May 24, 2010

AZ Governor Fights Boycott With Puppets

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Arizona Governor Jan Brewer has been fending off calls from around the country for a major boycott of her state for its passage of a draconian new immigration law. Last Friday, Brewer’s reelection campaign fought back with a new video that quickly went viral. (By Monday morning it had been viewed more than 260,000 times.) In it, a green puppet sings a little ditty about how reading “helps you know what you’re talking about,” mixed in with clips of various Obama administration officials acknowledging that they’ve never actually read the ten page Arizona statute they’ve been bashing. It doesn’t have quite the genius of Demon Sheep, but Brewer’s video does a decent job of making Attorney General Eric Holder and DHS Secretary Janet Napolitano look pretty foolish.

 

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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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