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“Article 1, Section 8 of the Constitution is pretty simple. It says, ‘Raise an army.’ It says absolutely nothing about race, colour, creed, sexual orientation. You all joined for a reason: to serve. To protect our nation, right? How dare we, then, exclude a group of people who want to do the same thing you do right now, something that is honourable and noble? Right? Get over it. We’re magnificent, we’re going to continue to be. … Let’s just move on, treat everyone with firmness, fairness, dignity, compassion and respect. Let’s be Marines.”

- Sergeant Major Michael Barrett, US Marine, on the repeal of ‘Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell.’

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Jose Vargas: Pulitzer Prize winning journalist, filmmaker, undocumented immigrant.:

I’ve tried. Over the past 14 years, I’ve graduated from high school and college and built a career as a journalist, interviewing some of the most famous people in the country. On the surface, I’ve created a good life. I’ve lived the American dream.

But I am still an undocumented immigrant. And that means living a different kind of reality. It means going about my day in fear of being found out. It means rarely trusting people, even those closest to me, with who I really am. It means keeping my family photos in a shoebox rather than displaying them on shelves in my home, so friends don’t ask about them. It means reluctantly, even painfully, doing things I know are wrong and unlawful. And it has meant relying on a sort of 21st-century underground railroad of supporters, people who took an interest in my future and took risks for me.

Pulitzer Prize winner Jose Antonio Vargas talks about his life, growing up as an undocumented immigrant and learning to live with it.

My heart’s still lodged somewhere between my throat and the pit of my stomach. We need to fix this country.

“Justice will be served