MEMO
MEMO from the Editor Spry Octogenarian When this issue of The Progressive goes to press on January 9, it will be eighty years to the day since Volume I, Number 1 appeared. It was called...
...protection of the environment...
...Open-eyed at last, we were startled to find our great industrial organizations in control of politics, government, and our natural resources...
...Engrossed in material development, we have neglected all our institutions...
...And so, even as I embrace the singularity of my position, I must trust the advent of my voice to facilitate the lifting of many others into our national consciousness...
...A few months ago, Managing Editor Matthew Rothschild came across On Call, a collection of Jordan's political essays published in 1985 by South End Press...
...But the cooperation necessary to permanent progress can be secured only through intelligent discussion...
...But within that broad context, The Progressive is always changing and, I hope, will always continue to change...
...An acute phase of this struggle has come upon us suddenly...
...It is not expected that our readers will agree with all we have to say...
...When it comes to devising a credo for The Progressive, we couldn't do much better today...
...In that first issue, LaFollette wrote: "In the course of every attempt to establish or develop free government a struggle between Special Privilege and Equal Rights is inevitable...
...This eightieth anniversary seems an auspicious occasion, then, to introduce a new columnist to The Progressive's subscribers...
...And telling the truth would be the principal weapon in the struggle...
...They rule through the men elected to represent the people...
...Her first offering came with this note: "In all of the U.S.A., there is only one Black woman with a regular political column in a national publication...
...Let me be, simply, the first of a coming, a properly raucous, a finally democratic multitude.'" Not a bad way to mark an eightieth anniversary, and neither is the Last Word on Page 50 of this issue—a submission from George Seldes, a truly heroic figure in the annals of crusading journalism in the United States...
...LaFollette vowed that his new magazine would make it its "chief task" to help people regain "the complete power over government—national, state, and municipal—which has been lost to them...
...Our growth was half blind...
...But birthdays are no big deal to George Seldes...
...The fundamental principles that un-dergird this magazine's editorial stance have been remarkably consistent over the years: rejection of militarism and war as ways of resolving human conflict...
...A continent of vast richness absorbed us...
...It was a challenge we couldn't ignore...
...It was called LaFollette's Weekly then, and the founding editor, Robert M. LaFollette Sr., believed he had to start his own magazine because there was no way to get the commercial press of his time to report truthfully on issues that involved a conflict between private greed and public interest...
...Instead, I might regularly appear, on a weekly or monthly schedule, as a national columnist...
...June Jordan, whose first offering appears on Page 15 of this issue, is a poet, playwright, and essayist, the author of some sixteen books...
...They manage conventions, make platforms, dictate legislation...
...In that sense, then, in that faith, I say, 'Okay...
...But if you will count the number of Black women with regular and national forums for their political ideas, and the ideas of their constituency, you will comprehend the politics of our exclusion: I cannot come up with the name of one Black woman in that position...
...He was beginning his career as a reporter about the time Volume I, Number 1 of this magazine rolled off the press in 1909...
...We assert no claim to infallibility...
...exposure of corporate and governmental abuse...
...We shall make mistakes," he acknowledged...
...In the Introduction, she had written: "In a sense, this book must compensate for the absence of a cheaper and more immediate print outlet for my two cents...
...defense of civil rights and civil liberties...
...If political writing by a Black woman did not strike so many editors as presumptuous or simply bizarre then, perhaps, this book would not be needed...
...We invited Jordan to become a regular contributor to The Progressive, and despite a heavy schedule of teaching (at the State University of New York, Stony-brook), lecturing, and writing, she agreed to submit a column every other month...
...With this, my first appearance in The Progressive, I become that one Black woman writer in America...
Vol. 53 • February 1989 • No. 2
