What, MoJo Worry?

Digging through 25 years’ worth of the social injustices documented in Mother Jones left us with furrowed brows. So we asked a few friends of the magazine to offer relief and tell us, What should progressives stop worrying about?

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Being called biased or godless for opposing politics that are disguised as religion.
Gloria Steinem, feminist

Compromising with the right. If nothing else, the recent judicial coup d’état proved that Republicans are ruthless hard-asses. Until political progressives start to fight just as hard and nastily as our opponents, we’re doomed to spend the rest of our lives in the political wilderness.
Ted Rall, political cartoonist

Young people.
Studs Terkel, oral historian

Blaming Ralph Nader and the progressive left for an election that was stolen by a bunch of frat-boy power brokers. Bush’s bum’s rush on democracy will create many opportunities to sensitize Americans to the connections between corporate money and our bankrupt political process. But we have to be ready to seize those opportunities—the same old dysfunctional lefty cannibalism is clearly not the answer.

John Sellers, director of the direct-action training group Ruckus

Revering the Other. Recently I gave birth to
a baby girl, whose ethnic mix is one-quarter Asian, three-quarters white. My beloved
California-dwelling, batik-wearing (white) friends (of the left) immediately asked, with great reverence, what traditional Chinese birth customs I would be observing. “Chinese birth customs?” I wanted to exclaim. “Like tying a stone around a female baby’s neck and drowning her in the village well?” The left finally needs to come to terms with the fact that Other is not always Better. The Other’s traditions are not always better, the Other’s souls are not always better, and, news flash, the Other’s art isn’t necessarily better either. (It is entirely possible that an evening entitled “Other Voices: Emerging Women of Color Dance the Songs of Their Souls” will utterly suck—indeed, this late in the game, it is likely.) It’s healthy to remember that some of our ancestors actually fled horrendous conditions to escape to the bland country we now complain about.
Sandra Tsing Loh, solo performer, author, and NPR commentator

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AN IMPORTANT UPDATE

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.”

Let’s do this. If you can right now, please support Mother Jones and investigative journalism with an urgently needed donation today.

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