Cate Root
Cate Root is a writer who lives and works in New Orleans.
DSA member
Cate Root is a member of New Orleans Democratic Socialists of America.[1]
Current Affairs
August 18, 2021
Dear comrades,
We, the former full and part-time staff, write to you with deep sadness and disappointment about recent events that have occurred at Current Affairs. On August 8th, editor-in-chief Nathan J. Robinson (author of Why You Should Be A Socialist) unilaterally fired most of the workforce to avoid an organizational restructuring that would limit his personal power.
Yes, we were fired by the editor-in-chief of a socialist magazine for trying to start a worker co-op. We all joined Current Affairs at different times. The Business Manager was even hired with the explicit instruction to help shepherd the magazine through the process of creating a more democratic workspace, in alignment with our socialist values. The organizational restructuring has been a topic for most of 2020 and 2021. We discussed it informally, we tried piecemeal reforms, we did a full-organization survey and one-on-one interviews with editors and staff to try to find consensus on a collective vision. Everyone’s stated goal, including Nathan’s, was to create a democratic workplace where all voices were equally valued.
But when we finally got around to discussing organizational models during a Zoom meeting on August 7th, Nathan became agitated. He insisted that in our attempt to set shared internal values, we were disregarding his vision for Current Affairs as published in the first issue. There was a palpable shift in his demeanor, and he behaved in a hostile manner throughout the rest of the conversation. The next morning, he started removing people from the company Slack, and sent letters requesting resignations, eliminating positions, and in some cases offering new “honorary titles” which would have no say in governance...
In solidarity,
- Allegra Silcox, Business Manager
- Lyta Gold, Managing & Amusements Editor
- Kate Christian Gauthreaux, Admin. Assistant
- Aisling McCrea, former producer of The Current Affairs Podcast
- Cate Root, Poet at Large[2]