May 3, 2022

Outraged Protesters Descend on Lower Manhattan to Rally for Abortion Rights

Mark Helenowski/Mother Jones

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A noisy crowd of many hundreds converged on downtown Manhattan’s Foley Square Tuesday evening, one day after a Politico bombshell revealed the Supreme Court was poised to overturn Roe v. Wade.

“Abortion is a human right, not just for the rich and white!” they chanted, banging drums and brandishing brightly colored signs, one that read, “My arms are tired from holding this sign since the 1960s.”

The rally, outside the barricaded steps of the federal courthouse near City Hall, was just one of a number of snap demonstrations called from coast to coast, channeling an eruption of outrage after the draft decision became public. Hannah Jacobs, a 29-year-old lawyer from Jersey City, told our Senior Digital Producer Mark Helenowski that this was her first-ever protest: “A group of men that are 70, 80-years-old—who have lifetime appointments, that have not been voted into office—should not have a say over whether I choose to have a baby or not.”

“They’re not ‘pro-life,’ they’re ‘pro-birth’,” she said. “As soon as the baby comes out, they don’t give a damn who that baby is, they don’t give a damn about the mom, they don’t give a damn about health care… they just want to exert control over our bodies.”

Mark is on the ground talking to attendees. Here’s what he is seeing and hearing:

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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.

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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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