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It’s no secret that laughter works miracles. It stimulates and relaxes muscles, reduces pain, and improves moods and immune systems. But sometimes when we, women of color, need it the most, it’s hardest to come by. And we need it right now. More than ever, you might say—even if it is always right now, and always more than ever.

Laughter is my superpower. And it is loud. My laughter fills rooms, resonating and expanding from bass notes to mezzo-soprano. When I laugh hardest, it’s a full-body experience, my stomach rounded out, eyes shut, ribs shaking, and one arm reaching to cover my wide-open mouth. The truth is that my laugh is as essential to me as anything else. It’s a form of survival and catharsis in the face of suffering.

But I remember too many times and spaces in which, and people for whom, my laughter has been too loud. Elderly white ladies in almost every kind of setting, particularly restaurants; middle-aged white men in office spaces; extended family.

When I started a career in my mid-20s, I was both embarrassed and indignant at being told to laugh quietly or not at all. To make myself smaller. To take up less space. I would nervously apologize.

Now I don’t. Apology would justify the unjustifiable: the right someone presumes to have to referee my laugh, to tell me to take my place in the background. I might laugh when just a smile would do—but I see no reason to mute my joy or withhold its expression. The foreground is ours to claim by organizing, protesting, voting, running for office, hiking, writing, and laughing.

Comedians Sarah Cooper and Ziwe Fumudoh know it too. They get me laughing by using humor as an act of resistance—to racism and sexism and a culture of racialized misogyny that’s all too familiar in the United States. To laugh loudly is to reject the assumption that women of color must, at all costs, watch our place. Cooper and Fumudoh are in their place and out front. And they are really, really funny.

Photos of Kamala Harris are everywhere this week as we witness her historic rise as a vice presidential candidate. She is smiling big, unabashedly taking pleasure in the moment. I imagine she knows the power of vocalizing, whether she’s at the back of the room or holding the mic; at the edge of power or the center of it; in a moment of rage or a fit of laughter.

Venu Gupta is Mother Jones’ Midwest regional development director. Laugh with her at recharge@motherjones.com.

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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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