Category Archives: Politics

The Democrats’ Debacle: The Path Forward for the Left

Posted on 12/28/2024 by Grant Chassy

  Buckle up—it’s happening again. Donald Trump will be president of the United States on January 20, 2025. The next four years will be a constant struggle, as we fight to retain the meager rights and supports we currently possess … Continue reading →

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Local Organizers Share Winning Strategies with Weary Residents

Posted on 12/28/2024 by Elizabeth Sotiropoulos

As the Champaign-Urbana community considers how we’ll navigate a second Trump presidency, we can learn from the organizing that led to local ballot victories this past November. The massive effort that made these ballot wins possible holds part of the … Continue reading →

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Safer For Who?

Posted on 12/26/2024 by Dua Aldasouqi

For many community members, Tuesday night means Champaign City Council (CCC) night. The council chambers are the spot to be! Dozens of diverse community members show up to ask our elected officials to endorse a resolution that includes 1) a … Continue reading →

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The Pretrial Fairness Act at One Year: Success but Lots More to Do

Posted on 12/26/2024 by James Kilgore

In September of 2023 a mysterious journalistic force bombarded our county with hysterical pseudo-newspapers under the banner Chambana News. Though they took the form of an advertising sheet from Walmart or Menard’s, they were actually a classic example of disinformation, … Continue reading →

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The Poor People’s Campaign Continues

Posted on 07/29/2024 by Paul Mueth

The Poor People’s Campaign is a grassroots movement that began in the 1960s and continues to this day, aiming to address issues of poverty, inequality, and social justice in the United States. The campaign was initially launched by Rev. Dr. … Continue reading →

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City Business is Whatever the Community Cares About

Posted on 05/03/2024 by Dua Aldasouqi

Americans have been in the streets since October 8 demanding an end to the US-backed Israeli attack on Gaza. They’re at sporting events and camping out in front of top politicians’ homes. They were at tree-lighting and caroling events over the … Continue reading →

 1,260 total views,  12 views today

Posted in Gaza, Israel/Palestine, Justice, Middle East, Palestinians, Politics, Section, Voices, War | Tagged , , , , , , | Comments Off on City Business is Whatever the Community Cares About

Why I Called Herschel Walker Coonish: The Right of Black People to Call Out their Traitors

Posted on 12/31/2022 by Sundiata Keita Cha-Jua

Editors’ Note: This article has been held until after the Georgia runoff election so there would be no suggestion of a political endorsement. Since Donald Trump’s incursion into US politics in 2015, deprecation and intimidation have become pervasive. Trump and … Continue reading →

 1,271 total views

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The Assault on the Pretrial Fairness Act

Posted on 11/04/2022 by Carol Skalnik Leff

Last month, News-Gazette columnist Jim Dey headlined “hysteria” over the provisions of the 2021 Illinois Pretrial Fairness Act (PFA), which will go into effect in January, including the end to cash bail. Predictably, but illogically, Dey located the hysteria on the side … Continue reading →

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The Move toward Socialism in the United States

Posted on 11/04/2022 by Jim Barrett

People on the Left are understandably preoccupied with the growing strength of fascism, white supremacist and antisemitic rhetoric and violence, and the growth of extreme right-wing groups. There is no doubt that these developments represent an obstacle to badly needed … Continue reading →

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Champaign Can End its Housing Discrimination

Posted on 09/18/2022 by Housing Working Group of the Champaign-Urbana Democratic Soc

As previously reported in the Public i, housing discrimination in Champaign is a chronic issue. Following on the “tough on crime era,” since 1994 Champaign has allowed landlords to reject tenant lease applications based on their conviction record—in excess of … Continue reading →

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The WTO Vaccination Charade

Posted on 09/21/2021 by Paul Mueth

It’s not an accident that the World Trade Organization (WTO) is the site for the battle over the pandemic and the health of the world. Many critics of corporate control of international trade, and of most of everyday life, have … Continue reading →

 1,686 total views

Posted in Big Pharma, COVID-19, Foreign Policy, International, pandemic, Politics, Public Health, World-wide death and suffering | Comments Off on The WTO Vaccination Charade

$0 Campaign Against Utility Shutoffs Wins $1.48 Billion in Relief

Posted on 05/26/2021 by Allan Axelrod

While there are large movements to cancel rents and mortgages across the country, such as Rent Strike 2020 and the COVID-19 + Homes Guarantee demands, there are comparably smaller movements to protect the integrity of those demands. As The Intercept, … Continue reading →

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Turn Off the Spigot: Money vs. Med4All

Posted on 02/08/2021 by Pat Simpson

The COVID pandemic has exposed the flaws in the US health care system as never before, reinforcing longstanding arguments for creating an expanded Medicare for All system in the country. The Public i has previously published articles (see June, November … Continue reading →

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TRUMP EMBRACES 19th CENTURY ENERGY PLAN WHILE THE REST OF THE WORLD LOOKS AHEAD

Posted on 06/17/2017 by Pam Richart

On June 1, 2017, President Trump made it official: the United States would be withdrawing from the Paris Climate Accord. The 2015 Accord is an agreement among 195 countries to strengthen the global response to the threat of climate change … Continue reading →

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Trump and the Resurgence of Antisemitism

Posted on 01/19/2017 by Michael Rothberg

I composed the following reflections-in-progress in the first week after the election in order to address the sudden prominence of antisemitism in mainstream American politics. Unfortunately, nothing that has happened since then leads me to think that these tentative thoughts … Continue reading →

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#BlackLivesMatter Founder Opal Tometi Visits C-U

Posted on 03/11/2016 by Brian Dolinar
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The Greek Crisis: Beginning of the End for European Unity?

Posted on 07/08/2015 by Richard Esbenshade

Protesters burn an EU flag during an anti-austerity demonstration in Thessaloniki, Greece. Practically since the moment of its victory in the January 25 elections, Greece’s Syriza party has been locked in a struggle with the “troika,” the triumvirate of the … Continue reading →

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“I’m Not Anti-Union”: Governor ALEC and the Hostile Takeover of Illinois (Part 2 of 2)

Posted on 07/08/2015 by Ricky Baldwin

  (Ricky Baldwin is a Senior Field Organizer for  SEIU 73, activist with Jobs With Justice, and occasional contributor to Labor Notes, Z Magazine, and Dollars and Sense.) Part One described multimillionaire Gov. Rauner’s stealth attack on the poor and … Continue reading →

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Groundswell Organizing and Obama’s Executive Action on Immigration

Posted on 01/30/2015 by Aaron Johnson-Ortiz

After President Obama signed his executive action on immigration last November, immigrant activists commended the president for his decision, which might help up to 4 million undocumented immigrants normalize their status, and at the same time emphasized that this action … Continue reading →

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Academic Freedom and the Board of Trustees at the U of I: A Historical Perspective

Posted on 11/13/2014 by Belden Fields

At the panel on academic freedom and free speech across disciplines held in the Beckman Institute on Monday, September 29, one of the panelists, Professor Colleen Murphy, said that the project now must be to make sure that the way in … Continue reading →

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