Disturbing the peace

A comic prompts pacifist-agressive behavior

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Five years after the 80-year-old Fellowship of Reconciliation decided to celebrate youth activism with a nonfiction comic book, the peace organization is trying to find a sensible way to destroy all 20,000 printed copies.

The problem, FOR claims, is that the comic book it created is racist. The African-American family depicted in the comic book Activists!, however, thinks the group is finding conflict where none exists.

“We’ve been screwed by FOR,” says Pat Boozer, who runs an inner-city counseling program in New Haven, Conn. Her family’s story is told in the strip. Boozer says she finds nothing racist about the book, and wants copies for her own group.

But the impressionistic drawings of Boozer’s family caused such an in-house stir that FOR won’t release the book. African-American staff members who were not consulted during the comic book’s production called the finished work offensive, complaining the cartoon exaggerated the family members’ features.

Another story in Activists!, describing a gay teenager’s fight to attend his school prom, provoked more objections. In a memo, one staff member complained to FOR’s board of directors: “Several faiths in our current membership would find the young homosexual story unacceptable.”

Shortly afterward, FOR announced that the 44-page comic book would not be distributed. Boozer calls FOR hypocritical: “They set themselves up as an organization that can mediate between groups, but they don’t carry themselves that way.”

FOR’s executive director, Jo Becker, downplays the complaints. “We are a spiritually based peace organization,” she says. “Mediation is not one of our primary functions.”

Becker offers at least one consolation: The books won’t be burned–they’ll be recycled.

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WHO DOESN’T LOVE A POSITIVE STORY—OR TWO?

“Great journalism really does make a difference in this world: it can even save kids.”

That’s what a civil rights lawyer wrote to Julia Lurie, the day after her major investigation into a psychiatric hospital chain that uses foster children as “cash cows” published, letting her know he was using her findings that same day in a hearing to keep a child out of one of the facilities we investigated.

That’s awesome. As is the fact that Julia, who spent a full year reporting this challenging story, promptly heard from a Senate committee that will use her work in their own investigation of Universal Health Services. There’s no doubt her revelations will continue to have a big impact in the months and years to come.

Like another story about Mother Jones’ real-world impact.

This one, a multiyear investigation, published in 2021, exposed conditions in sugar work camps in the Dominican Republic owned by Central Romana—the conglomerate behind brands like C&H and Domino, whose product ends up in our Hershey bars and other sweets. A year ago, the Biden administration banned sugar imports from Central Romana. And just recently, we learned of a previously undisclosed investigation from the Department of Homeland Security, looking into working conditions at Central Romana. How big of a deal is this?

“This could be the first time a corporation would be held criminally liable for forced labor in their own supply chains,” according to a retired special agent we talked to.

Wow.

And it is only because Mother Jones is funded primarily by donations from readers that we can mount ambitious, yearlong—or more—investigations like these two stories that are making waves.

About that: It’s unfathomably hard in the news business right now, and we came up about $28,000 short during our recent fall fundraising campaign. We simply have to make that up soon to avoid falling further behind than can be made up for, or needing to somehow trim $1 million from our budget, like happened last year.

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