I had drafted my usual spiel for this section — a joke, some accounting of our successes, and an appeal for your support — when I took note of our issue’s on-sale date. This edition will hit newsstands on July 20, 2021, exactly one year since the sudden death of our friend and comrade Michael Brooks.

I got to know twenty-nine-year-old Michael back in 2013, when Jacobin was just getting on its feet and he was working at the Majority Report. That show’s host, Sam Seder, told me that he had first met Michael the year before. Michael had roots in New York but spent his formative years in Western Massachusetts, and he was returning to the city and looking for a job.

Sam needed a producer, met Michael for a drink, and was “immediately struck by his intelligence and his sense of humor and decided to hire him — despite his ominous warning that he’s ‘not great with details.’”