July 22, 2016

Crime Is Down and People Feel Safer

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Donald Trump is apparently planning to deliver a hair-raising speech tonight focused on the “crime and violence that today afflicts our nation.” According to Trump, homicides are up, Washington DC is a killing zone, police shootings have skyrocketed, and illegal immigrants are “roaming free to threaten peaceful citizens.”

Whew. Just to prepare you for all this, here’s a chart you’ve seen many times before showing the rate of violent crime since its peak in 1993:

We don’t have official numbers for 2015 yet, and they might show a small uptick. That’s the nature of these things. But it’s pretty obvious that America is a considerably safer place than it’s been in decades.

But as the redoubtable Paul Manafort says, what about how people feel? Do they feel safe? That’s a hard question to answer, but Gallup asks it every year. Here’s the latest. I’ve included Excel’s trendline just to make it clear which direction this is going:

Bottom line: crime is way down and people feel safer than ever. Try not let Donald scare you too much tonight.

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We just wrapped up a shorter-than-normal, urgent-as-ever fundraising drive and we came up about $45,000 short of our $300,000 goal.

That means we're going to have upwards of $350,000, maybe more, to raise in online donations between now and June 30, when our fiscal year ends and we have to get to break-even. And even though there's zero cushion to miss the mark, we won't be all that in your face about our fundraising again until June.

So we urgently need this specific ask, what you're reading right now, to start bringing in more donations than it ever has. The reality, for these next few months and next few years, is that we have to start finding ways to grow our online supporter base in a big way—and we're optimistic we can keep making real headway by being real with you about this.

Because the bottom line: Corporations and powerful people with deep pockets will never sustain the type of journalism Mother Jones exists to do. The only investors who won’t let independent, investigative journalism down are the people who actually care about its future—you.

And we hope you might consider pitching in before moving on to whatever it is you're about to do next. We really need to see if we'll be able to raise more with this real estate on a daily basis than we have been, so we're hoping to see a promising start.

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