Here’s Why Patrick Stewart Rang The Opening Bell to Celebrate Twitter’s IPO


On Thursday, Twitter made its much-anticipated trading debut at the New York Stock Exchange. The social-media giant is trading under the ticker symbol “TWTR.” And when it came time to ring the opening bell, Twitter’s founders and CEO were joined by actor Patrick Stewart, Vivienne Harr (a 9-year-old girl who uses a lemonade stand to wage war on modern slavery), and Cheryl Fiandaca of the Boston Police Department.

Patrick Stewart Twitter IPO NYSE

Twitter tells Mother Jones that all three were chosen because they are awesome at Twitter. The company invited Stewart because the 73-year-old actor is pretty amazing at broadcasting his quirks and everyday life to his fans—shooting a bow and arrow, day trips, and more recently, this:

Patrick Stewart lobster Halloween costume

@SirPatStew/Twitter

Fiandaca, as the bureau chief of public information for the Boston PD, was at the helm of the department’s social-media efforts following Boston Marathon bombing in April.

And Harr has used her account to raise awareness and promote her efforts against child slavery. Here’s a statement from her father Eric:

Children have been setting up lemonade stands since time immemorial. The difference with Vivienne’s is simple: Twitter. Without Twitter, Vivienne raises $100 and reaches our local community. With Twitter, she raises $100,000 and reaches a global community. Twitter helped her moment become a movement. We believe that Twitter makes good on the long-held promise that one person can change the world. That promise burns bright in the heart of a little girl with a big dream: that all children should be free.

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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.

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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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