August 21, 2008

Student Activism Firsts

A <i>Mother Jones</i> timeline

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Sit-in
1960: Black students sit at whites-only lunch counter in Jackson, Mississippi.

Building takeover
1964: Berkeley students rally for free speech.

Teach-in
1965: sds drops knowledge on U Mich.

Draft-card burning
1965: Cal students say hell no to Vietnam.

Nationwide student strike
1970: Kent State shootings inspire weeks of class cutting.

Divestment from South Africa
1977: Hampshire College pulls out.

First daughter arrest
1987: Amy Carter busted for U Mass anti-cia break-in.

Booze riot
1991: 1,000 University of Hartford students battle cops over a confiscated beer keg.

Political smart mob
1999: Anti-wto protesters hit Seattle, cell phones in hand.

Netroots organizing
2003: Students for Dean website goes up.

Darfur divestment
2005: Harvard pulls its money from Sudan; 61 schools follow suit.

Congressperson discovers Facebook
2008: Rep. Greg Harris (D-Ill.) enlists a Lake Forest College sophomore’s 9,000-strong Facebook group to support his pro-civil-union bill.


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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.

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