A Repository of Hope Amid an Authoritarian Moment

Earlier this year, YES! Magazine, a legendary independent publisher of solutions journalism, ceased regular publication. For nearly 3 decades, YES! provided a crucial platform for organizers, visionaries, and writers to share stories of people striving for real change. In this far-right authoritarian moment, the loss of a veteran member of the progressive media ecosystem is certainly something we at Truthout deeply mourn.

But the impact of extraordinary journalism extends far beyond the date of publication.

The Truthout Center for Grassroots Journalism is stewarding the digital content of YES! and carrying on the work of solutions journalism precisely for this reason – to ensure that everyone can draw on the YES! tradition to inform their fight for a better world.

On this note, we have an exciting announcement: Truthout hosts a monthly newsletter with relevant content from the YES! digital archives and new solutions journalism from a variety of publications. You are reading the first installment of that newsletter! We look forward to providing our subscribers with these curated resources that can help us imagine – and build – movements for transformation.

“The stories found in YES!’s archives, along with new solutions-driven reporting, will continue to be urgently relevant, especially in these repressive times — we need examples, models, inspirations,” said Maya Schenwar, director of the Truthout Center for Grassroots Journalism. “We’re honored that the Truthout Center will be stewarding YES!’s archives and creating a YES! newsletter.”

As Sarah van Gelder, co-founder of YES! Magazine, writes, “The visionaries and practitioners featured in YES! explored what was possible then, and much of what they contributed suggests ways forward now”:

At YES!, we never spoke of certainties about the future — only about possibilities. But possibilities are powerful magnets, drawing us to the hard but deeply rewarding work of creating a world together where people and the planet come first.

The YES! approach offers a framework for this work: lifting up stories of people creating beautiful alternatives, connecting their efforts, unpacking the elements of success, and helping readers imagine and build the world we need. Whether through new media organizations, grassroots storytelling efforts, or whatever comes next, this approach remains not just relevant — but essential.

—Sarah van Gelder

Read the full article: The World Is Burning — Does the YES! Approach Still Matter?

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From the Archives: We’ve Won Before

Social movements undoubtedly have a major task ahead of them. From Trump’s authoritarian takeover of D.C., to Israel’s genocide in Gaza, it may often seem like we can’t change anything until we get a majority on board.

However, as Kevin A. Young reminds us in this 2020 YES! piece, the past is replete with examples of committed groups of people outside the majority that have changed the world. It is precisely these “militant minorities” who defeated slavery and Jim Crow, and brought an end to the Vietnam War.

“The lesson of these past victories is that successful change depends not on majority opinion, but on the ability of the key participants in a system to disrupt that system,” Young writes.

Read the full article: History Shows That Sustained, Disruptive Protests Work

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From the Archives: A World Beyond Capitalism Is Possible

Zohran Mamdani has brought national attention to the idea of democratic socialism through his victory in the Democratic party’s primary for mayor of New York City.

Capitalists are not happy about it. Corporate media is attempting to discredit his policy proposals, such as a rent freeze and universal child care, as unrealistic and utopian.

How can we convince others that another world is possible? As Andrea Brower advised us in YES! in 2013, “Those committed to building a more just future must question the taken-for-granted ‘truths’ that support the beliefs that capitalism is the only common-sense possibility and that there is no alternative.”

Read the full article: What to Say When People Say “It’s Impossible”

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New Work by YES! Contributors

• Sonali Kolhatkar, former racial justice and civil liberties editor at YES! Magazine and the host of Rising Up With Sonali, has launched Rising Up For Justice: Conversations with Change Makers, a weekly interview show with organizers. Learn more about her new project here. 
• Sarah van Gelder, founding editor of YES! Magazine, has a new report out in Truthout about how Trump’s plans for AI may exacerbate racial bias and climate denial. 
• David Korten, co-founder of YES! Magazine, has written an interesting essay exploring how Indonesia’s reckoning with authoritarian rule may offer lessons for how the U.S. can heal its own intense political divisions. 
• Evette Dionne, most recently editor-in-chief of YES! Magazine, is a cofounder of FlyTrap Media, which is a worker-owned, intersectional, feminist media group. You can subscribe to The Flytrap newsletter here.

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New Solutions Journalism From Independent Media

? How LA is uniting to provide mutual aid for those impacted by ICE raids – Waging Nonviolence

? Southern Workers Have a Lot to Teach Us About Organizing Against a Backlash – Hammer & Hope

? Four Wildlife Success Stories—That Require Continued Federal Engagement – deceleration

?️ Public Assemblies Strengthen Community Resistance to Rising Authoritarianism – Truthout

? ‘What could we build instead of prisons?’: New projects at the intersection of abolition and design – Prism

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Rising Up With Sonali

Rising Up With Sonali, a broadcast program that former YES! Senior Editor Sonali Kolhatkar leads, is continuing YES‘s legacy of solutions journalism. Each week, award-winning journalist Sonali Kolhatkar interviews change makers who are fixing our broken world, showing by example how creative organizing and sustained activism can actually make progress.  

In recent weeks, Sonali has interviewed Amazon Labor Union founder Chris Smalls, formerly undocumented Latina playwright and screenwriter Josefina Lopez, Pulitzer-prize winning writer Viet Thanh Nguyen, and incarcerated essayist Dortell Williams.

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Looking Ahead

Please share this newsletter with others and encourage them to subscribe. Our next edition will be sent in October. And if you’re excited about this continuation of the YES! tradition and want to support the newsletter, you can do so here.

May this repository of hope help you chart ways forward in these troubling times.

Best,

Truthout