Spousal Abuse Spiking

Photo: Wikimedia Commons

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I recently arrived in Portland for a talk at Mercy Corps, and though my host tells me that the city’s strongest association is with roses, it feels more like my own personal Domestic Violence Awareness Town.

The first thing I thought of when I touched down was this stupefying stat I’d read: A few months ago, 18 people died in domestic violence incidences in less than 30 days here. That would be just one piece of an alarming trend in rising domestic violence rates—not that domestic violence statistics haven’t always been consistently alarming.

Then I was doing some unrelated Internet research, and somehow landed on this page for an “assault and family violence attorney” containing such offensive and flip copy—

A domestic violence assault charge could be the result of a single violent outburst, one high-stress incident, or the retaliation of a malicious spouse. Whatever the reasons for you being so accused, we can help you favorably resolve your criminal case and move forward after a domestic violence or assault charge.

—that I was left torn between my certainty that we put way too many people in prison for way too long and an intense visceral desire to not let wife-beaters out of jail to walk around in the world, ever.

Then, also totally unrelatedly, someone posted on my Facebook page the United Nations Foundation stat that “One of every three women in the world faces violence, coercion, or abuse as part of her everyday life—and more than 70% of women will experience violence in their lifetime.” And my host also reminds me that it’s naïve for me to find it hard to believe that, for example, there were 59 DV deaths in Wisconsin last year.

And the Facebook post comes with a link pleading that people should “Tell your representatives in Washington today that ending violence against women needs to be a real priority.”

Jesus. And how.

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WE'LL BE BLUNT

It is astonishingly hard keeping a newsroom afloat these days, and we need to raise $253,000 in online donations quickly, by October 7.

The short of it: Last year, we had to cut $1 million from our budget so we could have any chance of breaking even by the time our fiscal year ended in June. And despite a huge rally from so many of you leading up to the deadline, we still came up a bit short on the whole. We can’t let that happen again. We have no wiggle room to begin with, and now we have a hole to dig out of.

Readers also told us to just give it to you straight when we need to ask for your support, and seeing how matter-of-factly explaining our inner workings, our challenges and finances, can bring more of you in has been a real silver lining. So our online membership lead, Brian, lays it all out for you in his personal, insider account (that literally puts his skin in the game!) of how urgent things are right now.

The upshot: Being able to rally $253,000 in donations over these next few weeks is vitally important simply because it is the number that keeps us right on track, helping make sure we don't end up with a bigger gap than can be filled again, helping us avoid any significant (and knowable) cash-flow crunches for now. We used to be more nonchalant about coming up short this time of year, thinking we can make it by the time June rolls around. Not anymore.

Because the in-depth journalism on underreported beats and unique perspectives on the daily news you turn to Mother Jones for is only possible because readers fund us. Corporations and powerful people with deep pockets will never sustain the type of journalism we exist 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 need readers to show up for us big time—again.

Getting just 10 percent of the people who care enough about our work to be reading this blurb to part with a few bucks would be utterly transformative for us, and that's very much what we need to keep charging hard in this financially uncertain, high-stakes year.

If you can right now, please support the journalism you get from Mother Jones with a donation at whatever amount works for you. And please do it now, before you move on to whatever you're about to do next and think maybe you'll get to it later, because every gift matters and we really need to see a strong response if we're going to raise the $253,000 we need in less than three weeks.

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