August 23, 2013

all right we are two nations

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From John Dos Passos, in The Big Money, on the execution of Sacco and Vanzetti:

    they have clubbed us off the streets     they are stronger     they are rich     they hire and fire the politicians the newspapereditors the old judges the small men with reputations the collegepresidents the wardheelers (listen businessmen collegepresidents judges     America will not forget her betrayers)     they hire the men with guns     the uniforms the policecars the patrolwagons

    all right you have won     you will kill the brave men our friends tonight

    there is nothing left to do     we are beaten

    ….they have built the electricchair and hired the executioners to throw the switch

    all right we are two nations

    America our nation has been beaten by strangers who have bought the laws and fenced off the meadows and cut down the woods for pulp and turned our pleasant cities into slums and sweated the wealth out of our people and when they want to they hire the executioner to throw the switch

I’m reading the U.S.A. trilogy and by chance I happened to read that passage last night. Today, Ed Kilgore tells me, is the 86th anniversary of the execution, so I thought it might be appropriate. Everything old is new again.

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WE CAME UP SHORT.

We just wrapped up a shorter-than-normal, urgent-as-ever fundraising drive and we came up about $45,000 short of our $300,000 goal.

That means we're going to have upwards of $350,000, maybe more, to raise in online donations between now and June 30, when our fiscal year ends and we have to get to break-even. And even though there's zero cushion to miss the mark, we won't be all that in your face about our fundraising again until June.

So we urgently need this specific ask, what you're reading right now, to start bringing in more donations than it ever has. The reality, for these next few months and next few years, is that we have to start finding ways to grow our online supporter base in a big way—and we're optimistic we can keep making real headway by being real with you about this.

Because the bottom line: Corporations and powerful people with deep pockets will never sustain the type of journalism Mother Jones exists to do. The only investors who won’t let independent, investigative journalism down are the people who actually care about its future—you.

And we hope you might consider pitching in before moving on to whatever it is you're about to do next. We really need to see if we'll be able to raise more with this real estate on a daily basis than we have been, so we're hoping to see a promising start.

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