An 18-Year-Old’s Family Restaurant Burned to the Ground. Supporters Are Pitching in to Rebuild It.

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It’s still only Tuesday? Okay, multiple Recharges. It’s gonna take a lot of boosts to get through this. Let’s stretch a triple:

More than material. When 18-year-old Hafsa Islam saw her family’s Bangladeshi Indian restaurant burned to the ground during protests in Minneapolis, she shared the news on Facebook and posted her father’s thoughts: “Let my building burn…Life is more valuable than anything else. We can rebuild a building, but we cannot give this man [George Floyd] back to his family.” Her posts were met with an outpouring of support so vast and news coverage so wide that solidarity turned into nationwide pledges to rebuild her restaurant.

Music of a moment. Saving lives is the country’s first order of business. But saving music is a collective project of its own, and encouraging news is in: The famed Bop Street Records announced that it would be forced to close by the pandemic, and 500,000 recordings flushed, but in the final hours, the Internet Archive came through to purchase the entire collection, sight unseen. The archive—a nonprofit library of free books, movies, music, and more—has collected more than 4.5 million audio recordings.

Unlocked. A small bail fund has raised a staggering $20 million in four days of donations to help protesters in Minnesota. A popular DJ, Marea Stamper, known as the Black Madonna, said that any followers who donate to bail funds and send her donation receipts would get added to her shows’ guest lists when touring resumes. “Everyone around the world is ready for justice,” Tonja Honsey, the fund’s executive director, said. “They’re ready for real change, and they’re supporting that.”

Send story ideas to recharge@motherjones.com, and swing by the daily blog at motherjones.com/recharge.

WE'LL BE BLUNT:

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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.

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