MoJo Reader,
Today is the last day of our fiscal year, and the big fundraising deadline we've been working toward for a few months now. We had a quite sizeable $145,000 gap in our online budget when the day started, which is more than we can easily manage, and we desperately need to close as much of that as we can by the end of the day.
But on Tuesday, when it became clear we were going to come up well short and I started thinking about what to write for my last urgent request for the donations that fuel Mother Jones, I couldn't shake the testimony from ex-White House aide Cassidy Hutchinson that morning.
Anyone who has known abusers recognized the man that Hutchinson and others described in testimony to the January 6 committee. The fist on the table, the broken dishes, the "I'm the effing [insert authority figure here] and you'll do what I say." And, too, the caution of those around him: The bystander's warning that "he's really ticked off right now, you better stay clear." The enabler's stone-faced phone-scrolling. The attempts to placate, to dodge, to tiptoe around until the worst blows over.
Hutchinson was talking about the 45th president of the United States, but she also described a type we've all stood nose to nose with before: The bully who can't fathom not getting his way. The committee has yet to corroborate some of the most chilling details of her testimony, but let that not distract us from the bigger picture. January 6—and more broadly, this whole moment we are living through post-Roe, post-Voting Rights Act, post-facts—is about bullying. It is about people who try to get their way by force because they don't have right, law, truth, or consent on their side. And like many of the biggest moments in American history, and in our personal lives, it is also about standing up to that.
Bullies and abusers, as all those who have faced them know, have one big advantage: They're willing to do whatever it takes. They will lie. They will hurt you. But they also have one huge disadvantage. They are cowards, and the clock is always ticking down until the moment they finally lose their grip.
The people who carried AR-15s to the rally on January 6 were not brave enough to stand up for their beliefs unarmed, as so many others have done in that same spot. The president who sent them there was not brave enough to face the will of the voters. Many of those around him were not brave enough to step into the path of a man doing violence to democracy. But some are doing so now, and more may come forward. It's never too late to, as committee chairman Bennie Thompson said at the close of Tuesday's hearing, "find some courage you've hidden away somewhere."
Cowards are afraid of the truth—that's something we run into often at Mother Jones. It's amazing how powerful people will hide from reporters, or claim that they never said something that we have on tape. Sometimes they sue, and lose, but in their mind it's still a win, because cowards and bullies want you to know that you'll pay if you tell on them. Whether it's calling witnesses to sweetly note that "He wants me to let you know that he's thinking about you. He knows you're loyal…" or just sending a meritless letter on law firm letterhead: Nice little nonprofit budget you got there, it would be a shame if big legal bills happened to it.
I meant to write a longer note about all this, because there is so much to say about courage, truth, and standing up for what's right regardless of who wants to hurt you—or for that matter, regardless of whether rainbows and unicorns appear once you do the right thing. Standing up often doesn't come with a reward or success, and these days that can feel really frustrating.
I wanted to get into what it means for journalists to try to stand up for what's right, and how those unicorns and rainbows—the impact that we can see—often take a long time to appear. And I wanted to find the perfect words to explain to you how concerning it is that our fundraising efforts, no matter how I try to make the case, are falling a bit flat with some of you. I'm hoping it's just a temporary lull, and I really don't want to hit the panic button about the fact that our end-of-year budget is going to come up short by a fair bit. I wanted to explain all this in a way that would resonate with you, the Mother Jones community—because I know that you are just as committed to standing up to bullies as you were a year ago, or ten, or 46 when MoJo was founded.
But then, yesterday, Covid finally got me, and the truth is, I don't have it in me to write that perfect email to end our pledge drive successfully. Instead, even as I tried to type out these words, my mind drifted to third grade. I was bullied—par for the course for a lot of kids back then (and now), so I don't mean to make a big deal of it. But I remember that I took to eating lunch in the classroom, or hiding out at the safe edge of the yard where the teachers were.
The safety was stifling after a while. I couldn't join my friends to catch the ladybugs in the bushes at the far end of the schoolyard. So eventually—and this is one of those memories that remain crystal clear to me, like a high-definition video—I decided that each day, I would take one step out of the safety of the teachers' corner. One step. The next day, two. Eventually, I got out far enough that the bullies swarmed me again, but this time, it didn't feel so overwhelming. The next day I was back out there taking another step. And somehow, after a time, these particular bullies gave up. They often don't know what to do when their targets stiffen up.
Standing up is something none of us do all the time, and none of us do perfectly, and often it doesn't have an impact right away. But those steps add up. And now, through the brain fog, I realize that that's why Cassidy Hutchinson's testimony—and those of Greg Jacob, Rusty Bowers, Ruby Freeman and Shaye Moss, and others—had me so riveted. In real time, we were watching these men and women take one step out into freedom.
Speaking up is contagious, like I wrote after another chilling moment of testimony, when Christine Blasey Ford stood up despite the hatred and mockery she would receive, and that's how change happens—change that can outlast even a Supreme Court tenure or dark period in US politics. Because eventually, the truth can and will break through: And we're seeing signs of that right now as conservative media reckon with Hutchinson's testimony.
No one knows what's going to happen from here with the January 6 investigations or the fights for fundamental rights and justice, but I think all of us in the MoJo community know in our bones that this is no time to come up short. It's time to fight like hell, like our namesake would tell us to do, for a democracy where minority rule cannot impose an extreme agenda, where facts matter, and where accountability has a chance at the polls and in the press. And maybe that's particularly a propos as we head into the Fourth, because democracy has never been a spectator sport.
If you can right now, I sincerely hope you'll help Mother Jones give this critical moment everything we can by pitching in with a donation today so we can finish our fiscal year a bit battered, for sure, but with the strongest showing of support and togetherness we can muster on just one day.
As stressful as it can be on days like today, there is no way I'd rather do this work than by being funded by and accountable to our incredible community of readers. And there is no one I'd rather fight for change alongside than all of you in the Mother Jones community, and our team of journalists and staffers, who I get to see showing up and speaking out every single day.
Thanks for reading, and for everything you do to make Mother Jones what it is.
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