September 28, 2018

Voices of Anguish and Hope from the Supreme Court Protests Today

“I’m horrified. I’m absolutely horrified.”

Hundreds of protestors gathered at the steps of the Supreme Court on Friday, September 28, to protest the confirmation of Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh.Kara Voght/Mother Jones

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Less than a block from the hearing room where the Senate Judiciary Committee was voting to send Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh to the full Senate for confirmation, hundreds of protestors rallied at the steps of the nation’s highest court to express their discontent with Trump’s SCOTUS pick. Kavanaugh made a second and explosive appearance before the committee yesterday after it heard the testimony of Christine Blasey Ford, a psychology professor who says Kavanaugh sexually assaulted her when the two were in high school.

Survivors of sexual violence and their allies have erupted in outrage over Kavanaugh’s nomination since Ford’s allegation—and two others against the nominee—came to light. That fury boiled over after yesterday’s hearing, when Republican Senate Judiciary members did not indicate that Ford’s testimony did anything to change their minds about Kavanaugh’s qualifications for the court.

Outside the Supreme Court, women stood on a podium to share personal stories of sexual assault and lead the crowd in chants. At one point, folk singer and protest icon Joan Baez even stopped by to lead the group in “Ain’t Gonna Let Nobody Turn Me Around,” one of her classic protest songs from the civil rights movement. After the vote, the crowd organized into a march around the US Capitol.

I spoke with some of the women who had come to show solidarity with Ford. Here are their stories:

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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.

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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.

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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