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July 11, 2014
In Vox Populi: New article on natural gas fracking.
We believe that the only way for society to change is for people’s voices to be heard. The subject of this dialogue is power--who has it, how is it used, and to what purpose. We welcome your participation.
--Vox Populi (April, 2014)
I just published an article that focuses on the continuing and very shrill dispute over the environmental and safety issues of hydraulic fracturing--or "fracking"--an extraction method for previously hard-to-access natural gas reserves underneath public and private lands which can be injured in the fracking process. In it, I try to pin down how proponents and opponents really view their arguments, and what each side really wants in the fracking controversy. Is compromise possible? Which issues? What would be a "win" for each side? It's called Commentary on NY Court of Appeals Fracking Decision.
But of equal (if not slightly more) interest to me in this post is publisher Vox Populi itself, the progressive online forum that published my essay. And we are given more than just hints. The name comes from the proverb, Vox populi, vox De, which translate from Latin as "the voice of the people is the voice of God." And if you look at the forum's website, Vox Populi's "tagline" on each web page is A Public Sphere for the Discussion of Contemporary Politics.
With these items in mind, and in view of the opening quote above, the Vox Populi forum intends to be very respectable, if not slightly wonky, grass roots clearinghouse of ideas to address real social problems: identifying them, talking about them, evening the playing fields where battles are fought, and crafting sound strategies to solve them. Issue categories already up on the Vox Populi website give us a better idea: Social Justice, War and Peace, Environmentalism
Vox Populi was co-founded by publisher Michael Simms, a nationally know poet, editor, teacher and founder of Autumn House Press, and by Nisha Gupta, who will be Vox Populi's first editor. Gupta is also a Ph.d candidate in Clinical Psychology at Duquesne University.
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Posted by JD Hull at July 11, 2014 01:04 PM
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