Hope (The Coronavirus Issue) - Spring '20
Dear Reader,
This is a radical time.
A time for radical changes of understanding, love, compassion and evolution. Radical societal changes.
When we began planning this issue, we had planned to bring you an issue filled with stories of hope.
As the quarter proceeded, we found many of our stories morphed by the lived experiences of COVID-19. We had discussed this potential reality while planning last March before the ~400,000 worldwide deaths (at time of writing) became a reality for us.
The stories you’ll find in this online-only issue of The Planet are stories grounded in a search for hope, written through three months of remote interviews, socially distanced meetings and dogged persistence from our staff. We found sources harder to contact and people without time to devote to a remote interview. Our staff strove through that difficulty to find the stories within this magazine, during one of the most difficult times of their lives.
To cap off one of the most groundbreaking and challenging quarters Planeteers have ever experienced, there are protests that should never have had to happen going on.
I want to use my position of privilege to say this:
To my BIPOC staff, writers and readers, I want to say that The Planet has a place for you. We will ALWAYS listen to you, and will do our best to learn and change. We welcome your story submissions to our main issue and Op-Ed sections.
Thank you for your continued support of The Planet, and for your support of people who are affected by centuries of systemic racism and inequity.
It’s been a hard quarter to have hope, but despite it all, we do. We see people continuing their activism and bringing issues into the public eye. Hope rings eternally at The Planet.
The Planet Magazine stands in solidarity with #BlackLivesMatter.
Alex Meacham
Editor-in-Chief