Marching Down Memory Lane

Matrimonio Para Todos
Originally uploaded by Tobias Higbie.

Just last night I was saying to Loretta that I was going to put Bughouse Square on semi-permanent hiatus. After all, I only get around to posting about once a month. I have new projects, a new blog, and plenty of other work to do.

But today I got permission from the Newberry to upload a bunch of great protest pictures to my Flickr account. These were all taken in conjunction with the exhibit Outspoken: Chicago's Free Speech Tradition that was up during the last quarter of 2004. They were taken by Ginger Shulick and by Jen Koslow. There are at least a hundred, probably more, so I'll upload them a bit at a time. (I'll leave discussion of the process of getting permission to my other blog, which is at least nominally about digital humanities issues).

This particular image, Matrimonio para Todos," is one of my favorites and was taken by Ginger Shulick. If you recall, the spring of 2004 was about the time San Francisco was embarking on its gay marriage experiment, and in Chicago activists were pushing the Cook County Clerk to recognize civil unions or gay marriage. In the exhibit, about 30 of the protest pictures were mounted on a wall that was at the entry/exit point. They included images of anitwar protests, anti-tax protests, union rallies, and anti-gay-marriage protests as well as pro-gay marriage rallies. We placed the comment book on a table in front of the images, along with a stack of cards printed with the phrase "I was outspoken when...". We got some wonderful responses on these cards, everything from "standing up to a bully at school," to being "in the Park in '68."

By the way, I just started using Feedburner, and I see that History and Education is the top referring site for me, along with searches for "Oaxaca protests." Thanks Tim! All three of my readers (besides Tim) should go check out History and Education right now. I promise to post comments, really I do.

A shout-out to Jen Koslow--working on Outspoken together was great fun! And Ginger--out there in the Big Apple--you have a great eye for photography. I'm looking forward to hearing more about your next project.