April M. Short is a co-founder of the Observatory, where she is the Local Peace Economy editor. She is also a writing fellow at the Independent Media Institute.
April M. Short is a co-founder of the Observatory, where she is the Local Peace Economy editor and a contributor to Human Bridges. She is also a writing fellow at the Independent Media Institute’s Local Peace Economy project. Previously, she was a managing editor at AlterNet as well as an award-winning senior staff writer for Good Times, a weekly newspaper in Santa Cruz, California.
April’s work in journalism examines sustainable new (and ancient) ways of thinking about society, culture and value, and being in the world. Her current focus is on the Local Peace Economy (LPE) project—a project conceived by CODEPINK and produced in partnership with the Independent Media Institute. LPE explores local solutions to global issues that are replicable and/or model healing ways forward. It focuses on cultural, social, and economic approaches that are community-based and uplift all people from the dominant global models built on war, oppression, and extraction.
Her writing has appeared in many national and international publications, including the San Francisco Chronicle, SF Gate, the Conversation, Salon, San Jose Mercury News, East Bay Times, Independent Australia, In These Times, Bitch Magazine, Ravishly Magazine, Jezebel, Raw Story, CounterPunch, National Memo, Pressenza, LA Progressive, Hollywood Progressive, Inequality.org, Truthout, Truthdig, and many others. Her work is sometimes syndicated in newspapers worldwide through the Big News Network and other news services.
She also works as a documentary assistant editor, story continuity consultant, and line producer. Her documentary work is primarily focused on environmental justice and climate-related projects in the Pacific Northwest. Additionally, she is on the steering committee for the grassroots nonprofit North Coast Communities for Watershed Protection—a volunteer, citizen-led effort to protect forested drinking watersheds in Oregon.
As former managing editor at AlterNet, she produced the Drugs, Health, and Books sections, as well as front page content and newsletters. She has extensive experience reporting on drug policy, cannabis, and plant medicines, and is a founding editor and contributing consultant for the psychedelics-focused news outlet Lucid News. She was also founding editor-in-chief of the consciousness/wellness-focused media outlet Reset.me. She is part of the Cosmic Sister “psychedelic feminism” network and received a Cosmic Sisters of Cannabis grant in 2016 to write “Why Women Are Leading the Charge to (Re)unite Cannabis and Yoga”—the first article about cannabis and yoga ever published in LA Yoga.
She is also a yoga teacher and meditation guide, and facilitates workshops, retreats, and feminine rites of passage experiences throughout California and the Pacific Northwest.
Music plays a significant and fascinating role during psychedelic-assisted therapy sessions. This 2017 San Francisco Chronicle article details the processes and thought behind creating music playlists for psychedelic-assisted therapy purposes. It includes an interview with musician Brian Eno, who is known for his historic role in the development and popularization of ambient music. Many of his songs are featured on psychedelic-assisted therapy playlists.
This 2013 article published in Salon details the report that first revealed the fact that private prison companies strike deals with states that contain clauses guaranteeing high prison occupancy rates. At the time this article was published the report was newly-released by In the Public Interest, and this was one of the first pieces of coverage on the groundbreaking report.
In 2014, as the first state-wide recreational cannabis legalization laws went into effect in Colorado and Washington, Professor Michelle Alexander's book The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness was released. This interview with Professor Alexander, published in Salon, details the racial inequities present in the rollout of cannabis legalization.
This article about the March Against Monsanto movement was published in In These Times, as well as a series of additional outlets. It was among the first media coverage of the movement, which took place in countries around the world and aimed to bring awareness of the impacts of chemical companies like Monsanto on health.
This is the first article about cannabis and yoga ever published in LA Yoga. April received a "Cosmic Sisters of Cannabis" grant in 2016 from Cosmic Sister to write this piece. It details the historical—even ancient—relationship between cannabis, yoga and the feminine.
This AlterNet article was published before the concepts of psychedelic-assisted therapy and the benefits of psychedelics for mental health were mainstream knowledge. It is an overview of the 2013 Psychedelic Science Conference and the breakthrough scientific research into psychedelics that was just beginning to be released after decades of federal red tape.
April co-edited and ghost-wrote portions of the book Maiden to Mother: Unlocking Our Archetypal Journey into the Mature Feminine, which was published by Sounds True in 2021.
April was the conceptual creator and assigning editor of the book Cannabis Saved My Life by Elizabeth Limbach, published in 2016 by Whitman Publishing.
April is a co-founding editor and co-creator of the psychedelics news outlet Lucid.news.
April was the founding editor-in-chief of the psychedelics and wellness media outlet Reset.me.
At the height of the 2020 uprising against systemic racism and police brutality, April Spoke with Len Beyea of KSQD Community Radio in Santa Cruz, along with activist Esabella Bonner, about "Alternatives to Policing – What Would Safety Look Like Without Police?" She was invited on teh show following the publication of her Independent Media Institute article outlining existing alternatives to policing.
This feature-length documentary follows communities along Washington's Chehalis River who are faced with worsening floods and a prized salmon population on the brink of extinction, as they grapple with how to prepare for climate impacts—and whether a new dam is the answer. April worked as a continuity consultant and assistant story editor on this film by Jesse Andrew Clark and Shane Anderson.
April was the producer, continuity consultant and lead interviewer for this mini-documentary produced by and for MAPS (the Multidisciplinary Association for Psychedelic Studies).
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This 2017 article for the San Francisco Chronicle explores the 50th anniversary of the Human Be-In, the historic drug policy protest that attracted tens of thousands of people to San Francisco in 1967 and served as the catalyst for the Summer of Love and burgeoning changes to U.S. drug policy and psychedelic science.