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The rest of you may be waiting for Congress to pass an infrastructure bill, but not us. In Irvine and other surrounding areas, it’s build, build, build. We have not one, but two Marine Corps bases that were shuttered in 1994, and after a seemingly endless set of negotiations, followed by a housing bust that brought everything to a halt, we’ve given developers the green light to build with abandon. This particular truck is hauling away dirt at MCAS Tustin (home of the blimp hangars that I’ll show you someday), but there’s also plenty of action at MCAS El Toro. All this construction is, naturally, a matter of huge controversy for the usual reasons of traffic and noise (and, um, the possibility of more low-income residents), but the voters have more-or-less spoken, and they voted to build. So that’s what we’re doing.

WE CAME UP SHORT.

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So we urgently need this specific ask, what you're reading right now, to start bringing in more donations than it ever has. The reality, for these next few months and next few years, is that we have to start finding ways to grow our online supporter base in a big way—and we're optimistic we can keep making real headway by being real with you about this.

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WE CAME UP SHORT.

We just wrapped up a shorter-than-normal, urgent-as-ever fundraising drive and we came up about $45,000 short of our $300,000 goal.

That means we're going to have upwards of $350,000, maybe more, to raise in online donations between now and June 30, when our fiscal year ends and we have to get to break-even. And even though there's zero cushion to miss the mark, we won't be all that in your face about our fundraising again until June.

So we urgently need this specific ask, what you're reading right now, to start bringing in more donations than it ever has. The reality, for these next few months and next few years, is that we have to start finding ways to grow our online supporter base in a big way—and we're optimistic we can keep making real headway by being real with you about this.

Because the bottom line: Corporations and powerful people with deep pockets will never sustain the type of journalism Mother Jones exists to do. The only investors who won’t let independent, investigative journalism down are the people who actually care about its future—you.

And we hope you might consider pitching in before moving on to whatever it is you're about to do next. We really need to see if we'll be able to raise more with this real estate on a daily basis than we have been, so we're hoping to see a promising start.

payment methods

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