May
2004
Ten
Years
A Reflection by Martin Rowe
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When Beth Gould and I began
Satya ten years ago, we had a relatively clear idea of what the magazine
would be. As I wrote in my first editorial in June 1994: “Satya aims to provide a voice for the people of New York City and the surrounding
area who wish to explore and affirm the connections between their different
groups to unite around a common theme of ending exploitation, suffering,
random cruelty, and waste.”
Well, ten years came and went and exploitation, suffering, random cruelty,
and waste are still with us. The Internet came and the money for dot-comers
(largely) went; George W. Bush came and Princess Diana went; and 9/11
came and U.S. credibility in the Middle East went. The Kyoto protocol
remains unapproved and mostly unimplemented, and the promises of the
world summits on sustainable development in Rio (1992) and Johannesburg
(2002) remain unfulfilled. There are several hundred million poorer,
hungrier people and several hundred million fatter, richer people in
the world. By the time another ten years have passed, the orangutan
may be extinct in the wild, the Siberian tiger vanished, some islands
in the Pacific underwater, factory farms like wildfire all over China,
and the possibilities of turning anything around gone.
Yet we continue—and, in spite of the above, with good reason.
While it would be somewhat audacious for Satya to claim that it has
united the environmental, animal rights, and vegetarian communities
anywhere—let alone New York City—it is clear that environmentalists,
especially the new generation, are beginning to understand the centrality
of diet choices in enhancing or halting environmental destruction. This
ten-year period in New York City has seen an exponential increase in
vegetarian restaurants, vegan and organic food, Community Supported
Agriculture, greenmarket produce, bike paths, and other features that
make up a sustainable future. Parks have been cleaned up and dog runs
established, people have returned to mass transit, neighborhoods have
been reclaimed, and there’s even a new boss of the once notorious
and now newly renamed New York City Animal Care and Control. And all
of that has been due to the tireless work of activists. As the protests
against war and for peace of the last few years can attest, the movements
for social justice are more vibrant, more youthful, and more international
than in many decades, and there is no reason to believe that this kind
of civil society action will diminish.
I can only lay claim to the first five years of Satya. When, at the
end of 1999, I left the magazine in the more-than-capable hands of Catherine
Clyne and her team, I knew that Satya would change—and that that
would be a good thing. I also thought the quality of the work would
remain the same. I was wrong. The quality has gotten better—much
better. Given my five-year absence, I think I am objective enough to
argue that you would be hard pressed to find a magazine that covers
so many different issues, with so many diverse voices, so relentlessly
and courageously. You will not only read about issues in Satya that
other magazines don’t want to touch, but you will read new or
forgotten or unheard writers making connections other magazines don’t
make in a venue where the grassroots guerrilla always trumps the grandiose
grandee.
It was my hope that Satya would become a kind of self-contained representation
of the enormous diversity of this city, the country, and the planet—a
venue for progressive thought that saw the world as an interconnected
whole and demanded of its members to reach out to each other—and
I think that is what it has become. As Satya goes, so goes the world:
for none of it is possible without all of us allowing one or two of
us to make it possible. I hope you will continue to support the magazine
and tell others about it. With a little luck and a lot of hard work,
perhaps over the next ten years we can tip the balance in favor of the
planet and the other species who share it with us.
Martin Rowe is the founder of Lantern Books, a
publisher dedicated to vegetarianism, environmentalism, and animal advocacy
(www.lanternbooks.com).
He is the author of Nicaea: A Book of Correspondences and editor of
The Way of Compassion: Survival Strategies for a World in Crisis, a
collection of essays and interviews from the first five years of Satya.
You can read more of his writing at www.martin-rowe.com.
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