September 20, 2010

The View From My Windshield: The Last Free Place

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Lead There be Light: Leonard Knight, 79, began building Salvation Mountain at the entrance to Slab City in 1986 (Photo: Tim Murphy).Lead There be Light: Leonard Knight, 79, began building Salvation Mountain, outside Niland, California, in 1986. I’d hesitate to call anything made from gallons of paint “green” except in a strictly colorful sense, but Knight does get creative, constructing “trees” out of stacked tires, adobe, and large sticks. Mostly, though, the place is about getting the message out: God = Love. In recent years, Knight’s legend has grown with appearances in Sean Penn’s “Into the Wild,” and the John Waters-narrated documentary, “Plagues & Pleasures on the Salton Sea” (Photo: Tim Murphy).

(Photo: Tim Murphy)(Photo: Tim MurphyBonus photo below the jump!

(Photo: Tim Murphy)(Photo: Tim Murphy)

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WE CAME UP SHORT.

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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