By Laurie Moberg, Assistant Editor
I met Simi Kang early in her graduate career at the University of Minnesota. As graduate students, we were committed to our research and our projects, but Kang has always demonstrated an even greater commitment to people, to community, and to work that makes change. I was delighted when she agreed to bring her politics, perspective, and provocations into guest editing this issue of Open Rivers.
As the guest editor for the issue, Kang moves Open Rivers toward questions of environmental equity and justice, and, by extension, their opposites: environmental inequities, injustices, and racism. As pieces in this issue of the journal demonstrate, environmental justice is complicated and multifaceted; environmental injustices are layered in our social structures, institutions, geographies, and language. Yet environmental justice is perhaps also one of the most important and unequivocal goals to which we must aspire together. So how do we begin to do this work, to do better, to not just attend to injustices but be allies, and to work to make change together?
In this issue, Kang brings together what she calls in her guest editor’s introduction “an alarmingly beautiful set of calls to action, meditations on, and new directions toward our relationship with injustice and water” to offer some insight into these questions. There is much to learn from the community of authors she has brought together here. The individual pieces are both inspiring and challenging; together, the collection moves Open Rivers in a new direction and into new conversations we look forward to continuing in the future.
Happy reading!
Recommended Citation
Moberg, Laurie. 2019. “Introduction to Issue Thirteen.” Open Rivers: Rethinking Water, Place & Community, no. 13. https://openrivers.lib.umn.edu/article/introduction-to-issue-thirteen/.
DOI: https://doi.org/10.24926/2471190X.5690
Download PDF of Introduction to Issue Thirteen by Laurie Moberg.