Video of the march from City Hall to the former location of Castro Camera.  We saw the movie on Thanksgiving afternoon, and I highly recommend it.  Sean Penn did an excellent job of portraying a martyr for LGBT rights.

Dave Johnson, Speak Out California

Markos, in a post today about the state of progressive infrastructure compared to the right’s, Building machines,

[. . .] But that battle is no longer one-sided. Their machine may be bigger, but we have something. And that’s all we ever needed — a hint of a partisan progressive media machine, fed by research and investigative reporting from the likes of ThinkProgress and Talking Points Memo, to begin delivering our message in the face of their vast media machine, as well as ineffective CW[conventional wisdom]-meisters like Maureen Dowd, Mark Halperin, and David Broder.

Look what we have been able to get done in this country with only the smallest, minimally-funded hint at an infrastructure of organizations and media outlets working to counter the right that has been built up since we started this fight.  We fought back against the conservative machine and got the Democrats to start fighting back themselves.  We took the Presidency, increased our numbers in the House and maybe, just maybe took  enough senate seats to stop the filibusters.

Now, imagine what we could do if we actually started funding serious progressive infrastructure organizations and building an ecosystem in which our writers and advocates could actually make a living, sell enough books to start receiving advances, get paid reasonably to write articles, receive speaking fees from organizations and some of the things right-wing advocates take for granted…  Imagine tens of thousands of young activists being trained every year.  Imagine progressive non-profits having the budgets to pay people more than minimum wage and provide benefits and get things done.  Sheesh.

Imagine what we could get done in California if we put together solid organizations that could reach out to all of the public and explain the benefits of progressive values and policies.  I mean progressive policies like good, well-funded public schools and low-cost universities, a health care system that works for the people, help with child care, a transportation infrastructure that gets people where they want to go in a timely manner, energy alternatives that cost less and do not pollute and employment rules that bring us reasonable wages and benefits in good jobs that also give us time to have fulfillment in our lives.  These are all possibilities, in fact these are all things that we were within reach of obtaining in California not too long ago.  These are things thaqt we can dream about again.

Barack Obama was able to raise millions of dollars in small donations, and this has helped the country to start to restore democracy.  We can do this in California, by sending $10 or $100 or more to help organizations like Speak Out California and others, and doing this as often as you can.

It is time for us to begin to renew the California Dream.

Click through to Speak Out California.