July/August 2004 Issue

The Yes Men

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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 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.

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