February 16, 2007

Tonight: A Documentary on Melvin Van Peebles

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How to Eat Your Watermelon in White Company (And Enjoy It) is premiering on The Independent Film Channel at 9 p.m. tonight. It’s a biographical documentary on Melvin Van Peebles, who grandfathered blaxspoitation cinema with Sweet Sweetback’s Badasssss Song in 1971, and has created 11 other films and seven plays in his career.

“I wanted a movie that black people could walk out of standing tall,” Van Peebles explains. “I didn’t see the type of movie I wanted to see so I made it myself.” How he has done so again and again, despite all odds, is what this documentary shows best.

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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.

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