April 7, 2009

First Grandma’s Essence Interview

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Best Nana ever? That would be Michelle’s mama, Marian Robinson.

First Nana and First Lady grace this month’s Essence and ‘Big Mama’ just gets cooler and cooler. There’s just too much good stuff to cut and paste; check the link for the full story. My fave? The First Grandma plans to evacuate the WH with a quickness, once the kiddies are all settled. Why? “I love those people, but I love my own house. The White House reminds me of a museum and it’s like, how do you sleep in a museum?”

“Those people”? Rock on, Nana. She does yoga. She thinks her own daughter is too strict. She’s ready to get back to her own life after tending to her grandkids while her ‘other kids’ do their own thing, White House be damned.

I say: let’s bring Nana Robinson to Burning Man this year!

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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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