Friday Forum + Conversation Café
Fall 2025 Series
Please join the University YMCA and Diversity & Social Justice Education for our Fall 2025 Friday Forum + Conversation Café series. We will hear from community leaders tackling our most pressing public concerns through an unwavering pursuit of social justice.
All presentations are open to the public and free on Fridays at 12 PM in Latzer Hall at the University YMCA. Free lunch is provided. Continue reading
The Queers for Palestine float won “Best Themed Float” at
the Champaign-Urbana July 4 parade. Photo by Paul Mueth
In March, community organizers from Champaign-Urbana launched a local campaign to demand an end to Illinois’s investments in corporations supporting Israel’s genocide against the people of Palestine, including Illinois’s direct purchase of Israel Bonds. The local effort joins a statewide campaign, led by organizers in Chicago, that has been demanding divestment for the last year. The campaign for divestment includes a wide variety of people and organizations across the state, representing both Palestinians and allies.
Israel’s atrocities against Palestinians are sustained through US financial and military support. At the federal level, the Biden and Trump administrations have jointly provided Israel over $20 billion in support, violating the Leahy Law, which prohibits arms sales to countries blocking humanitarian aid. At the state level, investments by the Illinois State Board of Investment (ISBI) include stock in companies that are complicit in Israel’s genocide, including Boeing, Caterpillar, and others. These companies provide technologies used to enact state violence, such as the militarized Caterpillar bulldozers used to destroy Palestinian homes and bury civilians alive, and Boeing aircraft used to drop bombs on refugee camps. Continue reading
This article is the first of a two-part analysis of the relation between unions and immigrant workers. In an upcoming issue, the focus will be on campus unions at UIUC and their efforts to protect international students and undocumented workers.
Since the country’s inception, immigrants have been the backbone of free labor in the United States. Until recent decades, organized labor’s relations with immigrant workers have been decidedly mixed. This article offers a brief historical overview of these relations and a more detailed discussion of unions’ current efforts to support immigrants, documented and undocumented, and their communities.
In or Out: The Past Record of Organized Labor’s Attitudes and Treatment of Immigrant Workers
Not surprisingly, a critical component of unions’ past relations with immigrant workers was racism and ethnic prejudice among union leaders and members, but another important component, often intertwined with racism, has been the structure of unions themselves, namely the distinction between craft and industrial unions. Continue reading
This year the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign’s Engineering Open House 2025 was expecting 40,000 visitors April 4 and 5. Designed to showcase the talents and research of students in STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Math) fields, the theme this year was “The Age of Innovation.” In this era of increased government surveillance and record-breaking military budgets, we should be asking ourselves “just what kind of innovation do you mean?”
The links between the university system and the military-industrial complex are well understood. In fact, the list of corporate partners available on the Grainger College of Engineering website includes military aerospace giants like Raytheon and Boeing. No surprise then that the college’s Aerospace Engineering page lists Northrop Grumman as one of the top employers of UIUC graduates. The weekend’s 2025 “Age of Innovation” first-place award went to a project called “Pilot your Drone: Air Traffic Adventureland.” UIUC’s aerospace engineering program ranks number six in the country. Thus it is small wonder that student-led groups like Illini Unmanned Aerial Vehicles bring together students from different fields such as computer, mechanical, and electronics engineering, as well as computer science and finance. It is this link specifically—the one between engineering and computer science as it relates to the military-industrial complex—that has not been as well investigated on campus. Continue reading
With the Trump-era onslaught and so many problematic circumstances to deal with in the power-production and -distribution system, the nuclear-power issue perhaps seems not necessarily top of many people’s and organizations’ concerns. Both at the national and the local level, however, there are reasons to be very disturbed about what is going on in the higher levels of corporations, universities, and governments. Locally the contract between Nano Nuclear and the U of I to build a Micro Modular Reactor (MMR) in the heart of CU requires attention and community engagement.
Corporations have been rushing to build MMRs, primarily to power data farms dedicated to both artificial intelligence and crypto mining. There are many competing design concepts, some of which incorporate molten salts or liquid sodium as an intermediate heat-exchange system. The former is merely highly corrosive; the latter is corrosive and explosive on contact with air or water. The Gates Foundation seems to favor both. However there is no established small-reactor design that has had regulatory scrutiny. Continue reading
The roaming marauders of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), with masked faces, gallivanting around in armored vehicles and unmarked cars, are terrorizing communities across the United States.
Los Angeles, a California city with sanctuary laws meant to protect immigrant communities, is under a military siege: mothers, children, neighbors, and friends disappeared by unnamed, badge-less goons in military uniforms, with Marines and National Guard troops violently suppressing dissent.
ICE and the militant agencies supporting their kidnappings are fit for a dystopian alternative-history novel, not the streets of our country. Continue reading
US bases in the Middle East. Of the nearly 1200 overseas military sites operating in the world, the US has nearly 900 while Iran has one—yet the US accuses Iran of military adventurism. Source: World Beyond War Report, 2025
For decades Iran has been the gremlin in the American global imagination. US officials claim that Iran is the main source of instability in the Middle East, allowing them to dismiss any opposition to US or US allies’ policies as products of Iranian scheming. The US-Israeli attacks on Iran in June, however, marked a dramatic escalation in the long-running US shadow war on Iran. Although the White House proclaimed that “Operation Midnight Hammer” successfully averted a global nuclear crisis, the reality is that the crisis was as invented as the long-standing assertion that Iran is the master agent of disorder across the region. America, not Iran, is the rogue state here.
The June strikes killed hundreds, half of whom were civilians; prompted retaliations against a US base and Israel; and nearly ignited a regional war. They also caused less quantifiable, but equally profound, damage to US and global security. Most pointedly, they make future nuclear crises more likely. Iran can rebuild its reactors and research programs in a matter of months if it chooses to, but we cannot rebuild the trust needed for international cooperation in non-proliferation so easily. Continue reading
US Bases in the Middle East. Source: World Beyond War
For decades Iran has been the gremlin in the American global imagination. US officials claim that Iran is the main source of instability in the Middle East, allowing them to dismiss any opposition to US or US allies’ policies as products of Iranian scheming. The US-Israeli attacks on Iran in June, however, marked a dramatic escalation in the long-running US shadow war on Iran. Although the White House proclaimed that “Operation Midnight Hammer” successfully averted a global nuclear crisis, the reality is that the crisis was as invented as the long-standing assertion that Iran is the master agent of disorder across the region. America, not Iran, is the rogue state in the view of much of the world. The regime change that we are most likely to see as a result of the Israeli-U.S. “war” on Iran is the end to the Western dominated post-WWII global order.
The June strikes were heartless and irresponsible. They killed hundreds, half of whom were civilians; prompted retaliations against a US base and Israel; and nearly ignited a regional war. While it is unclear how much damage they caused within Iran, they caused profound damage to US and global security. Most pointedly, they make future nuclear crises more likely. Iran can rebuild its reactors and research programs in a matter of months if it chooses to, but we cannot rebuild the trust needed for international cooperation in non-proliferation so easily. Continue reading
The June 17 incident (top), and the van (bottom) that the workers were kidnaped from by ICE
This article appeared on the author’s Substack on June 24, 2025. It has been lightly edited for style.
At least eight men were taken by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) in East Urbana in the early morning hours of Tuesday, June 17. My sources in the Latino community have not been able to track down any of them. Likely young men with no families, they appear to have barely left any trace behind. There’s just a photo of a maroon van with long ladders on top. A contractor confirmed they were roofers who had been whisked away by ICE. Another source said they were being driven toward Springfield, which is the direction others have been taken by ICE.
There was a social media post made by a community member with photos of the maroon van surrounded by unmarked ICE vehicles. Red and blue lights are flashing. It happened around 7 a.m. The news spread like wildfire in the immigrant community. The post got more than 500 shares on Facebook. Continue reading
Champaign has had LPRs in place since 2022; here is one at the intersection of Kirby and Prospect Avenues. Photo by Alen Romero
Objection! Question is irrelevant. We ask the wrong question, and we are being given the wrong answer. We still haven’t answered the question the Champaign County jail consultant, the late Dr. Alan Kolmonoff, posed to us back in 2013: “What do we want to use a jail for?”
What data proves that the more spent on jails, police, prosecutors, arrests, and surveillance equipment leads to crime prevention and an overall drop in incidents of crime simply because we’ve built a bigger mousetrap? It’s been stunning that in the 50 years of a racialized drug war, the School of Social Work, the College of Law, the Political Science Department, the Police Training Institute, the College of Education, and the College of Psychology at the University of Illinois have all been nearly silent and lent little wisdom to solving our local problems.
We must stop our unrealistic expectations of law enforcement. As much as we wish it so, law enforcement simply cannot prevent crime, even with automated License Plate Readers (LPRs).
This summer Reger completed editing and publishing the Sangamon River Anthology of Champaign County Poetry. Here he shares the foreword from that volume to introduce the project and offer a glimpse into the collection’s themes.
Poetry in Champaign County has long been characterized by Urbana’s Red Herring Poetry group, which for nearly 40 years has organized and published local poetry through its journal, The Matrix. Since those halcyon days, we have not seen such focused efforts from poets setting a standard for literary efforts in our area.
It has long been an objective of mine to bring local poets together and forge some semblance of unity among them. In our community, poetry groups abound, but I have not witnessed much individual crossover and mingling of muses. This anthology is an effort to do just that by publishing the poetry of several members of groups together in a single volume that purports to be a representation of the very best work done by a wide variety of current local poets, ranging in age from 18 to 80.
America, I’m writing you a poem:
All words I learned at your side,In these days of your decline, reaching
Up to regain yourself, to get back
To a state of reason and equanimity.
Though your path is nearly severed,
And the man with the knife is still
Loose in your head.
You need me:
Demonstrators march by the courthouse in Urbana June 18 (a few days before the US bombing of Iran), protesting the US-backed Israeli bombing and potential US escalation. Photo by Janice Jayes
Gaza protest in downtown Urbana on July 21
Belden in his campus office, 1988
Belden preparing for a PACA solidarity demonstration, 1991
Anyone who knew Belden Fields understands that he was an institution in Champaign-Urbana, someone who injected a message of social justice into our daily lives. Everyone will have their own way of remembering him. He was very smart, very funny, and very friendly toward all. But he was also a serious socialist and union member active in just about any movement that promised greater fairness and equality. I came to know him well on a personal level through this labor and socialist activism.
I first met Belden in the 1980s through PACA, the Peoples’ Alliance on Central America. My wife Jenny Barrett and I had been active around Central American issues when we lived in North Carolina, and Belden and many other wonderful people offered us a chance to continue this work. We were on the sidelines; Belden was at the center. From this point in the eighties, he and his life partner Jane Mohraz welcomed us into this community and enhanced our lives here. Continue reading
Belden cooking communally for a People’s Alliance for Central America (PACA) event
What are we to make of the current horrors of a globally ascendent authoritarianism, an authoritarianism bred in the toxic soil of neoliberalism and the aftermath of the wars in Iraq and Latin America that sent desperate migrants knocking on the United States’ and Western Europe’s doors? Arguably these developments support longstanding arguments that late capitalism’s trajectory is ultimately incompatible with democracy as well as with a state’s ability to provide for the material needs of all its citizenry. This is the barbarism before us, but given how this brand of barbarism also ignores the existential climate crisis, it is not just barbarous but apocalyptic in its implications.
Belden Fields was someone who believed that there was an alternative to capitalism, an alternative that he identified as democratic socialism. Belden did not always wear his socialist perspective on his sleeve, a stance that any good organizer in contemporary America is wise to adopt. Indeed, I am sure there are many in our community, including many who worked with him in the multiple social justice campaigns he engaged in, who had no idea of this aspect of his identity. Even I, who worked with Belden in two socialist-identified organizations, never had a full-blown, in-depth conversation with him in which he elaborated his views. To understand Belden’s democratic socialist perspective, one must look at his engagement with these two local organizations, as well as examining his writings on human rights in which his socialist outlook, to my mind, is embedded. Continue reading
Review
Belden’s book Rethinking Human Rights for the New Millennium (2003), addresses a conflict among three human rights theories and provides a compelling synthesis of the three.
According to The Declaration of Independence, “All men are created equal, . . . they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights.” These 15 words provide the basis for the three competing theories of human rights, which I call the Naturalist, the Constructivist and the Marxist. Continue reading
It’s February 8, 1990. The U of I Board of Trustees are meeting. The Coalition Against State Sponsored Terrorism (CASST) is protesting against CIA recruitment on campus. We have members inside the meeting planning to disrupt, but not get arrested. We have members outside, in the halls of the first floor of the Illini Union. The inside protestors leave. We are marching in a circle. A cop comes up to me (“group leader” and suspect, according to the police report). He is trying to tell me no signs are allowed in the Union. I say there is no such rule. We go back and forth and I can tell I have irritated him. I signal for the rest of us to leave and we head out the door to go outside while chanting. They f***ing grab the last three people in line and arrest them. Later, they try and justify their actions by citing the “no picketing” rule, which we later argue is about impeding access to the building, which the dozen or so of us were not doing.
Professor Belden Fields is outraged. The next day he takes a hand-made sign that says “NO CIA recruiting on campus. They try and pull the same bulls*** on Belden, but they refuse to arrest him. This makes Belden furious. I think he went back one or two more times before they finally arrested him. Continue reading
Belden with farmworker leader Cesar Chavez, 1987
I worked closely with Belden in the Union of Professional Employees (UPE) and later in the Campus Faculty Association (CFA). UPE voted to change its name to CFA in 2007. This article is an attempt to reconstruct Belden’s work in these University of Illinois labor organizations for the period when Belden and I worked together on their executive committees. Although neither ever achieved official bargaining-unit status, they nevertheless had an impact on campus policies by issuing statements, holding demonstrations, and allying with other official campus unions around various issues. UPE and CFA also had a union caucus in the University of Illinois Academic Senate, which I was pleased to chair for many years, and had a significant influence on what happened there. Belden was a cofounding member of UPE, and an active member of the Senate for a long time. He served on the Senate’s Equal Opportunity Committee, and also represented UPE on the Champaign County AFL-CIO for over two decades, during which time he was both treasurer and recording secretary. And of course UPE and the county AFL-CIO supported numerous campus and other union contract campaigns over the years, and especially the right of academic professionals and graduate students to form unions. UPE/CFA membership hovered around 200 to 250 members for the years I am covering in this article, 1998 to 2007. Hopefully others will be able to fill in more around his earlier union activities. Belden retired in 2000, and gradually reduced his involvement in campus affairs to concentrate more on issues in the larger community. Continue reading
