Lessig’s Donor Strike Withholds $1 Million from Congress

Fight disinformation: Sign up for the free Mother Jones Daily newsletter and follow the news that matters.


In January, Lawrence Lessig and his reform-minded organization, Change Congress, launched a donor strike aimed at members of Congress who do not support a bill designed to greatly reduce the influence of lobbyist and special-interest money in politics.

Thursday, Lessig and fellow Change Congress founder Joe Trippi announced donors have withheld $1 million total, including $365,000 held back from Senators Diane Feinstein (D-Calif.) and Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.).

Lessig has long railed against the money-powered corruption machine in Congress, and Change Congress’s strike was engineered in part to draw attention to Illinois Senator Dick Durbin’s Fair Elections Now Act.

Now, you could debate the merits of a donor strike (won’t it cause members of Congress to rely more on big-time dollars from special interest groups?), but Durbin’s bill, which Arlen Specter (R-Penn.) cosponsored, could transform how politicians finance their campaigns—and how they vote once they arrive in Washington. Basically, it creates an incentive for politicians to raise a large number of small-dollar donations. Once they hit a magic number of those donations, they are eligible for a much larger cash infusion, paid from a public fund. If they accept that chunk of money, they will not be allowed to take big-dollar donations from lobbyists or special interest groups. Instead, every small-dollar donation received after that would be matched by money from the central fund.

AN IMPORTANT UPDATE

We’re falling behind our online fundraising goals and we can’t sustain coming up short on donations month after month. Perhaps you’ve heard? It is impossibly hard in the news business right now, with layoffs intensifying and fancy new startups and funding going kaput.

The crisis facing journalism and democracy isn’t going away anytime soon. And neither is Mother Jones, our readers, or our unique way of doing in-depth reporting that exists to bring about change.

Which is exactly why, despite the challenges we face, we just took a big gulp and joined forces with The Center for Investigative Reporting, a team of ace journalists who create the amazing podcast and public radio show Reveal.

If you can part with even just a few bucks, please help us pick up the pace of donations. We simply can’t afford to keep falling behind on our fundraising targets month after month.

Editor-in-Chief Clara Jeffery said it well to our team recently, and that team 100 percent includes readers like you who make it all possible: “This is a year to prove that we can pull off this merger, grow our audiences and impact, attract more funding and keep growing. More broadly, it’s a year when the very future of both journalism and democracy is on the line. We have to go for every important story, every reader/listener/viewer, and leave it all on the field. I’m very proud of all the hard work that’s gotten us to this moment, and confident that we can meet it.”

Let’s do this. If you can right now, please support Mother Jones and investigative journalism with an urgently needed donation today.

payment methods

AN IMPORTANT UPDATE

We’re falling behind our online fundraising goals and we can’t sustain coming up short on donations month after month. Perhaps you’ve heard? It is impossibly hard in the news business right now, with layoffs intensifying and fancy new startups and funding going kaput.

The crisis facing journalism and democracy isn’t going away anytime soon. And neither is Mother Jones, our readers, or our unique way of doing in-depth reporting that exists to bring about change.

Which is exactly why, despite the challenges we face, we just took a big gulp and joined forces with The Center for Investigative Reporting, a team of ace journalists who create the amazing podcast and public radio show Reveal.

If you can part with even just a few bucks, please help us pick up the pace of donations. We simply can’t afford to keep falling behind on our fundraising targets month after month.

Editor-in-Chief Clara Jeffery said it well to our team recently, and that team 100 percent includes readers like you who make it all possible: “This is a year to prove that we can pull off this merger, grow our audiences and impact, attract more funding and keep growing. More broadly, it’s a year when the very future of both journalism and democracy is on the line. We have to go for every important story, every reader/listener/viewer, and leave it all on the field. I’m very proud of all the hard work that’s gotten us to this moment, and confident that we can meet it.”

Let’s do this. If you can right now, please support Mother Jones and investigative journalism with an urgently needed donation today.

payment methods

We Recommend

Latest

Sign up for our free newsletter

Subscribe to the Mother Jones Daily to have our top stories delivered directly to your inbox.

Get our award-winning magazine

Save big on a full year of investigations, ideas, and insights.

Subscribe

Support our journalism

Help Mother Jones' reporters dig deep with a tax-deductible donation.

Donate