Letter from the Editor
By Nicole Davis
3 years ago we launched Red Flag Magazine with our premier issue on “Water”. We have spent the past 3 years “Raising Red Flags” and “Activating” people around global issues in honor of our motto “When Something Is Wrong A Red Flag Should go Up”. We have spent the past 3 years looking outward – looking primarily for what is “wrong” and how we can fix it.
Today we are starting to reflect upon our language and our mission. We are looking for new ways to understand the issues we have labeled as “wrong”. What we have learned in these past 3 years is that the things we have labeled as “wrong” are always connected to a person, and inextricably that person is connected to every being on this planet. We have also learned that what may be “wrong” for one person can often feel very very “right” to another. And so, through our work a new language is being born. “Wrong” is beginning to take shape not as “wrong” or “right”, but as a reflection of something that is out of harmony – and as a result is causing harm.
Before we continue our work of staking red flags we are taking a look within. Before we can tune what is out of harmony we felt we first needed to discover the melody of our collective song.
For 100 Days – from September 24, 2012 through January 1, 2013 – we will be asking questions. We will not schedule any interviews. The people that we interview will be people we come into contact with in our daily lives. Each day we will go out into the world and interview one person that crosses our path. We will ask each person the same set of questions. On the first day of the new year we will have collected what we hope will carry the sound of our collective voice.
The French born author Anaïs Nin wrote “Love consists of not looking each other in the eye, but of looking outwardly in the same direction.” Here in the United States the campaign to polarize our nation has been in full swing as we prepare to elect the next leader of our nation. Our collective voice has been divided in the fight to defend values that we believe to be separate from one another. By looking outward together onto a world we all share we hope this project will offer a way to move from a place of seeing each other to a place of truly knowing each other.