Live Reading with NMBA Member Flavian Mark Lupinetti

Shaping Destiny: Election Season, Before, During and After is our response to the realities of the most important and frightening election of our lives, whether we are old or young.

In this issue we present poetry, prose, and graphics that investigate present conditions, address the election itself, and explore how we must live afterwards.

Our intention with Shaping Destiny was to present links between current events and matters of social justice, the earth, and the spirit arising from each. The work is intended to provide direction and places to find comfort, as well as to explain, strengthen and prepare. It addresses major issues and rights gained and taken away, including women’s rights, civil rights, ecological issues, and many others—some rights that we still have, and others we have lost already. Each of the Presidential candidates in this election promises to address these issues, but in ways that are starkly different. One path stands for overtly violent organizing to take us back perhaps to the 1920s, as in the identification of Christian Nationalism with white supremacy. The other path stands for regaining rights and providing an economy that will very likely allow a decent life. International issues also confront both candidates. These are sharpest about the necessity of a cease fire for Gaza and now for Lebanon. Ukraine’s struggle for identity and clear independence continues.

Michael McDermott, Director, Black Earth Institute
​
Managing Editor, About Place Journal About Place Journal "Shaping Destiny" Link: https://aboutplacejournal.org/issues/...

Contributing Editors: Ann Fisher-Wirth, Jacqueline Johnson, Richard Cambridge, and Pamela Uschuk.

Assistant Editors Kate Sutter and Ellie Coleman

Readers: Melissa Tuckey, Mackenzie Sanders, David Mills, Catherine Pierce, Cynthia Hogue, and Flavian Mark Lupinetti