Drop your guns, communicate

December 2003

This issue marks Alternative’s first annual anniversary. A year has passed ever since members of Alternative’s team first sat together, scratched a few notes on their notebook and later launched this online and its parallel in print publication.

Despite the skyrocketing number of electronic visits, the high demand on print issues and the endless number of letters to the editor that we receive every month, some leftists spearheaded the campaign to discourage Alternative and, under the pretext of warning other comrades of pseudo-leftist publications, bombarded us with all kinds of accusations.

In some instances, this feedback was constructive and helped us, from an outside perspective, in reshaping our policies. In other instances, this feedback was as destructive and demoralizing as forcing the team to reconsider the worthiness of the project.

But a year after investing immense efforts, the Alternative team felt rewarded and came – after endless deliberations – to the conclusion that the young publication should live for several purposes.

Alternative gives a chance, especially to the youth from around the world and from different leftist and rightist backgrounds, to express their views. Alternative is not a tool for indoctrination and propagating dogma. That is to say, Alternative does not only write what the left likes to read. Alternative rather prints issues and expresses views, which in the Alternative team’s opinion, would contribute to human justice.

The monthly publication realizes that a great deal of activism should be done before globalization of the market becomes globalization of human values and good ethics. To do that, feedback and different opinions should be heard and pondered so that the different leftist groups can prioritize their agendas.

There are no clear-cut recipes for how to rescue the world. Only interaction, debate and constructive dialogue would bring to the fore perspectives from both the right and the left and would help in forming news ideas, highly needed in the currently highly explosive world.