Southern Winds

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What I did

Sometime in February 2024, IVEJ's Executive Director told me about an idea: a free community-driven social justice magazine that brings crucial information to Imperial Valley residents. By December 2024, we were getting ready to print our first few thousand issues.

I'd dreamt about editorial projects but this one posed unique challenges: would I be able to pull this off having never opened InDesign or led contributors through an editorial cycle?

When this project first kicked off, I had an outline of approximately 8 stories that were going to be written by existing IVEJ staff. What ended up happening was a wonderful collaboration with 30 contributors and 8 local artists that resulted in a 130-page magazine dedicated to making information about Lithium Valley accessible to residents.

Something to note: typesetting for the magazine was done exclusively by Mike Ramos.

Why I did it

I don't have a statistic, but most Imperial Valley residents only have a vague notion of what's going on in the Lithium Valley region. There are still many misconceptions within the community: such as that lithium is going to be extracted from the Salton Sea—note: it's not—and very little understanding of the potential environmental and public health hazards that a project of that magnitude will bring to the frontline communities in the Northend of the county.

Since the publication of the magazine, I've been approached by residents who've appreciated having lithium documents translated to Spanish for their benefit; despite being one of the counties with the highest Latinx population in the state of California, most council and supervisor meetings are exclusively in English.

While lithium extraction in Imperial County has the potential to transform the region—and the country's reliance on fossil fuels—it's imperative that the Valley does not become a sacrifice zone for the sake of a greener economy.