“Change Y’all Lives Out There”: Watch Jacob Blake’s Powerful Message From His Hospital Bed

Blake was shot in the back by a Kenosha, Wisconsin, police officer two weeks ago.

Fight disinformation: Sign up for the free Mother Jones Daily newsletter and follow the news that matters.

It’s been two weeks since Jacob Blake was shot in the back by Kenosha, Wisconsin, police officer Rusten Sheskey, reinvigorating an uprising against police brutality and racism that has swept the country since the death of George Floyd in early summer. On Saturday, Blake spoke about the fragility of life from the hospital bed where he remains paralyzed from the waist down.

“I just want to say, man, to all the young cats out there and even the older ones, older than me, there’s a lot more life to live,” he said in a video posted on Twitter by his lawyer, Ben Crump. “Your life and not only just your life, your legs—something that you need to move around and move forward in life—can be taken from you like this,” he snapped his fingers. 

Blake described the pain he now experiences every time he breathes, sleeps, eats, and moves around. “Twenty-four hours, every 24 hours, it’s pain,” he said. But he ended his message with a call for change and action. “Please, I’m telling you, change y’all lives out there. We can stick together, make some money, make everything easier for our people because there’s so much time that’s been wasted.”

WE'LL BE BLUNT:

We need to start raising significantly more in donations from our online community of readers, especially from those who read Mother Jones regularly but have never decided to pitch in because you figured others always will. We also need long-time and new donors, everyone, to keep showing up for us.

In "It's Not a Crisis. This Is the New Normal," we explain, as matter-of-factly as we can, what exactly our finances look like, how brutal it is to sustain quality journalism right now, what makes Mother Jones different than most of the news out there, and why support from readers is the only thing that keeps us going. Despite the challenges, we're optimistic we can increase the share of online readers who decide to donate—starting with hitting an ambitious $300,000 goal in just three weeks to make sure we can finish our fiscal year break-even in the coming months.

Please learn more about how Mother Jones works and our 47-year history of doing nonprofit journalism that you don't find elsewhere—and help us do it with a donation if you can. We've already cut expenses and hitting our online goal is critical right now.

payment methods

WE'LL BE BLUNT

We need to start raising significantly more in donations from our online community of readers, especially from those who read Mother Jones regularly but have never decided to pitch in because you figured others always will. We also need long-time and new donors, everyone, to keep showing up for us.

In "It's Not a Crisis. This Is the New Normal," we explain, as matter-of-factly as we can, what exactly our finances look like, how brutal it is to sustain quality journalism right now, what makes Mother Jones different than most of the news out there, and why support from readers is the only thing that keeps us going. Despite the challenges, we're optimistic we can increase the share of online readers who decide to donate—starting with hitting an ambitious $300,000 goal in just three weeks to make sure we can finish our fiscal year break-even in the coming months.

Please learn more about how Mother Jones works and our 47-year history of doing nonprofit journalism that you don't elsewhere—and help us do it with a donation if you can. We've already cut expenses and hitting our online goal is critical right now.

payment methods

We Recommend

Latest

Sign up for our free newsletter

Subscribe to the Mother Jones Daily to have our top stories delivered directly to your inbox.

Get our award-winning magazine

Save big on a full year of investigations, ideas, and insights.

Subscribe

Support our journalism

Help Mother Jones' reporters dig deep with a tax-deductible donation.

Donate