THANK YOU TO THE NEW PAID MEMBERS

Since the last two fundraising posts, 15 people have become paid sustainers of The Holler. Three of those folks signed up at the founding member level. I really can’t tell you how appreciative I am. Thank you, from the bottom of my cold dead heart.

If independent pro-working class media based in industrial Appalachia, operating on a shoestring budget, and reaching more than 8 million people yearly is something that excites you, become a founding member yourself for $1/day… Or less than that. There are options.

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There are more of you now than the last time I asked - welcome newbies

This six-second video of me in a Dale Earnhardt shirt with the slogan “no war but class war” slo-mo walking to work at the dive bar that I live above garnered two hundred thousand views on TikTok, and now about 150 of you are brand new subscribers to this newsletter. Hello and welcome.

@heyjohnrussell Raise hell, end bail. #serviceindustry #bartender #divebar #appalachia #ohio #smalltown #wva #chaotic #redneck #yallternative #ohiovalley #leftist #politics #billionaires.

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I’m excited by our new parasocial relationship enabled by the great and mysterious internet. Maybe someday we can all do something collectively, like go to a music festival, or rise up against this billionaire Sim City we live in where everything is made up and the points don’t matter. Ya know what I mean?

Imagine losing $200 from your wallet. Would that matter to you? Would it darken your day? Now imagine losing $200,000,000,000, and being the first person in history to do so. Elon Musk holds that high honor. And yet, even after losing more money in less time than anyone else in history, he is still the second richest person on earth.

Fuck these people, man. We should all get together and demand our money back for this very silly carnival.

The Holler Ohio Valley @heyjohnrussell

Cool so Elon lost the most money in the shortest time of anyone on earth and is still… the second richest person on earth. Very cool system we have.

Anyway, new members, you’ve joined us on the third and final day of a fundraising drive, in this year of our Lord two-thousand-and-twenty-three. Fundraising happens for 3-5 days every two months… and not necessarily contiguously (see photo caption below).

Me at the bar around 4 AM after a 16-hour shift when this email was supposed to go out.

New Years Weave. The ashtray outside my bar where a length of hair was unceremoniously removed from someone’s head the night before in a bout of vigorous celebration… This is a lie. It was a fight.

F*ck a paywall

Everything is free here, and I hope to keep it that way. On the occasions where I put effort into producing good content about important events, I don’t hide that behind a paywall. They’re part of the problem when fighting dominant right-wing media.

For some of these events, The Holler is the only media outlet there. Other times, we’re one of a handful of outlets that produce clips where working people talk at length about their own stories. We’ve traveled to New York City to cover Amazon and Starbucks workers, Iowa to cover John Deere workers, Columbus, OH during the teacher’s strike and rail roader rally, Huntington, West Virginia to talk with steelworkers and nurses, Erie, PA to talk to ironworkers, and others.

It takes time and money to go where the action is, get the interview, produce the clips, release them on social media, and transcribe and link all sources here. The end product is free.

But twice a month, I guilt trip y’all as hard as I can to PAY FOR THIS NEWSLETTER AND THE LABOR IT TAKES TO PRODUCE IT! SERIOUSLY, DEAR READER, IT’S $5/mo FOR A WHOLE YEAR OF THIS. YOU WON’T EVEN REMEMBER SPENDING THE MONEY NEXT WEEK. JUST SUBSCRIBE NOW AND BE THE KIND OF PERSON THAT SUPPORTS MEDIA THEY LOVE TO CONSUME! THANK YOU!

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Ok. Sorry. Now that I’ve got that out of my system…. That’s how it works here!

If you couldn’t tell by now, I like to mix my serious political advocacy with a Texas-sized dollop of informality. I don’t know if I’m a pseudo-journalist, an internet cartoon with informed political opinions, or what. I’m a guy with a couple of notches on my belt in terms of national politics, who never quite fit in with the political professionals (thank God), and whose whole ass is engulfed in flames at the state of, and sheer disrespect for, working Americans everywhere.

It helps to be one of the few lefties with a Class A commercial driver’s license. Iowa for Warren 2019.

There’s the serious content mentioned above, and sometimes you’ll get a dud of a newsletter with me posting some thirst trap with leftist text over it, like this one here. Or maybe this one, that brought you here in the first place.

What I’m saying, is expect sincerity but not professionalism. Professionals are the people that made my hometown into the forgotten grundle of America with a lot of unnecessary human suffering to boot. Untie that tie my guy. You’re amongst kin.

This model of social media supported by subscribers to this newsletter was able to reach over 8 million viewers last year on a shoestring budget.

Like a sickly rooster on its last leg, I muster my feeble crow once weekly about the bullshit we currently endure, and how we could end it with a tad of working-class solidarity. If that’s the media you crave, then you must pay to keep it around *stage whisper* (and it’s only $5/mo).

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The Holler

More paid subscribers please! Third and final…