The New Pilgrims.

On April 10, a gorgeous spring day, I marched for immigrant rights with about 25,000 people in Madison, Wisconsin. Latina moms were strolling their babies, fathers had their kids on their shoulders.

One little girl held up a sign that said, "I am the future."

Another sign said, "We can die for this country but our families can't live here?"

"Did the Pilgrims have papers?" read a third.

But the signs that hit home the hardest were aimed at James Sensenbrenner, the Congressman from the Milwaukee area who sponsored the bill that would turn undocumented immigrants into felons.

"Sense not Sensenbrenner," read one sign.

"Wisconsin is ashamed of Sensenbrenner," read another.

I was standing by an old union guy, Ed Sadlowski, and he said, "The worst bosses make the best organizers."

Sensenbrenner is quite an organizer.

We're pleased to offer you two articles on the subject of immigration this month. One is by Tram Nguyen, author of a fantastic book, We Are All Suspects Now, who shows us the difficulties of getting asylum in America today. The other is by Edwidge Danticat, the great fiction writer, who lauds the immigrant protesters, newly visible, newly vocal.

It falls to me now to bid farewell to our ace investigative reporter, Anne-Marie Cusac, who is leaving us to become a professor at Roosevelt University in Chicago.

In her first year here, she won a George Polk award for her investigative piece "Stunning Technology: Corrections Cowboys Get a Charge out of Their New Sci-Fi Weapons." Over time, she specialized in other inhumane practices and devices, such as the restraint chair, now in use at Guantanamo. And she even went on Nightline to discuss some of her findings.

Beyond her reporting on these and other topics, Anne-Marie brought us vital interviews with people who belonged in The Progressive, like Urvashi Vaid, Harry Hay, Harold Pinter, Tillie Olsen, and Sam Hamill.

Fortunately, Anne-Marie will remain connected to The Progressive as a contributing writer. She promises to send us investigative stories in the years ahead. That won't be quite the same as having her here in the office, but it will partially fill this painful void.

Speaking of painful voids, we are saddened at the lost of John Kenneth Galbraith. This regal egret of an economist, this embodiment of Democratic liberalism, died on April 29.

Galbraith wrote several times for The Progressive, most recently in 1999 for our ninetieth anniversary issue. Entitled "Free Market Fraud," he decried the practice of CEOs setting their own compensation, as well as "the full-fledged takeover by private industry of public decision-making and government spending." In an interview by Amitbah Pal in our October 2000 issue, he denounced economists and intellectuals "who pursue what is comfortable to the rich."

For more than two decades, Galbraith served as a member of The Progressive's editorial advisory board. He always cheered us on. His final note to us was dated December 8, 2005.

"My commitment to The Progressive is indeed as strong as ever," he wrote. "Liberal integrity was never so badly needed. We certainly cannot do without The Progressive. I have not been in the best of health in the past year but, here, nonetheless, my continued affirmation of what you do. Do not relent."