April 12, 2016

400 Non-Violent Protesters Were Arrested on Capitol Hill


More than 400 people protesting the role of big money in politics outside the U.S. Capitol were arrested on Monday. The non-violent demonstration, which was organized by the advocacy group Democracy Spring and involved members of over 100 individual groups, was the first of similar rallies planned for this week.

According to police, protesters on Monday were arrested for “unlawful demonstration activity” and charged with “crowding, obstructing, and incommoding.”

The Democracy Spring website claims 3,500 people have pledged to participate in this week’s demonstrations. The April events come on the heels of a 10-day march from Philadelphia to Washington.

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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.

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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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