November 7, 2012

The Pro-Obama Mosh-Pit Party in Front of the White House, Election Night 2012 [VIDEO]

Gleeful liberals. In trees.<a href="https://twitter.com/i/#!/swin24/media/slideshow?url=pic.twitter.com%2Fj7DKYOxL">Asawin Suebsaeng</a>/Twitter

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“I just got back from OHIO, and all I got was FOUR MORE YEARS,” screamed a stumbling but upbeat Obama campaigner.

Following across-the-board cable news projections that President Obama had won a second term, hundreds of supporters flooded the north side of the White House bordering Lafayette Square. There was a lot of whooping, jumping, and delighted liberals climbing trees. It was like the night Bin Laden got shot in the face, only with more partisanship and less bloodlust.

Obama supporters brought conga drums, life-size cardboard cut-outs of the Michelle, Barack, and Joe, and the standard placards and flags. Also, there was this doodle dog wearing an “OBAMA OR BUST!” white cape (according to smaller text on the dog-shawl, the animal was on a “cross-country tour”).

Peppered throughout the celebrating crowd were the usual dissenting voices looking to be passively heard. There was that huddle of college-age males repeatedly shouting, “Allahu Akbar!!!” and then grinning at their implied jab at BHO. There was that one guy sermozing about Reaganomics literally through a bullhorn. And then there was a pair of grey-suited conservatives—name-checking Castro, Iranian mullahs, the works— who really did sound like they believed America had just reelected our Mars-traveling, gay-orgy-having, hurricane-making, nose-job-getting leftist overlord.

You know, the expected trolling amidst the partyin’.

And there was, of course, the obligatory pro-Obama mosh-pit:

The Wall Street Journal also has some good footage of the crowd of hundreds (“most of them young”) at the White House on Election Night.

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WHO DOESN’T LOVE A POSITIVE STORY—OR TWO?

“Great journalism really does make a difference in this world: it can even save kids.”

That’s what a civil rights lawyer wrote to Julia Lurie, the day after her major investigation into a psychiatric hospital chain that uses foster children as “cash cows” published, letting her know he was using her findings that same day in a hearing to keep a child out of one of the facilities we investigated.

That’s awesome. As is the fact that Julia, who spent a full year reporting this challenging story, promptly heard from a Senate committee that will use her work in their own investigation of Universal Health Services. There’s no doubt her revelations will continue to have a big impact in the months and years to come.

Like another story about Mother Jones’ real-world impact.

This one, a multiyear investigation, published in 2021, exposed conditions in sugar work camps in the Dominican Republic owned by Central Romana—the conglomerate behind brands like C&H and Domino, whose product ends up in our Hershey bars and other sweets. A year ago, the Biden administration banned sugar imports from Central Romana. And just recently, we learned of a previously undisclosed investigation from the Department of Homeland Security, looking into working conditions at Central Romana. How big of a deal is this?

“This could be the first time a corporation would be held criminally liable for forced labor in their own supply chains,” according to a retired special agent we talked to.

Wow.

And it is only because Mother Jones is funded primarily by donations from readers that we can mount ambitious, yearlong—or more—investigations like these two stories that are making waves.

About that: It’s unfathomably hard in the news business right now, and we came up about $28,000 short during our recent fall fundraising campaign. We simply have to make that up soon to avoid falling further behind than can be made up for, or needing to somehow trim $1 million from our budget, like happened last year.

If you can, please support the reporting you get from Mother Jones—that exists to make a difference, not a profit—with a donation of any amount today. We need more donations than normal to come in from this specific blurb to help close our funding gap before it gets any bigger.

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