MLK50: Justice Through Journalism relies on the generous support of donors like you to fund journalism designed to disrupt the status quo.
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We launched on April 4, 2017 as a one-year project and have grown into a full-fledged nonprofit digital news site focused on poverty, power and public policy. We’re a member of the Institute for Nonprofit News and follow the organization’s ethics policies.
Our work has impact: In response to a June 2019 MLK50-ProPublica investigation into Methodist Le Bonheur Healthcare’s debt collection practices, the nonprofit hospital announced it would expand its financial assistance policy, stop charging interest and attorney’s fees on hospital debt lawsuits, stop suing its own employees and raise the pay of all workers to $15 an hour by 2021.
Methodist has since erased the debts owed by more than 6,500 patients it sued for unpaid hospital bills.
These changes will affect the lives of thousands of low-income residents across the Memphis region — and our reporting made it happen.
Click here to make a tax-deductible donation. Community LIFT serves as the project’s fiscal sponsor.
The MLK50 team is guided by these words from Dr. King:
“For years I labored with the idea of reforming the existing institutions of society, a little change here, a little change there. Now I feel quite differently. I think you’ve got to have a reconstruction of the entire society, a revolution of values.”
We, too, believe that the time is right for reconstruction and revolution. Where the status quo doesn’t benefit the majority of our community, it must be dismantled.