June 24, 2020

Midweek Boosts, With a Guest Appearance by Cornel West

The coronavirus is a rapidly developing news story, so some of the content in this article might be out of date. Check out our most recent coverage of the coronavirus crisis, and subscribe to the Mother Jones Daily newsletter.

A drumroll of quick ones:

• The Village Vanguard is up and running with a powerful livestream series that continues Saturday night and Sunday afternoon, featuring the exhilarating sounds of bassist Joe Martin, saxophonist Mark Turner, pianist Kevin Hays, and drummer Nasheet Waits. Visit VillageVanguard.com for tickets and teasers.

• Louis Armstrong, as Gary Giddins said, did “what only the greatest artists are prepared to do—show the world to itself in a new light.” And the photographer Chris Barham did likewise, showing Armstrong to the world in a set of iconic photos of the jazz legend on the front steps of his Queens home with kids in the neighborhood 50 years ago this week. Barham died Monday at the age of 87, but his inspiring images live on.

• Saxophonist Rudresh Mahanthappa, whose music I can’t stop boasting about—for god’s sake listen to his tensely erupting, lucidly floating sound on “Aftermath” and “Threnody” with Vijay Iyer—is on a hot streak. Mahanthappa’s latest, Hero Trio, is bound to be album of the year. If I were still organizing the old Pazz & Jop poll at the Village Voice (you reading this, Bob and Chuck? Send a flare to recharge@motherjones.com), Hero Trio would be runaway first, and I’d ballot-stuff, electioneer, whatever it took. Sample and sample, with Charlie Parker darting in.

• In case you missed Arturo O’Farrill’s good news, his Afro Latin Jazz Orchestra’s Four Questions features Cornel West’s narration and poetic justice on the title track, with a “caravan of love—or what Coltrane called A Love Supreme.” Dr. West, you are supremely welcome at recharge@motherjones.com.

• Additional stamina from the exceptional tenor saxophonist Jorge Continentino on “De Volta à Festa (Back to the Party),” from drummer Vanderlei Pereira’s new Vision for Rhythm. “Party” indeed, if you can, pandemic and all.

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.

payment methods

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.

payment methods

We Recommend

Latest

Sign up for our free newsletter

Subscribe to the Mother Jones Daily to have our top stories delivered directly to your inbox.

Get our award-winning magazine

Save big on a full year of investigations, ideas, and insights.

Subscribe

Support our journalism

Help Mother Jones' reporters dig deep with a tax-deductible donation.

Donate