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News flash: Radical activism can be fun! This gut-busting documentary follows the
antics of two political performance artists who set up a website parody of the
World Trade Organization in 1999. To their delight, the site has often been
mistaken for the genuine article and has earned the faux free traders invitations
from around the world to speak on behalf of the WTO. The Yes Men documents the
hilarious results.

The duo promote ever more ludicrous ideas—auctioning votes to the highest bidder,
for instance—and are shocked to find that their proposals are met not with
outrage but applause. The only group to recoil in horror are students at
Plattsburgh University, where the “WTO reps” propose solving world hunger by
routing “recycled” food from sewer pipes in the First World to fast food
restaurants in the Third World.

How do these jokers get away with it? As the Yes Men offer on their website,
“Anytime anyone [in power] has done something about us—saying they ‘deplore’ us,
complaining we’re a political action committee, whatever—they’ve looked ri-
diculous to the press.” We’ll see what happens after The Yes Men is released
nationwide in August.

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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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