June 26, 2019

Pink Floyd’s David Gilmour Sold His Guitars for $21.5 Million—And Donated Everything to Fight Climate Change

At least he’s not selling them to build a wall.

David Gilmour with his granddaughterCourtesy Polly Samson

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Pink Floyd guitarist David Gilmour, stirred by the message of 16-year-old climate activist Greta Thunberg, wanted to do something to improve the world.

But what could he do?

Last week, Gilmour auctioned off his guitars, including the black Fender Stratocaster that helped create Dark Side of the Moon and Shine On You Crazy Diamond. He said goodbye to the 12-string Martin behind Wish You Were Here. In all, he raised $21.5 million—that’s right, $21.5 million.

He gave the proceeds from the most valuable auction of musical instruments in history to a nonprofit that fights climate change.

“The global climate crisis is the greatest challenge that humanity will ever face,” Gilmour tweeted. “We need a civilised world that goes on for all our grandchildren and beyond in which these guitars can be played and songs can be sung.” And then, in a video, he strummed a placid instrumental.

Gilmour donated to a charity called ClientEarth, which takes legal steps to combat climate change.

His grand gesture, applauded worldwide, may have a broader impact, persuading others to swap their mementos for cash to help solve our climate emergency. Readers, what ideas do you have for those of us who don’t have $21.5 million in guitars to help fight climate change? Email me at recharge@motherjones.com. Each of us has something to offer, writes psychologist and Maitripa College professor Dan Rubin.

Here are more Recharge stories to get you through the week:

  • Conscientious Cracker Barrel. A Tennessee restaurant turned away the police detective who had called for executions of LBGTQ people when he tried to schedule a church meeting there. The Cracker Barrel shut down the detective and his evangelical group’s event plan, citing its zero-tolerance policy for hate. “We serve everyone who walks through our doors with genuine hospitality, not hate, and require all guests to do the same.” (Knoxville News Sentinel)
  • Freedom to read. Arizona’s prison system lifted its ban on a critically acclaimed book on African American men and prisons after a nationwide uproar and an ACLU challenge. “We won!” tweeted author Paul Butler, a former prosecutor and Georgetown law professor whose book, Chokehold: Policing Black Men, had been pulled from Arizona prisons. “This is a victory for the inmate who wanted to read my book, and for literacy and justice,” Butler wrote. “The struggle continues for the 2 million plus souls locked up in the US.” (Arizona Republic)
  • His mother knew. Charlie van der Horst’s mom was a Holocaust survivor. When his parents moved to the United States in 1950, they discovered their new nation was also rife with prejudice and hate, he once said. They became active in the civil rights movement, and their son, a noted researcher of AIDS and Ebola, didn’t fear jail time as he fought for the rights of North Carolina residents without health insurance. Van der Horst, 67, died in the Hudson River while swimming in a New York marathon earlier this month. “I think he used his powers for good,” said Dr. David Wohl, who came to the University of North Carolina to work with van der Horst in 1994 and is now a professor of medicine in the university’s Division of Infectious Diseases. Thanks to Jonathan M. Katz for the link. (News & Observer)
  • And hey-oh, Ohio: I’ll leave you this week with a waterfall from the Cuyahoga Valley National Park, via the Interior Department Twitter feed. Have a great week ahead!

Correction: The blooming flower in the Interior Department’s tweet is actually known as dame’s rocket, not a phlox. The difference: A phlox has five petals; dame’s rocket has four.

More Mother Jones reporting on Recharge

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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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