Stewart Rhodes Doesn’t Like MoJo. That’s Why You Do.

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At a press conference for this weekend’s big gun-rights rally in Washington, D.C., Oath Keepers founder Stewart Rhodes announced that he’s thinking about suing us over Justine Sharrock’s profile of his organization, a fast-rising right-wing group that is recruiting men and women in uniform to resist the Obama administration. Rhodes is upset that we featured Oath Keepers supporters who talk openly about taking up arms against the government, and says that instead we should have focused on the Navy officer who sits on his board (and who seems in unshakeably good cheer when answering questions like, “That’s the ultimate cost of freedom, isn’t it—blood?”).

The thing is, talk of armed resistance is what our reporter, Justine Sharrock, heard over and over during the months she spent reporting on Rhodes’ organization—going to Oath Keepers conferences, spending time in Oath Keepers chat rooms, and meeting as many of the group’s supporters as she could. She wrote the story she found, not the story she was directed to. That’s what good reporters do, even when it earns them angry comments, threats of litigation, or worse. (Last year, another one of our writers, Anna Lenzer, was detained and not-so-subtly threatened with rape while investigating Fiji Water).

Some MoJo reporters are working on in-depth exposes—on the industry that stands in the way of housing relief, for example, and on a mysterious birth-defect cluster near a toxic-waste landfill—right now. Others are in Washington, keeping tabs on folks like the Congressman who calls other lawmakers “domestic enemies.” The reason they can stay on the beat is… well, you. MoJo relies on our readers’ help; hundreds of you have pitched in to get us to the goal of $25,000 for our current drive, but we’re not there yet. You can give 50 cents, $5, or $50, via credit card, PayPal, or check in the mail. Try it! It’ll feel good to be part of one of a very few reader-supported news organizations in America.

AN IMPORTANT UPDATE

We’re falling behind our online fundraising goals and we can’t sustain coming up short on donations month after month. Perhaps you’ve heard? It is impossibly hard in the news business right now, with layoffs intensifying and fancy new startups and funding going kaput.

The crisis facing journalism and democracy isn’t going away anytime soon. And neither is Mother Jones, our readers, or our unique way of doing in-depth reporting that exists to bring about change.

Which is exactly why, despite the challenges we face, we just took a big gulp and joined forces with the Center for Investigative Reporting, a team of ace journalists who create the amazing podcast and public radio show Reveal.

If you can part with even just a few bucks, please help us pick up the pace of donations. We simply can’t afford to keep falling behind on our fundraising targets month after month.

Editor-in-Chief Clara Jeffery said it well to our team recently, and that team 100 percent includes readers like you who make it all possible: “This is a year to prove that we can pull off this merger, grow our audiences and impact, attract more funding and keep growing. More broadly, it’s a year when the very future of both journalism and democracy is on the line. We have to go for every important story, every reader/listener/viewer, and leave it all on the field. I’m very proud of all the hard work that’s gotten us to this moment, and confident that we can meet it.”

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AN IMPORTANT UPDATE

We’re falling behind our online fundraising goals and we can’t sustain coming up short on donations month after month. Perhaps you’ve heard? It is impossibly hard in the news business right now, with layoffs intensifying and fancy new startups and funding going kaput.

The crisis facing journalism and democracy isn’t going away anytime soon. And neither is Mother Jones, our readers, or our unique way of doing in-depth reporting that exists to bring about change.

Which is exactly why, despite the challenges we face, we just took a big gulp and joined forces with the Center for Investigative Reporting, a team of ace journalists who create the amazing podcast and public radio show Reveal.

If you can part with even just a few bucks, please help us pick up the pace of donations. We simply can’t afford to keep falling behind on our fundraising targets month after month.

Editor-in-Chief Clara Jeffery said it well to our team recently, and that team 100 percent includes readers like you who make it all possible: “This is a year to prove that we can pull off this merger, grow our audiences and impact, attract more funding and keep growing. More broadly, it’s a year when the very future of both journalism and democracy is on the line. We have to go for every important story, every reader/listener/viewer, and leave it all on the field. I’m very proud of all the hard work that’s gotten us to this moment, and confident that we can meet it.”

Let’s do this. If you can right now, please support Mother Jones and investigative journalism with an urgently needed donation today.

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