As such, I am pleased to announce this issue's guest editor, native New Yorker Keith Olejniczak. KO's a philosophical guy by way of formal training but he's also been a writer/steady contributor and overall supporter of this lit rag project since its 2007 inception. Now he gets to steer the ship, with the help of his talented wife and artist, Maureen, who will be overseeing the artistic direction for the covers and any other accompanying visual pieces.
To briefly recap for the uninitiated, Ç is an annual literary arts journal for low-down writers and artists - small batch productions, typically hand-bound, not meant for review online or marketed and sold with ISBNs, perhaps stashed in a few special collections - it's the kind of journal you may hear about but will rarely, if ever, catch a glimpse of unless you contribute yourself or happen upon its release party. Such festive occasions are one-off events that come after the final production in each and every calendar year. Yet there are a lot of words to be parsed and much ink to be dried before we get to the party. So peep the visionary and activist Mill motif and check out the flier below - and note the deadline for submission is 15 May 2014.
A few final words. 2014 has been a rough year already for poets, revolutionaries and critical thinkers. To date we've lost heavyweights like Baraka, Seeger and Hall but have also unfortunately bore witness to the persecution of Shabaani. I mention all of this to say that if you believe, like me, that writing is fighting - well then we certainly have a lot more writing to do to combat and correct the rampant corruption and injustice that plagues our ravaged, plundered and globalized home we call earth.
One last thing to consider, these words of the slave who taught himself to read, delivered on August 3, 1857 in Canandaigua, New York:
"Let me give you a word of the philosophy of reform. The whole history of the progress of human liberty shows that all concessions yet made to her august claims have been born of earnest struggle. The conflict has been exciting, agitating, all-absorbing, and for the time being, putting all other tumults to silence. It must do this or it does nothing. If there is no struggle there is no progress. Those who profess to favor freedom and yet depreciate agitation are men who want crops without plowing up the ground; they want rain without thunder and lightning. They want the ocean without the awful roar of its many waters.
This struggle may be a moral one, or it may be a physical one, and it may be both moral and physical, but it must be a struggle. Power concedes nothing without a demand. It never did and it never will. Find out just what any people will quietly submit to and you have found out the exact measure of injustice and wrong which will be imposed upon them, and these will continue till they are resisted with either words or blows, or with both. The limits of tyrants are prescribed by the endurance of those whom they oppress." - Frederick Douglass
Consider this another chapter of the untelevised revolution. If you've got something clever, creative and insightful to say, submit your works to the email listed on the flier. Once again the submission deadline is May 15, 2014 and our production team will be hard at work this summer compiling, editing and selecting your works with the goal of heading to press in the fall. Future correspondences will be conducted via e and snail mail. Looking forward to hearing from you - from newbies to regular contributors - if you don't know, now you know.
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