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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Please learn more about how Mother Jones works and our 47-year history of doing nonprofit journalism that you don't find elsewhere—and help us do it with a donation if you can. We've already cut expenses and hitting our online goal is critical right now.

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WE'LL BE BLUNT

We need to start raising significantly more in donations from our online community of readers, especially from those who read Mother Jones regularly but have never decided to pitch in because you figured others always will. We also need long-time and new donors, everyone, to keep showing up for us.

In "It's Not a Crisis. This Is the New Normal," we explain, as matter-of-factly as we can, what exactly our finances look like, how brutal it is to sustain quality journalism right now, what makes Mother Jones different than most of the news out there, and why support from readers is the only thing that keeps us going. Despite the challenges, we're optimistic we can increase the share of online readers who decide to donate—starting with hitting an ambitious $300,000 goal in just three weeks to make sure we can finish our fiscal year break-even in the coming months.

Please learn more about how Mother Jones works and our 47-year history of doing nonprofit journalism that you don't find elsewhere—and help us do it with a donation if you can. We've already cut expenses and hitting our online goal is critical right now.

payment methods

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