And the winner is…Jacobin!
This month, the top vote-getter on eclecticmisc.org for the $50 donation was Jacobin! I’ve donated $50 on their site (receipts, literally, at the end of this post).
“What is Jacobin?”, you may ask. If so, you aren’t (yet) among the over 3,000,000 people who visit their site each month and over 60,000 subscribers to their print magazine (also available online). Jacobin magazine covers American and world politics from a socialist perspective.
Not only that, but it has a growing YouTube presence, which is what caught my attention. Weekends is a weekly show featuring an interview with a leading socialist or left figure, and two decode segments exploring an important current issue for the Left.
Some notable guests they’ve had are:
Noam Chomsky
Jeremy Corbyn
David Sirota
Julia Salazar
Richard Wolff
And those are just in the past three months! I’m a subscriber to Jacobin magazine and have very much enjoyed all of the articles I’ve read so far. I recommend it to anyone who wants to find out the story behind the story that the mainstream press neglects to mention (often intentionally, I assume).
I admit, though, that the main reason I support Jacobin is for Weekends. Weekends by Jacobin was created by the late, widely-revered socialist icon Michael Brooks, and award-winning, much-admired progressive powerhouse Ana Kasparian, host and executive producer of TYT. Weekends is now hosted by Ana and Nano Vila, host of the podcasts Woke Bros and Let's Pod it Out, frequent host on TYT, and executive producer of Emmy-nominated Trumpland.
I’ve become a regular viewer of Weekends and personally think it’s like a good flip side of TYT, but you do *not* have to be a TYT viewer (or even like TYT) to watch it; in the chat there are those who love TYT, hate TYT, and somewhere in-between.
The Young Turks has the self-avowed capitalist Cenk Uygur and socialist Ana Kasparian, and is a daily news program covering current events from a progressive perspective but with a variety of viewpoints. There’s also a clear activist side of the show, the #DontKillItBernie and #SaveUsKamala movements being the most recent examples.
Weekends has two self-avowed socialists (as well as Cale Brooks, producer and socialist par excellence who often offers his own analysis and takes at the end of the show). They focus on deep dives on two topics (one by Nando, one by Ana), an extended interview, and answering viewer questions from the chat in detail at the end of the show. (Here’s a tweet of mine — liked by Nando himself! — describing Weekends in 280 characters or less)
If you love Ana’s salt and Nando’s commentary, or want to hear a socialist take that you would never get in the mainstream media, you should check out Weekends.
I’m glad to be able to give Jacobin $50 for February’s donation. Thanks to all who visited the site and voted, and make sure to come back on Friday to vote for March’s donation!
What do you think? Leave your comments below!
