📧 from Sojo
Dear Br. Isaac,
I am waiting to hear back from our HR department about the correspondence you had with our team dating back to 2007. In the meantime, I wanted to draw your attention to our copyright policy that was printed on our website prior to the publication of any of your work. The link below is a capture of our website from August 17, 2007. You’ll see that by submitting work, authors grant Sojourners the exclusive print publication rights to the work submitted, and authors grant the subsequent right to reproduce, distribute, adapt, or display the work for any purpose and in any manner or medium worldwide. You can find that policy here: https://web.archive.org/web/20070817153806/http://www.sojo.net//index.cfm?action=about_us.copyright_policy
I went back an additional two years to August 31, 2005, and the policy was in place at that time also, and that was well before your first published essay.
We maintain this policy on our website currently as well. You can find it here: https://sojo.net/magazine/write.
I’m not sure a Zoom would be productive, but if you have other ideas about what could be helpful, please let me know what they might be.
@ 1020 to Sojo
This is great, thank you Matt.
Two things to consider:
1) This policy, which would not trump federal law if it tried, does not grant Sojourners said rights in perpetuity. Nor does it prohibit copyright holders from withdrawing or reverting any such rights. I reverted my copyright effective Friday, January 17, 2025 at 17:00 Pacific time, the timezone from which I wrote when I gave Sojourners two weeks' notice to remove my unpaid work from all assets it controlled.
2) This policy provides for a "fee... for any solicited article that is rejected." My solicited article titled "Wrestling With Demons" was solicited by Rose Berger, CCed, but redacted so heavily as to not reflect the original piece by any reasonable means. When you find out how much that fee is supposed to be, you can add that amount to the liability I estimated in a previous email. I can provide emails as evidence if this needs to be resolved legally, but Rose should have them, and I think I CCed Elizabeth Denlinger Reaves as well, so I've CCed her too.
As for your belief that Zoom would not be productive, that is your call to make. But it does beg the question why. Why, after all, is a primary inquiry, child-like, if you will. As in, "whoever does not receive the kingdom of God as a little child will never enter it." (Mark 10:15, NRSVA). For example, I've wondered Why nobody asked me why I cannot be associated with Sojourners any longer. I'm not surprised, any more than I was surprised someone like Trump could win the popular vote, but curiosity does take a certain amount of humility I suppose.
Would you like to 1) continue this in writing, which could then be used in court, or 2) do you want to have a human conversation about how (and why) our personal pain and trauma is getting in the way of preaching the good news to the poor?
