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December 25, 2020 In the spring of 2013, a friend of mine fell off a balcony. She lived in San Franc
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[View in browser]( [Mother Jones Daily Newsletter]( December 25, 2020 In the spring of 2013, a friend of mine fell off a balcony. She lived in San Francisco and at that moment I was sitting in my father's basement in San Diego, having recently left New York because my job doing social media at a consumer tech website had not paid me enough to be able to afford both rent and an unexpected bill. The phone rang and interrupted me writing tweets about laptopsâthey'd agreed to let me work remotely since the alternative was homelessnessâand I found out the news and fell apart instantly. It was doubtful she would live. I ran upstairs, sobbing, and asked my father if he would buy me a ticket and a hotel to go see her. He didnât hesitate and said, âthe most important thing is that in this moment you go.â I jumped on a plane and checked into a random Priceline hotel and ended up wandering the streets mostly because I didnât want to bother the family while she was in surgery. She made it through, though she was still in a coma. There was nothing to do but be happy she hadnât died and pray that she would recover. Eventually I went back to this temporary mid-20s, boomerang sort of living situation with my father, but having been confronted with a tragedy affecting the person in my life with whom I was closest, I had a hard time pretending to care about how many people were reading reviews of Samsung Galaxy phones. No one publicly knew about any of this but a few days later a friend of mine from Twitter who I had never met in person but had grown to know online named Clara Jeffery, the Editor-in-Chief of Mother Jones, DMâd me and asked if I had any recommendations for people to do social media at Mother Jones. I gave her a few names. She asked if they would be willing to move to San Francisco, and I said, probably not. The next day I was sending out tweets about Roombas and it occurred to me that I just didnât give a damn about the Roomba or phone reviews and I realized that actually maybe wouldnât it be nice to have a job where things matter? If life is a precious and brief as I had then come to understand, wouldnât it be wild if I spent mine doing something more meaningful? And in a location that would allow me to be a friend in a way that mattered? I DMâd Clara and said âactually, you should hire me. Iâll move to San Francisco.â She said, âOh, ok. Well...you can definitely apply!â (I was so caught up in my own drama at that moment that I definitely was hoping for the impossible scene where they just say âyouâre hired!â But that only happens in films or to Dick Cheney). Anyway, I went on some interviews and ended up getting the job. On my first day, I met all these wonderful people who cared about their work in a very earnest way; not because they were trying to get the most traffic or do well enough to climb career ladders, but because they believed in the impact. Coming from where I had come from, it was a totally new paradigm. I donât think I even knew that Mother Jones was a nonprofit yet. I knew it just as this magazine that had published wonderful workâlike lots of magazinesâand that I admired it. But what I didnât anticipate was that Mother Jones was so much more than a magazine. Itâs an instrument of positive change. Literally all of my colleagues from that day to this one have measured their work in terms of how it makes the world better. Thatâs it. Thatâs the ball game. In these intervening seven years I have also come to know another special virtue of Mother Jones by getting to work with and be awed by so many young people who come up through the fellowship program and then go on to conquer the world at the New York Times or the Washington Post or win a zillion awards and break the biggest stories that have yet to break. My friend eventually woke from the coma and I was with her for the many months of recovery she had to endure. Sheâs as beautiful and smart and funny and wonderful as ever. Eventually I left San Francisco and moved to New York to build the Mother Jones presence here, and thatâs been amazing as well. Mother Jones is a magical, special place and if you put it in a screenplay, studio executives would say was far fetched. it keeps those who would do ill up at night; it cuts the teeth of the next generation of investigative reporters; It holds the powerful to account and shines light on corruption. Why am I telling you this, is a question I forgive you for asking. Because itâs Christmas! And on Christmas you say what youâre grateful for. I am grateful for many things in life, and three of those things are: Mother Jones, the people who work here, and the readers that make it possible. Iâm going on leave on January 1st for a while to work on some personal projects and though Iâll be back in fall, Iâll miss all three legs of that stool more than I can say. This newsletter will be in the good and warm hands of Abigail Weinberg, my coauthor for the last 7 months, and Inae Oh, who wrote most of the wonderful notes that hit your inbox this last week. If youâve enjoyed my writing on this newsletter or off, subscribe to [my personal newsletter](, which Iâll be keeping updated with all my random writings while I'm away. And please, if you appreciate Mother Jonesâthe work it does, the impact it hasâand share the goals it endeavors to accomplish, [take a minute to donate](. (If you can! If you canât, thatâs ok too!) [Mother Jones is a non-profit and none of this would be possible without your support.]( Mother Jones has made me a better person, a more interesting and smarter and funnier person, and I donât think Iâm the only one to experience the transformational ferry dust of this magazine. I thinkâI hopeâyou have, too. Merry Christmas! Ben Dreyfuss P.S. I'm sorry if there are lots of typos in this. It's Christmas and though I don't mind asking myself to work, I would have felt guilty ruining someone's holiday to get it edited. Advertisement [House Donation Ad]( [Top Story] [Top Story]( [Raphael Warnock Is Tapping Into a Long Legacy of Faith-Based Civil Rights Activism in his Quest for the Senate]( And he's become the target of ugly Republican attacks in the process. BY MOLLY SCHWARTZ [Trending] [A Black professor's colleague called the cops on him. What the school did next made it much worse.]( BY JACKIE FLYNN MOGENSEN [How I cooked my way through a terrible, very bad year]( BY TOM PHILPOTT [What Biden can do to boost the economy without any help from Congress]( BY HANNAH LEVINTOVA [Monsters of 2020: The United States Senate]( BY NATHALIE BAPTISTE Advertisement [House Subscription Ad]( [Weekend Reads] [Special Feature]( [Thereâs No Quick Fix for Healing Democracy]( Rebuilding is going to take a while. Here are five tools that will help. BY MONIKA BAUERLEIN [Fiercely Independent] Please read Monika Bauerlein's year-in-review column, "[There's No Quick Fix for Healing Democracy](," and make a year-end gift to support Mother Jones' journalism. [Donate]( [Recharge] SOME GOOD NEWS, FOR ONCE [More Good News on the Way]( Recharge is getting a recharge this week and will return after the holidays. Enjoy yours safely. If you’re looking for a boost, [the blog awaits](. Send good news and New Year’s resolutions to recharge@motherjones.com. âDaniel King Did you enjoy this newsletter? Help us out by [forwarding]( it to a friend or sharing it on [Facebook]( and [Twitter](. [Mother Jones]( [Donate]( [Subscribe]( This message was sent to {EMAIL}. To change the messages you receive from us, you can [edit your email preferences]( or [unsubscribe from all mailings.]( For advertising opportunities see our online [media kit.]( Were you forwarded this email? [Sign up for Mother Jones' newsletters today.]( [www.MotherJones.com](
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