Urban Habitat has announced the suspension of Race Poverty and the Environment, their journal of 20+ years which chronicled movements for social justice across the Bay and across the United States.

Here is Media Alliance’s statement on the closure:

Media Alliance would like to express our distress at the decision by Urban Habitat to end the production and distribution of Race Poverty and the Environment after 20 years. As observers of the destructive media consolidation of the past decades and struggles to maintain an alternative press, we have been acutely aware of the role RP&E has played in giving voice to issues of income inequity, racial injustice and the destruction of the natural environment.

By highlighting innovative organizing and clearheaded analysis across areas and featuring a wide variety of individuals, organizations and affinity groups doing meaningful work, RP&E has served a vital function. Recent experiments in sound and video have enhanced its value and made it even more helpful than before.

It will be a huge loss to the many movements it serves and to readers all over the Bay Area who relied on it. It’s not that we are insensitive to whatever financial issues may be weighing on Urban Habitat, but in our assessment, RP&E was one of the most consistently useful and visible programmatic services provided by Urban Habitat.

We hope the Urban Habitat board will reconsider this decision and affirm RP&E’s value to both Urban Habitat itself and to movements for social justice throughout the Bay Area and beyond.

For more information on the decision and what comes next for Race Poverty and the Environment: http://friendsofrpe.org/