The BDN Editorial Board operates independently from the newsroom, and does not set policies or contribute to reporting or editing articles elsewhere in the newspaper or on bangordailynews.com.
We tried something new for Martin Luther King Jr. Day this year, putting out a call for contributors and more deliberately looking to fill these opinion pages with diverse voices. This will be a continual effort, not just a project for one day of the year.
Ultimately, not all of the commentary here is from voices of color or from local sources. But we’ve had encouraging conversations and will keep working to build new connections and see that more diverse Maine voices are included in these pages.
Board members from the Wabanaki Alliance responded to our effort with a thoughtful piece. Though it is a departure from our standard practice and format, given the whole point of elevating voices other than our own, we thought it also made sense to literally elevate this piece from Maine tribal leaders on the editorial page. We wanted it to be the first thing people read in print.
This approach admittedly creates some tensions with our typical layout and style in the opinion section. It may be the only time we try this, but it is important to reassess longstanding practices and embrace tensions between new ideas and the usual way of doing things (sometimes the usual way, like republishing the same editorial year after year, can also be a lazy way that unintentionally perpetuates a pattern of racism).
Consider part of what King wrote in his “Letter from a Birmingham Jail.”
“I have earnestly opposed violent tension, but there is a type of constructive, nonviolent tension which is necessary for growth,” King wrote from an Alabama jail cell in 1963.
Across society, in many ways, we must reassess how we’ve been doing things — in the press, in government, in communities, in hearts and minds. Rather than avoiding the tension that often accompanies this process, we all should embrace the nonviolent forms of it that can lead to change and growth.
