August/September Issue Front Cover

Posted on August 2023 by Public i

THE STRUGGLE FOR REPRODUCTIVE RIGHTS CONTINUES

Stop Abortion Bans Rally, St. Paul, Minnesota, May 21, 2019. Photo by Fibonacci Blue via Flickr

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The Danville Abortion Clinic Troubles

Posted on August 2023 by Barbara Kessel

Damage to the planned home of the planned new Danville abortion clinic from the May 20 attack

Mary Catherine Roberson, chair of the Danville chapter of Personal Pac, warns, “do not take it for granted that because you live in Illinois, you are safe. If the anti-abortion forces start organizing in your town, reach out to Personal Pac for support.”

As soon as the US Supreme Court overturned the 1973 Roe v. Wade decision on June 24, 2022, Indiana enacted a new total ban on abortion. After lawsuits against it were cleared away by the Indiana Supreme Court, it went into effect on August 1, causing the considerable flow of abortion seekers from Indiana to Illinois to further increase. Continue reading →

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Posted in abortion rights, health care, Healthcare, Reproductive Justice, Section, Voices, Women, Women, wonen's rights | Tagged abortion rights, anti-abortion violence, reproductive justice, women's rights | Comments Off

FirstFollowers: Using Participatory Action Research to Make Change in Our Community

Posted on August 2023 by James Kilgore

FirstFollowers has a tradition of doing participatory action research at Champaign-Urbana Days, the premier outdoor summer event aimed primarily at the Black community. Participatory Action Research (often called PAR) aims to gather data and information, not just for publication but to bring about change. While most people at C-U Days are focusing on barbecue, the stage performers, or meeting up with family members and friends from the past, we put on our research caps and tap into the wealth of knowledge and information the people in the park embody. Most of us are not professional researchers. We are individuals who have spent time in prison or had loved ones subjected to incarceration. But we are fully aware that those who are touched by a problem are closest to the solution. However, few people bother to ask them for their opinions. Continue reading →

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Posted in African Americans, incarceration, Racism, Section, Violence, Voices of Color | Tagged African Americans, incarceration, local community, participatory research, policing, violence in the community | Comments Off

A “Pattern of Problematic Conduct”: Urbana Officer Tests Police Accountability (Shortened Print Version)

Posted on August 2023 by Brian Dolinar

Urbana Police Officer John Franquemont arguing with Laquesha Thadison before arresting her on April 5, 2020. Photo courtesy Urbana Police Department

This article originally appeared at WILL/Illinois Public Media on July 5, 2023. Reprinted with permission. It has been edited for space and style. See the full version here.

“I had a big goose egg on my forehead,” Tianna Morrow recalled, after being pushed down by Urbana police officer John Franquemont. “I busted my head on the cart where the kids put their shoes.”

Morrow and her boyfriend, Lamar DeShawn Phillips, who are both Black residents of Urbana, were sleeping when they were woken up in the middle of the night by police in January, 2018. They had crashed on the couch at an apartment rented out by Phillips’s brother. Morrow says they had his permission to be there, but police were called by the brother’s girlfriend, who was also residing in the apartment. Continue reading →

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Posted in African American Women in Champaign-Urbana, African Americans, BLM, Justice, Police, police accountability, Police Brutality, Police brutality, Policing, Racism, Section, Violence | Tagged police accountability, police brutality, police review boards, racism, Urbana police | Comments Off

A “Pattern of Problematic Conduct”: Urbana Officer Tests Police Accountability (Full Version)

Posted on August 2023 by Brian Dolinar

Urbana Police Department Officer John Franquemont after arresting Laquesha Thadison in April 2020. Photo courtesy Urbana Police Department

This story is part of a partnership, focusing on police misconduct in Champaign County, between the Champaign-Urbana Civic Police Data Project of the Invisible Institute, a Chicago-based nonprofit public accountability journalism organization, and Illinois Public Media. This investigation was supported by funding from the Data-Driven Reporting Project, which is funded by the Google News Initiative in partnership with Northwestern University|Medill School of Journalism.

This article originally appeared at WILL/Illinois Public Media on July 5, 2023. Reprinted with permission. It has been edited for style.

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Posted in African American Women in CU, African Americans, BLM, Justice, Police, police accountability, Police Brutality, Police brutality, Policing, Racism, Section, Violence | Tagged police accountability, police brutality, police review boards, racism, Urbana police | Comments Off

Code Blue: Suffering through DWB in Rantoul

Posted on August 2023 by Kevin Williams

This essay, submitted to the Rantoul Press in 2009, was never published. The author shares it now to give context to community concerns with policing in Rantoul in the wake of recent police shootings of young Black men.

“You were put here to protect us, but who protects us from you? Every time you say ‘that’s illegal,’ doesn’t mean that it’s true.” (Boogie Down Productions, 1989)

When I was a teenager those were just words to a song. As an adult, they’ve become a motto. I have been DWB (driving while Black) for 20 years now and I’ve learned there are special Rules of the Road for those who suffer with DWB. Continue reading →

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Posted in African Americans, African Americans, Champaign County, Justice, Police, police accountability, Police Brutality, Police brutality, Policing, Racism, Section, Voices | Tagged African Americans, Driving While Black, local community, police harassment, policing | Comments Off

Community of Urbana-Champaign Cooperative Housing to Reduce the Post-Pandemic Youth Housing Divide

Posted on August 2023 by Marilena Prisco

Harvest House on West Washington Street in Urbana, an early COUCH house. Photo courtesy of COUCH

Housing cooperatives have a long history in the US. In university towns like C-U, those laboratories of young people assume new importance in the post-pandemic city. Escaping the logic of a typical landlord-tenant agreement, members self-manage and maintain the houses in which they live. The Community of Urbana-Champaign Cooperative Housing (COUCH) was constituted at the end of the 1990s through the efforts of a group of current and former university students. Fast-forward to 2019: COUCH has evolved to consist of three houses and 37 members. The total number of members that have at one point passed through COUCH since its foundation exceeds five hundred. For organizations like COUCH, the pandemic meant two years of crisis and deep transformation. In 2023, the first year in which the co-op has reverted almost to its pre-pandemic state by reducing the vacancy rate that characterized the previous two years, it is a good moment to reflect on the state of the group and to look at the larger role of youth housing co-ops in the US. Continue reading →

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Posted in Community, Cooperative, Homelessness, Housing, Students, Voices, Youth Services | Tagged community, cooperatives, homelessness, housing, housing crisis, student housing, youth housing divide | Comments Off

The Kingfisher is Flying to Illinois

Posted on August 2023 by The Kingfisher Task Force

2023 painting by Kingfisher team member Olivia Jean Merrell. Photo by Kingfisher Task Force, used with permission

In 2007 the UIUC Board of Trustees acknowledged the opposition of faculty, student organizations, and NCAA guidelines prohibiting the use of race-based mascots in intercollegiate athletics, and voted to eliminate “Chief Illiniwek” as the campus mascot. Tired of waiting for leadership on the issue, some students have moved ahead. You can read about this history in a May 2019 Public i article by Stephen Kaufman.

It’s hard going 16 years without an official mascot. To most people, mascots might not be a big deal, but for us at Illinois, how our university is represented is an extension of how we represent ourselves. That’s why, tired of waiting, we’ve decided to spend our time building one of our own. Our mascot is the Kingfisher, a distinctive orange and blue bird found in Illinois, with a wingspan of nearly two feet and nests that are lined with the bones of its prey. We, a group of dedicated students, faculty, and alumni, have been working diligently these past few years to make this mascot the icon it’s becoming, and for those who may not know of our work, we’d like to update you about all we’ve accomplished. Continue reading →

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Posted in Section, Students, University of Illinois, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, Voices | Tagged campus activism, mascot, UIUC | Comments Off

Another View of the Ukraine War

Posted on August 2023 by Al Kagan

The expansion of NATO in Europe since its founding in 1949. Creative Commons license CC BY-SA 3.0

Readers will note that the Public i has recently published three articles about the Ukraine War. However, there are still more issues not yet fully addressed.

“When two elephants fight it is the grass that gets trampled.” Swahili proverb

The New Cold War

Although the Ukraine War is certainly about the self-determination of the Ukrainian people, it is more than that, actually much more than that. On a geopolitical level, it is, after a brief pause, fundamentally a continuation of the Cold War that lasted from just after World War II until the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991. Russia and the former Soviet republics that are now independent countries were in a state of confusion and rebuilding for some years, but Russia has substantially stabilized, most of the East European countries formerly allied with the Soviet Union have been incorporated into the eastward expansion of NATO and the European Union, and a few of the border states formerly within the Soviet Union are in a state of contestation and flux. We should ask the question: why has Russia invaded or supported rebellions in small breakaway slices of territories in the countries of Georgia (Abkhazia and South Ossetia), Azerbaijan (Nagorno-Karabakh), and Moldova (Transnistria), as well as Ukraine (Donetsk and Luhansk)? One relevant answer is that these are buffer zones between Russia and the rest of NATO and European Union countries. Russia is protecting its borders, just as the US continues to do under the infamous Monroe Doctrine. It is relevant that NATO has been talking for years about eventually including Ukraine and Georgia in that alliance. (The question of the Russian annexation of Crimea is more complicated, especially concerning its fossil fuel resources and large number of Russian residents.) Continue reading →

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Posted in Afghanistan, Corporate media, Eastern Europe, Foreign Policy, Imperialism, International, International, Latin America, Nuclear War, Peace movement, Section, Ukraine, War | Tagged Monroe Doctrine, NATO, nuclear threat, peace, Russia, Ukraine, war | Comments Off

For Whom the Bell Tolls

Posted on August 2023 by Pat Simpson

For whom does the bell toll? These days it tolls for our children, gunned down in our streets and schools because of gun violence. And as if this were not enough, there are the child laborers among us and the rollback of protections proposed by atavistic lawmakers. Child labor is not a thing of the past and it is on the rise.

Know Their Names

Just in late June and July of this year, three boys died while working on the job in violation of state and federal law. Duvan Thomas Perez, 16, died after being caught by a conveyor belt while cleaning machinery in a poultry processing plant. Michael Schuls, 16, died after being trapped under machinery at a logging company. Pinned between a trailer rig and its trailer, Will Hampton, also 16, died while working at a landfill. Continue reading →

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Posted in children, labor, Labor/Economics, Section, union soldarity, Worker Health and Safety | Tagged child labor, labor protections, solidarity, Whistleblowers, workers' health and safety, workers' rights | Comments Off

August/September Issue Back Cover

Posted on August 2023 by Public i

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Summer Issue Front Cover

Posted on July 2023 by Public i

FAREWELL TO DANIEL ELLSBERG

Daniel Ellsberg on March 19, 2011, speaking at a rally near the White House to end the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, and other potential fronts, such as Libya. (Photo courtesy of Ben Schuman/Flickr, CC BY-SA 2.0)]

Ellsberg and co-defendant Anthony Russo

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US/NATO Proxy War in Ukraine: Continuity in US Foreign Policy

Posted on July 2023 by Paul Mueth

President Jimmy Carter’s adviser “Zbigy” Brzeziński (right) defended the decision to provoke the Russians into invading Afghanistan, despite the cost to the Afghan people

The war in Ukraine is barbarous and awful beyond comprehension. The formula in the US media that the attack was unjustified is true, but its frequent corollary, that it was completely unprovoked, is not. This is Noam Chomsky’s and Daniel Ellsberg’s assessment, but is unheard in US media, as usual. Jeffrey Sachs on Democracy Now! pointed out that the New York Times has used the word “unprovoked” regarding this invasion 26 times in its editorials, its opinion columns, and its invited guest op-eds.

The Eisenhower Media Project (EMP)’s May 16 full-page ad in the Times called for the US to be an agent for peace in the world, and suggested that the expansion of NATO over the last few decades was indeed a factor in the escalation of the violent impasse into a full onslaught in Ukraine. The EMP was consequently attacked for echoing Putin’s talking points. The expansion of NATO has been consistent US policy from the neoconservative Republican George W. Bush administration up to the liberal Democratic Joe Biden administration today. The neoconservative Project for a New American Century (PNAC), established in 1997 as a US foreign policy think tank, was a key influence on the Bush administration, specifically in support for the US attack on Iraq. The persistent presence of Victoria Nuland in the State Department—advised by her husband Robert K. Kagan, cofounder of PNAC—is the supreme example of the continuity of neocon influence. For the PNAC, nothing but complete US dominance in the world is acceptable. Any competitor of any kind must be dealt with in terms that ignore blowback and the devastating consequences for people throughout the world. Continue reading →

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Posted in Afghanistan, Foreign Policy, Imperialism, International, International, Ukraine, War | Tagged imperialism, NATO, Russia, Ukraine, US foreign policy, war | Comments Off

Frozen Conflicts, Flashmob Militants, and the End of the Gunpowder State

Posted on July 2023 by Janice Jayes

This 2016 effort by Bellingcat is one of many to try and make sense of the hundreds of militias operating in Syria during the past decade

Syria, Libya, Yemen . . . and now Sudan. Sudan has the unhappy potential to become the next of the intractable conflicts that have unfolded over the past decade. These multisided struggles involving a cocktail of militaries, militias, and mercenaries drag on year after year, producing destabilizing waves of refugees, flourishing criminal cohorts, and a plague of outside meddling. Explanations abound: neglect from the outside world, interference by the outside world, weak states, overpowered states, a need for military training, an excess of military training, and the perennial favorite of West-centric analysts: the historic legacy of . . . something. It doesn’t matter what is demonized: culture, religion, colonialism, or some other trait—the key is that chaos is attributed to vestiges of an undead past.

But what if the foreign policy imagination has been looking at these wars the wrong way? What if these wars can tell us more about the future than the past? Transformations emerge at the margins of systems, but are seldom recognized by those invested in existing paradigms. 19th-century leaders in Vienna, for example, dismissed nationalist movements as delusional, yet the nation-state replaced empire as the political norm within a few decades. Continue reading →

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Posted in Africa, Foreign Policy, International, International, Middle East, Section, Violence, War | Tagged foreign policy, Middle East, Sudan, the state, violence, war, warlords | Comments Off

Daniel Ellsberg: “The Most Dangerous Man in America” and Heroic Whistleblower

Posted on July 2023 by Al Kagan

Ellsberg with Howard Zinn (left) and Noam Chomsky (right) at 1971 May Day anti-war protest. Courtesy of University of Massachusetts Archives

“Wouldn’t you go to prison to help end this war?” Daniel Ellsberg, 1971

“I was PFC Manning.” Daniel Ellsberg, 2011

“The current risk of nuclear war, over Ukraine, is as great as the world has ever seen.” Daniel Ellsberg, 2023

Daniel Ellsberg recently made public his terminal cancer diagnosis. [Ellsberg died on June 16—eds.] It is an appropriate time to look back on his heroic accomplishments. Continue reading →

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Posted in Foreign Policy, Free Speech, Imperialism, Peace movement, Vietnam War, War | Tagged activism, imperialism, In Memoriam, peace movement, Vietnam War, Whistleblowers | Comments Off

Anti-Abortion Centers Mislead People at Their Most Vulnerable

Posted on July 2023 by Julie Laut and Celia Barbieri

Reproductive justice: the human right to maintain personal bodily autonomy, have children, not have children, and parent the children we have in safe and sustainable communities.

This past January, on the 50th anniversary of the Roe v. Wade decision, SisterSong Women of Color Reproductive Justice Collective convened a summit to envision new futures for reproductive justice. The original framework, established in 1994 by Black women including SisterSong’s co-founder Loretta Ross, insisted that the fight for reproductive rights be combined with human rights and social justice activism. The right to an abortion, for example, while foundational, does not address the broader circumstances under which a person chooses to keep or end a pregnancy. Thirty years after first calling for reproductive justice, the 2023 summit reaffirmed their commitment while envisioning “a future rooted in human dignity and worth, bodily autonomy, joy, love, and rest.” Continue reading →

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Posted in abortion rights, Feminism, Healthcare, Reproductive Justice, Section, Voices, Women, Women, wonen's rights, Youth | Tagged abortion rights, anti-abortion, feminism, reproductive justice, women's rights | Comments Off

Profiting Across the Autism Spectrum

Posted on July 2023 by Seth Lerner

Demand for ABA practioners, including Board Certified Behavior Analysts, soared after 2014; more than 70 percent work with the autistic. From thetreetop.com/statistics/aba-therapist-demographics

Driving through north Champaign last winter I noticed a new business in a strip mall near Denny’s. At first, I assumed it was some sort of sports store due to the all-caps signage: “TOTAL SPECTRUM.” But this was not a purveyor of football helmets and jockstraps, but one of many licensed providers of Applied Behavior Analysis (ABA), the only state-approved “treatment” for those on the autism spectrum. As it turns out, jockstraps may be more strictly regulated than this rapidly expanding industry built upon the needs of vulnerable clients. My brief employment as an ABA “clinician” convinced me that more transparency is needed both on this industry and the therapy it markets.

Autism Speaks and the ABA Endorsement

Parents often hear about ABA through the well-known advocacy organization Autism Speaks. Their website explains ABA almost as a form of positive reinforcement: “when a behavior is followed by something that is valued (a reward), a person is more likely to repeat that behavior.” ABA proponents claim their Pavlovian approach is the only way for an autistic person to make “progress” in socialization, life skills (tying shoes, brushing teeth, etc), or academics. Continue reading →

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Posted in Corporations, health care, Healthcare, Mental Health, Section | Tagged autism, for-profit health care, health care, mental health | Comments Off

Diesel Therapy

Posted on July 2023 by Shamar Betts

US Marshals loading prisoners for transport. From usmarshals.gov/what-we-do/prisoners/transportation

The odyssey of Urbana resident Shamar Betts continues. Betts was arrested for authoring a Facebook post at age 19 in the wake of the George Floyd murder in 2020. He was sentenced to four years in federal prison and charged with repaying nearly two million dollars for damage committed by many in C-U during this emotional time. His accounts of his prison experiences have been slightly edited for space. You can read more here, and find previous Public i articles on the Betts case here. Diesel therapy is slang for a form of punishment in which prisoners are shackled and transported for days or weeks.

I’m not sure what I expected jail to be like, but I know it wasn’t this. My first two months confined were some of the worst days of my life. I spent 21 days in Madison County, Mississippi, where I was placed alone in a unit designed for 14 inmates. The guard who booked me in put my picture on the door with a sign that read “Warning! Accompany inmate with 2 guards and 2 sets.” Continue reading →

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Posted in African American, African Americans, BLM, incarceration, Justice, Prisoners, Section, Voices, Voices of Color | Tagged African Americans, Black Lives Matter, incarceration, US Marshals | Comments Off

UIUC GEO Wins a Progressive Contract

Posted on July 2023 by Essam A. B. Elkorghli

GEO rally on the quad before the December 1, 2022 bargaining session

Graduate workers across the US have been hard-hit by the skyrocketing inflation induced by federal mismanagement of monetary policy that is being felt by all too many working-class people. The laughable wage increases that were “handed” to many low-paid workers do not adjust to inflation, leading many to have to draw from the little savings they have. All of this is happening as the University of Illinois’s president received a $40,000 bonus and the Executive Director of Labor and Employee Relations was awarded a $5,000 bonus. To add salt to the wound, labor unions since 2018 have been bargaining with the Supreme Court’s anti-labor ruling in Janus v. AFSCME—a decision that has hindered unions from collecting union dues from non-members (called “fair-share dues,” since negotiated contracts cover members and non-members alike). As a result, union membership across the US has dwindled. UIUC Graduate workers bargained for a whole year to win a contract that current and future graduate students will benefit from.

The UIUC Graduate Employees’ Organization (GEO) is a democratically run labor union that represents graduates who work as teaching and graduate assistants. The bargaining team (BT) was elected by GEO members in 2022, and they immediately met for extended hours to draft a new contract, since the extant contract was due to expire that August. Five months prior to that date, the administration and the BT had their first bargaining session, where the GEO offered a comprehensive proposal. To the GEO’s dismay, the next five months saw the administration come unprepared to the bargaining sessions, with no counterproposal and instead only endless unfocused and irrelevant questions. The GEO’s proposal included an increase in wages exceeding inflation; year-round health care (graduate workers are covered for the duration of their employment, and many do not have summer appointments, which means no health insurance in the summer); modifications to understandings of discrimination; extended leaves and holidays; and adjustments to the grievance procedure. Continue reading →

Posted in labor, Labor/Economics, Public Universities, Section, Students, union soldarity, University of Illinois, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, Voices | Tagged bargaining, campus labor, Campus organizing, GEO, UIUC, union solidarity, unions | Comments Off

Carbon Capture, Illinois’ Biggest Coal Fired Power Plant, and the Prairie Research Institute

Posted on July 2023 by Andrew Rehn

How a carbon capture system works—and its dangers

Carbon capture has become the divisive hot topic in Illinois climate policy over the last year. The Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) included substantial subsidies for carbon capture that have created an industry gold rush looking to build and operate carbon capture systems (CCSs), carbon pipelines, and carbon sequestration. One such project proposes to put carbon capture on Illinois’s largest coal-fired power plant. It is being led by UIUC’s Prairie Research Institute (PRI), but there are reasons to be skeptical of the project.

Carbon capture and storage is the process of isolating carbon dioxide (CO₂) either at a source (power plant or factory) or directly from the air. Then the captured CO₂ is transported, often through a pipeline, and stored, usually in underground geological formations such as saline reservoirs or depleted oil reservoirs. Continue reading →

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Posted in Climate crisis, Environment, Environment, IL, Section | Tagged carbon capture, climate change, energy, environment, pollution | Comments Off