LA’s Lean, Green, Dating Machines

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Leave it to LA to find a way to combine efficiency, sex, and eco-street cred. In the city of instant gratification, there’s now an easy way to determine if that cute guy at the gym will build a LEED-rated home with you: green speed dating!

Jenean Smith, founder of the Green Speed Dating website, came up with the idea while brainstorming ways to raise money to install solar panels at a rural school in Nicaragua. “One day—I have no idea why—I said, you know what the world really needs? Green speed dating!” She set up an event in Santa Monica, where for $20 participants could spend three minutes on green mini-dates. Eco-conscious Angelenos couldn’t get enough. “There’s all these green singles’ sites that don’t have enough people on them, and there’s regular speed-dating where you don’t know who you’re going to meet,” says Smith. “People liked that this was a green event for a good cause.”

And how did the LA speed-daters evaluate their potential partners’ green-ness? By asking what they drove, of course! One lucky guy narrowly escaped having to admit he owned an SUV; another found his bicyling habit made him a little too green for most dates. NPR caught some of the oh-so-awkward car convos; listen yourself here.

Okay, okay, so only in LA would cars be the focus of a green dating event. (To each his own: Portland, OR offers bicycle speed dating.) But the cause is indeed worthy, and word of the site is spreading fast. California readers take note: This could be your summer of green love.

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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.

If you can, please support the reporting you get from Mother Jones—that exists to make a difference, not a profit—with a donation of any amount today. We need more donations than normal to come in from this specific blurb to help close our funding gap before it gets any bigger.

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