August 24, 2016

Bigoted Attack on Actress Leslie Jones Continues, as Hackers Post Photos and Personal Info

It’s “racist & sexist,” tweets Questlove. “It’s disgusting.”

Leslie Jones<a href="http://www.zumapress.com/zpdwnld/20160803_zaf_rx3_2165.jpg?type=hires">Wwd</a>/Rex Shutterstock via ZUMA Press

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Update (8/25/2016): The Department of Homeland Security has announced that it is investigating the breach of Leslie Jones’ personal website.

Comedian and SNL star Leslie Jones has been targeted once again with aggressive online harassment. Today, hackers who broke into her personal website posted what appear to be nude photos and images of her passport and driver’s license. (Whether the explicit photos and ID images are real has not been confirmed.) The hackers also posted on Jones’ website—which was taken offline after the hack was discovered—a picture of Harambe, the gorilla shot and killed recently at the Cincinnati Zoo.

Last month, Jones was the target of a deluge of online abuse related to her co-starring role in the reboot of Ghostbusters. Some of the harassment involved racial slurs and photos of gorillas posted to her Twitter feed. Breitbart News technology editor Milo Yiannapolous—whose antics are detailed by Sara Posner in her recent piece on his boss, Trump campaign director Stephen Bannon—was banned from Twitter for helping incite the torrent of racist trolls. Jones has yet to comment on the hack but described her previous experience as her own “personal hell.”

Jones later reappeared on Twitter to post updates about the Olympics. During that time, she defended gymnast Gabby Douglas from an onslaught of online harassment, which began after Douglas stood at attention during the national anthem rather than placing her hand on her heart. After her website was hacked, supporters quickly came to her defense on social media. Here’s musician Questlove and Presidential nominee Hillary Clinton:

WE CAME UP SHORT.

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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.

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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.

payment methods

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