Letter from the Edge of Erasure

We took a break. Then the state killed again. This is what it means to witness when the truth is under siege.

From the Editor:

Perhaps you’ve noticed that the publication has been mostly quiet this weekend. It was supposed to be a mental health break, a chance to bundle up against the cold and recharge. The plan was to chase dopamine and escape, just for a moment.

Then the unthinkable happened. Again.

Alex Pretti — a nurse, a neighbor, a human being — was shot and killed by federal agents in Minneapolis. Another life lost, another moment of truth swallowed by spin. Within just hours of the start of our self-imposed break, any rest we took felt both necessary and impossible.

As the footage emerged, witness footage after witness footage, we sat in shock, in dread, and in anger. We monitored the newsfeeds. We noted the press's careful position.

Texts and phone calls pinged back and forth for hours, with each new update, each press conference, and each released video. This team navigated emotion after emotion, spiraling, frankly, from numbness to grief, from fear to white-hot rage.

The NewsBreak and short-form reporting arm of our group continued to churn out the facts as they emerged. Commentary and analysis, however, felt impossible. What can we tell you that you do not already see with your own eyes?

I’m not ashamed to say that we’re scared. We’re angry. We’re exhausted.

However, we’re not confused.

We know what this is. We are watching — again — as the state asks us not to believe what we saw, as the press regurgitates official lines while bystanders with phones provide the only truth, and as we’re told to doubt the witnesses, to question the footage, to wait for “confirmation.”

This is what erasure looks like— slow, cold, sanctioned.

In the face of it, we say this: We are the press now. We are the historians. We are the memory keepers. I don’t mean the Coffman Chronicle. I mean all of us, every person who sees what is happening, each protestor and social media poster, every single one of us watching this unfold.

We didn’t ask to be the last vestige of the free press. None of you requested a front row seat to unprecedented times, to the fracturing of a nation. But here we are, and until this ends, here we will remain, each of us, seeing, recording, and holding truth.

So document everything. Save it. Print it. Burn it to discs. Archive it offline. One day, someone will need to know what happened here.

Stay peaceful, even when your soul is on fire, because that spark — that one moment of violence — is what they are waiting for. It’s the excuse, the justification, and the last domino.

Yes, this will be long. It will hurt. People will be lost. Truth will be erased. But we can still show up—peacefully, persistently, and with eyes wide open and phones recording.
When this ends — however it ends — what we do now will matter. Those who remain will need to know what we witnessed.