Nearly 20,000 Letters From Pen Pals, Plus a Birthday and a Political Chess Puzzle

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Three boosts to enter the week:

Letter by letter. “Will you be my pen pal?” “My name is Pattie. Please write me.” “My name is Berlene. I am your pen pal! Please write to me.” Nearly 20,000 letters have poured in, answering the calls of a North Carolina senior center’s residents after they posted photos to Facebook of hand-drawn signs in search of connection. Four months had passed since visits were discontinued, and the outpouring of support from letter writers continues.

Political pen pals. On his birthday today, Zac Lee Rigg—raised in Malaysia and Indonesia and living in Los Angeles—tells Recharge, “Tell everyone I’m aging and I’m not ashamed of it.” (He’s also producing some of the most consistently brilliant, historically informed, justice-driven videos on The Internet. But can he single-handedly defund the United States military?)

No one’s pawn. It’s International Chess Day. Alongside the game’s popularity runs a history of human rights campaigns and political problem-solving, highlighted by the United Nations’ livestream today, “Chess for Recovering Better.” In the mix: superstars Viswanathan Anand of India, Levon Aronian of the United States, Hou Yifan of China, and Vladimir Kramnik of Russia. Hop on. The event was inspired by Mher Margaryan, Armenia’s UN representative, to “promote fairness, equality, mutual respect, and understanding among nations.”

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THE FACTS SPEAK FOR THEMSELVES.

At least we hope they will, because that’s our approach to raising the $350,000 in online donations we need right now—during our high-stakes December fundraising push.

It’s the most important month of the year for our fundraising, with upward of 15 percent of our annual online total coming in during the final week—and there’s a lot to say about why Mother Jones’ journalism, and thus hitting that big number, matters tremendously right now.

But you told us fundraising is annoying—with the gimmicks, overwrought tone, manipulative language, and sheer volume of urgent URGENT URGENT!!! content we’re all bombarded with. It sure can be.

So we’re going to try making this as un-annoying as possible. In “Let the Facts Speak for Themselves” we give it our best shot, answering three questions that most any fundraising should try to speak to: Why us, why now, why does it matter?

The upshot? Mother Jones does journalism you don’t find elsewhere: in-depth, time-intensive, ahead-of-the-curve reporting on underreported beats. We operate on razor-thin margins in an unfathomably hard news business, and can’t afford to come up short on these online goals. And given everything, reporting like ours is vital right now.

If you can afford to part with a few bucks, please support the reporting you get from Mother Jones with a much-needed year-end donation. And please do it now, while you’re thinking about it—with fewer people paying attention to the news like you are, we need everyone with us to get there.

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