July 20, 2010

Shirley Sherrod Update

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


I’ve written a bunch of updates to my post this morning about the video of USDA Director of Rural Development Shirley Sherrod — the one posted Monday at BigGovernment.com where she allegedly fesses up to treating white people poorly — but you might have missed them if you don’t routinely revisit posts you’ve already read. So here they are:

UPDATE: Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack, who quickly fired Sherrod after the video was posted, stands by his firing. The White House says they had nothing to do with it. The NAACP condemned Sherrod but then mysteriously deleted their statement from their website and announced they were “conducting an investigation.” Andrew Breitbart says he doesn’t have the entire video, just the edited version he put up. The guy who shot the video says he’s sent the whole thing to the NAACP and hopes to post it when he gets permission.

That’s the latest for now.

UPDATE 2: The NAACP backtracks: “With regard to the initial media coverage of the resignation of USDA Official Shirley Sherrod, we have come to the conclusion we were snookered by Fox News and Tea Party Activist Andrew Breitbart into believing she had harmed white farmers because of racial bias. Having reviewed the full tape, spoken to Ms. Sherrod, and most importantly heard the testimony of the white farmers mentioned in this story, we now believe the organization that edited the documents did so with the intention of deceiving millions of Americans.”

Jeez. Fox News and Breitbart ginning up a phony outrage over some alleged liberal atrocity? Helluva hard thing to believe, isn’t it?

UPDATE 3: The full video is here. The segment in question starts at 16:30 and goes for about five minutes. “You know,” she starts, “God will show you things, and can put things in your path, so that you realize that the struggle is really about poor people.” Then, after telling the story of Roger Spooner, she ends with this: “Working with him made me see that it’s really about those who have versus those who don’t. And they could be black, they could be white, they could be Hispanic.”

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.

payment methods

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.

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