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.
Latest by this author
San Francisco’s third poet laureate, devorah major, speaks on Palestine and how poetry can help us connect as we navigate the violence of our world.
The free and shared goods economy is creating community resilience and alternatives to trash culture for millions of people.
Architects and everyday people are teaching each other to build spaces for community and climate resilience using local, natural materials.
Meet a theater group that left the city to reimagine a local economy.
A free and open community grief-tending event in Berkeley, California, set an example for coming to terms with loss—of people we love and of nature.
Due to decades of activism by a coalition of Indigenous groups, commercial fishers, concerned citizens and environmentalists, Oregon and California state governments committed to removing four dams along the Klamath River.
By April M. Short in Local Peace Economy | Local Peace Economy Project | English | January 7, 2021 | Guide to Climate and Environmental Action
The Boston Ujima Project’s assembly All About Love: Community Care Systems asks: What would it take to love and care for the most marginalized people in the city?
The movement to revillage our modern world seeks to combat mental illness, housing and climate disasters.
Looking to our cultural evolutionary origins might help us improve society at many levels.
Anthropologists’ research on the origins of war, going back to the beginning of human history and our closest ape relatives, suggests war is not part of our evolution. They also find systems of peace work, and many already exist.
How Paicines Ranch in California works to bring business and investment up to date with our times and closer to nature—prioritizing ecosystem health, habitat, and the sequestration of carbon through soil practices.
Community support throughout the COVID-19 pandemic and uprisings against racial injustice around the world prove the necessity of mutual aid for survival during times of crisis, and beyond.
By April M. Short in Local Peace Economy | Local Peace Economy Project | English | April 19, 2023 | Guide to Local Peace Economy
Amid Israel's bombardment of the Gaza Strip in 2023 and mass civilian deaths, well-known writers, artists, healers, and activists shared "Practices for Care and Endurance" to support efforts for ceasefire and freedom.
A 2021 study on the effects of climate crises in ancient Mesopotamia found increased cooperation and a more widespread distribution of power.
The nonprofit Solar United Neighbors (SUN) is one group working to help communities move away from fossil fuels toward solar power.
When the way things are isn’t working, we can build something better if we draw from our collective power and focus on care and interconnection.
A platform of California Climate and Agriculture Network would move billions of dollars into the hands of farmers and ranchers willing to adopt regenerative food and farming systems.
A look at successful programs that already exist as alternatives to police, and which policy changes and actions might restructure the U.S.’s policing and justice systems.
Grief spaces and community listening circles in Ashland, Oregon, model ways for communities to navigate these trying times—from fires to COVID-19 to racist police killings.
From the Black Panthers to Shepard Fairey, artists have been behind some of the biggest acts of political resistance in the U.S. The anonymous artist collective behind the naked Trump statues that appeared around the U.S. in 2020 released a documentary about protest art during the 2020 election season.
New findings and significant advances in research have scientists rethinking our origins, and museums around the world are working to catch the public up.
The media collective Untold Palestine gathers the stories mainstream media doesn’t tell about Palestinians—videos, photographs, and written accounts from Palestinian people about their culture and daily life.
A short film and narratives project “Stories for Life” seeks to bring about the shift in culture that humanity needs to survive.
By April M. Short in Local Peace Economy | English
A mother and daughter in and out of homelessness founded a grassroots magazine in 1996, by and for people experiencing poverty. It grew into a media, education, and art advocacy project for people in poverty around the world.
Many people are already investing themselves in the local peace economy as they divest from the economy of war.
The COVID-19 pandemic demonstrated the shortcomings of our mega-food industries and the necessity to localize food production.
Efforts by governments and cities across the nation to defund the public library indicate a misunderstanding of the essential role that libraries play.
Many work to curb the global trash crisis by sharing goods with their neighbors.
Yoga teachers who work with oppressed communities say the practice is a key way to navigate stress, trauma, and disruption.
Rupa Marya, a physician and musician, studies how social structures impact health. She says colonial capitalism fractures the critical relationships that keep us healthy.
By April M. Short in Local Peace Economy | Local Peace Economy Project | English | Guide to Local Peace Economy
Artists have always been on the front lines of protest and social shift, taking the pulse of culture and society.
A global movement is building for a just, sustainable economy that prioritizes people and the planet over endless profit and growth.
By April M. Short in Local Peace Economy | Local Peace Economy Project | English | Guide to Local Peace Economy
In a breakthrough grassroots victory, months of protests in 2020 by homeless residents over the lack of affordable housing in Philadelphia led the city and the Philadelphia Housing Authority (PHA) to agree to cede 50 vacant homes to a public land trust.
By April M. Short in Local Peace Economy | English
Understanding the Local Peace Economy and how to divest from the war economy that is destroying life and well-being on this planet.
By April M. Short, Jodie Evans, Judy Wicks and Medea Benjamin in Local Peace Economy | CODEPINK | English | Guide to Local Peace Economy
A people-powered effort to move to fossil fuels to alternatives at the local level is building across the U.S. and the globe.
An interview with the creator of the short film “Ode to Joy,” which celebrates connection with nature as a portal to deeper connection with self and each other.
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. 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, 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.External
Psychedelic Drugs Altering Mainstream Medicine
San Francisco Chronicle | March | 2017
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.
San Francisco Chronicle | April | 2017
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.
Salon | September | 2013
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.
Salon | March | 2014
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.
In These Times | May | 2013
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.
LA Yoga | April | 2017
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.
Alternet | April | 2013
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.
Publications by this author
Co-authors: Sarah Durham Wilson | Sounds True | June | 2022
Becoming the Mother is every woman’s birthright―regardless of whether or not she raises children. The Mother is who we needed as a child, who we were meant to be in this life, and who the world needs us to be now.
Wilson teaches that while pre-patriarchal cultures honored women’s natural cycles, today’s society infantilizes women, idolizing youthful traits such as “pretty, pleasing, and polite” in order to keep us distracted and dependent. While a healthy version of the Maiden will always remain part of us, there comes a time when we must no longer let her wounds and immaturity guide our lives. We must step into our mature, feminine fullness.
Co-authors: Elizabeth Limbach (author) and April M. Short (editor) | Whitman Publishing | May | 2016
From military veterans and young mothers to a Christian minister and a former probation officer, the 100 Americans profiled in Cannabis Saved My Life have starkly different backgrounds. They span all ages and political persuasions and hail from every corner of the country, some from states where marijuana prohibition is alive and well, and some from greener safer pastures like Oregon and California.
What they have in common are powerful and moving stories of unbelievable suffering and courageous resilience. They turned to a controversial but age-old plant. The ways in which this medicine helped them vary as much as their make-ups, but they share the experience of having had their lives become livable once again. For some, this means living life as a criminal or fleeing their home states for one where they can medicate with peace of mind. Your heart will break for them, your eyes will open because of them, and, ultimately, you will be uplifted and inspired by their stories.
Media by this author
Interview | October | 2020
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 the show following the publication of her Independent Media Institute article outlining existing alternatives to policing.
Feature | January | 2020
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.
Feature | September | 2013
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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