Happy Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Day

Happy Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Day!

Instead of posting a long write-up, I came across a Salon article by Kali Holloway, originally published in Alternet, that features nine quotes that our US media often overlook when invoking the name and career of Rev. Dr. King Jr. You can find it here.

Here is a small quote from Dr. King Jr.'s 1967 speech "The Three Evils of Society," delivered at the National Conference on New Politics:

Again we have deluded ourselves into believing the myth that Capitalism grew and prospered out of the Protestant ethic of hard work and sacrifice. The fact is that capitalism was built on the exploitation and suffering of black slaves and continues to thrive on the exploitation of the poor – both black and white, both here and abroad.

You can read the entire speech here, and hear him deliver it here.

Also, in light of the forthcoming inauguration of Donald Trump as the 45th President of the United States, I think the image below offers one way of honoring Rev. Dr. King Jr.'s legacy. It's going to a difficult fight, and a long four years!

Honor King: End Racism! broadside, April 8, 1968. (Gilder Lehrman Collection)

President Obama at Selma's 50th Anniversary

Yesterday President Barack Obama traveled down to Selma, Alabama to participate in the commemoration of the 50th anniversary of "Bloody Sunday," March 7, 1965, which was the day on which roughly 300 Civil Rights marchers, who had been planning and organizing for several years to launch their attempt to march, on behalf of voting rights, from the smaller city to the state capital, encountered a horrifying brutal response from white Alabama State troopers and local posse members. As they proceeded over the Edmund Pettus Bridge, marchers, who included organizers Southern Christian Leadership Council (SCLC) Director of Action James Bevel and Amelia Boynton, as well as future US Representative John Lewis (D-GA), encountered beatings with nightsticks, horses trampling them, and near-suffocation by tear gas. TV cameras captured the attacks, including Boynton clubbed and lying unconscious, broadcasting them across the nation and globe, which helped to make possible two subsequent marches, the third successful and both led by the Reverend Martin Luther King, Jr., and also spurred President Lyndon Johnson and Congress to pass the Voting Rights Act of 1965, as Ava Duvernay's Oscar-nominated film Selma, depicts with great skill.

In his remarks, which I watched today and found to be among the best speeches he has given since becoming president, the President outlined how far we as a society have come since the events of 50 years ago while noting the journey left before us. His emphasis on voting rights is especially important given the challenges black voters--and voters in general, especially the poor, and the young and elderly--still face as a result of changes enacted by state legislatures, and court rulings, including the US Supreme Court's 2013 decision in Shelby County v. Holder, which held that the coverage formula delineated in Section 4(b) was unconstitutional, since it no longer responded to current conditions in the US, thereby rendering Section 5 of the Act, which apply to specific jurisdictions singled out in Section 4(b), legally unenforceable. The stakes of voting rights are huge, and as the President and other speakers at the event asserted, the future not only of the blood-stained, tear-drenched gains of the past hang in the balance, but of our democracy in general. We have come so far, as a nation, but we still have a way to go.


Later, the President, Mrs. Obama, their daughters, and Mrs. Robinson, the First Lady's mother, marched with participants, including many veterans, across the Edmund Pettus Bridge as a symbolic gesture to those who had bravely done so 50 years before, and who have done so many times since. Commemorative marches also took place all over the country, including over the Brooklyn Bridge.

U.S. President Barack Obama (3rd L) participates in a march
across the Edmund Pettus Bridge in Selma, Alabama, March 7, 2015.
Also pictured are first lady Michelle Obama (L), U.S. Representative
John Lewis (D-GA) (2nd L), former first lady Laura Bush (2nd R)
and former president George W. Bush (R). The event comes
on the 50th anniversary of the 'Bloody Sunday' march
at the bridge, where police and state troopers beat
and used tear gas against peaceful marchers
who were advocating against racial discrimination
at the voting booth. REUTERS/Jonathan Ernst

To build upon the events of 50 years and today, and of the hundreds of years of struggle over the right to vote, over social, political and economic equality and freedom, I hope everyone commits to contacting her Congressperson to urge them to vote for new legislation to address the Supreme Court's ruling; to pushing all our state legislators to expand, rather than restricting voting rights, including greater access, extending voting periods, and the franchise to former felons; and to championing the repeal of the SCOTUS's monstrous 2010 decision in Citizens United vs. FEC, which has gutted regulation of campaign spending laws and unleashed an ocean of money, masquerading as "speech," into our election system at all levels.

Rev. Dr. MLK Jr. Day: His 1965 Interview with Alex Haley

Selma-Montgomery March: Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King leading march
from Selma to Montgomery to protest lack of voting rights for
African Americans. Beside King is (l-r), Ralph Abernathy, James Forman,
Reverend Jesse Douglas and John Lewis, March 1965.
(Photo Credit: Steve Schapiro/Corbis)

Today on Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Day, I thought I'd post a link to one of the best interviews Rev. Dr. King (1929-1968) ever gave, with journalist and author Alex Haley, of Roots fame. The interview took exactly 50 years ago today, in January 1965, the year of the Selma-to-Montgomery March--and of the story underpinning Ava Duvernay's highly acclaimed new film Selma--and appeared in Playboy magazine, preceding the famous Alabama march and the assassination of Malcolm X, but following many other landmark moments in Rev. Dr. King's and the Civil Rights Movement's long march towards social, political and economic equality and freedom.

It's worth reading the entire interview (linked from AlexHaley.com), which gives a far fuller portrait of Rev. Dr. King's mindset in the mid-1960s. In it he talks about mistakes he felt he made, his disappointment of the lack of support and righteousness from white Christian ministers and churches in the cause of Black equality, the moving resistance of young people, the concept of "militant nonviolence," strategizing for the future for Civil Rights, a critique of the Nation of Islam and Malcolm X, the challenges of nonviolence and the dangers of violence as a solution, racist science and white supremacy, the relationship between African Americans and Black people around the globe, and so much more. Here is one quote:

King: I mean to say that a strong man must be militant as well as moderate. He must be a realist as well as an idealist. If I am to merit the trust invested in me by some of my race, I must be both of these things. This is why nonviolence is a powerful as well as a just weapon. If you confront a man who has long been cruelly misusing you, and say, “Punish me, if you will; I do not deserve it, but I will accept it, so that the world will know I am right and you are wrong,” then you wield a powerful and a just weapon. This man, your oppressor, is automatically morally defeated, and if he has any conscience, he is ashamed. Wherever this weapon is used in a manner that stirs a community’s, or a nation’s, anguished conscience, then the pressure of public opinion becomes an ally in your just cause.

and here is another, concerning the Civil Rights Act, which Rev. Dr. King didn't think went far enough:

King: One of these decisive developments was our last major campaign before the enactment of the Civil Rights Act—in St. Augustine, Florida. We received a plea for help from Dr. Robert Hayling, the leader of the St. Augustine movement. St. Augustine, America’s oldest city, and one of the most segregated cities in America, was a stronghold of the Ku Klux Klan and the John Birch Society. Such things had happened as Klansmen abducting four Negroes and beating them unconscious with clubs, brass knuckles, ax handles and pistol butts. Dr. Hayling’s home had been shot up with buckshot, three Negro homes had been bombed and several Negro night clubs shotgunned. A Negro’s car had been destroyed by fire because his child was one of the six Negro children permitted to attend white schools. And the homes of two of the Negro children in the white schools had been burned down. Many Negroes had been fired from jobs that some had worked on for 28 years because they were somehow connected with the demonstrations. Police had beaten and arrested Negroes for picketing, marching and singing freedom songs. Many Negroes had served up to 90 days in jail for demonstrating against segregation, and four teenagers had spent six months in jail for picketing. Then, on February seventh of last year, Dr. Hayling’s home was shotgunned a second time, with his pregnant wife and two children barely escaping death; the family dog was killed while standing behind the living-room door. So S.C.L.C. decided to join in last year’s celebration of St. Augustine’s gala 400th birthday as America’s oldest city—by converting it into a nonviolent battleground. This is just what we did.

and a third, concerning the relationship between Black Americans and Black Diasporic peoples:

King: Yes, I do, in many ways. There is a distinct, significant and inevitable correlation. The Negro across America, looking at his television set, sees black statesmen voting in the United Nations on vital world issues, knowing that in many of America’s cities, he himself is not yet permitted to place his ballot. The Negro hears of black kings and potentates ruling in palaces, while he remains ghettoized in urban slums. It is only natural that Negroes would react to this extreme irony. Consciously or unconsciously, the American Negro has been caught up by the black Zeitgeist. He feels a deepening sense of identification with his black African brothers, and with his brown and yellow brothers of Asia, South America and the Caribbean. With them he is moving with a sense of increasing urgency toward the promised land of racial justice.

Do read the entire interview; so much of what he says still pertains today, a sign of his extraordinary vision and of the challenges we still face.

SCOTUS: The Good, the Bad & the Horrendous

Pride Flag, Soho

With most of its majority rulings over the last few years, the conservative/libertarian-leaning US Supreme Court has regularly managed to outrage liberals and progressives, and cheer business and rightist interests, but it also occasionally raises eyebrows on all sides with a surprise decision or two that at least on the surface appear reasonable. So it was, in the latter case, with two of the final rulings the Court handed down this term, on Friday, in Hollingsworth v. Perry, which upheld a federal court ruling that invalidated Proposition 8, that state referendum that had abruptly halted and prevented same-sex marriages in California, and in United States v. Windsor, which struck down the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA), introduced by Republicans, passed by bipartisan US Congressional majorities and signed into law by then-President Bill Clinton in 1996, banning federal recognition of same-sex marriages well in advance of any state allowing them.

As a result of these two findings, same-sex marriages can resume in California, perhaps within days, and the federal government will now recognize same-sex marriages in those states that allow them, a number that continues to increase, by according them an array of federal rights and benefits that had previously been available only to opposite-sex couples. Coming on the cusp of LGBTIQ Pride weekends around the country, both rulings count as major victories in the long struggle for gay rights and marriage equality, but in the case of the latter victory, the effects remain unclear and will certainly be limited by the fact that a majority of US states not only do not permit same-sex marriage, but have changed their constitutions specifically to bar it. In addition, neither ruling goes as far as 2003's Lawrence v. Texas, which removed a major federal disability from LGBTIQ people's (and heterosexuals') lives by striking down all state-based sodomy laws. In a number of US states, LGBTIQ people can still be fired from their jobs, lose their children, be barred from visiting ill partners and loved ones, and incur other forms of discrimination just for being perceived to be gay.

In the case of my home state, New Jersey, we have civil protections for LGBTIQ people, but although our legislature did vote up a same-sex marriage bill, our conservative governor, Chris Christie, not only refused to sign it, a position he reiterated after the SCOTUS rulings came down, but has called for a statewide referendum to determine whether we will have a right that nearly all the surrounding states (including all of New England, New York State, and Maryland) now enjoy. It seems likely that New Jerseyans would affirm marriage equality at the ballot, since polls show a majority of state residents support it, but putting rights to a vote is never a good idea, and a positive outcome is always uncertain. In any case, Chris Christie appears to be doing this primarily to stay in the good graces of the national GOP, in hopes of gaining the 2016 President nomination, if not a subsequent one. On a personal level, as a product of the post-Gay Liberation moment, I remain critical of the mainstream gay rights movement's focus on marriage, a problematic, often oppressive bourgeois institution on many levels, and its drive towards homonormativity and uniformity, the latter of which has been especially destructive to and for queer people. We have not decided to get married, and I am not sure if we will. Yet I also support ending discrimination in all forms, and of being able to gain recognition, and removing economic burdens, under federal law, something that people in same-sex marriages until Friday rulings could not do. I think this is especially crucial for older queer couples, married queer couples with children, and queer couples who are experiencing serious health crises.

More in keeping with the Supreme Court's horrendous rulings, and with, as scholar Tavia Nyong'o put it so aptly in a tweet to me, the increase both in tolerance and inequality, were two others I want to highlight, that undercut even more the happiness I felt at the DOMA and Prop 8 rulings. First was the Court's gutting of the landmark 1965 Voting Rights Act, signed into law by President Lyndon Johnson, to address the decades-long efforts to prevent black people and other minorities from voting and exercising our democratic rights. By a 5-4 majority in Shelby County, Alabama v. Holder, Attorney General, the Court essentially struck down Section 4, which provided a "coverage formula" defining "covered jurisdictions" as states or political jurisdictions that had "maintained tests or devices as prerequisites to voting" and had had low voter registration or turnout levels in the 1960s and early 1970s, and thus required, as per Section 5, "pre-clearance" by the US Justice Department before they could enact new voting laws.

As a result, all of the states formerly labeled as covered jurisdictions, which had egregious histories of barring African Americans and other people of color from voting, ranging from poll-taxes to changing election sites and dates, to canceling elections outright (all of which were accompanied by violent, sometimes mortal, forms of intimidation), can now revert to form if they like, and once again start legislating laws making voting burdensome to impossible for black voters and others. Chief Justice John Roberts delivered the Court's majority opinion, declaring among other things that "Blatantly discriminatory evasions of federal decrees are rare." In his opinion, it would be up to Congress to clarify the law, a likelihood that seems dicey given the current obstructionism of the GOP. Associate Justice Clarence Thomas wrote a brief, separate concurrence calling for Section 5 to be struck down as well. Associate Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg delivered her dissent, joined by the three liberal justices, from the bench, stating in her opening paragraph that Congress, "recognizing that large progress has been made...determined, based on a voluminous record, that the scourge of discrimination was not yet extirpated" in 2006. She is right, and the potential for voter suppression and discrimination in the former "covered jurisdictions" is, as the past has shown, going to require not just vigilance and resistance but new laws to counter the actions of this activist court.

Another deeply problematic ruling that flew under the radar, but which reporter John D. Echeverria of The New York Times astutely caught was Koontz v. St. John's River Water, which may have the effect, as Associate Justice Elena Kagan wrote in her dissent, of "work[ing] a revolution in land-use law," and not in a way beneficial to most residents of a given jurisdiction. In essence, the 5-4 ruling, written by Associate Justice Samuel Alito, severely harms sustainable development laws, by creating an incentive for local government officials to, as the Times notes, reject development plans or allow developers to run amok rather than risk a lawsuit that could very well go against these governments based on the new post-Koontz standards. In addition, the finding places a new burden on local governments to justify mandated fees for permits, making compromises to address potential environment degradation less likely given the court's ruling in favor of developers and corporations. The Times points out that in the case of waste disposal

Many communities impose development-impact fees on developers if a proposed project would require expanding waste-disposal sites or building new ones. Before Koontz, a developer could raise a constitutional challenge if the charges were unreasonable, but judges typically deferred to local governments in such cases.

After Koontz, developers have a potent new legal tool to challenge such charges because now the legal burden of demonstrating their validity is on the communities themselves.

Finally, there was Fisher v. University of Texas at Austin, the court's most high-profile affirmative action case this term, in which 7 members of the Court, with Associate Justice Anthony Kennedy delivering the majority opinion--and with both Associate Justices Antonin Scalia and Clarence Thomas delivering concurring opinions (Thomas's included the perversely ironic line "The Constitution does not pander to faddish theories about whether race mixing is in the public interest")--vacated a lower court decision to defer to the University of Texas's use of race in achieving and maintaining diversity in its student body and in deciding whether its plan to do so was narrowly enough tailored to meet the stricter standards required by two previous SCOTUS decisions, Grutter v. Bollinger and Gratz v. Bollinger, and the infamous Regents of the Univ. of California v. Bakke. With Justice Kagan recusing herself, only Justice Ginsberg offered a dissent, writing that she has "several times explained why government actors, including state universities, need not be blind to the lingering effects of “an overtly discriminatory past,” the legacy of “centuries of law-sanctioned inequality," and thus voted to affirm the Court of Appeal's decision in favor of the University of Texas. The practical outcome does not ensure admission to Abigail Fisher, the 22-year-old white plaintiff, but it does mean that the University of Texas will now have to go back and rethink its admissions plan so as not to fall easy pray to a similar lawsuit in the future.

In many online discussions of this decision, I or any reader could quickly spot the rants against affirmative action, the alleged deleterious effects on white applicants, the dismissal of the sustained impact of past discrimination, and on and on, but very rarely did I see a basic fact that Time presented in clear and fairly concise fashion, which is that over the entire history of affirmative action, white women--i.e., people just like Abigail Fisher--not black people, not latinos, not native americans, not asian americans, but white women, have been the primary and majority beneficiaries of affirmative action policies. I remember a good friend of mine who taught at NYU pointing this out to me and others at a panel debate with conservatives at Rutgers back in the late 1990s, and then coming across this information repeatedly online over the last 15 years, but what continues to adhere in the public discourse is the belief, articulated on Friday, by radio talkshow host Brian Lehrer on his WNYC, that black people have been the main beneficiaries of affirmative action, which represents discrimination against white people. I should also note Abigail Fisher's suit failed to point out that Texas admitted only 5 black or latino students with lower scores than Fisher, but did extend admission to FORTY-TWO WHITE students. Additionally, 168 black or latino students with scores better than Fisher were not admitted. But fact, facts.

I'll end with a slightly adapted version of note I sent to some friends in reference to affirmative action, American institutions of higher education, one several I have had very close ties to:

I recently finished reading Craig Steven Wilder's book, Ebony and Ivy: Race, Slavery and the Troubled History of America's Universities (Bloomsbury, forthcoming fall 2013), which I picked up at BookExpo America, and will just say that if the oldest universities and colleges in this country (including Harvard, founded in 1636, or Rutgers, founded in 1766) ever fully addressed their horrific history--and it is very, very bad, as Wilder's excellent, authoritative historical study makes very clear--on slavery, the extermination and forced removal of native peoples, the development of medical and the natural sciences using black and brown bodies, the enrichment of elites (whose names, from Williams to Bard to Amherst, etc. are all over these institutions) and so much more, they would have to admit black and native people free for hundreds of years. Most of us don't have a clue about the full and ugly early history of this country, or the institutions that made it possible, and how race, racism and anti-affirmative policies towards a sizable portion of us have continually privileged and benefited white Americans, including people who only later became white.

I do plan to review Wilder's book, but I also hope it informs future discussions about race and higher education, because ignorance of this history has meant a severely underinformed discussion and debate.

The Case Against Harold Ford + Prop 8 Trial Underway + NFL Playoffs

On Twitter, I posted this link (via Matthew Yglesias), to one of Harold Ford Jr.'s (right, NY Daily News) commercials from his 2006 Senate run in Tennessee, in which he lost to right-winger Bob Corker. In the commercial, as in his run, Ford Jr. is so far to the right that you have to remind yourself he's not a Republican. But for anyone familiar with his prior record, his ideological position in the Senate run was no surprise. As a Congressperson (a legacy, no less, inheriting the seat from his father, Harold Ford Sr., who was more politically progressive and underwent an intensive legal assault by Tennessee Republicans and the Reagan administration), Ford Jr. consistently took right-of-center positions, unapologetically claimed to "love George Bush," and after losing the election, in which he was repeatedly race-baited by the GOP, he soon went to head the Democratic Leadership Council (DLC), which is to say, the Democrat's GOP-lite annex, and to punditry gigs on Fox and then MSNBC, on which he has repeatedly demonstrated that in addition to having a pretty face, his ideological compass remains fairly rightward. (I.e., he's in the mainstream of the US corporate media.) The combo of post-defeat opportunities, which now include an executive post at bailout recipient Merrill Lynch, landed him in New York.

One thing that Ford Jr., as the son of a prominent and wealthy politician, has always possessed, it seems to me, is confidence, or to put it another way, chutzpah, and recently he demonstrated it when, at the alleged urging of various extremely wealthy New Yorkers, including New York's billionaire mayor, Ford Jr. announced his desire to seek the Senate seat currently occupied by Kirsten Gillibrand (below right, NY Daily News). She, readers might recall, is the not especially popular former center-right upstate Democratic Congressperson picked in haphazard fashion by New York's ineffectual and inept governor, David Paterson, after he directed his staff to trash Caroline Kennedy, the presumptive nominee and early patron of President Barack Obama. Since assuming the seat, Gillibrand has moved noticeably to the left, and approximates her senior colleague, Chuck Schumer, in her voting patterns; yet it would seem that a strong candidate from the left, running against the neoliberal, DLC-ish policies of the current administration, might make a case for replacing Gillibrand and pushing an even more progressive, pro-New York agenda. Congresswoman Carolyn Maloney, one likely candidate, had thought about it before decided not to run. The case for a right-wing quasi-Democrat, bankrolled by Wall Street types, with a longstanding anti-gay, anti-immigrant, and warmongering record, however, appears more difficult to make. In fact, Ford's record and rhetoric have been so far to the right that I would venture he'd have a hard time be electing in any Northeastern state as a Democrat, let alone a Republican, except perhaps in Pennsylvania. Yet he has been huddling with New York's mayor-by-default, Mike Bloomberg, and the Democratic Majority Leader, Harry Reid, recently came to plead with Bloomberg not to back Ford Jr. As to where President Obama stands on the matter, who knows, though given his tenor of his tenure so far, I could see him backing Ford Jr., whom he repeatedly campaigned for in 2006. (Obama, however, will not be campaigning this week for Ted Kennedy's likely replacement, Democrat Martha Coakley, who is in a tightening race in Massachusetts against Republican Scott Brown. Go figure.)

I have read comparisons between Ford's carpetbagging and Hillary Clinton's, or Robert F. Kennedy's (he was born in New York, however), and am aware of the long history of Americans who've tramped from state to state getting elected (cf. James Shields, 19th century US Senator from Illinois, Minnesota, and Missouri), but the Clinton comparison in particular focuses more on the political contours rather than addressing the specific ideological and policy cases against him running, and winning, in New York State. What would he bring to this race? Do New Yorkers, and black New Yorkers--which seems to be his hook--specfically, see any benefit from electing someone who has repeatedly supported policies damaging to most of them? Ford notes in the commercial that he supported the Patriot Act, defense spending, and against "amnesty" for "illegals." His record shows that he voted against ENDA and for the Iraq War, the Bankruptcy Bill, and the Federal Marriage Amendment. He supported the candidacy of Samuel Alito for the Supreme Court, and Republican legislation on behalf of Terri Schiavo's parents, against her husband. Ford Jr. did take some mainstream Democratic positions, including standing against drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Reserve and supported federal stem cell research funding, but had he been elected to the Senate in 2006, his prior record would have placed him at the far right of the Democratic caucus, and to the right even of several Republicans, including Arlen Specter and Olympia Snowe.

Despite some recent moderation, which I imagine no one is buying, the main reason I can identify for his candidacy is that his patrons ("executives," to use the New York Times's term) want someone even more compliant with and willing to push even more reliably pro-corporate ("independent"--New York Times) politics from what was Hillary Clinton's and Al D'Amato's (a verifiably right-wing Republican) old seat. This argument mirrors the ones put forward when Mike Bloomberg was mulling a presidential run; I saw no natural mass constituency, only Wall Street and the social and business élites, who quickly coöpted Barack Obama--who made pilgrimage and paid fealty to Bloomberg, don't forget--instead. He has suggested that there needs to be a black person in the Senate (on the grounds of local and national representation and diversity, I would agree, though I don't think it should be him), especially now that Roland Burris will not be returning after this year, and so far no other viable African-American candidate for any of the open Senate seats has emerged. (While I would not to lose a single woman in the Senate, perhaps Barbara Mikulski will decide to step down and Maryland's Lt. Governor, Iraq veteran Anthony Brown, will run for her seat). This is not to attribute bad faith to Harold Ford Jr., but to suggest that there is no convincing case to be made, at least on behalf of the majority of New York voters, or the rest of the country for that matter, for his candidacy for this seat, right now or anytime in the foreseeable future. And I'm not kicking his dog, mind you. Just asking, but at this point in our ongoing national economic and political debacles, how stupid and gullible do the people in power think we are?

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Today was the first day of Perry v. Schwarzenegger, the federal trial challenging the constitutional validity of Proposition 8, which the San Jose Mercury News suggests may "be the signature civil rights fight of the 21st century." Depending upon the outcome, it could lead to a landmark US Supreme Court ruling, or Congressional legislation down the road, and as it concerns the most populous state in the nation and the popular reversal by referendum and constitutional amendment of rights underwritten by a court ruling, it's particularly significant.

The trial is underway in the United States District Court for the Northern District of California. Today the presiding justice, Chief US District Judge Vaughn Walker, appointed to the federal court by President George H. W. Bush, heard arguments from both sides; Theodore Olson, the conservative lawyer and former Solicitor General under George W. Bush, along with Clinton administration counsel David Boies, are leading the arguments on behalf of the plaintiffs, two same sex couples, Berkeley residents Sandra Stier and the eponymous Kristin Perry, and Burbank couple Paul Katami and Jeff Zarrillo, who were denied marriage licenses because of the Prop 8 vote. Prominent attorney Charles Cooper is arguing on behalf of the Prop 8 amendment of California's state constitution. California's Attorney General, former Governor and Oakland mayor Jerry Brown, refused to defend the law, saying it should be struck down, while Governor Schwarzenegger has argued that it raises important constitutional questions that need to be addressed.

As noted above, Should Olson, Boies and the plaintiffs win, the case could then move by appeal to the US Supreme Court. The higher court did stay Judge Walker's decision to permit delayed broadcast of the proceedings on YouTube, so for the duration media accounts will have to suffice.

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How about those New York Jets, who defeated the Cincinnati Bengals two weeks in a row, this time 24-14 on Saturday. Jets QB Mark Sanchez (right, NJ.com) became only the fourth rookie QB to win a playoff game. The Dallas Cowboys followed the Jets' victory by defeating the Philadelphia Eagles 34-14. The Cowboys' defense was out in full force, as was its running and passing game.

On Sunday, the Baltimore Ravens, long known for their defensive prowess, stopped the New England Patriots cold with a 33-14 victory and stupendous running by former Rutgers star Ray Rice (below left, NJ.com), who racked up 159 yards on 22 rushes, and 2 touchdowns. Later that afternoon, the Arizona Cardinals put on an offensive show and defeated the Green Bay Packers 55-41, in overtime. As the score suggests, there was hardly any defensive play to speak of, though the Cardinals got just enough when they needed it.

The Jets now play the 13-3 San Diego Chargers, while the Ravens play 14-2 Indianapolis, which was rolling towards an undefeated season until the Jets broke up their mojo. In the NFC Arizona plays the New Orleans Saints, who went 13-3, while Dallas plays the 12-4 Minnesota Vikings. I'm pulling for the Jets, but I see the higher seeds (Indy, Saints, Vikings) all winning.

Photos: Stop Prop H8 March

FIRST: I did fix the "Long Nightmare Will Be Over" gif--yes, it should be January 20, 2009!

Now, some photos from the Rally which became a (permit-less) March.

The rally area, at Federal Plaza (Calder sculpture in the background)

One of my favorite (silly) placards

Heading towards Michigan

Protesters

On the street, beneath the new banners celebrating our President Elect, Barack Obama

Protesters have fun

Two ebullient protesters

Not sure where this is (but in the Loop!)

A drummer, heading back towards Michigan Ave.

Illinois's very gay state seal

The Chicago mounties

Near Wacker Drive (and those famous Marina "Honeycomb" Towers)

Alongside the Chicago River on Wacker Drive (I took this photo from Starbucks window--the young black folks working in there were quite supportive)

Back on the street

Some impromptu young marchers who joined on Michigan Ave.'s Miracle Mile

On Michigan Avenue's Miracle Mile