May/June 1995 Issue

Pop Quiz for

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Is this a photo of
A) a junior varsity basketball team;
B) the latest hip-hop group to break the top 40;
C) a gang;
D) Illinois’ best high school chess team, second by half a point in last year’s National Scholastic Chess Championships?

Murray and Herrnstein, eat your words: The correct answer is D. The students, hailing from Chicago’s inner-city Rezin Orr Community Academy, vied for the national title with New York City’s considerably more affluent Stuyvesant High to take second place by the slimmest of margins. Out of 850 players from 30 states, brothers Darnell and Cornell Faust (first and second from the left in the back row) took fourth and sixth place, respectively. So for whom, exactly, does the “bell” toll? Not for Orr’s whiz kids.

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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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