June 6, 2016

We’re Live-Tweeting Bernie Sanders’ Coachella

The campaign’s last dance (or is it?) in the shadow of the Golden Gate Bridge.

Democratic presidential candidate Sen. Bernie Sanders and his wife Jane Sanders arrive at a campaign rally in San Francisco.Noah Berger/AP

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My parents’ first date was a George McGovern political rally. And if that strikes you as strange, well, you probably are not a Bernie Sanders supporter.

In San Francisco this evening, thousands of young Berners are gathering on a grassy field next to the Golden Gate bridge for a political love fest featuring acts such as Fishbone, Fantastic Negrito, and the Dave Matthews Band—not to mention Hollywood celebrities, lefty intellectuals, and one wild-haired democratic socialist. Officially, it’s the Sanders campaign’s A Future To Believe In GOTV Concert. Unofficially, it could be an epic last hurrah, the sort of thing that gets mentioned to the kids decades later—like Woodstock!—to prove you actually did something in your 20s besides sit on your ass and smoke pot.

Not that there won’t be joints and vape pens—maybe oil rigs. But you get the point: This isn’t a regular political campaign, it’s a “revolution,” and revolutions come with their own culture. Like Feeling the Bern. Or wading through the Bernie Sanders Dank Meme Stash. Or wearing an adult-sized Bernie onesie. Or joining the Bernie Love Wave. There has not been a campaign like this in America, since, well, Matt Gonzales ran for mayor of San Francisco. And I mean that in the best possible way. A Bernie Sanders get-out-the-vote concert in this town is not something you want to miss.

And you don’t have to, because we’ll be live-tweeting the event and posting updates here for as long as our batteries last. So check back regularly to get your Bern on from the comfort of your living room sofa—which is probably filled with nasty flame retardants. (Now if Bernie were president…)

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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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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