November 1, 2018

Oprah Chanting “You Get a Vote” Is the Voter Turnout Rallying Cry You Need Today

It’s simply delightful.

As Georgia’s secretary of state, Republican Brian Kemp has overseen ruthless voter suppression tactics that could create obstacles for thousands of people attempting to vote in Kemp’s race for governor against Democrat Stacy Abrams. And with polls showing a statistical tie, Democratic get-out-the-vote efforts could not be more crucial.

Step in, Oprah Winfrey.

“You’re on the precipice, on the very precipice, of a historical, a historical election,” the media mogul said to a cheering crowd in Marietta on Thursday. “Nobody paid for me to come here,” she continued. “Nobody even asked me to come here. I paid for myself, and I approve this message.”

At another rally, with Abrams by her side, Oprah borrowed from her iconic “You get a car” moment to chant, “You get a vote! You get a vote!” Make sure to watch till the end to hear an audience member bring the delightful chorus home:

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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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