One of the most baffling politicians for me has been Joe Lieberman. Lieberman was a Democrat until 2006 when he ran as an independent and defeated the Democratic nominee for the Senate in Connecticut. During the 2008 elections, he had spoken in the Republican convention and campaigned for the Republican nominee John McCain. There was talk among Democrats after the 2008 elections of stripping Lieberman of the chairmanship of the Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee, which is responsible for assuring the efficiency and effectiveness of the Federal Government, and Chairman of the Subcommittee on Air Land Forces. Barack Obama, though, wanted a fresh start with no animosity towards those opposed to him, so Lieberman was treated kindly by the incoming new administration.

"Gays and lesbians stood up for civil rights in Montgomery, Selma, in Albany, Georgia, and St. Augustine, Florida, and many other campaigns of the Civil Rights Movement. Many of these courageous men and women were fighting for my freedom at a time when they could find few voices for their own, and I salute their contributions."

Recently a friend informed me that in the state of Maine, a proposition is on the ballot to try to outlaw gay marriages. Last year, I spent a lot of time researching arguments against Proposition 8 and found in the website by the gay evangelical group Soulforce several quotes from leaders of the Civil Rights movement of the 1960s and I will use them for this blog. All speak powerfully of the injustice of discrimination in any form, whether it be because of race, gender, ethnicity or sexual orientation. As the above quote by Coretta Scott King notes, many gays and lesbians participated in the great Civil Rights battles from the 1940s to the 1960s. Among them were Bayard Rustin, who organized the March on Washington in 1963, and James Baldwin, the famous writer.

One of my favorite programs is SPARK, a Public Television station that profiles artists in the San Francisco Bay Area. A few weeks ago, SPARK showcased the political posters of Favianna Rodriguez. Rodriquez makes posters and graphics that support social movements and grassroots activism, much in the same way that past political artists like Honore Daumier, Jose Guadalupe Posada and Kathe Kolliwitz created graphic works that commented on the ills of society.

One of my favorite magazines to read is Z Magazine. It is a leftist magazine of essays, accounts of activists and great cartoons that offers a point of view that I don't see in any other magazine. In my latest issue that I got in the mail, they are going to push in these next few months to fundraise and get more subscribers. I like Z Magazine because it covers the work of activists from around the world who are trying to protect the environment, work for human rights, aid in peace effors, help the poor, and expose the wrongdoings of corporations and of government. As a website of progressive activists who have many of the same concerns and interests, I thought many of you in Everyday Citizen might be interested in giving Z Magazine a try.

Z Magazine was founded in 1987 by two of the founding members of South End Press. It was inspired by the movie Z, by Costa-Gavras, that tells the story of repression and resistance in Greece. At the end of the movie, instead of listing the cast and crew, Costa-Gavras list the things banned by the Greek junta in the movie. They include: peace movements, labor unions, long hair on men, Sophocles, Tolstoy, Aeschylus, strikes, Socrates, Ionesco, Sartre, the Beatles, Chekhov, Mark Twain, the bar association, sociology, Becket, the International Encyclopedia, the free press, modern and popular music, the new math, and the letter Z, which in the movie symbolized “the spirit of resistance lives.” In the spirit of the movie, Z Magazine is dedicated. In each issue, Z Magazine begins with this statement: