Thank You

A note from the publisher: We’re a week away from Thanksgiving, but this is about more than that. 

Today is The New Civil Rights Movement’s seven year anniversary.

Some quick history.

November 4, 2008 was a momentous day. On the one hand, Barack Obama was elected president. On the other, the people of California decided to revoke the right of their friends, family members, neighbors, and co-workers to marry a person of the same sex. They stood together and said loudly to the world, “we will not allow it.” Yes, that was what Prop 8 did. That, and a whole lot more.

It threw 18,000 marriages into legal limbo, the state into chaos, and the LGBT community across the nation into action the likes of which had not been seen in decades.

And, like so many others, it was the day my life changed.

As many of you may know, even living on the other side of the country in New York City, Prop 8 was devastating. For me, it was a life-changing event. I could not fathom why so many people wanted to ensure people like me could never marry. And I could not stand by and do nothing.

So I set out to find out why so many people opposed marriage equality, and to share what I learned with as many people as I could. 

15 days after Prop 8 passed I started The New Civil Rights Movement. 

Seven years later, today, we’re an award winning news organization that reaches around two million people a month on our website, and up to 21 million people per week via Facebook. We have attracted over 300,000 fans and followers on Twitter and Facebook, we won a GLAAD Media Award, and the Library of Congress archives our work as a cultural artifact on public policy issues.

We’ve grown from reporting on marriage equality, to reporting on a wide array of LGBT issues, to reporting on a vast swath of civil rights issues as we see them through the lens of politics, religion, law, and social justice. 

So I wanted to take a moment to say, “thank you” to all our wonderful and dedicated readers, because we couldn’t do this without you.

It’s a week before Thanksgiving, but I think the time is right.

Thank you. For staying with us, for visiting us daily, for reading our work, for sharing our articles (please, share our articles!), for patting us on the back and yes, for telling us when we don’t meet your expectations. All of it helps make us better, and better able to serve you.

We may have won marriage, but there are so many more battles to fight. Protections from discrimination in the workplace, housing, and credit. Voting rights. Women’s rights. Privacy rights. Gun control. Immigration. Health care. Education. And income inequality, to name just a few.

We have a historic election upon us, including the recent challenge of dealing with those who would like to close our borders to those they fear or don’t like, and those who would like to turn their backs on the American ideals of welcoming people “yearning to breathe free.”

Will the next president place strong progressives on the Supreme Court? Will he or she keep us from war? Will they respect our freedoms? Or will we face a bleak term of Republican fear-mongering, oppression, hypocrisy, and pandering to the religious right that will throw many of the hard-won civil rights advances of the past seven years into limbo, or, worse, into the trash heap?

Regardless of the outcomes, civil rights battles will always be with us, and we’ll always be here, ready, willing, and able to help keep our readers informed, motivated, and hopefully ready to take action.

Again, thank you for your support, your comments, your engagement, and your time.

It means the world to us here at The New Civil Rights Movement.

So, as we begin our eighth year, thank you!

 

David Badash
Founder and publisher
The New Civil Rights Movement

 

Image: You may recognize this image from our Facebook page. It’s by French photographer Guillaume Paumier, taken at the 2011 Gay Pride Parade in Toulouse.

 

Photo via Flickr and a CC license