September 22, 2020

Your Remembrances of RBG Are Powerfully Insightful. Here’s a Sample. Keep Them Coming.

A makeshift memorial for Justice Ruth Bader Ginsberg near the steps of the US Supreme CourtAlex Edelman/AFP/Getty

Fight disinformation: Sign up for the free Mother Jones Daily newsletter and follow the news that matters.

As grieving continues and mobilizing begins in the wake of Ruth Bader Ginsburg’s death after a profound and pathbreaking life, so too does memorializing, and the sharing of her life’s lessons. Mother Jones readers are sending us glimpses of how you hear her legacy and where you find a recharge in her memory. Below is a selection. Keep your messages coming, in the form embedded in this week’s column by MoJo’s Monika Bauerlein, or by emailing us at recharge@motherjones.com.

These especially ring true for many of us (and we also heard from those who wished she’d retired under President Obama, but that’s for another post):

I was born in 1949 and RBG changed my life. Before she helped change the laws dealing with women’s rights, I couldn’t get a credit card in my name. In the want ads, jobs for men were listed separately from jobs for women & I wasn’t allowed to apply for any job listed for men. The laws were crazy & discriminated against women in many ways. Ruth changed that & I will be eternally grateful.
—A reader who wishes to remain anonymous

Ruth Bader Ginsburg is all that I ever hoped to be. A strong, intelligent woman who fought the good fight. Who protected the rights of the people who could not protect themselves. She shaped the lives of generations of women. She showed them that they could have control of their lives, their bodies, their family size, their futures. She gave generations of women (and men) hope. And self-determination. She did not allow old white men to control her or us. We cannot let her legacy die. We must fight on in her memory. I own my body. As does every Woman. And man. And I will not ever accept the chains that others wish to reapply. I, for one, will always love RBG and the justice she stood for. And the freedoms she fought for.
—Roma Johnson-Egea
Westerville, Ohio

RBG was such a tower of strength, civility, and compassion in this seriously messed-up country. At least RBG was there to steady the judiciary. It comforts me to hold the memory of her courage and grace.
—Margo Pearce
Boston, Massachusetts

Ruth Bader Ginsburg has inspired generations and made life fairer for all. Tzadik exemplifies her. I know that her reasoning has had an incredible impact the world over and that her dissents will pave the way for progress, as they already have in the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act. Ruth Bader Ginsburg lived with courage, dignity, humility, and love. There could be no better example of a life well-lived in the service of others.
—Linda
Hyattsville, Maryland

Strength, fortitude, intelligence, calm, wisdom. Bonus: She’s from Brooklyn.
—Gregory
Brooklyn, New York

Thinking of RBG reminds me of “When Great Trees Fall” by Maya Angelou.
—Dee
Concord, California

At Dee’s suggestion, Maya Angelou’s “When Great Trees Fall”:

When great trees fall,
rocks on distant hills shudder,
lions hunker down
in tall grasses,
and even elephants
lumber after safety.

When great trees fall
in forests,
small things recoil into silence,
their senses
eroded beyond fear.

When great souls die,
the air around us becomes
light, rare, sterile.
We breathe, briefly.
Our eyes, briefly,
see with
a hurtful clarity.
Our memory, suddenly sharpened,
examines,
gnaws on kind words
unsaid,
promised walks
never taken.

Great souls die and
our reality, bound to
them, takes leave of us.
Our souls,
dependent upon their
nurture,
now shrink, wizened.
Our minds, formed
and informed by their
radiance, fall away.
We are not so much maddened
as reduced to the unutterable ignorance of
dark, cold
caves.

And when great souls die,
after a period peace blooms,
slowly and always
irregularly. Spaces fill
with a kind of
soothing electric vibration.
Our senses, restored, never
to be the same, whisper to us.
They existed. They existed.
We can be. Be and be
better. For they existed.

Send us your RBG recharges here or by emailing recharge@motherjones.com. And if you’re looking for a continuing boost, our Recharge blog awaits.

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