Tom Vilsack Needs to Rehire Shirley Sherrod. Now.

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I’ve already tweeted a bit about this, but it’s worth a blog post too. The full video of Shirley Sherrod doesn’t show that she’s a racist. What it shows is her telling a story about how, 24 years ago, she had to overcome her own underlying racial resentments in order to do her job properly. It shows her telling a story about how, with God’s help, she learned that her job was about helping the poor, not about whether you’re white or black or Hispanic. In other words, it’s the exact opposite of what Andrew Breitbart tried to paint it as.

This should go without saying, but Tom Vilsack needs to apologize and rehire Sherrod, and he needs to do it with the same dispatch that he fired her with in the first place. If stories like Sherrod’s are out of bounds, we’ve truly reached a new low in conservative mau mauing and racial cowardice.

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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.

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