Humans aren’t the only ones who need lawyers, apparently. Earthjustice, founded in 1971 and headquartered in San Francisco, has the slogan “Because the earth needs a good lawyer.” In other words, the work of Earthjustice is providing legal representation to individuals and organizations involved in environmental litigation. Cases represented by Earthjustice attorneys are chosen according to three criterion: whether the case has high stakes, whether the case potentially has a landmark impact, and whether the case would forge strong partnerships with national and local groups. If a case is won, Earthjustice’s policy and legislation team works with members of Congress to write new laws and strengthen old ones; this ensures that progress made in the courtroom isn’t erased by congressional action. The three main categories of Earthjustice’s legal victories have been wildlife and places, climate and energy, and health and toxics.
Mark Sappenfield
Dear Reader,
About a year ago, I happened upon this statement about the Monitor in the Harvard Business Review – under the charming heading of “do things that don’t interest you”:
“Many things that end up” being meaningful, writes social scientist Joseph Grenny, “have come from conference workshops, articles, or online videos that began as a chore and ended with an insight. My work in Kenya, for example, was heavily influenced by a Christian Science Monitor article I had forced myself to read 10 years earlier. Sometimes, we call things ‘boring’ simply because they lie outside the box we are currently in.”
If you were to come up with a punchline to a joke about the Monitor, that would probably be it. We’re seen as being global, fair, insightful, and perhaps a bit too earnest. We’re the bran muffin of journalism.
But you know what? We change lives. And I’m going to argue that we change lives precisely because we force open that too-small box that most human beings think they live in.
The Monitor is a peculiar little publication that’s hard for the world to figure out. We’re run by a church, but we’re not only for church members and we’re not about converting people. We’re known as being fair even as the world becomes as polarized as at any time since the newspaper’s founding in 1908.
We have a mission beyond circulation, we want to bridge divides. We’re about kicking down the door of thought everywhere and saying, “You are bigger and more capable than you realize. And we can prove it.”
If you’re looking for bran muffin journalism, you can subscribe to the Monitor for $15. You’ll get the Monitor Weekly magazine, the Monitor Daily email, and unlimited access to CSMonitor.com.
