The Athens Human Rights Festival—thanks to Citizen Advocacy, Common Ground Resource Center, a loyal coordination staff, and many others—celebrated their hard-earned 30th anniversary earlier this month. We're proud to report the festival a grand success—and how could it not be? Social interest in the kinds of issues the festival advocates has been building and building as the 2008 presidential election inches closer; all the resulting political discourse has helped make this year's Human Rights Festival that much more significant. It's prime time to make change.

The downtown street celebration, dedicated to the loving memory of Eve Carson, featured a throng of politically-active musicians such as Jackpot City, Dubconscious, The Maybes, Fleeta Mitchell, Tommy Jordan and the String Theory—who haven't missed a festival in all its glorious thirty years—and the list goes on. There were also over thirty orators, each with their own individual ideas and messages; they spoke on behalf of education, gay and lesbian rights, immigration issues, economic justice, marijuana law reform... Why, there were even llamas. Long live the hell-raisers, let's hear it for thirty more. For more information and the full Human Rights Festival 30^th Anniversary webloid, visit www.athenshumanrightsfest.org.