How The Issue of Representation Impacts Central Illinois

Posted on 12/31/2022 by Marcus Pruitt

The slow police response to the 2021 disappearance and later identification of ISU graduate student Jelani Day contrasted with high-profile investigations of missing white individuals

The issue of unequal representation of cultures has plagued the nation since its birth, often resulting in the perversion of people’s natural rights. In central Illinois, it extends that perversion through aggressive discrimination.

Although minorities have seen more representation on screen, their everyday lived experiences haven’t. Instead, stereotypical mirrors of minorities are represented by America’s dominating culture. This amplifies the cultural disconnect between races, which creates an environment of division and misrepresentation. Continue reading →

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Sola Gratia Farm Grows Good in CU

Posted on 12/31/2022 by Fiona Munro

The author selling Sola Gratia produce at the farmer’s market

Here in Central Illinois, we’re surrounded by prime farmland—miles and miles of crops, primarily corn and soy, growing on some of the most fertile soil in the world. And yet, approximately one in seven adults and one in five children in our community does not know where their next meal is going to come from. This disparity is what the founders of Sola Gratia Farm–visionary members of St. Matthew Lutheran Church and Faith in Place—were responding to when they created this farm in 2012. Continue reading →

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Music Curio: Improvisers Exchange Sheds Sonic Shreds

Posted on 12/31/2022 by Sarah Rose Stiles

Jason Finkelman and Saori Kataoka go at it at an Improvisers Exchange performance

Improvisers Exchange exudes experimental sounds at the Rose Bowl Tavern every first Monday of the month from 5:30 to 7:30 pm. Organized and directed by Jason Finkelman, Improvisers Exchange is a fluctuating eclectic ensemble of musicians, all of whom share a buzz for creative communal genesis of sound experiments, more specifically “omni-idiomatic improvisation.” Finkelman thought up this term to denote an ideal approach welcoming all styles, simultaneously integrating any mixture of styles and instruments into a single improv-jam, where sound-comrades may match, blend, or contrast, cultivating a kind of calico cosmos. With participation open to the community, Finkelman also runs the ensemble as a workshop at U of I during school months, and has featured special guests such as Mai Sugimoto, David Rosenboom, and Tatsuya Nakatani. I’ll take you on a musical tour of a few past events. It may inspire you to seek out their future happenings. Continue reading →

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The Assault on the Pretrial Fairness Act

Posted on 11/04/2022 by Carol Skalnik Leff

Local Pretrial Fairness Act activists and advocates demonstrate at Illinois Terminal in Champaign, outside of State Senator Scott Bennett’s office, on October 3, 2022. Photo courtesy of Karen Medina

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 of advocates for criminal justice reform rather than right-wing scaremongers who are shrilly shouting “Purge.” [The reference is to the horror media franchise, in which all crimes are allowed for a short period annually.] As if the end of cash bail meant that everyone would be automatically released to the streets. . . . Continue reading →

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Take Action to Keep Champaign County from Losing Another Nursing Home!

Posted on 11/04/2022 by Champaign Country Health Care Consumers

University Rehabilitation Center, the former county nursing home. Photo courtesy of Karen Medina

Champaign County residents are about to lose another nursing home. But we can stop this from happening, if we work together!

The Rothners, who are the current owners of the former Champaign County Nursing Home, which they bought in 2018, now want permission from the Champaign County Board to sell the nursing home and have it become something other than a nursing home.

This would mean that the Champaign County community would lose another approximately 220 skilled-nursing facility beds. Continue reading →

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The Inflation Reduction Act: Historic Climate Legislation with a Lifeline to Fossil Fuels

Posted on 11/04/2022 by Lan and Pam Richart

With the passage of the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) in August, many environmental advocates and others concerned about rapidly rising global temperatures breathed a collective sigh of relief. The US finally is taking historic action to address the climate crisis. The IRA is the largest-ever US investment in tackling climate change. Those who crafted the bill say its $370 billion price tag will allow the US to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by nearly 40 percent by 2030.

But among the welcomed parts of the bill—such as expanding renewable energy, supporting energy efficiency, and funding conservation stewardship—there lies a Trojan horse. Billions of dollars are now available to the fossil fuel industry for carbon capture and sequestration, disguised as a fundamental pillar of our nation’s carbon emission reduction plan. The net effect of this giveaway will be a prolonged reliance on fossil fuels and a diversion of much-needed funding away from the more effective and efficient paths of renewable energy. Continue reading →

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Drag Shows in Champaign-Urbana: Interview with Amy Myers

Posted on 11/04/2022 by Karen Medina

Amy Myers onstage

“Drag is an art. It is a culture.”

As a cis, straight woman, I did not fully understand the cultural importance of drag shows until 2019, when I was managing a community center that has a wonderful zine collection and venue space. 2019 was the 50th anniversary of the Stonewall Uprising; Krannert Center hosted Sasha Velour’s “Smoke & Mirrors,” and with Sasha came books and zines. The community center was rented out for Gay Ball on the date of the anniversary . . . and the Urbana police were stopping people as they came to the ball. That was the year that I learned why queens had to be fierce, strong, and fabulous. Continue reading →

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In Guatemala, Ethnic Cleansing Moves from the Village to the Courtroom

Posted on 11/04/2022 by Janice Jayes

Guatemalan police units assist with a land eviction

If you want to see what ethnic cleansing looks like in the 21st century, take a trip to Guatemala. Don’t just stay at the charming eco-lodge by the lake under the volcanoes, however, because you might fly home with a false idea of Guatemalan progress. To understand the true cost of your vacation you have to see the original residents the police drove off the land so investors could acquire that scenic view; the nearby farms appropriated by agro-industries responding to foreign, not local, markets; and the courtroom where Indigenous political leaders are rendered invisible in disputes with multinational investors. Those helpful waiters you are tipping? They might have been driven out of their ancestral villages at night by hired thugs from the nearby mine pumping toxic runoff into their water, their family scattered to places as distant as Champaign-Urbana, Illinois in the effort to find the money to keep the next generation alive. This ethnic cleansing is not grotesquely bloody in the way that usually captures international attention, but the results are just the same: a landscape cleared of the culture, institutions, and bodies inconvenient for the more powerful. Continue reading →

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Two Academic Freedom Cases at the U of I Revisited

Posted on 11/04/2022 by Belden Fields

The CCA, originally called White Citizens Councils, was a white segregationist/supremacist organization

Late last year, the University of Illinois Press published Dangerous Ideas on Campus by Matthew Ehrlich. It is an excellent book on two professors at the U of I, one of whom was fired, while the other was not. The issue involved both freedom of speech generally and academic freedom that professors—and their professional organization, the American Association of University Professors (AAUP)—claim is theirs. 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 social and economic change and a serious threat to democracy in the United States, but we may be losing track of a more encouraging countertrend (depending a bit on one’s particular politics). We are living though a socialist upsurge which continues to grow. In fact, it is likely that there is not only a connection between the two phenomena, but also that the health of American democracy depends on the development of a vigorous left-wing movement that is willing and able to confront the upsurge from the Right. Continue reading →

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Links

Posted on 11/04/2022 by Thomas Stromblad

The Public i is partnering with the Education Justice Project (EJP) to share writing completed by incarcerated students at the Danville Correctional Center. The EJP is a comprehensive college-in-prison program based at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign. Through its educational programming EJP enriches the lives of its students, their families, and the communities to which they return.

Chaos stills, only the eerie sound of silence remains. The clapping of cheap sneakers colliding with the linoleum floor announces the start of a race, a race to the link to a life left behind. The urge to sprint is overpowering. Consideration for others is lost. Jostling bodies clamor together, vying to be first. Silver boxes shine, beacons in the darkness, illuminating hope and giving illusions of relevancy. Hieroglyphic symbols have shaken the hands of more people than any president. Grasping souls look to hold onto a world otherwise lost. The magical device is an escape. Continue reading →

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Abortion Rights: A Manifesto

Posted on 09/18/2022 by Mary Lee Sargent

Do Fear the Reaper. An OtherWords cartoon by Khalil Bendib

Women, girls, and all people who can become pregnant need abortions. Before abortion was legalized in the US, almost a million women a year sought illegal abortions. According to the Centers for Disease Control tens of millions of women, girls, and other persons have had abortions since Roe v. Wade legalized them in 1973—one in four women. The peak years for legal abortions (1.5 million annually) were 1975 to 2006, before a cascade of state restrictions made this medical procedure more and more difficult to get.

What I have to say about the US Supreme Court decision (Dobbs v/ Jackson Women’s Health Organization) ending women’s Constitutional right to an abortion by allowing states to prohibit and criminalize it will seem radical to some and reactionary to others. Radical because it includes a critique of the way heterosexual sex is performed and fetishized in patriarchal societies. Reactionary because it includes a critique of the way heterosexual sex is performed and fetishized in patriarchal societies. The act that causes pregnancy is rarely subjected to critical scrutiny. Continue reading →

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Donald Trump v. Shamar Betts

Posted on 09/18/2022 by Shamar Betts

Shamar Betts is currently serving his four-year sentence in USP Hazelton, a high security federal prison in West Virginia

I, Shamar Betts, incited a riot through a Facebook post encouraging my people to join alongside the rest of the world in an attempt to express our feelings on the tragic death of George Floyd in May of 2020. Although no one was harmed, the results of my uproar led to penalties of four years in Federal prison, three years of supervised release, and a restitution fine of $1,686,170.30 to be paid to the government for merchandise stolen and damages that occurred during the uprising.

Eight months later, on January 6, 2021, Donald Trump incited an insurrection by calling supporters to a rally and publicly addressing his frustration after losing the Presidential election to Joe Biden, which eventually led to hundreds of people bombarding and storming our nation’s Capitol. The outcome of this devious revenge tactic ended with five deaths, 140 police officers injured, and at least $1.5 million worth of damages to one of America’s most treasured landmarks. Continue reading →

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A Time of Monsters: The New Nadir and the Crisis of the Black Worker

Posted on 09/18/2022 by Gus Wood

Photo by pexel

We currently reside in what Italian Marxist Antonio Gramsci called “A Time of Monsters.” Exacerbated by the catastrophic COVID-19 pandemic, the Black working classes continue to struggle under what Black Studies scholar Sundiata Cha-Jua has dubbed “the New Nadir.” For this New Nadir, the lowest point in the socioeconomic conditions for African Americans, the transformation to financialized global racial capitalism has occurred through three interlocking processes: globalization of production and markets that have restructured how we work; federal, state, and local neoliberal social policies; and financialization. This combination amounts to an anti-Black-working-class agenda, reinforced through the underemployment of Black workers—deindustrialization and the dominance of service sector, unskilled, unstable, low-wage labor—racialized mass incarceration, a resurgence in state terrorism and private racial hate crimes, new disenfranchisement, political fragmentation via gentrification, and social humiliation. As a result, the dwindling material resources make current attempts at Black grassroots social movements relatively ineffective. With little social-movement progress, Blacks experience a drastic devolution in our roles in the political economy, social status, and cultural representation. Continue reading →

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Juneteenth Freedom Day

Posted on 09/18/2022 by Aaron Ammons

Image by Radio FREE Crockett

Juneteenth is the oldest nationally celebrated commemoration of the ending of slavery in the United States. Dating back to 1865, it was on June 19 that the Union soldiers, led by Major General Gordon Granger, landed at Galveston, Texas with news that the war had ended and enslaved Africans were now free. The news of emancipation took two and a half years after President Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation—which had become official January 1, 1863. The Emancipation Proclamation had little impact on Texans due to the minimal number of Union troops to enforce the new Executive Order. However, with the surrender of General Lee in April of 1865, and the arrival of General Granger’s regiment, the forces were finally strong enough to influence and overcome the resistance.

Later attempts to explain this two-and-a-half-year delay in receipt of this important news have yielded several versions that have been handed down through the years. Often told is the story of a messenger who was murdered on his way to Texas with the news of freedom. Another is that the news was deliberately withheld by enslavers to maintain the labor force on the plantations. And still another is that federal troops waited for the slave owners to reap the benefits of one last cotton harvest before going to Texas to enforce the Emancipation Proclamation. All . . . or none of these versions could be true. Certainly, for some, President Lincoln’s authority over the rebellious states was in question. Whatever the reasons, conditions in Texas remained status quo well beyond what was statutory. 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

Activists have kept the issue of housing discrimination alive at council meetings

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 federal policy. Consequently, formerly incarcerated people have not and do not have equal housing opportunities, and this increases the risk of recidivism. The housing inequity’s impact on recidivism was specifically acknowledged by At-Large City Councilmember Matthew Gladney on June 25, 2019:

“Now, I’m not going to sit here and pretend that every person who serves their sentence and gets out of prison is completely reformed and is never going to reoffend. I’m not pollyanna. But I also don’t think that we should erect roadblocks to their potential ability to reform. I think that, you know, there’s been studies on this, being homeless or unstably housed or living in a high-crime neighborhood all heighten someone’s risk of reoffending.” Continue reading →

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West Virginia v. EPA: SCOTUS Decision Not Necessarily a Blow to Climate Action

Posted on 09/18/2022 by Eric Freyfogle

Supreme Court rulings, once announced, sometimes take on curious lives. Understood in one way when released, they can, as precedent, shape the law in other, unexpected ways. The Supreme Court’s opinion in West Virginia v. US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), handed down on June 30, 2022, might well become one of those rulings. Or it might not.

West Virginia v. EPA considered the legality of the 2015 Clean Power Plan, an Obama-era effort to curtail carbon emissions by coal-fired power plants. The plan’s legality turned on whether Congress had given the EPA sufficient legal power to adopt the plan’s unusual regulatory features. Questions from the justices at oral argument suggested the plan would not withstand scrutiny. In some way, court-watchers predicted, the court would conclude that the EPA had exceeded its delegated powers. But what reasoning would it employ? Continue reading →

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The Future of Actual Malice

Posted on 09/18/2022 by John Nerone

The Supreme Court building, Washington, DC

Justice Clarence Thomas poked the media industry this past June when he dissented from the Supreme Court decision not to hear an appeal of a libel case. The plaintiff, Coral Ridge Ministries, had sought a review of a lower-court decision turning down its suit against the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC). Justice Thomas’s dissent repeated a point he’s made for years: it’s time to overturn New York Times v. Sullivan, the decision that established the “actual malice” standard for defamation of “public figures.”

Coral Ridge Ministries is an evangelical organization. It sued SPLC because that venerable civil rights organization had put it on a list of “hate groups,” pointing to its anti-LGBT positions. Coral Ridge claims that it is not a hate group, that its positions are plainly “biblical,” and that SPLC’s listing harmed it because it made it ineligible to participate in the AmazonSmile program, in which buyers can designate a charity that Amazon will make a donation to. Continue reading →

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Kathryn J. Oberdeck (January 18, 1958–June 8, 2022)

Posted on 09/18/2022 by Jim Barrett

Kathy Oberdeck: scholar, teacher, activist

Kathy was a passionate fighter against all forms of inequality. She combined an unwavering commitment to the highest intellectual standards with a selfless dedication to community and family. She was a prolific historian of poor and working-class people, particularly their cultural lives. Kathy made it clear that the stage, the street, the church pew, and the trades council were all public spaces where ordinary people both made culture and contested it.

As her friend and colleague Antoinette Burton noted, Kathy “always showed up” when there was social justice work to be done. Her commitment to social justice was based in both her religious and her political commitments. Friends teased her about being Champaign-Urbana’s only Lutheran Marxist. Impatient with any type of pretense, she turned her keen wit on any sign of arrogance. Her activism and scholarship brought her legions of friends here in C-U and throughout the world. We all remember her as a loving and devoted mother to daughters Fiona and Cara, and to her husband William Munro, a political science professor and scholar of southern Africa. Continue reading →

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Juneteenth 2022 at Randolph Street Garden

Posted on 09/18/2022 by Public i

Ruiz-Divas (left) and Jones (right) harvesting plants for natural dyes

Seitu Ken Jones, a multidisciplinary artist who believes in the power of public art to link the past and present, spent 2020–21 as a visiting artist at the UIUC Center for Advanced Study. He returned this past June to work with Reverend Dawn Blackman and artist Victor Alberto Ruiz-Divas at the Randolph Street Community Garden. They worked with youth on summer projects, which included producing dye from local plants and designing art from and for the garden. The final project, “Ancestral Roll Call” was completed as part of the Randolph Gardens Juneteenth observation. Photos courtesy of Sharon Irish. Continue reading →

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