by theleftberlin editorial team
This is the 500th article to appear on this Website. We’ve achieved quite a lot in a relatively short space of time. Our first article was an interview with Greek anti-fascist Petros Constantinou which appeared on October 3rd last year. Our layout has improved some since then, but we believe that the quality of our content has been great from the start.
Who we are
The most important thing to know about us is that we are a broad non-sectarian front of progressives of many stripes. This site replaced www.theleftberlin.wordpress.com, which had functioned more or less as the official Website of the LINKE Berlin Internationals working group. While we do maintain a close relationship with the LINKE Internationals, we have editorial independence, and a broader mandate. We aim to represent the whole range of opinions from the international socialist / communist / anarchist / feminist / ecological left. We believe these all need to be debated in a non-sectarian and open manner.
Although each member of our editorial group has strong opinions on many subjects, we decided from the start to pursue no single editorial “line”. Again – we prefer to reflect a variety of left-wing opinions. If we have sometimes failed to do this fully, the only reason has been a lack of access to material. Therefore if you feel that your point of view is under-represented here, please send us articles to publish. (Note we normally require the permission of the author). We are also interested in reading more feedback on the articles that we publish.
We publish a mixture of articles that have appeared elsewhere, and those which have been written especially for this Website. The number of original articles has increased in recent months, and we are pleased that a growing number of writers now send us unsolicited articles. We want this to continue, so if this sounds interesting to you, please get in touch.
Some statistics
We have so far published articles from or about 53 countries or states (see table below). The fact that these figures are weighted towards the Global North reflects the reality that this is where we generally have our closest contacts. This is something that we’re trying to redress.
Our Authors’ gallery contains the name and a brief description of 112 people who have written articles and sent us their information (some of you are still missing – please send that info…) From this gallery, 56% of our authors are male, 44% female, and 1 does not identify as either gender. Our aim is that half of the articles we publish should be from female authors – and we are gradually getting closer to that goal. 31% of our contributors are Black, Asian and Minority Ethnic.
What else we have to offer
This Website also contains two pages of Events – the ones organised by the LINKE Berlin Internationals, and a more general page of Events coming up in Berlin. Again, this lives from the readership, so please send us any Events that you think we should cover. We alo have a Sound & Vision menu containing videos and photo galleries. We’re planning on adding some audio files soon.
Every Saturday lunchtime we send out a Newsletter containing news and information. As well as coming events, and the most read articles of the previous week, we also contain a Campaign of the week, describing different campaigns in Berlin with which we are working. To subscribe to the Newsletter, go to the bottom of this page and enter your e-mail address.
Future plans
This article contains some good news. We have been awarded a small grant with which we can pay for some short-term improvements to our Website. So if you earn your living by journalism, photography or journalism, please fill in this form and we may be able to give you a small payment for your work. We are particularly interested in improving our contacts with other countries, particularly in the Global South.
To decide on which changes we make and how, we will be having an open meeting of our editorial team on either 5th or 12th July. If you are interested in being part of this discussion, please contact us at lag.internationals@die-linke-berlin.de.
Finally, we are always interested in welcoming new people to our editorial team of committed volunteers. We are particularly looking for the following:
- People to write original articles
- People who can commission existing articles (finding the article and talking to the author)
- People who can translate existing articles
- People who can proof read articles before they are published
- Web software experts who can help maintain the site.
If this sounds like you, or if you think that there is any other way you can contribute, please contact us at the same mail address: lag.internationals@die-linke-berlin.de. Although we are based in Berlin, most of our communication is online, so we can easily involve people from outside.
