The Third Monday In October

Big Year Productions. 91 minutes.<br /> Billed as a mash-up of Election and Spellbound, this film is a charming portrait of four middle-school presidential elections.

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Billed as a mash-up of Election and Spellbound, this film is a charming portrait of four middle-school presidential elections. You know the drill: There are the popular kids, such as the Marin County, California, girl who admits that she’ll win votes because she’s pretty, “But that’s just the way things go.” Then there are the overachievers, like the self-described “politically obsessed dynamo” from Austin. Yet the one to root for is Mick Del Rosario, an utterly winning kid from San Francisco, who runs on a platform of “More fun! Pure democracy!!!” Adolescent drama abounds, but the real story here—as in adult politics—is about money. Mick, whose immigrant dad works two jobs, makes do with a hand-lettered poster, while his suburban peers and their parents print up stickers and T-shirts. At Mick’s inner-city school, crummy used textbooks are a hot-button issue; across the San Francisco Bay, candidates promise better flavors of Jamba Juice in the cafeteria. Unfortunately, this divide is one of several questions left unexplored as the filmmakers opt for sound bites over substance.

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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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