It feels like everything in the news is making me upset these days. From COVID-19 to the violence that the Wet’suwet’en land protectors have experienced to the Democratic primaries in the States, trying to stay informed has been incredibly stressful. It’s easy to fall into a rabbit hole of bad news: there’s a coronavirus death in British Columbia, Indigenous protesters are being arrested for defending their land, another Democratic candidate dropped out and they endorsed who? Suddenly, I’ve been on Twitter reading the news for hours—and I’m mad.
Of course, this stress is a bit of a champagne problem—I’m just sitting on my phone, and some might ask why I even care. I’m probably not going to catch COVID-19, and if I do, I’m young and healthy and I likely won’t get deathly ill. I’m a settler on this land, the RCMP are likely never going to persecute me for protecting my land, nor is there a multinational corporation trying to steal my land. I’m not American, and though Canada will be touched by the U.S. election, I can’t even vote.
Despite that, I think it’s important to be informed. It makes us better citizens and more empathetic individuals. And my stress isn’t unfounded: the headlines that spiral around us online are written to maximize our clicks by mobilizing reactive and inflammatory language. So, how can I calm the fuck down?
Maybe the point is not to calm down. Recently, I’ve started to seek out stories that are about action. In particular, I’ve been inspired by stories about Wet’suwet’en land defenders and their settler allies standing up for Indigenous rights and sovereignty. On one Wednesday, I found myself on St. George with a group of my peers who had walked out of class in solidarity with the Wet’suwet’en. Though this was a coincidence—I was actually trying to get to a meeting—I found myself pulled into the crowd and shaken by the collective action. Since then, I’ve been trying to transform my news consumption into action or thoughtful reflection.
The world is bad and crumbling and falling apart and (sometimes, quite literally) on fire. I know this from my news consumption and all the headlines that I’ve internalized and carried with me. But people are rising up and piecing it back together from the ashes. It’s absolutely awe-inspiring.
I’m always unsure of how to deal with my own position as the editor of a student paper and as a journalist—what kind of things should we focus on? What sort of opinions should we allow on our pages? Who should we talk about, and who should we not provide a platform for? God forbid that I, or The Strand, become one of those content-farming, click-baity places that only stress people out. But perhaps focusing on the stories of change, the stories that are all about action rather than upholding norms and repressive structures, is the goal.
This week, The Strand’s pages are filled with stories about change and structural reforms that have been led by students. For example, our news article about the renaming of the Vic One Ryerson stream highlights a push made by Vic students to have the University acknowledge our institution’s ties to the residential school system and to stop honouring a figure whose legacy is tied up in it.
I guess, honestly, as I near the end of my term as Editor-in-Chief here, I’ve been thinking a lot about what we’ve done this year, and what we haven’t done. Now that I’m weeks away from completing my undergraduate degree, I’ve found myself fixated on the things that could have been. While I’m so happy and proud of everything we’ve accomplished this year, it’s also easy to get caught up in the things I set out to do and didn’t get to, or that fell by the wayside as life got busier. But looking at this issue, our last “real” issue of the year, makes me prouder than ever of our small but mighty paper, and gives me hope for what the future of The Strand and student journalism holds.
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