Quotable

"War is the greatest threat to public health." - Gino Strada, Italian war surgeon and founder of the UN-recognized Italian NGO Emergency

Thursday, December 11, 2008

Listen to Your "Mother" (Jones)

Friends,

If ever a journalistic organization lived up to its namesake and its standing as a true representative of the Fourth Estate, it's Mother Jones Magazine.

Mary Harris "Mother" Jones was a fearless and tireless defender of workers' rights long before the days of modern labor laws. After addressing the railway union convention in 1897, the union members started to refer to her as "Mother". After assisting the United Mine Workers in their nationwide strike, she became known as "Mother Jones" by working men and women all over America.

Mother Jones spent much of her adult life organizing, agitating and supporting working people all across the Nation; coal miners, steelworkers and textile workers. She advocated for an end to child labor. For her efforts she was harassed, arrested (numerous times) and even convicted by a military court for conspiring to commit murder (she was 83 years old at the time). But she never gave up the struggle.

Mother Jones Magazine is an independent, non-profit investigative magazine that honors its namesake's legacy. You would be hard pressed to find a better source for investigative journalism on just about any and every subject from the political realm to the cultural. Check out their Website if you don't believe me. This is really great, subversive stuff! Mother Jones should be in every peace activist's "toolbox".

Mother Jones was once called "the most dangerous woman in America" (by a U.S. District Attorney). Is that cool or what? Mother Jones Magazine may be just as dangerous to the politicians, profiteers and polluters it often exposes in its pages. And these people are obviously having fun doing what they love. In an era that has seen such extraordinary corporate media consolidation, we desperately need the true independents like Mother Jones. Journalism in the public interest.

Independent journalism - Read it! Use it! Support it!

Peace,

Leonard

Reference
: Facts about Mother Jones are from Mother Jones: The Miners' Angel, by Mara Lou Hawse, The Illinois Labor History Society (Note: The link to this online resource no longer works as of 8/23/2012)

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