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As the climate changes for the worse on our planet, we’re going to see more and more conflict over the limited resources needed to sustain life. In some western states in the US, the drought has already heated up the “water wars” between farmers and metro areas. In California, Governor Jerry Brown has asked residents to voluntarily decrease water use by 20 percent. Farmers who plant crops that reap higher profits (like almonds) now have to let whole groves of trees die because there is not enough water to keep them producing. The result is an economic downturn with fields, fallow; unemployment, rising and the price for crops, skyrocketing.
We’ve had droughts before, but the kind of drought that western states are experiencing this year is one of the worst on record. If the drought continues for a few years, it will rival what the plain states experienced during the Great Depression. We may not see the kind of dust storms that plagued that region during the 1930s, but what is certain is that the level of crop production in states like California (one statistic says the state produces 15 percent of crops) will decrease. Part of the problem is that many of the crops produced require a tremendous amount of water, and, as Sheila D. Collins notes in both her article on Truthout and in this interview, the west has, since John Powell surveyed the area in 1869, been an arid region that can’t sustainably support large-scale agriculture.
Professor Collins has studied both Powells water policy suggestions and those of Franklin Roosevelt and sees the prescient visions of both individuals as something the government should revisit – especially as more extreme weather conditions become the new normal on our world. Failure to do so will mean more societal conflict, more economic dislocation, and scarcer resources.
We’re not backing down in the face of Trump’s threats.
As Donald Trump is inaugurated a second time, independent media organizations are faced with urgent mandates: Tell the truth more loudly than ever before. Do that work even as our standard modes of distribution (such as social media platforms) are being manipulated and curtailed by forces of fascist repression and ruthless capitalism. Do that work even as journalism and journalists face targeted attacks, including from the government itself. And do that work in community, never forgetting that we’re not shouting into a faceless void – we’re reaching out to real people amid a life-threatening political climate.
Our task is formidable, and it requires us to ground ourselves in our principles, remind ourselves of our utility, dig in and commit.
As a dizzying number of corporate news organizations – either through need or greed – rush to implement new ways to further monetize their content, and others acquiesce to Trump’s wishes, now is a time for movement media-makers to double down on community-first models.
At Truthout, we are reaffirming our commitments on this front: We won’t run ads or have a paywall because we believe that everyone should have access to information, and that access should exist without barriers and free of distractions from craven corporate interests. We recognize the implications for democracy when information-seekers click a link only to find the article trapped behind a paywall or buried on a page with dozens of invasive ads. The laws of capitalism dictate an unending increase in monetization, and much of the media simply follows those laws. Truthout and many of our peers are dedicating ourselves to following other paths – a commitment which feels vital in a moment when corporations are evermore overtly embedded in government.
Over 80 percent of Truthout‘s funding comes from small individual donations from our community of readers, and the remaining 20 percent comes from a handful of social justice-oriented foundations. Over a third of our total budget is supported by recurring monthly donors, many of whom give because they want to help us keep Truthout barrier-free for everyone.
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