A change is coming.

THIS ISSUE MARKS THE EVOLUTION of ColorLines from a quarterly to a bimonthly. The spruced-up design and the new schedule simply provide you more of the ColorLines content you've come to expect--thoughtful, timely analysis of the most important events and trends in communities of color throughout the country and beyond.

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Government continues to retreat from its responsibility to the most vulnerable members of this society, even after the lessons of Katrina. R.M. Arrieta shows us how Los Angeles could very well be the next Katrina, complete with poor people of color left behind by the evacuation. The city lies along 300 earthquake fault lines and President Bush has identified it as a major terrorism target. But homeland security dollars directed toward East and South L.A. are geared toward exhorting poor people to evacuate quickly rather than providing the means for them to do so. In a separate interview by our own Tram Nguyen, a disaster medical team member, Barbara Morita, reflects on her experiences working in the aftermaths of September 11 and Katrina.

On the cultural front, as the first numerically significant generation of adoptees from the developing world hits adulthood, we have included a package on transnational adoption. In frank personal essays, a Jewish woman discusses the implications of bringing her dark-skinned Indian daughter home to Brooklyn, and an adult Colombian adoptee looks back on his family's conflicted life. The number of international adoptions has tripled in the two last decades, reaching 20,000 this year. In the third piece, Sandra White Hawk, who was "adopted out" along with many of her siblings from her poor Native American parents, emphasizes the importance of keeping families together whenever possible.

We also have the mix of news and opinion that contextualize today's events. Francis Calpotura argues for conducting today's immigrant rights movement in its proper historical and global context. Daisy Hernandez talks to a Black minister about addressing gay rights in the church, and Megyung Chung looks at the fate of the WTO and peasant farmers.

Finally, a little institutional news. The Applied Research Center, which publishes ColorLines will say thanks and goodbye this year to its founder and executive director, Gary Delgado. Gary gets the credit for turning the thought of ColorLines into material reality. We are so grateful for his vision, his brains and his fierce willingness to fight it out. In addition to getting lots of time off, he'll be providing these pages with insightful reporting and commentary as a senior contributing editor.

With this issue, we also present the first multimedia version of a ColorLines cover story. Check that out on the new ColorLines website, www.colorlines.com. None of these improvements and expansions would have been possible without your subscriptions and support.

Thank you.

Rinku Sen

Publisher