A personal note while visiting family. [Mother Jones]( MoJo Reader, Itâs fitting that by the time you read this, Iâll be a few days into visiting my mom back in the Midwest, because this email ended up being about her. I didnât realize it until just a few years ago, but my sense of justice and wanting to stick it to the man, as a career, took root watching her raise me and my brother as a single mom. (Dad was around, for sureâIâll have something to write about him soonâ¦) She was the one woman in an office full of boomer menâat their 1980s and early â90s peakâand every once in a while, she would vent about the BS she endured. She commiserated with the laborers and warehouse workers. She got to know them and brought their stories home. Neither of us realized it then, but I was learning about smashing the patriarchy. My mom reads these emails. Monikaâs mom does too (âIs the $350,000 goal really that dire?â âYes Mom, it is.â) Moms are the best. We share messages people receive from their proud mamas in our impact tracking channel. Theyâre adorable. Weâre named after a historic mother, after all. I didnât tell mine that I was sending this email about her. But before I left to take some time off and visit, I knew I needed to have an email go out asking for [the donations we need](âand I guess I also learned something about fundraising from all those years asking Mom for money. It's rough right nowâweâre running behind our fundraising targets. Last December, I was talking with my mom, telling her how stressful work was. How our year-end campaign was struggling, and how fewer people are paying attention to the news over the last few years. She said, âOh, right, I havenât really been reading those emails,â and I canât blame her. Back in February, we were chatting and she just casually tossed out âTrump is going to winâ like it was a foregone conclusion. What?!?!? It stuck with me, the bluntness and matter-of-factness. She was onto something I wasnât yet grasping out in the Bay Area. One personâs mother is a terrible data set, but Iâll bet you [15 bucks]( that a whole lot of you also felt like itâs become quite laborious to follow the news right now. Some might even feel resigned. It is so hard [raising money]( against this backdrop. I just called my mom to see what sheâs thinking now, without being direct about whyâjust âa work thing Iâd like to get your read on.â She said she felt relieved when Joe Biden stepped down, and thankful he did what she and many thought was the right thing. âThen I started seeing what theyâre saying aboutâ Kamala Harris, âand you know people hate California [OUCH, MOM!], and reality started to sink in.â I didnât press for who the âtheyâ is in âwhat theyâre saying about her,â but my mom is no nutjob glued to propaganda sites or grifter newsâitâs more the standard fare of the Today show, local TV networks, the national evening news (she adores Lester Holtâloved Tom Brokaw), some corporate newspapers that are shells of themselves. That stinks. The mainstream media, with its historic errors of false equivalency and timidity, and its horserace he-said-she-said coverage, can make people like my mom lose a fleeting sense of hope. Because somehow the first Black woman on a major party presidential ticket might appear unelectable, yet the first convicted felon is a shoo-in? Great. My point is this: Mother Jones and Reveal need to be there for people like my mom. People who care and want better news than all that horserace coverage. Online, on social media, on the radio and podcasts, in print, and on streaming platforms, we need to be there with quality information that doesnât just follow the pack. And as long as we can hit our budget this month, next month, and so on (itâs really that tight every month, [please donate if you can](), we will be there. [With your support](, we can and will keep creating more of those momentsâbetween now and November, and whatever happens postelection, because you know it isnât just another ho-hum politics-as-usual race weâre living through. How about you? How are you feeling these days? When we [asked in February](, the overwhelming feeling was dread and despair. Has that changed? Weâd truly like to [hear from A LOT of you]( because when Iâm back from my time off next week, I need to figure out how the hell we can raise upward of $1 million [in online donations]( we need by the time the year ends. I have some ideas, and am hoping for the best. I am also hoping to be able to tell my mom that this atypical email struck a chord and sheâs helping me connect with you and raise [some of the money]( we need. Thanks for reading, Brian Hiatt Online Membership Director [Donate]( [Mother Jones]( [Donate](
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