach our goal of a raising $20,000 for print operations. Check out more fundraising information on our Instagram @dissonant_times or donate at dissonanttimes.org/support.

Thanks for reading,

Joy