The New Issue: Issue 6
From the Big Issue North stable, The New Issue contains real stories - beautifully told. It offers stunning photography combined with quality writing, covering everything from changing landscapes and social issues to lifestyle and fiction.
The 80-page magazine, printed on high quality stock, is a publication for good, dedicating all its profits to creating opportunities for people who have the least.
All profits from The New Issue go to supporting vendors of Big Issue North, helping them overcome barriers to employment and find secure accommodation.
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This time, we find that it doesn’t take tanks on the presidential lawn. The forces threatening many democracies now are those of erosion and decay, not the good old-fashioned coup d’état.
Governments in India, Poland and elsewhere have got there by the ballot box. It’s then they set about undermining the rule of law, threatening the media and denying their citizens – some of whom don’t actually mind – their human rights.
Lots of them do, including the Polish women we photograph speaking up for their reproductive rights and the farmers in India whose patience and endurance in defending their way of life might be as strong as any erosive force.
Meanwhile, the struggle for access to clean water and toilets for Honduran schoolchildren is a less provocative but no less elemental human rights concern.
Quite what Dostoevsky would have made of these struggles isn’t clear. The great Russian writer warned against the nihilism of leaders who seek power any cost and defended individual freedom. But with his accent on nationalism and his attacks on revolutionary and liberal thinking in the 19th century, he was no friend of the left. In our comic strip biography, it’s the mismatched loves of his life that concern him more.
The New Issue is sister publication to the street paper Big Issue North. Subscriptions support the work we do to support its vendors, who are now back on the streets after lockdown and able to accept contactless payments for magazines – although not cryptocurrencies, which we explore within.
We hope you enjoy The New Issue’s blend of high-quality long-reads, photo-essays, fiction and more. There are no tanks on the lawn but there’s a ballet dancer on the beach and, if you look hard enough, a hen harrier sky dancing over northern moorland.
