Howdy, folks! It’s Sunday, which means it’s time for an update on what the Center for a Stateless Society has been doing and where we’ve been. I’m Trevor Hultner, your new Media Coordinator, and from here on out I’ll be keeping you abreast of where our writers are getting published, where C4SS is being mentioned and what we’re up to for the upcoming week.

Ch-ch-changes

Erick Vasconcelos stepped down from the Media Coordinator position earlier this week. Erick took over from me when I left the Center back in August 2015, and over the past year he has done amazing work reorganizing everything from who gets our article submissions to how those pickups get counted. I’ll be continuing his work behind the scenes.

A Week In Commentary

The last week of August/first week of September was a relatively quiet week for C4SS, with regard to commentaries. Toward the tail-end of last week, Logan Glitterbomb posted their piece on indigenous resistance to the Dakota Access Pipeline. We submitted the piece for pickups on Monday, and the piece was grabbed by CounterPunch, a regular disseminator of our work; from there, their piece was picked up by the Canadian Centre for Globalisation Research.

Logan also published a report on the goings-on of the Spanish Anarcho-Syndicalist union CNT – Confederación Nacional del Trabajo – including word that they would be reforming the International Workers Association.

I posted a hot take on Colin Kaepernick’s refusal to stand for the National Anthem, and Kevin Carson has posted a piece on how capitalism is not making us richer. Both of these articles are in the queue for submissions, and we’ll have their stats – and more! – in next week’s blog post.

Anarchy in the Gray Lady

Chad Nelson got into the New York Times! Okay, not exactly, but it’s really, really close, and really, really exciting. Here’s the breakdown:

Back in April, Chad published an article on activists protesting cluster bomb manufacturer Textron in Rhode Island. It was picked up by an Augusta, GA news outlet, a Long Island news vertical, and RI Future, a “progressive political blog that strives to speak truth to power, stick up for the oppressed and ignored and tell interesting and entertaining stories about the Ocean State.”

RI Future is where Sewell Chan, a reporter for the New York Times, found Chad’s piece and used it as a contextual link in the online version of their story, “Report Finds Ban Hasn’t Halted Use of Cluster Bombs in Syria or Yemen,” published on Friday, Sept. 2.

Here’s the paragraph from Chan’s article that Chad’s link was hanging out in:

“In April, activists began regular protests outside the Providence, R.I., headquarters of Textron, a maker of cluster munitions. In May, the Pentagon stopped delivering cluster munitions to Saudi Arabia. And in June, a provision to ban the transfer of such munitions to Saudi Arabia was nearly adopted by the House of Representatives, losing on a vote of 216 to 204.”

This is legitimately a momentous occasion. Being linked to in an article published in the New York Times shows the kind of impact our writers – and our ideas – can have, even months down the line. This is why it’s important to…

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The Center for a Stateless Society is a 501(c)(3) charitable organization. Donations to the Center help pay our writers so they can continue to do great work that may one day end up in the New York Times; it also helps us fund projects that move us toward realizing the dream of a free world.