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You all inspire me to show up. Thank you. MoJo Reader, This is the first email I've written to you,
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You all inspire me to show up. Thank you.
MoJo Reader,
This is the first email I've written to you, but I had the good fortune to pore over the hundreds of comments we received from the Mother Jones community over the last week or so, and it was [really inspiring](âand inspiration is worth sharing right now.
I'm Brian, and I work on building Mother Jones' online community. I'm always looking for ways to listen to and learn from our readers, and I obsess over finding ways to connect with you because that's the only way independent journalism is going to surviveâwith a broad base of engaged, committed readers. Those fundraising campaigns you see are part of my job, too.
When the coronavirus pandemic suddenly became real, our first impulse was to take the pulse of our readers. So our CEO Monika's recent [column]( asked how you're doing, what has you worried, and how you think Mother Jones can have the greatest impact right now.
So many of you shared ways youâre adapting and helping others, and since hope can help empower people right now, I wanted to share a couple of those with you. You can hear from more of your fellow readers in my post "[It Gives Us a Reason to Get Dressed, See Smiles, Have Hope](."
"I woke up early yesterday morning to find that my wife, who is terminally ill, was not by my side. I found her in her sewing room, sewing masks."
âBob in Minnesota
"Iâve signed up to be an NHS volunteer (in the UK) and am helping neighbours and elderly friends with grocery shopping. But the widest net Iâve managed to spread has been to create a Facebook group called âThe Good in Usâ where hundreds of peopleâfrom the US to South Africa to Cyprus to Malta to Australia to France to New Zealand to the UK and moreâare posting stories of good."
âGabrielle from the United Kingdom
"Every day at 3 p.m. I bring my karaoke machine onto my balcony and sing one song. The song is dedicated to a group or place: Italy, NYC, health care workers, researchers finding a cure/vaccine, our elderly, those who are depressed, friends with compromised immune systems. When I sing, my whole building comes out and sings from their stoop, porch, balcony or the courtyard and pretty soon, we are all dancing. It gives me a sense of fun and peaceâ¦It gives us a reason to get dressed, see smiles, have hope."
âAntonia in Los Angeles
"As a 77-year-old, Iâm kinda upset when the governor of Texas and Fox News spout, âDie for the Dow.â But really, if thereâs only one respirator for me and a 25-year-old, unless sheâs a known psychopath with terminal cancer, she should get it. Itâs weird to be expendable!"
âAn anonymous reader in New Jersey
[Read more here](.
I like that last one a lot. The profound generosity of offering to give up your own life delivered with a dash of good-spirited humor. Plus, it gets at the big picture of how this crisis has exposed so many vulnerabilities.
That was the third thing that came through loud and clear from your responses: an overwhelming sense that we as a nation can, and must, do betterâand a real concern about the long-term priorities of our leaders. Readers are worried about how this is going to affect our elections. You want to flatten the curve for health care and wealth inequality. Youâre concerned about the erosion of rights. And so many see the collective action we're taking now as a chance to come out of this as a stronger societyâespecially as it relates to confronting climate change.
Our world has been turned upside down over the course of about three weeks, and so has MoJoâs reporting. Or, then again, it has not: Just as before, journalism that can debunk misinformation, call out what needs to be called out, and lift up the voices of the most vulnerable is critical. Our newsroom is digging deep on some of the biggest issues of the moment, from the [election]( to the [criminal justice system](, [the rights of women]( and [people of color](, the future of our [climate]( and [food systems](âonly now all these are affected by, and more relevant amid, this crisis.
Monika and I often say, âLetâs just level with people,â when writing to you about how Mother Jones works, and I saw a draft of her [column]( recently that, way at the end, said, âI donât know how weâll keep doing what we have to do for the next few months.â Strong wordsâbut true.
We had been preparing to launch a big fundraising campaign last week and weâre obviously not doing that in the way we had planned. But we very much need support from readers to keep our journalism going, so [if youâre able to pitch in with a donation]( weâd be beyond grateful, especially as so many people are being hit in different ways right now. My partner, who works in the travel industry, was furloughed a few weeks ago, and two of my best friends are looking at shuttering their small businesses that they poured everything into. Nearly 10 million people are estimated to have filed for unemployment benefits in the past two weeks, including many of you who wrote us.
Weâll have a clearer picture of what all of this means for our finances, and thus our journalism, before too long, and Iâm sure we will have more to say about that as we do. But for now, we know we have to keep our shoulder to the wheel, we know you need us to keep doing the kind of journalism the moment demands, and we know we have to pay for it every single day. It would be amazing if even just [a handful of our readers who are able to support our work did so today]( while we figure out where we go from here. Thank you so much to everyone who has recently donated.
Itâs been a tough month for me, but after processing everything we heard from you and writing it out, I feel a lot better. Together, we are going to get through this the best we can, and I know that with enough grit, we will come out strongerâbecause I see you, and our team at Mother Jones, rising to the challenge every day.
You all inspire me to show up, and I hope you'll [take a couple of minutes to read through more of the amazing comments we received]( from the Mother Jones community to see why.
Thanks for reading, and for being such an incredible group of humansâwe're lucky to have you.
Brian Hiatt
Mother Jones
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