May 7, 2007

Weird Weather Watch: Another Town Bites the Dust

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tornado.jpg

This weekend, as residents of the Foggy City dusted off their bikinis and Speedos in record-breaking 80-degree heat, the town of Greensburg, Kansas, became the second U.S. city to be destroyed by climate change. A series of tornados massacred the small town west of Wichita, destroying 95 percent of its buildings. (Miraculously, only 10 died.) The big one was a mile and a half wide with winds over 200 miles an hour (it was a class F-5 tornado, the most severe). Is there online betting for how many cities will be demolished before the federal government gets serious? Change may not be as painful as we think, as April blogged. And even if it does mean giving up cars and some air travel, it can’t be as bad as the alternative.

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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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