These days it’s almost impossible to avoid turning on the news or reading the paper without hearing stories about the politics of politics — that is, tales about the campaign trail, candidates’ families, scandals, and occasionally the candidates’ platforms.

Save for those moments when the candidates seek the support of voting blocs — the Jewish vote, the Latino vote, the female vote, the black vote — the predicaments of those on the margins of the United States and the world at-large receive scant attention. In this issue of InTheFray Magazine, we seek to broaden this year’s election dialogue by illuminating the interests and stories of the politically invisible.

Writing from the Democratic National Convention in Boston, ITF Contributing Writer Ayah-Victoria McKhail explores the media’s failure to cover the repression of free speech at the DNC in Tongue-tied. Harvard Ph.D. candidate Scott Winship, meanwhile, assesses the risks that the Democrats are taking by Compromising politics in order to send President George W. Bush back to Crawford, Texas. Complemeting Tak Toyoshima‘s Secret Asian Man cartoon about taking the Jap road,< b>Mikhaela B. Reid, our newest cartoonist, pokes fun at queers supporting President Bush in The boiling point. On Monday, August 16, ITF columnist and Managing Editor Henry Belanger will share his thoughts on the DNC.

Given the economic volatility that has predominated during the past four years, few can deny the decisive role that the economy will play on November 2. But as ITF Index Editor Laura Louison suggests in her review of David Shipler’s Pulitzer Prize-winning book The Working Poor (this month’s featured book from Off the Shelf), poverty isn’t merely an election year concern. For many, Louison discloses in Will work for food, impoverishment is a stark, everyday reality that demands national attention.

Of course, economic insecurity knows no borders — or age limits. As ITF Contributing Editor Michelle Chen reveals in Migrant makeover, teens from rural China who migrate to the city hoping to lift themselves from poverty by working in salons often pay a high price while supporting the country’s economic expansion. In nearby Vietnam, street youth participating in the Street Vision Project expose their economic struggles through their cameras in Street vision. Complementing these photos and highlighting the pervasiveness of the oppression experienced by children who lack economic standing, Josh Arseneau shares his poignant photos of child soldiers in West Africa, which we’ll publish on Monday, August 16.

Rounding out this week’s pieces are the visual works of art and the four poems performed by spoken word artists Joyce Lin (Understatement), Kate Hanzalik (Marilyn Chin tells my skin to run), Andre Michael Carrington (Boy rock), and Chavisa Woods (Totems) at InTheFray’s CROSSING BORDERS benefit in Manhattan last month. Special thanks to these fine poets and artists — and to all of our readers and friends who have continued to support our work here at ITF.

Laura Nathan
Editor
Austin, Texas

“

Laura Nathan-Garner