May 23, 2011

Making Our Own Reality

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Today the LA Times ran four letters about President Obama’s Middle East speech. Here’s how three of them started:

Howard Karlitz: In his speech explicitly stating America’s friendship with Israel and our commitment to its security, President Obama urged the Israelis to return to their 1967 borders as a means of securing peace….

Kenneth L. Zimmerman: Setting the borders for a Palestinian state the way they were before the 1967 war is the only reasonable solution….

Mike Sacks: Given the logic of Obama’s proposal that Israel return to the pre-1967 borders, the following should also occur….

Obama, of course, didn’t propose that Israel return to its 1967 borders. I would like to repeat that for posterity while there’s still a chance that someone might believe me:

In his speech on Thursday, President Obama didn’t propose that Israel return to its 1967 borders.

How is it that this has seemingly become conventional wisdom in just a few short days? Obama’s formulation, after all was crystal clear and only 19 words long: “We believe the borders of Israel and Palestine should be based on the 1967 lines with mutually agreed swaps.” Israelis and Palestinians have been negotiating on those exact terms for decades.

I don’t really know what’s happened here. Is it the power of Fox News? The power of AIPAC? Just the age-old power of people to hear what they want to hear and believe what they want to believe? I dunno. But it’s really pretty stunning to see this kind of historical revisionism become so widespread so fast.

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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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