redefining sidewalks

A friend of mine posted this note on facebook, and I thought I'd spread the word.

Hey friends at other colleges and universities,

I am a member of a student group here at Princeton protesting Proposition 8, California's recent ballot initiative that banned gay marriage. In the past week, our group has begun staging rallies on our campus for a measure we have dubbed Princeton Proposition 8 (PP8), which would ban freshmen from walking on the University's sidewalks by securing what we feel is the traditional and right definition of a sidewalk (a means of pedestrian and bicycle transit for use by sophomores, juniors, seniors, grad students, faculty, staff, and visitors only). We feel that California's Proposition 8 provides us with a very good precedent to take away the rights of a minority like this.

We are doing this because we are outraged. We are outraged because a majority voting to deny the rights of a minority is illegal, unconstitutional, and wrong. It is the very thing a constitutional democracy is designed to prevent.

Moreover, we are outraged by the fact that to date no one at our university is speaking out. There has been no public outcry; there has been no public discussion of the issue. Our goal in doing this was to create some.

And we have thus far been very successful. People are talking about this issue now. This satirical protest has people discussing the appropriateness of the analogy being made (that marriage, like sidewalks, are a civil right which cannot be denied to a minority simply because a majority wills it to be so). This conversation invariably leads to a deeper weighing of the issues at the heart of the matter.

Over the course of two days of rallying, our pro-PP8 petition has garnered over 400 signatures from enthusiastic "supporters" of traditional sidewalk values, including that of University President Shirley Tilghman. You can watch a video from our pro-PP8 rally on YouTube (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=59IK28ry9eQ), or read about it in our campus newspaper (http://www.dailyprincetonian.com/2008/11/21/22209/). Since the posting of these items, they have been linked to by a surprisingly large number of blogs, including Andrew Sullivan's blog, The Daily Dish. The YouTube video has received over 14,000 views. Word is spreading. We will continue our rallies on Monday and Tuesday, with the eventual goal of organizing a formal vote to "pass" our law.

This is a letter inviting you to participate in our movement. At our college alone we can do only so much. But imagine if every college in the country started such a movement. Together, we'd be impossible to ignore. We could get the whole nation talking.

We encourage you to rally at your own campus for an anti-freshman-on-the-sidewalk University Proposition 8. This is a way for us to make our voices heard in a unique and profound way, especially in a world that views our demographic as complacent and apathetic.

If you're interested and want more information about what we did, email our organizer, Christopher Simpson, tagged in this note (cjsimpso@princeton.edu).

Feel free to copy this note and tag your own friends at other schools!

Thanks,
Lianna


Here's the video of their rally: