UI Bans “War Chant”

Posted on 10/19/2017 by David Prochaska

On February 21, 2007 the University of Illinois got rid of the Chief Illiniwek mascot.

On August 24, 2017 they got rid of the “war chant.”

The “war chant,” separate from but related to the so-called “3-in-1,” was created during the 1980-1981 basketball season by Beth Nuss, leader of the pep band saxophone section. “Back in those days, the NCAA allowed the pep bands to play quick ‘vamps’ whenever the home team was on offense.” The band director “always encouraged section leaders to be creatively involved in the band, offering tunes, cheers and ideas to be played…At this one particular game, our band director had been distracted in conversation with someone… Illinois suddenly got the ball and the game was pretty exciting. I turned to the sax section…. I asked the alto saxophones to play the simple melody and made up a harmony for the tenor saxophones to play along with… At that point, the saxophone section, combined with the baritone section, began our first ‘war chant.'”

As Nuss says explicitly, the “war chant” “was not an original melody. It was something I recalled hearing back in my youth, perhaps from a movie or cartoon. I had no recollection of where the melody came from; it just came to me.” In other words, it came from Nuss’s store of cultural memory; it was among the collective cultural representations she imbibedwhile growing up. “It was made up by ear from thoughts that came to me from something I could vaguely remember from an old movie or perhaps an old cartoon.”

“War Chant” from Old Captain Kangaroo Cartoon

In fact, it was from an old cartoon. broadcast on “Captain Kangaroo.” The music was from a song called “Pow Wow the Indian Boy.”

Pow Wow, the Indian boy,
Loved all the animals and the woods…
Pow Wow was a friend
Of all the animals in the woods;
If there was any trouble,
He would help them if he could;
If Pow Wow couldn’t help them,
He would go to the Medicine Man,
And he would tell them stories
Just how it all began, all began, all began …

The song introduced a black-and-white cartoon called “Adventures of Pow Wow.” One episode, “The Magic Spigot,” for example, features besides Pow Wow, Chief Kick-a-Shin, and is set in Wahoo Valley.

You can’t get more fake Indian than that.

Key is that what became the “war chant” was part of a shared cultural memory from 1950s and 1960s America, so that it is not surprising that others responded to it when the pep band played it, and that it caught on. “We played it again my senior year,” Nuss says. “The crowd response was good from it.”

You cannot draw a straighter, more direct line than this from a white caricature of native Americans to the music and dance associated with the Chief Illiniwek mascot. The “war chant” was literally a cartoon.

The vamp indeed pumped “up the crowd.” That is, fans filled this vessel of cultural memory literally with themselves – their dim recollections, unarticulated remembrances, their feelings growing up transferred from a cartoon caricature to a cartoon mascot.

Fans, however, either don’t know or don’t care that the “war chant” originated in a racist, Indian caricature; few, if any, think about how they are reproducing a racial stereotype when they unreflectively repeat the “war chant.” Nuss certainly does not. Quite the opposite. Disappointed to see the “war chant” banned, she did not want to see Chief Illiniwek done away with either.

“It is a subject that goes deep to my heart. Only those who have been involved in things     such as Illini athletics, the band, cheerleaders, etc., truly understand the traditions and pride of the Illini. It’s something I cannot explain.

This is why there is such a passion revolving around this subject. To some outsiders, it’s ‘just a stupid mascot,’ and they scream for us to move on already. To those of us who understand, who’ve lived on campus, upholding the great traditions, this runs deep within us.”

Talk about cultural memory. Doing away with the “war chant” brought back to life, zombie-like, all the barely repressed feelings and memories about getting rid of, “retiring” the Chief Illiniwek mascot 10 years previously. The same old arguments, claims, jeers, snark, criticisms were heard yet again, and again and again.

1) “They keep chipping away” at everything having to do with the mascot.

2) “The evil NCAA made us do it.”

3) “FSU has the Seminoles, but we can’t have the Chief.”

4) “The Chief elicited excitement, pride: how can that be bad?”

5) “Not all Indians are opposed” to the mascot.

6) “It was the distant, out of touch administration at the big U that did this.”

7) “None of this would ever have happened were it not for (Jay) Rosenstein and (Steven) Kauffman (and Nancy Cantor).”

8) “Josh Whitman betrayed us”

9) “This whole thing should be decided by majority vote, we outnumber them, this is tyranny by a very small minority.”

10) “Those opposed don’t even go to the games”

11) “After the ‘war chant,’ they say they won’t ban the ‘3-in-1,’ but we don’t believe them, we don’t trust them.”

12) “They didn’t tell us beforehand, they didn’t come out and say they were going to do it, they were sneaky.”

13) “How stupid: how can music be racist?”

14) “How unhistorical: the music came much later than the Chief.”

15) “This is another example of pc run amok — where does it stop?”

16) “The only ones offended are liberal snowflakes. Suck it up. Get a life.”

But who exactly is the snowflake here? Answer: it is overwhelmingly the pro-Chiefers who are whining, playing the victim.

Yet between banning the mascot in 2007 and eliminating the “war chant” in 2017, nothing has been learned. There are no new arguments.

All of this is, however, no longer funny, or cute. Not after Trump, not after Charlottesville.

“Illini Nation” Resembles Trump Nation

In many ways, Illini Nation resembles Trump Nation, the base he plays to. Both are exclusive rather than inclusive. Trump Nation may be populist, but the dark side of populism is its authoritarian tendency. While in some respects inclusive – and disproportionately white – it simultaneously excludes other people — disproportionately minorities.

Like Trump Nation, not everyone is included in Illini Nation. Fans like Nuss say, in effect, if you don’t get it, then you’re not one of us, you’re not really part of, a member of “Illini Nation.” Truly, “I bleed orange and blue,” as the bumper sticker said.

Anti-Chiefers say the mascot, the dance, the 3-in-1, and the war chant are all based on racist stereotypes that have nothing to do with native Americans. Grow up, get over it. Those others, the anti-Chiefers, are not viewed as real, bona fide, card-carrying members of Illini Nation. As a numerical minority who oppose the mascot, moreover, they literally do not count. Exactly the same argument is made by Trump Nation authoritarians. The true believers bleed orange and blue, they exclude everyone else as ‘other,’ different, not one of us, not like us, who don’t feel things like we do.

Those who support Chief Illiniwek and the war chant claim to be honoring native Americans, that Chief Illiniwek is a positive symbol. Yet the online comments to the News-Gazette’s wall-to-wall coverage of the war chant ban include several explicitly racist anti-native American ones, as well as racist anti-Chinese posts.

“You’re so right, CallSaul, representation and imagery should be correct. 

Perhaps a dancing slot machine or bingo card is more appropriate?”

“I find those means of Native American “fundraising” offensive yet it’s allowed because these areas have tribal sovereignty, states have limited ability to forbid gambling there, as codified by the Indian Gaming Regulatory Act of 1988.

Apparently preying upon people with gambling weaknesses in the name of profit is fine.  Good to know “safe spaces” exist for people to lose their money, compromise families as a result of lost finances, and feed an addiction.”

“So true. Slot machines and casino bells pay homage to the Illini more than Chief Illiniwek and the war chant.”

“Yes, lets replace “Illini” with Drunken Gamblers.   That would be clearly more appropriate and current.”

“Maybe change our name to the University of Illinois Chinese Commandos.  Because that’s all that is going to be left to fund this nonsense.”

“Coming soon— University of Beijing-Champaign Campus”

It got so bad that one poster, conservative on every other social issue, called for others to stop the anti-Chinese posts.

“I hope all the posters here will stop with the anti-Chinese comments because they are truly ugly and painful, particularly in light of the still missing Yingyang Zhang and her family and friends. The Chinese students here are just that: students. Just as are the Korean students, the Japanese students, the Israeli students, the Lebanese students, the Iranian students, the students from France, England, Scotland, Ireland, Wales, Haiti, Chile, Peru, Indiana, Iowa, California, New York…..and so on. Stop with that xenophobic, provincial nonsense.”

Both Illini Nation and Trump Nation appeal to “tradition,” even if fake, unhistorical, or invented. After Charlottesville, News-Gazette sports writer Loren Tate wrote, “As we see all over the country, right or wrong, people are passionate about their traditions. Can’t blame them.” If this isn’t a racist dog whistle, I don’t know what is. Since Trump demands to be able to be an overt racist, white supremacist nationally, it gives license in effect to be unapologetic racists locally.

Instead of representing the broader Champaign/Urbana community, the News-Gazette represents – and gives an open mike to – the exclusive Illini Nation. Yet C/U is larger than Illini Nation, and a lot more diverse.

When it comes to the Chief Illiniwek mascot and the war chant, the News-Gazette practices what I call “push journalism,” entirely analogous to “push polling.” Not content with reporting, the paper manufactures “news.”  After the war chant was banned August 25, every day until mid-September the paper ran at least one story, editorial, or column, plus hundreds of online comments and numerous letters to the editor.

Newspaper Run By Jocks

The paper is run by jocks.  Managing editor Jim Rossow, former sports writer. News editor Jeff D’Alessio, former sports writer. Forty-year sports columnist Loren Tate. Opinions editor writer Jim Dey. Tate and the others running the News-Gazette are acting like petulant adolescents, just like Trump. They should move their offices down the street to the Marajen Stevick Senior Daycare Center.

Yet despite the paper’s wall-to-wall coverage of everything Chief and the war chant, there are huge blind spots in their sports coverage.

In the ugly spat between Trump and NFL players protesting police brutality, photos of Champaign-based Flex-n-Gate owner Shahid Khan linking arms with his Jacksonville Jaguars players appeared in the New York Times and Wall Street Journal, among other places. In the News-Gazette there was no mention whatsoever; Khan had suddenly become a non-person. This is the same Khan whom the paper fawns over as a local billionaire, a Republican, and Trump supporter. The same person who when he was put up for a UI honorary degree, the paper defended from critics who argued he was undeserving because of his multiple OSHA workplace violations and fines. Oh, that’s right, he’s Muslim. I get it.

Where’s the News-Gazette? It’s AWOL. The exact same place Republicans are on gun control. On climate change. Its idea of “reporting” is all too often non-reporting.

Trump tweets about the “beautiful hits” football players sustain. But it’s left up to homeboy George Will to discuss chronic traumatic encephalopathy (CTE), and comparing football to bear baiting. “The Puritans banned bear baiting…not because it gave pain to bears but because it gave pleasure to Puritans.” They “understood that there are degrading enjoyments. Football is becoming one.”

Politics infuse sports. Those running the News-Gazette know it, but they are in such deep denial that they cannot and will not acknowledge it. The fans don’t go to see politics, the jocks say, they go to watch bear baiting, er… football.

The News-Gazette is the mouthpiece of Illini Nation. It disserves the broader, more diverse C/U community. Complicit in aiding and abetting racism, the paper makes things worse instead of better. If you’re going to continue with this Chief stuff 28 years after Charlene Teters began protesting in 1989, 10 years after the mascot was banned in 2007, in the 2017 aftermath of national, bipartisan criticism of  divider-in-chief, white supremacist Trump on Charlottesville, and you still don’t get it, then you are clearly, unapologetically racist. The stench from your jockstraps is unmistakable.

In the aftermath of the Harvey Weinstein sexual harassment scandal (and I’m purposely not mentioning all the Bill O’Reilly’s here), not even harassment defender Jim Dey dares write yet another of his many editorial columns attacking “microaggressions,” which, after all, are another form sexual harassment takes. (In the aftermath of the clearly fraudulent, lying Republican “repeal-and-replace” sham, Dey has also stopped his many, egregious editorial attacks on Obamacare. Who would have thought?)

All Too Many Americans Cannot – Or Refuse To – Deal With History

All too many Americans cannot — or refuse – to deal with history. They cannot, they refuse to engage the past, work through it, come to resolution, and move on. They cannot, they refuse to learn from the past, to come to terms with it. They’re stuck. Thus, they condemn themselves to reliving it, reenacting it again… and again and again. Confederate monuments to slavery. Burns and Novick’s Vietnam paean resurrecting and reliving the war but not resolving it, drawing lessons from it, or moving on from it. Football halftime reenactments of Indians and white settlers.

One clear sign of this refusal to engage and move on is the high proportion of war chant commenters acting like adolescents rather than adults. To the point where other commenters commented on these whining whiners. What adults do with children throwing a temper tantrum is put them in timeout. Pro-Chiefers are like Peter Pan, the boy who refused to grow up.

With the Chief Illiniwek mascot, and now the war chant, there is no resolution, no closure. There is only indefinite deferral, reproducing the same old tired arguments over and over. Like Mickey Mouse as the sorcerer’s apprentice vainly swabbing up the floor over and over in that other 1950s cartoon, Fantasia.

We can now see that UI made a grave mistake in 2007 by not rapidly replacing the Chief mascot. When Stanford got rid of its Indian mascot in 1972, they replaced it immediately with the Stanford Tree, and soon after with today’s Cardinal.

In contrast with Stanford, Illini Nation still thinks the mascot is real. The Chief Illiniwek mascot controversy is all about anthropomorphism, about making a person out of an inanimate mascot. “Of course, you love him. You created him,” Charlene Teters observed years ago. In In Whose honor? directed by Jay Rosenstein, whom the pro-Chiefers love to hate, Indian activist Michael Haney plays a native drum piece followed by the war chant — “That’s Hollywood.”

But getting people to see the Noble Savage mascot as a stereotype, getting people to hear the war chant as fake Hollywood music — that’s been the whole problem all along, hasn’t it?

So, like a Jack-In-The-Box zombie, the controversy keeps coming back again and again. The continued anthropomorphizing, the personal investment in the fake Indian means that even talking about talking about a mascot replacement creates a firestorm.

The UI administration no doubt wants to move on, to be rid of the whole thing. Equally, the UI administration has consistently, systematically failed to take a stand, make a clean break. In not doing so, it has produced and reproduced, over and over that which it claims it does not want – for the controversy to continue. Here the Chief supporters are absolutely correct. The administration is and has been spineless throughout this whole sorry saga.

It’s déjà-vu all over again, as another player used to say.

 

Posted in Indigenous, News-Gazette, Trump | Comments Off on UI Bans “War Chant”

The YWCA: We Are on a Mission

Posted on 10/19/2017 by Andrea Rundell

Since opening on campus in 1884 as a women’s residence hall, the YWCA of the University of Illinois has served as an organization on a mission to promote peace, justice, freedom and dignity for all. We recognize the powerful potential of young women to harness their skills and abilities to effect change in the community and beyond. Being on campus allows us to mobilize students and assist them in learning how to navigate the societal, political, and professional spheres.

Our goal is to develop the next generation of women leaders who will come to situations fully aware of their power to effect positive change. We take our history of being the oldest continuously operating, student-affiliated YWCA seriously. Everything we do reflects the responsibility and promise of that legacy. It is imperative that we realize how important it is to not only pass the baton to the next generation, but also to train them to run well. This is an active process, and we can all be a part in some way, but be a part we must to ensure that the struggle for social justice is always advancing.

The YWCA of the University of Illinois is excited to continue our mission of eliminating racism and empowering women this upcoming school year. Through various programs and events, we are inviting students and the community to engage in discussions and causes related to social justice.

As with past years, this year we are again implementing our Women in Leadership (WIL) program: an intensive, two-semester leadership and project management internship. Structured as a group consulting project, the internship allows undergraduate women to work directly with local human services agencies to learn about the nonprofit sector, identify organizational challenges, and research, propose and implement solutions over the course of a school year. The YWCA supplements interns’ work with additional training focusing on professional development, leadership skills and building a working team, all of which are applied to team projects.

Interns are guided through this process by mentors drawn from Urbana-Champaign’s excellent professional and graduate student pools. Past WIL teams have worked with the Champaign-Urbana Area Project, MakerGirl, and Moms Demand Action for Gun Sense in America. We are proud that this program continues to grow with each passing year and provides students with beneficial leadership experience and the community with skillful individuals that are passionate to help.

October will see the kick-off of our annual Community Read, working with the Asian American Cultural Center around the powerful and insightful book When the Emperor Was Divine, by Julie Otsuka. The Community Read is a multi-week literature and arts program that invites University of Illinois students and the greater Urbana-Champaign community to learn about and explore the experiences of girls of color through reading, dialogue and creative expression. Participants come together weekly for conversations and arts and cultural events around the stories that resonate with them most. Through these, readers build relationships across social identity and a greater appreciation for the diverse individuals and groups living in Urbana-Champaign.

Throughout the series, the YWCA encourages participants to explore intersectional dialogue skills and social justice. This fall’s book choice details the experiences of a family with the Japanese internment camps set up by the U.S. government following Pearl Harbor. We chose this book because it challenges us to think more deeply about the lives of Japanese Americans, our own American history and today’s politically charged atmosphere of xenophobia and fear.

The events we will be holding in conjunction with the Big Read include one of the first screenings of Matthew Hashiguchi’s documentary Good Luck Soup. In this film, we join Matthew on a journey to discover his family’s experiences as Japanese Americans within the Black and White surroundings of the Midwest. Along the way, we will learn of his life and the lives of his grandmother and family members. For them, what does it mean to be Japanese American? And how has that identity and experience changed over time? We will also be hosting book discussions, a family-centered craft event, and closing the series with keynote speakers: author Karen Su and internment survivor Yuki Llewellyn. The Champaign Public Library and Urbana Free Library will serve as host spaces for this Read.

Along with these events, we will be continuously working on advocating for the causes closest to us – one of them being the abuse-to-prison pipeline. An issue that overwhelmingly affects girls of color, the proverbial pipeline reinforces punishing victims of abuse by criminalizing their behavioral reactions from the trauma they have experienced. This includes suspending students for truancy, arresting runaway youth, and punishing the sexually exploited instead of their abusers. Unfortunately, the trauma is inadequately – if at all – addressed in the criminal justice system, leading to a continuous cycle. As a local organization, we feel it necessary to confront this issue in our own community. We are hoping to shed light on this issue in order to improve the quality of our community response, and connect girls who have experienced trauma with the resources that they need.

As the year moves along, the YWCA will provide more opportunities to engage the community and address social justice issues. To stay updated on what we are doing, subscribe to our newsletters, take a look at our website at ywcauofi.org, or connect with us through social media. We welcome all men and women to join with us in any way you can, to pay it forward, to envision and work towards a world that values everyone’s contribution regardless of race, gender or sexual orientation. We all have something to contribute.

 

Andrea Rundell is the Executive Director of the YWCA of the University of Illinois, and is unabashedly in love with the mission of “eliminating racism and empowering women.” She has been there for four years now, so she thinks she’s getting the hang of it.

Posted in University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, Women, wonen's rights | Comments Off on The YWCA: We Are on a Mission

“Not Here, Not in My Town”: Charlottesville Black Lives Matter on Why We Must All Resist Fascism

Posted on 09/09/2017 by Sarah Lazare

Communities in Charlottesville, Va., are reeling from a murderous Nazi and white supremacist march on their town—one that stole the life of anti-Nazi protester Heather Heyer and wounded many more. I spoke with Lisa Woolfork, a member of Charlottesville’s Black Lives Matter chapter, about what solidarity and anti-racist organizing looks like in this moment.

She explained that Charlottesville’s Black Lives Matter chapter formed in June as “committed Black folks coming together from a variety of walks of life, to stand up for preservation of Black lives, to stand up and make sure Black issues are not forgotten.” Woolfork, who is an associate professor at the University of Virginia (UVA), underscored that she is proud of everyone in her community who rallied together to resist organized white supremacists. “This is what community defense looks like,” she said. “You say, ‘Not here, not in my town.’”

Sarah Lazare: How are you, your community and Black Lives Matter holding up after a harrowing few days?

Lisa Woolfork: I believe we are resilient. All the actions that took place that day were about defending Charlottesville as a community, standing up for our city, and saying no to the racists who wanted to invade and take over. I feel we did that very successfully. It was wonderful to stand shoulder to shoulder in solidarity with a variety of people. It was Black folks joining in with folks from many different walks of life. I was moved by that.

At the vigil last night for Heather Heyer, the woman who was murdered, I saw it again. The same resolve for Black self-determination. For what Black Lives Matter stands for. To stand up and to say, “You might come armed—our community is willing to stand up against that.” The alt-right comes armed with assault weapons. They came to do damage. This was about the liberation of Black lives as well as criticizing white supremacy.

White supremacists are not just marching in the street, but they seem to be endorsed at the highest levels. What Charlottesville let the world see is that there is a connection between racist ideas and racist action. The reason the alt-right came to Charlottesville is that they were terrified to lose their Civil War participation trophy, their confederate monument to Robert E. Lee—who fought to maintain a white-supremacist republic. That’s why the alt-right was here. Principles of white supremacy and Black subjection still appeal to them.

Sarah: How can people across the country and the world show solidarity right now?

Lisa: There are a variety of ways people can stand up. Support Black Lives Matter—not just in Charlottesville, but all around the country. Get tapped into local organizations. Have uncomfortable and difficult conversations that can open the door to greater understanding. Be willing to be uncomfortable. Don’t just go along with racism and casual white supremacy. That just normalizes white supremacy.

There is a reason white supremacy is the air we breathe in this country. White supremacy is not just the Nazis and alt-right. It’s also very casual and subtle. It’s saying things like, “You’re pretty for a Black girl.”

Trump cannot reprimand that alt-right, because they are his base. There were a lot of people out there with “Make America Great Again” hats. The rise of Trump has coincided with a spike in hate crimes during the first months of his presidency. After he was confirmed by electoral college, there were tons of acts and incidents that very day. This is something we might want to think about.

I’ve never heard of a sore winner. They won [the election], and they are acting as if they lost. They are beating people in the streets. If you won, why are you beating up Muslims and immigrants? They are the party of the aggrieved white people, and we saw them marching through our streets and our city, throwing up Nazi gang signs. They were right near the library where I take my kids, right across the street where my son gets his hair cut.

Sarah: What do you want people to know about what happened in Charlottesville over the weekend?

Lisa: This is what community defense looks like. You say, “Not here, not in my town.” You come out, speak out. That’s what Charlottesville Black Lives Matter came out to do. We are pleased we were able to do that and fortify our community, fortify ourselves, stand up against this violent tide of white hatred that should not be allowed to go unchecked.

I believe that can happen in overt and covert ways. All across the country, there were solidarity rallies: in New York, Atlanta. People all over the country stood in solidarity with Charlottesville. This is the opportunity and this is the time. If not now, when?

Sarah: What is your response to people who say we should just ignore fascists?

Lisa: I believe that claim is problematic. The alt-right is not out there because they want attention; they are out there because they want to promote white supremacy. They have tons of followers on Instagram, Facebook, Reddit. They have a strong social media presence. They have a global following. They are everywhere. They are trying to maintain white supremacy. That’s what they’re fighting for. To say they are out there for attention is to treat them like they’re naughty toddlers, not dangerous terrorists.

It’s a tacit and silent endorsement of white supremacy to say it can be tolerated or that everyone has a right to their opinions. It belies the fact that racist thought and racist action are connected. The symbol of Lee is a magnet for racists and white supremacists. We are inviting them by maintaining that negative hatred at the center of our city. We create hospitable conditions for them.

Sarah: Is there anything you want our readers to know about what local organizing looks like from here?

Lisa: As we move forward, we have a lot of issues we are working to promote. We want awareness of some of the inequities and issues of injustice in our city. Nearly 80 percent of stop-and-frisks in Charlottesville are of African Americans, even though we only comprise 19 percent of the population. We want people to pay attention to the court case about the Confederate monument. We call on Charlottesville city council to remove confederate monuments from public spaces, so we’re a less hospitable place for Nazis, white supremacists and racists. There is the case of a missing transgender women, whose disappearances are overlooked nationally.

I would advise people to look forward, look within, and look locally. What can you do to challenge white supremacy in your daily life? We have to stop believing white supremacy is someone else’s problem. Because we live in America, which has white supremacy at its base, it lurks in all of us. Challenge things, ask questions, intervene if you see someone harmed.

Look locally. See what’s happening right in your town where you can help. What is the poverty rate in your city? How is public education? Do you have a public education system that fails Black and Brown students? What kind of steps can you take to remedy that? What about hunger? How does that work in your town? The problems with Charlottesville are problems with every city in America.

Sarah: What is your response to politicians and pundits who are demonizing people who are resisting fascism?

Lisa: I believe there should be a diversity of tactics in order to fight white supremacy. I believe that these fascists came to invade our town and to terrorize. They came with weapons, with bats. They create a false equivalency when they say Nazis are equal to anti-racist activists. By demonizing the anti-fascists, it makes fascism look as if it’s a viable social position. There were people out there Saturday in khaki pants and white polo shirts who marched to where I teach at UVA and shouted, “Death to the Jews, we will not be replaced.”

I am of the belief that everyone out there in the spirit of community defense was acting in robust and muscular love. Love for humanity and justice, against the tide of white supremacy and all sorts of things being normalized.

This article was originally published at In These Times on Aug. 14, 2017. It is reprinted with permission.

Posted in African Americans, Antisemitism, Trump | Comments Off on “Not Here, Not in My Town”: Charlottesville Black Lives Matter on Why We Must All Resist Fascism

Interview with Marlon Mitchell from FirstFollowers

Posted on 09/09/2017 by Carol Inskeep
. 
The local group FirstFollowers is only two years old, but it is already making in impact in our community.  In this interview Marlon Mitchell talks with Carol Inskeep about their mission and the ambitious range of projects the group is working on.  Marlon Mitchell is the founder and co-director of FirstFollowers. He is currently pursuing his PhD in the Department of Curriculum and Instruction in the College of Education at the University of Illinois at Champaign Urbana. His work with FirstFollowers inspired him to pursue an Advanced Graduate Certificate in Policy Analysis at Northwestern University, which he recently completed
Who are the FirstFollowers?
Founded in 2015, FirstFollowers is a volunteer-run, mentoring program. “We provide services to individuals that are either returning to the community from incarceration or who have felony convictions. They may be finding barriers and challenges to getting back into school or employment or housing or other issues that many of us in society take for granted. We have plenty of goals but one of them is to just get people encouraged and motivated, and to provide opportunities to move past that felony conviction.” 
 
“You’re welcome here” – Drop-In Center
A core FirstFollowers program is the Drop-In Center at Bethel AME Church (401 E. Park St., Champaign) which is open Tuesday and Thursday from 1 to 5 p.m. “We provide individual mentoring and assistance with employment searches, acquiring ID, family reconnect, finding education and training opportunities and more.” Mitchell says that the peer mentor model is key to what they do: “The mentors down at FirstFollowers are all volunteers who have been through those challenges. They’ve been through the system. They’ve had that transition back to their community, back to their families, so they fully have a front seat to what that challenge can look like.” Too often stigma and stereotypes keep people with a record isolated. “One of the things we pride ourselves on here at FirstFollowers – we provide an opportunity for a person to feel welcome. It shows a person that you truly care, that you fully understand what they’re going through. And it also provides that opportunity to encourage.”
 
Build Programs, Not Jails
Mitchell – and others in FirstFollowers – have been vocal opponents of the proposed multi-million dollar Champaign County Jail expansion project. “It blew my mind,” says Mitchell, to see a proposal to invest millions in incarceration instead of education and community programs, “just to see the human capital – the abilities of communities – to see a mass amount of people being snatched out of their communities and to see all the human capital that is lost through mass incarceration. And then to see them come home where there’s nothing that gets them back into the economy for their community or their family. One of the platforms that we really run on…is to build people, not jails; to build up people and not prisons.”
 
It’s not just about Individual Stories – Understanding Mass Incarceration
Though their work at the Drop-In Center helps many individuals, Mitchell says an important part of the work is “connecting the dots” to understand mass incarceration as a system of social oppression and social control. “Me, myself personally, I didn’t know exactly how all this worked,” says Mitchell. “I knew it was a social phenomenon that I saw in my community. I saw it in my own family. It’s something bigger than this, because there are so many black and brown and low income communities that are being ravaged by mass incarceration and by recidivism.” Community organizing is a key part of the work, he says, so that people “understand the history and inter-relation of issues. A system like this is not just built overnight,” and it takes real organizing to “redress that momentum” and “get people on board to connect the dots.” 
 
FirstFollowers asked the Community: 90% say Access to Employment is Key
Last summer members of FirstFollowers reached out to the community with a survey asking about the barriers and unmet needs of those reentering Champaign Urbana. 90% of people identified the lack of access to good jobs that pay a living wage and provide opportunity as a top issue. 
 
FirstFollowers has worked on this issue in a number of ways. They’ve reached out to employers, encouraging them to consider the skills and potential of individuals, even if they have a record. Building trust and relationships with employers can create more opportunities. FirstFollowers is especially interested in helping more people move into the trades – skilled work that pays well and provides a career path. 
 
Mitchell says FirstFollowers mentors also work with people to “build their skill sets.” This may mean helping someone overcome a fear of technology. Mentors use laptops at the Drop-In Center to teach people how to search for jobs, complete applications, and upload resumes. But there may be a more fundamental need to build basic literacy skills. Mitchell likens illiteracy and under-education of people who have been incarcerated to the history of African Americans being shut out of educational opportunities. The goal, says Mitchell, is to help people identify their goals, get the skills and education they need, and then have opportunities to succeed. 
 
Susan Burton’s new book Becoming Ms. Burton: From Prison to Recovery to Leading the Fight for Incarcerated Women offers a “Blueprint” for Community Organizing.
Mentors recently read the book Becoming Miss Burton and they shared their reactions to it at a well-attended event at the Independent Media Center in July. Mitchell has had a chance to talk with Susan Burton on a couple occasions. “I had an idea about a reentry program before I even met her,” but Mitchell says she’s given FirstFollowers good advice and a “blueprint for training our mentors and addressing the underlying political issues.” Her reentry work moves beyond “one-off, one person’s experience to building a movement that has a strategic approach” for ending mass incarceration.   
 
A Roadmap to Local Resources: A Resource Guide to Reentry in Champaign County
FirstFollowers has just begun distributing a clear and concise guide that helps people link to the most important resources they need upon reentry – including current, practical information about how to obtain an ID and where to access housing, health care, food, clothing and other services. (The guide was produced in collaboration with University of Illinois professor Ken Salo and his Urban and Regional Planning class.) They have begun distributing the guide to local social service organizations, libraries, religious institutions, and even to the Champaign County Jail. You can request copies of the guide by contacting FirstFollowers.
 

They Want to Stay Grounded in the Community

FirstFollowers is committed to this combination of community education, mentoring and political organizing. You’ll see FirstFollowers speaking out against tax dollars being used to expand the jail, giving out back-to-school backpacks at community events, and educating the public on mass incarceration at public events. Mitchell says an important part of the FirstFollowers mission is “getting back into the community, giving back to the community in a positive way, and being an advocate for the community.” 
 
You can support their work
Come out to hear FirstFollowers September 30th at 4pm at the Champaign Public Library. A focus of the event will be fees and fines in the criminal justice system. You can also check out the FirstFollowers website (http://www.firstfollowersreentry.com) or follow them on Facebook (https://www.facebook.com/firstfollowersreentry) to see personal testimonies, photos from their events, resources and links to other information and other reentry programs, or to donate to their work. 
Carol Inskeep is a local librarian and community member.
 
 
Posted in Community, Justice, Prisoners | Comments Off on Interview with Marlon Mitchell from FirstFollowers

Israel Anti-Boycott Act a Threat to Free Speech

Posted on 09/09/2017 by Belden Fields

This article is about a bill introduced in both the U.S. Senate (S.720) and the House of Representatives (H.R.1697). These identical bills are both very complex and very dangerous to our civil liberties.

They would outlaw “requests to impose restrictive trade practices or boycotts by any foreign country…against a country friendly to the United States or against any U.S. person” (2i). They also outlaw “requests to impose restrictive trade practices or boycotts by any international governmental organization against Israel” (2ii). Note the word “requests.” This means advocacy, i.e,, speech.

Historical Background

 This is not a stand-alone bill. It is actually an amendment to the 1979 Export Administration Act. That act placed rules and regulations upon businesses or corporations that are involved in international trade. It was mainly concerned with corporations or individuals selling technology that could be useful to a foreign country’s military or intelligence abilities. A corporation or business that did not follow the rules would be liable to a fine of not more than five times the exports involved, or one million dollars, whichever is greater. But an individual who breaks the rules would be fined up to $250,000 and/or up to a five-year prison term. What the new proposed bill does is take its anti-Israel boycott provisions, and apply them to the criminal penalties of the 1979 bill that dealt more generally with export restrictions. If one only reads the new S.720, one would never realize that that there are such harsh criminal penalties attached to advocacy.

Indeed, Glenn Greenwald and Ryan Grim contacted some of the bill’s congressional co-sponsors and they had no idea that the bill contained such restrictions on free speech (https://theintercept.com/2017/07/19/u-s-lawmakerss-seek-to-criminally-outlaw-support-for-boucott-campaign-against-israel).

A second historical touchstone was the Boycott, Divest, and Sanctions (BDS) movement that began in 2005. This was initiated by Palestinians and became world-wide. It urged governments, businesses, and the U.N. to boycott Israel and its settlements in the occupied territories. It advocated for an economic boycott, but also included the arts and education. Israel and its U.S. supporters have become especially concerned about the support it has gotten on U.S. college campuses, where students have pressured their institutions to divest themselves of Israeli investments. The Illinois legislature has prohibited such divestiture by our state universities.

The third historical touchstone has been two recent actions by the United Nations Human Rights Council (UNHRC). These are specifically referenced in the bill. The bill states that “on March 24, 2016 [the UNHCR] targeted Israel with a commercial boycott, calling for the establishment of a database, such as a ‘blacklist,’ of companies that operate, or have business relations with entities that operate, beyond Israel’s 1949 Armistice lines, including East Jerusalem (Sec 2(3)).” The bill further asserts that “at its 32nd session in March 2017, the UNHCR is considering a resolution pursuant to agenda item 7 to withhold assistance from and prevent trade with territories occupied since 1967, including East Jerusalem, the West Bank, and the Golan Heights, stating that businesses that engage in economic activity in those areas could face civil or criminal action.”

Who Is Behind This Act?

The main inspiration for this act came from the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC). It came together with Senator Ben Cardin, a Democrat from Maryland. Cardin has been very close to AIPAC. He and Lindsay Graham (Republican from South Carolina) kicked off the first session of the annual AIPAC policy conference in March 2015. Of all of the groups that lobby Congress on behalf of a foreign government, AIPAC is undoubtedly the most successful. It gives uncritical support to Israeli policy. In terms of influence AIPAC is the foreign policy equivalent of the domestic National Rifle Association (NRA) gun lobby. It hangs like the sword of Damocles over American elected officials. Offending AIPAC and the Israeli government carries with it the threats of loss of contributions and electoral defeat. It also carries the threat of being branded as anti-Semitic. AIPAC now shows itself willing to sacrifice freedom of speech and association of Americans in its support of Israel. In helping to draft and giving support to these two bills, AIPAC shows itself willing to sacrifice the fundamental right of Americans to freedom of speech. For this reason, on July 17, the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) sent a letter to U.S. Senators asking them to oppose S.720.

Those of us living in Illinois should take note that the House version of the bill (H.R.1697) was sponsored by Congressman Peter Roskam from Illinois’s 6th congressional district in the Chicago suburbs. A co-sponsor of the bill is Congressman Rodney Davis of our own 13th Congressional district. The support for the bills in both houses has been bi-partisan.

But, as we said before, it is doubtful that many of the supporters actually know what is in the bill. It suffices that the bill is pro-Israel. When I called into Congressman Davis’s phonathon and stated the name of the bill that I wanted to discuss, the staffer who filters the call for him immediately asked me, in a hopeful voice, “Are you pro-Israel?” I said, “why are you asking me that? That’s not the issue. I am pro-free speech and association.” He then replied “Of course, of course.” Unfortunately, I could not stay on the phone long enough to talk to Representative Davis, if indeed I would have passed the filtering process at all. That’s perhaps a clue as to why Rep. Davis prefers phonathons to actual town hall meetings. I also subsequently received a letter from Congressman Davis assuring me that he was staunchly pro-Israel. No wonder that he refuses to hold town hall meetings!

What We Can Do About It

We in Champaign-Urbana are not strangers to the power of those who would stifle free speech that is critical of Israel and its policies. We have lived through the disgraceful firing of Professor Steven Salaita, a Palestinian-American whose angry tweets concerning the use of force against Palestinians not only resulted in his firing from the U of I, but also an international boycott that forced him out of academia entirely. (C/U News-Gazette, 25 July 2017, pp. A1-6.) If he used a swear word in his angry denunciation of bombs raining down on Gaza, it paled beside the gratuitous vulgarity of our present President and his associates in the White House. Given our own local experience with such uncritical pro-Israel lobbying and deprivation of the rights of free speech, it is especially incumbent upon us to let Congressmen Rodney Davis and Peter Roskam, and Senators Ben Cardin, Dick Durbin, and Tammy Duckworth that we will not tolerate the violation of basic rights that are in House Bill 1697 and Senate Bill 7.

Posted in Boycott, Foreign Policy, Israel | Comments Off on Israel Anti-Boycott Act a Threat to Free Speech

“The End of Civilization As We Know It”

Posted on 09/09/2017 by Al Kagan

The Social Responsibilities Round Table of the American Library Association (with several co-sponsors) brought environmentalist Bill McKibben to speak at our annual conference in Chicago on June 24, 2017. It was a terrific presentation, and I will try to relay some of the high points from my notes and discussions.

McKibben is the author of the first book on global warming, and the founder of 350.org, a grassroots network now in 188 countries. 350.org acts to limit climate change by mobilizing support for alternative renewable energy sources while closing down all fossil fuel energy generation. 350.org works to ban fracking, and supports the movements against the Keystone XL and Dakota Access pipelines. The organization works to cut financial support to the fossil fuel industries, and supports divestment campaigns. 350.org supports climate justice, and listening to the communities hit hardest by climate change. Leadership of the movement must come from the people who are on the front lines of resistance, often the indigenous and the poorest people in the world.

The number in the name refers to the safe limit of carbon parts per million in the atmosphere, a number that might have been possible to maintain when the organization was started in 2008. But sadly, we have now passed 400 parts per million. The name 350.org was picked because it was understandable in all languages.

Bill McKibben said that in the past he misunderstood what was going on in the national debate on climate change. We had won the scientific argument but lost the fight against established power and money, greed and self-interest of the few at the top. Writing books was therefore not enough, and by the fall of 2009, the network sponsored a Global Day of Action of 5200 demonstrations in 181 countries. He showed some very inspiring slides from that day, taken in various countries around the world.

He said that we don’t have any time left, and we need worldwide action. The fight against the Keystone Pipeline shows that it is possible to stand up and win, and this has had a ripple effect for struggles everywhere. He noted that we stopped Shell from drilling in the Arctic. McKibben said that old people need to get arrested. They have a lot less to lose than young people. He told us that “There is not the slightest thing radical about what we are asking for.” Rather, the radicals are in the oil companies and in Washington, DC.

McKibben told us that this is the first crisis with a time limit, and that we could not have guessed how far and fast climate change would happen. It was recently 129 degrees in Pakistan, and 116 degrees in Oman. These are temperatures at the limit of human survival. We have lost half of the sea ice in the Arctic. An iceberg as large as Delaware will very soon break off in the Antarctic. (It did break off the week of July 12th.)   Bill McKibben noted that at the rate we are going, we can expect 7-8 degrees F rise in the next 100 years, which would mean “the end of civilization as we know it.”

He also said that we could not have guessed how slowly the world would react. Engineers at Exxon knew of the problem in the early 1980s, but it was against corporate self-interest to act on this knowledge. The corporation instead shut down its climate research and started a very successful campaign to deny the science. The US is the climate change outlier in its denial. The rest of the world accepts the science and many efforts are succeeding. The cheapest forms of energy are now sun and wind. Denmark is producing one-half of its power through wind!

One way for individuals to mitigate their own greenhouse gas emissions is to contribute money to support renewable energy projects such as wind farms, solar power, or biomass energy. Individuals can calculate how much carbon and other greenhouse gases they emit into the atmosphere through air travel or other transportation, and then contribute an appropriate amount to a non-profit organization that will use these funds to support such projects. These contributions are called “carbon offsets,” and it is easy to make these calculations online. Although McKibben said that these carbon offsets are only a drop in the bucket, he uses the organization NativeEnergy for his offsets.

McKibben also advocated support for the indigenous organization Honor the Earth, the Indigenous Environmental Network, and Green for All.

When asked about the value of a carbon tax, he said that it might have been useful in the past, but now the problem is too big. We need to keep the fossil fuels in the ground, and we need a public campaign to spread alternative energy.

Al Kagan is the Chair of the International Responsibilities Task Force of the Social Responsibilities Round Table of the American Library Association

 

Posted in Environment | Comments Off on “The End of Civilization As We Know It”

The 2018 U.S. Militarized Budget

Posted on 09/09/2017 by Mort Brussel

The 2018 U.S. Militarized Budget

My premise is that the military budget, as proposed by the current administration, is a principal reason for the strangling of our civil society. This article explains why it is unnecessary, why it is promoted, and why it is malignant.

The Proposed Military Budget and its Rationale

There are two components of the Federal budget, one discretionary and the other “mandatory” (essentially fixed). Discretionary spending is about one-third (about $1.2 trillion) of total spending.

The discretionary part of the Trump Federal budget (as with prior budgets) is presently dominated by Pentagon and related expenditures and amounts to about $740 billion, but still must be negotiated. It includes virtually everything the government does outside of such “entitlement” expenditures as Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid, which are components of the mandatory budget. Military expenditures include direct military spending and related spending on veterans’ affairs, homeland security, CIA, intelligence, and nuclear weapons research and development. It amounts to an astounding 65%-68% of the federal discretionary budget!

Borrowing words from William Hartung, “You undoubtedly won’t be surprised to learn that perpetual war and the urge to perpetuate yet more of it leaves little room for spending on the environment, diplomacy, alternative energy, housing, or other domestic investments, not to speak of infrastructure repair. Put another way, preparations for, and the pursuit of war, will ensure that any future America is dirtier, sicker, poorer, more rickety, and less safe.”

“With all the military spending and the increase planned by the Trump administration, the danger is that we shall forever be looking for new conflicts to engage in, to finding new enemies to scare our people.” (http://www.tomdispatch.com/post/176311/tomgram%3A_william_hartung%2C_ the_trillion_dollar_national_security_budget/#more)

Why Are Our Military Expenses So Large?

1) Is the U.S. homeland really in danger from attack from perceived state adversaries: China, Russia, North Korea, Iran, …Venezuela?

One should remember here that US military expenditures dwarf those of any other nation, in fact are larger then next eight countries’ military expenditures combined. Russia’s spending is about one-tenth, and China’s about one-third, that of the U.S.. Moreover, Russia has recently announced that it is reducing its military spending by about 25%.

The U.S mainland is surrounded by protective oceans and friendly countries. The only nations that could conceivably attack it are those which possess intercontinental ballistic missles as well as imposing sea and air power, namely our advertised main adversaries Russia and China. Iran and North Korea, now rated so dangerous, lack such capabilities and are unlikely to have them in the near future, for they simply lack technical capacity and resources, the recent ballistic missile tests by North Korea notwithstanding. (However, they could use their diminished deterrent military capabilities were they to be targeted by the U.S.)

But what country would dare attack our nuclearized, high-tech military powerhouse knowing that it would be obliterated by an overwhelming U.S. response if it tried? This would be true even if our military budget were, for example, halved. Russia and China clearly understand this, and hence seek peaceful coexistence with the United States, despite our threatening military provocations at their borders.

2) Another excuse for our military budget is to protect our allies—NATO countries, Japan, Israel, Saudi Arabia, South Korea—but there is little indication that those nations are in danger, unless the U.S. initiates or promotes attacks on their neighbors. (Thus, an attack by the U.S. on North Korea might cause Japan and South Korea to be attacked; a U.S. attack on Iran would possibly invoke retaliation against Saudi Arabia and Israel.)

3) Therefore, what seems most evident is that this overwhelming military U.S. capability serves mainly to safeguard our broadly understood “national security” or “national interests.”

What this entails is that “we”, i.e. the U.S. governing circles, shall not readily tolerate competitors to those interests. “We” have to be able to demand that others provide resources that we need, or crave, such as oil. Moreover, we wish to be in control of those resources, physical and economic. It is for this reason that we maintain about 800 military bases around the globe. Efforts to create what is called “global stability” means that we must repel opposition from other nations to these, our aims: We thus cannot admit the sovereignty of nations who do not acquiesce to major U.S. policy objectives.

4) What about having our military prowess in order to fight terrorism? But it is well recognized that we create terrorists who seek vengeance for our destructive actions against their societies. Moreover, terrorism and the demonization of Russians, Chinese, Iranians, and North Koreans is useful in keeping our war economy humming, servicing Raytheon, Lockheed-Martin, General Dynamics, Boeing, etc., and myriad subcontractors. These corporations are the obvious beneficiaries of our war-prone foreign policies. Yet, expensive high-tech weaponry has little effect in preventing the attacks that terrorists can employ.

Of course, we must maintain and enhance our already overwhelming military superiority, because China and Russia (among others) are improving their military capabilities. Thus, the Trump budget proposes $54 billion in new military spending, and $1 trillion over 30 years to improve our nuclear weaponry—possibly for what used to be unthinkable, a first strike against Russia or China.

Who Benefits and Who Suffers?

It is at this point relevant and important to emphasize that the security of the U.S., as conceived by our administrations, does not extend uniformly to our own population! The well-being of most us not only does not benefit from the gargantuan U.S. military/national security budget, but is sabotaged by it. With such a budget, much of what most of our people value will be unattainable.

Finally, and perhaps foremost, one must take into account the moral dimensions of U.S. military behavior. Our military policies, made available by our military expenses, have cast aside core human values, the values of a just and humane society. Our behavior—wars, drone killings, subversions—constitute a grotesque tale of death, maiming, and destruction of other peoples and their societies. We’ve destroyed Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya, Syria, Yemen, Somalia … , while sustaining war-mongering theocracies, like Saudi Arabia, and repressive expansive governments, like Israel with respect to Palestinians.

Domestically, military expenditures go hand in hand with an increasing militarization here at home. National security regulations undermine freedoms. Nations dominated by militaries and their supporters become murderous and repressive. One only needs to recall how it worked in Hitler’s Germany, Mussolini’s Italy, and Hirohito’s Japan.

To summarize, my focus has been to attack grossly excessive military spending, because that determines what resources are available for our nation’s social needs, hence our nation’s internal strength; and whether we can have a truly democratic society, and one that fits peacefully into the world, rather than one which is militarized. The world would be a safer and more prosperous place if the wealth of the U.S. were not depleted by its unnecessary military and intelligence depredations.

###

This article and Dave Johnson’s article in this issue are derived from presentations at a panel on “The Hidden Costs of War” on June 18, 2017 at the Champaign Public Library.

Bio.

Morton (Mort) K. Brussel is a UIUC emeritus professor of physics, retired in 1995.  He is  concerned with war, peace and human rights issues, and worries about the sustainability of resources in a growing world economy and problems arising with climate change due to human influences. He has engaged in antiwar protests in France and the United States.

 

Posted in Economy, Foreign Policy, Middle East, military | Comments Off on The 2018 U.S. Militarized Budget

OUT OF SIGHT, OUT OF MIND, THE HIDDEN COSTS OF WAR

Posted on 09/09/2017 by David Johnson

“War is a racket!” This was a famous quote from retired U.S. Marine Corp General Smedley Butler in 1934. Butler stated that “I spent 33 years in the Marine Corp, most of my time being a high-class muscle man for big business, Wall Street, and the bankers. … In short, I was a racketeer for capitalism.” Butler was also quoted as saying that “War only profits the few and costs the majority dearly.”

According to a 2016 Brown University study, as of 2001, the U.S. Government has spent $4.8 TRILLION so far in Afghanistan and Iraq. Total Department of Defense (DOD) spending for this same period of time is over $10 trillion. Total annual military spending budgeted for 2017 is equal to $582 billion, and was expected to increase to $639 billion in 2018. But a vote in the U.S. House of Representatives on Monday, August 7 increased the military budget to $696 billion—almost $60 BILLION MORE than what President Trump requested. 60% of House Democrats voted for this increase.

The DOD budget consumes 80% of the revenue from the individual federal income tax, which in reality is a war tax equal to $3,200 per year for every adult in America.

A large percentage of this war spending goes to various corporations that sell weapons, and other goods and services like spying on American citizens. The exact amount spent is unknown, because the DOD has refused to submit to an audit for the last 16 years, and none of the contracted corporations that received taxpayer money have ever been audited. From the information that has been disclosed, the top five DOD vendor contractors (Boeing, Lockheed-Martin, Raytheon, General Dynamics and United Technologies) received about $75 billion in 2012 alone.

OTHER HIDDEN COSTS OF WAR

The other hidden costs of war are even more obscure than the lack of transparency in the DOD’s budget, and are more long-term. In addition to long-term care for wounded and psychologically traumatized veterans, there is the neglect of deteriorating infrastructure in the U.S., both physical and human.

A study by the Urban Land Institute in 2011 estimated that $2 trillion is needed NOW, to upgrade existing physical infrastructure in the U.S. that is rapidly deteriorating from years of neglect: roads, bridges, dams, levees, water systems, sewer facilities, railroads and airports. Another Flint water crisis is already beginning to happen in East Chicago, Cleveland and Baltimore, as well as in smaller cities and rural areas.

The study also states that if federal tax money is not allocated to upgrade this deteriorating infrastructure, the federal gas tax will need to be increased, local and state governments will need to create more toll roads on existing highways, water and sewer bills will increase, property and sales taxes will increase, and corporations will obtain ownership of more public spaces, services and projects – leading to the lower quality of services and higher costs that always result with privatization.

The $2 trillion dollars needed is just for existing infrastructure upgrades. So even more money would be required to bring the U.S. into the 21st century with the building of high speed rail networks as well as the improvement and expansion of solar, wind and other clean energy technologies that Western Europe and China already have.

Besides physical infrastructure there is human and environmental infrastructure that desperately needs to be upgraded and expanded, like environmental cleanup and pollution prevention equipment; full funding of public K-12 schools; making post-high school technical and higher education free for all; a guaranteed minimum income; secure and expanded Social Security and public sector pensions; and the start-up costs for an expanded and improved Medicare for All single payer health care system.

For every $1 billion spent on the military, 12,000 jobs are created. But with the same billion dollars spent, 16,000 clean energy jobs, 18,000 health care jobs or 27,000 education jobs could be created – not to mention the vast number of jobs that would be created for the upgrade of current infrastructure and the creation of 21st century infrastructure.

WHAT HAS MILITARY SPENDING ACCOMPLISHED?

Apologists for the massive amounts of tax money spent on the military attempt to argue that it is needed to protect the American people and protect the world from terrorism. But according to a 2013 WIN/Gallup International poll conducted in 65 countries which asked the question, “Which country poses the greatest threat to world peace?”, the United States was voted the biggest threat (24% of those polled), with Pakistan a distant second (8%). Obviously the rest of the world doesn’t think that the U.S. Government is conducting wars around the world to protect them from terrorism. In fact, it appears that the perception among world inhabitants is that the U.S. Government is the cause of terrorist acts and is conducting wars of aggression. If this perception is correct, why is the U.S. Government conducting wars abroad, and for whose benefit? Could it be the same special interests that Marine Corps General Butler identified – large corporations, Wall Street investors, and the banking industry? Perhaps the oil and other energy companies as well?

The fact that the so-called “defense” industry (war profiteers) increased profits and stock performance over the last 16 years seems to indicate that. If General Butler’s other statements are true, that he was a racketeer for capitalism and that wars only profit the few and cost the many dearly, then it appears that the so called “War on Terror” that has been conducted the last 16 years is really something else. Like the attempt to control energy resources, geopolitical territory and low wage sweat shop labor costs, and to increase the profits of the war profiteer industry (a.k.a. “defense” contractors).

In other words, protecting and expanding the wealth, privilege, and power of the 1% billionaire class (the few) is costing us (the many) dearly in the loss of life and limb of U.S. soldiers, our tax dollars and the physical and human infrastructure we depend upon to live.

This insanity must stop!

David Johnson hosts the World Labor Hour radio program, which broadcasts and webcasts live worldwide every Saturday morning from 11 AM – 1 PM on WRFU- Radio Free Urbana , 104.5 FM and at www.wrfu.net

 

Posted in Economy, Environment, Foreign Policdy, Foreign Policy, labor, Middle East, military | Comments Off on OUT OF SIGHT, OUT OF MIND, THE HIDDEN COSTS OF WAR

Administrative Sleight of Hand: Financial Realities at the University of Illinois

Posted on 09/07/2017 by Augustus Wood

“I am opposing a social order in which it is possible for one man who does absolutely nothing that is useful to amass a fortune of hundreds of millions of dollars, while millions of men and women who work all the days of their lives secure barely enough for a wretched existence.” — Eugene V. Debs

In June 2017, top administrators at the University of Illinois sent an open letter to state legislators, warning them that failure to agree on a 2018 fiscal budget will “drive up construction costs, disrupt teaching, research, and campus life” at the Champaign-Urbana site. This followed the University’s preposterous request for $662.1 million from the state for operating costs for FY2018, a sharp increase from the $40 million requested for FY2016. While on the surface this seems reasonable because of the state revenue (not budget) crisis, these University appeals for increased fiscal support are a manipulative sleight of hand that masks the University’s booming profit with a dishonest narrative of poverty and forced austerity. The financial reality of the University of Illinois is that it has more money than it has ever had before. Between FY2005 and FY2015, tuition and fee revenue increased by a staggering $668 million, or 155.5%, while state funding decreased by only $36 million, or 5.2%, over that same ten-year period. Additionally, the University currently has a $3.2 billion total endowment, and received close to $300 million in state appropriations for FY2015 and FY2016. Even if we exclude other revenue-generating juggernauts like the Big Ten television deal and athletics, the University’s insistence in continuing this false narrative of poverty and austerity is reprehensibly fraudulent. In fact, the University unevenly distributes its grossly exorbitant profits to a small percentage of bureaucratic bloat at the expense of graduate employees, staff, undergraduate students, and tenured and non-tenured faculty. This deliberate monopoly of resources forces us to face ever-increasing material hardships that threaten our health, working conditions, and productivity as workers and scholars.

As UIUC graduate employee Grace Herbert argued in her exemplary April 2016 Public I article, “UIUC is Balancing a False Budget ‘Crisis’ on the Backs of Students and Faculty,” the University’s financial sleight of hand is dependent on its devious expense reporting. The University combines its financial data for Springfield, Champaign-Urbana, and Chicago, thus making it impossible to approximate the distribution, expenses, and revenues for each individual campus. As Herbert points out, the budget reports for each campus are individually structured, but they only report expected expenditures, which allows the University to escape questions and accountability for its regressive resource distribution.

Instead, when we look past the administrative sleight of hand, the University’s recent financial maneuvers delegitimize its scarcity claims and expose its willingness to position graduate employees, tenured and non-tenured faculty, and students as low priority for the institution. Firstly, UIUC continues a media campaign celebrating its “tuition freeze” without providing any concrete details. The reality is that UIUC is only freezing tuition for in-state students, while the most expensive tuition rates, for out-of-state and international students, continue to rise. Because this year’s freshman class is the largest in UIUC history, this ploy will prove the most lucrative for the administration. UIUC signed head football coach Lovie Smith to a six-year, $29 million contract, with another $4 million allocated for his staff. Lastly, the University is planning a $250 million renovation project at the Illini Union, the largest campus renovation in the school’s history. The UIUC administration would not propose such a risky, long-term project if it did not possess an excessive surplus of funds. Consequently, this reprehensible dishonesty demonstrates that the University prioritizes its profit-inducing projects much higher than its actual poverty-stricken teaching assistants, who average $16,360 per year in pay, well below the $22,314 per year recommended cost of living for a graduate employee.

Exorbitant administrative pay is crucial to this sleight-of-hand strategy. Nationwide, public university presidents and chancellor compensation (including base salary, bonuses, severance packages, etc.) rose by 4.3% last year, with the median now at $431,000. The University of Illinois is a primary catalyst for this increase, with Illinois system president Tim Killeen’s $600,000 base salary (with an extra $100,000 in performance bonus) positioning him in the top 20 percent of public university presidents in the United States. Besides Killeen, other administrative salaries are as follows: Chancellor Robert Jones: $649,000; Executive Vice President and Vice President of Academic Affairs Barbara Wilson: $450,000; College of Medicine Dean Kin Li: $650,000; Interim Provost Edward Feser: $330,500; Chief Information Officer Mark Henderson: $320,000; Dean of the College of Education Jim Anderson: $245,843; Interim Vice Chancellor for Academic Affairs and Provost John P. Wilkin: $249,000; Vice Provost for International Affairs and Global Strategies Reitumetse Obakeng Mabokela: $230,000; Director of Labor and Employee Relations Leslie N. Arvan: $127,558.12; Vice Provost for Academic Affairs William T. Bernhard: $245,061; Vice Provost of Budget and Resource Planning Paul N Ellinger: $245,000; Vice Provost Elabbas Benmamoun: $230,000; Dean of College of ACES Robert J. Hauser: $319,735; and Associate Dean of Academic Affairs Marieke Schoen: $183,530.

This administrative sleight of hand at UIUC not only fattens the top execs’ pockets, but also reduces opportunities for other campus entities on the ground level to preserve or improve working and living conditions. The University Administration directs departments to cut staff and teaching assistants, and asks that they somehow manage overflowing freshmen classes every year. As a result, faculty must overload their work duties with professional tasks such as academic advising, a full-time service that toes the line of violating the job duties set forth for teaching faculty. Academic Advisor and Black Studies scholar Lou Turner was one such casualty last year, as the African American Studies Department chair, Ronald Bailey, unfairly targeted and fired Turner, effectively destabilizing the department and placing the students, graduate assistants, and faculty in jeopardy. Additionally, departments are forced to enact hiring freezes so tenured and non-tenured faculty teaching loads dramatically increase. Academic spaces like Altgeld Hall, Coble Hall, and the English building have multiple workplace safety hazards (mold, asbestos, rats and roaches, and crumbling infrastructure) that require significant renovations; however, departments in those buildings, like the Math Department, are repeatedly told the school has no money for those repairs.

Unfortunately, the new Illinois state budget, passed and celebrated by both Democrats and Republican legislators, cuts higher education by ten percent, further exacerbating the burden of educational costs on the backs of graduate employees and undergraduate students and their families whose means have been increasingly constrained by stagnant wages and the rising cost of living. These hardships mean that working class employees and students will amass crippling debt to address social crises such as food insecurity, healthcare costs, student fees, child care services, and housing instability.

The UIUC administration willingly constructs a fabricated financial crisis on the campus that simultaneously increases its revenue streams and endangers the social realities of workers across Champaign County. As scholars, activists, and concerned citizens, we must hold the University accountable for its fraudulent claims by taking control of the narrative, exposing the UIUC administration for its role in subordinating multiple groups on the campus, and centralizing our struggle, as graduate workers, tenured and non-tenured faculty, staff, and students, to obtain the fair wages and working conditions we deserve as the lifeblood of the university. If we drive the narrative consistently, the administrative sleight of hand fails. Our liberation is at stake.

Gus Wood is a PhD Candidate in the Department of History at the University of Illinois, Co-President of the Graduate Employees Organization, a trustee on the Champaign County AFL-CIO Executive Board, Co-Host of the World Labor Hour on WRFU Radio, and an organizer for Black Students for Revolution, North End Breakfast Club, and the Speak Truth Collective.  He studies social movements and political economy in Black urban history and Black labor history.

Posted in University of Illinois | Comments Off on Administrative Sleight of Hand: Financial Realities at the University of Illinois

GEO’s Fight for Tuition Waivers

Posted on 09/07/2017 by Patrick Kimutis

By Patrick Kimutis and Bruce Kovanen

The Graduate Employees’ Organization (GEO), the union representing graduate workers at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign (UIUC), is continuing a years-long fight to win tens of thousands of dollars of withheld compensation owed to fourteen former international students from the Masters in Computer Science (MCS) program. In January, 2016, a neutral and legally binding arbitration process determined that the University Administration was in violation of the GEO’s contract with the university in withholding this form of compensation from teaching assistants enrolled in the MCS program. According to the GEO’s contract with the university, teaching assistants receive tuition waivers, a form of compensation that waives the costs of tuition in exchange for the labor performed. Because of the high cost of tuition, and the low wages graduate employees receive (the vast majority of graduate employee wages are 30% or more under the university’s published living wage), the tuition waiver is the primary form of compensation.

In 2013, GEO learned that the Department of Computer Science (CS) was enacting a policy to eliminate waiver-generating assistantships for graduate students enrolled in MCS. GEO met with campus administrators, who agreed not to enact the policy. In Fall 2014, incoming MCS graduate students were told that this policy had been enacted; they could not hold assistantships in the CS department, but they could find employment in other campus departments that would come with a tuition waiver. Many of them were highly qualified in other fields and were offered waiver-generating assistantships in other departments; however, those offers were rescinded when CS began demanding that any unit hiring an MCS student pay the CS department the cost of the student’s tuition in cash, rather than just waiving it. In effect, this blacklisted the students from waiver-generating positions, because employing units were unwilling to pay tuition in cash to the CS Department. In many cases, the waiver-generating assistantship was converted to an hourly position, so the MCS assistant was working for drastically reduced compensation, often alongside non-MCS peers doing the same work and receiving a tuition and fee waiver. Hourly employees are denied additional rights like union representation, contributions to health insurance premiums, and other fee waivers.

When MCS graduate students came to GEO and explained the situation, the GEO initiated their grievance procedure, culminating in arbitration in which the federal arbiter sided with the union and found the University Administration in violation of the contract. However, the arbiter left the remedy up to the parties, and the GEO has since been fighting the Administration to reimburse fourteen identified students who performed hourly work that should have been compensated with a tuition waiver. Several of these former students cannot even afford to go back to their home country due to the debt they accrued while being forced to pay tuition to UIUC. All fourteen of the identified students are international, and some had to put their families’ houses up as collateral to finance their time working and studying at UIUC. Their family homes are not safe until the debt is paid.

The Administration, for its part, has not only not paid these students back, but has stonewalled the GEO. Associate University Counsel Craig Hoefer has repeatedly ignored GEO emails and phone calls, delayed meetings pertaining to the grievance, and refused to provide information that would help the union determine if there are additional students who are owed compensation. Craig Hoefer has had documentation from the fourteen affected former students since February 2017, and since that time has refused all of GEO’s attempts to communicate about the case. The Administration’s refusal to provide these students with the compensation they are owed has not only had massively detrimental effects on these individuals’ lives, but also speaks to a broader attempt to devalue graduate labor at the University of Illinois. In the ongoing contract negotiations with the GEO that began in March of this year, the Administration has proposed changes to the tuition waiver language that would open the door for them to impose similar policies on graduate employees across campus. Tuition waivers are a necessary mechanism for making higher education accessible to anyone but the super rich. Almost all graduate students at UIUC are non-residents for tuition purposes; the minimum yearly tuition rate for non-resident and international graduate students is $26,502 with some programs costing nearly $50,000 per year.

Since the election of Trump and the concomitant rise in xenophobia, the UIUC Administration has repeatedly voiced its support for international students, who comprise 44% of the university’s graduate student population. Their actions, however, tell a different story. We’re asking members of the community to email Scott Rice, Campus Legal Counsel, at serice@uillinois.edu, and Craig Hoefer, Associate Legal Counsel, at choefer@uillinois.edu, to ask them why they have been unresponsive to GEO’s calls and emails, and to demand a response. If this bothers you, let them know! You can use a template, posted below, to start your email.

If you’d like to learn more about this issue, please contact the GEO at geo@uigeo.org.

Template:

Dear Mr. Rice and Mr. Hoefer,

I am writing in support of the GEO’s efforts to secure reimbursement for MCS graduate students affected by a recent arbitration decision. I decry your silence and inaction, and I demand that you respond to the GEO’s repeated attempts to settle the terms of the arbitrator’s decision.

Best,

___________

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The Racial Justice Task Force and the slow trudge toward justice in Champaign County

Posted on 09/07/2017 by Albert Stabler

The Champaign County Racial Justice Task Force (RJTF) will be issuing its final report this fall. Those who sought to create this task force, and those working within it, have faced an uphill struggle in trying to get the white community to confront the fact of racism in the criminal justice system.

The proposal to establish a Racial Justice Task Force first came from a wide-ranging 2013 report issued by the Champaign Community Justice Task Force (CJTF), a group of officials, scholars, and activists chaired by then-Urbana City Councilwoman Carol Ammons, the county’s current State Representative. The CJTF issued a call to create an RJTF in order to address the egregious racial disparity in the population of the Champaign County Jail, relative to the general county population. Essentially, African-Americans make up about 13% of the county’s population, and always well over half, sometimes over 70% of the jail population.

While multiple community groups mobilized to pack the County Board meeting room in fall 2015 in support of the RJTF, centrist Democrats on the Board made an effort to shift attention away from criminal justice. While the resolution that passed made no such stipulations, the application for appointment to the RJTF nonetheless requested that applicants indicate their interest in jobs, housing, or an all-purpose heading simply labeled “justice.” Applications were to be reviewed by a five-person panel, of which four members were white. In November, eight local activist organizations wrote an open letter criticizing this process. Applications were slow in coming in, and a group was not convened until February 2016.

Without any funding from the County Board, the RJTF began its work with 23 members (including one alternate), divided fairly evenly between white members and members of color, and took the early step of issuing a mission statement dedicated to criminal justice. The group soon broke up into subcommittees. In September 2016, there were committees addressing policing practices, juvenile justice, community engagement, restorative justice, the legal process, and structural racism. Ignoring the mission statement, this last category initially was intended to encompass employment and housing, and later expanded to include education, implicit bias, and trauma-informed counseling.

Over the course of the last 18 months, the group has met regularly, both in its committees and as a large group. According to Task Force member Sara Balgoyen,”the task force has had many experts in their respective fields (police, courts, juvenile, disproportionate minority contact and more) present evidence–based practices, promising practices, and beliefs for how to reduce racial disparities.”

Task force members have ventured into the community on a handful of occasions: to gather community members’ stories at two events in summer 2016, and, in March 2017, to get feedback on collaborative efforts to analyze county criminal justice data. Other than these forays, though, it’s not clear that the group did much to solicit the views of incarcerated or formerly incarcerated people.

The original mandate had the RJTF issuing a final report in July 2017, but the group received permission to extend its work until October. Drafts of committee final reports have been under discussion since July. The legal process committee has focused on fines and fees, penalties that disproportionately burden poor people of color, and new sections were added to the report: one dealing with access to public housing for those with criminal convictions, and one identifying cash bail as a significant cause of racial disparity in the jail. Most of the draft sections are concise, and generally make concrete, common-sense recommendations to address problems related to criminal justice disparities. The deficit in an otherwise solid draft report was the section on structural racism, which ignored criminal justice; however, this section, now only treating “education,” has been cut down from its original length of over 30 pages.

With some additions and subtractions, the RJTF group now stands at around 18, and has a distinct white majority. Attendance at meetings exaggerates this imbalance. This white domination can be witnessed in the meetings, in which white speakers take up an outsized portion of the group’s time. These speakers seem to have set the bulk of the group’s agenda since 2015, and have at times communicated among themselves without including the entire membership. This inadvertent but undeniable silencing of Black voices does, in turn, help to explain the attrition and absence of people of color from a group purportedly formed to address the interests of communities of color.

Alex Evans, a Black member who has stopped attending meetings of a Task Force he describes as “arguably anti-Black,” wrote to me about the racial dynamics of the group.

“On paper it looks as if the RJTF was/is interested in what Black folks have to say, but the reality is that they actively rejected what some Black committee and community members had to say. It was definitely an instance of only accepting the ‘Black perspective’ if it was comfortable to their brand of liberalism… It seemed as though many on the RJTF went into the process searching for racial discrimination, not as a means for providing proof for the County Board, but they searched to validate their experiences and their feelings that things aren’t as bad as some of us claim.”

Along with the sprawling and ineffectual section on structural racism, Evans also took issue with the programs proposed by the restorative justice committee, programs which he said “were suggested to benefit Task Force members’ professional endeavors, not as a means to confront the racial justice issues in the county.”

Ultimately, the work of the Racial Justice Task Force has been worthwhile. At the same time, its history illustrates the pervasive racist dynamics in institutional efforts to confront white supremacism. This remains true despite the good intentions of white liberals, some of whom have made valuable contributions to the Task Force. “The (draft) report ignores the very real racism and indifference utilized to construct it,” says Evans, “while at the same time attempting to rebuke the same racism in Champaign County.” He states, “all many of us are asking is for the current system to be called out, and, more importantly, be held accountable for its daily patterns of inflicting racialized miscarriages of justice.”

Given the difficulty of communicating this simple necessity to a relatively sympathetic, diverse group organized to address the racism of the criminal justice system, it is hard to be optimistic about what will happen when the RJTF final report reaches the far more white and far more skeptical County Board. But this Board is the same body that had to be hounded into creating the RJTF, and the same body that then sought to undermine its mission in the application process. Most importantly, it is the same body that must once again this fall, as in years past, be stopped by public pressure from spending taxpayer dollars to expand the county’s majority-Black jail.

 

 

 

 

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Illinois Sets Precedent With Bill To Protect Prison Visitation

Posted on 08/24/2017 by Public i

St. Rep. Carol Ammons and Wandjell Harvey-Robinson

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
August 23, 2017

FOR MORE INFORMATION:
Brian Dolinar, Program Director, Independent Media Center 217-621-5827, briandolinar@ucimc.org
Michelle Jett, State Rep. Carol Ammons 217-531-1660, michelle@staterepcarolammons.com

Urbana, IL – In-person contact visits are now legally guaranteed in Illinois prisons, setting a new bar for preserving the rights and dignity of incarcerated individuals and their families. With the passage of HB2738: Protect Prison Visits Bill, video calling will not replace, but will supplement, in-person visiting.

Introduced by Illinois State Representative Carol Ammons, and supported by the Urbana-Champaign Independent Media Center (UCIMC), HB2738 also ensures that the cost of video calling is reasonable and affordable. This is the companion bill to 2016’s HB6200: The Family Connections Bill which cut in half the cost of traditional phone calls from prison. Both bills are a product of the partnership between Representative Ammons and the Campaign for Prison Phone Justice.

“I am proud to say Illinois is setting a national precedent for regulating this new technology. Strong family connections are a strong factor in reducing recidivism and simply a humane way to treat those serving sentences and their family members,” said State Representative Carol Ammons (D-Urbana).

“We use our eyes to see, but our eyes see more than just figures. With our eyes we can see love, we can see pain, we can see joy. This bill will enable those incarcerated the opportunity to extend their love by reaching out to their families via video chats. Technology is advancing for the communities in the outside world and we cannot forget about the human beings removed from their communities and families. Again, we say thank you,” shared Wandjell Harvey-Robinson, who grew up struggling to stay in contact with her parents who were both incarcerated.

HB2738 was signed into law by Governor Rauner in August and goes into effect January 1, 2018.

#####

UCIMC is a community center based in Urbana, Illinois with a mission to foster the creation and distribution of media and art that emphasizes underrepresented voices and perspectives. We are a member of the Campaign for Prison Phone Justice, and an anchor member of the Media Action Grassroots Network, housed at Center for Media Justice in Oakland.

 

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Rodney Davis: Can’t Blame Trump for Charlottesville

Posted on 08/18/2017 by Public i

In the August 15th Issue of the News-Gazette, our congressional representative Rodney Davis is quoted as saying: “What happened in Charlottesville is no more President Trump’s fault than what happened to me two months ago when a Bernie Sanders supporter shot at me.”

Mr. Davis, Bernie Sanders did not extol violence the way that Trump did when he urged his supporters to beat up protesters at his election rallies. Trump offered to pay their legal fees. Nor did Sanders urge police officers to use gratuitous violence against arrestees the way Trump has. Nor has Sanders disseminated images of himself punching CNN.

Sanders has never promoted racism or anti-Semitism. Trump called Mexican immigrants rapists, said that  that he would build a wall to keep them out, and claimed that he could not receive justice from a judge because the judge was Latino. Trump has tried to ban Muslims from entering the United States and falsely asserted that he saw Muslims cheering in NY when the twin towers were hit in 9/11. He has brought into the White House such Muslim-haters as Steve Bannon, Michael Flynn, Stephen Miller, Julie Kirchner, and Sebastian Gorka. Bannon was also head of Breitbart News, to which he has just returned, that gives voice to spewers of white supremacy, anti-Semitism, and anti-Muslim views.

Trump himself was an early denier of the U.S. birth of Barack Obama, our only African American president. He also was quick to call for the reinstitution of the death penalty in New York, to be used against black youths who had been wrongly convicted of  rape. His real estate firm also discriminated against black people. In his absurd claim that three million people (the number of his popular vote loss to Clinton) voted against him illegitimately and his appointment of a presidential commission to search for massive voter fraud nationally, he feeds the attempt by Republicans to disenfranchise minority voters, a way of trying to solidify white dominant power and fundamentally undermining our democratic system.

Through all of the above, and his verbal false equivalencies, similar to your own false equivalency Mr. Davis, Trump has indeed empowered racists, Nazis, fascists, and anti-Semites in our body politic. Shame on you sir!

 

 

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Soros Fellowship Awarded to UCIMC’s James Kilgore for Electronic Monitoring Campaign

Posted on 07/26/2017 by Brian Dolinar

July 25, 2017

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

We are proud to announce that James Kilgore has been awarded the prestigious Open Society Foundation Soros Justice Fellowship for 2017-18. Building on work supported by Urbana-Champaign Independent Media Center (UCIMC) for the last three years, James’s Open Society Fellowship will focus on developing a national campaign on the use of electronic monitoring (EM) in the criminal legal system. Kilgore has been researching electronic monitoring since spending a year on a monitor as a condition of his own parole in 2009-10.

This project comes at a critical time when many jurisdictions are moving towards the use of electronic monitoring as a strategy for decarceration, often with draconian conditions of house arrest. James’s work will mobilize a nationwide network to develop a set of guidelines for electronic monitoring which will center the rights of those on the monitor and contest unjust EM policies such as user fees and unregulated collection of location tracking data.

“Without policy and organizing intervention in the use of electronic monitoring now, the dream of decarceration could turn into a nightmare. The way EM is deployed could lead to greater freedom and community connections, or could increase surveillance and control while putting it out of sight, limiting freedom of movement throughout poor communities,” said Danielle Chynoweth, co-founder of UCIMC and former Organizing Director at the Center for Media Justice.

This project is co-hosted by the Center for Media Justice, a racial justice organizing hub that champions the media and technology rights communities of color and America’s poor, and the Urbana-Champaign Independent Media Center, a local base-building organizing with a ten-year history in supporting effective criminal justice reform campaigns. These organizations collaborate through the Media Action Grassroots Network (MAG-Net), a national network of 100+ groups working together to amplify the voices of impacted communities to win communication rights and power by influencing policy and shifting culture.

A project of Open Society Foundations, Soros Justice Fellowships fund outstanding individuals to undertake projects that advance reform, spur debate, and catalyze change on a range of issues facing the U.S. criminal justice system.

In addition to his work on electronic monitors, James has played a leading role in local social justice campaigns as the Co-Director of FirstFollowers reentry program and a founding member of Build Programs, Not Jails. He is also the author of five books, including the highly acclaimed Understanding Mass Incarceration: A People’s Guide to the Key Civil Rights Struggle of Our Time. James played a key role in UCIMC’s work in the 2014-15 campaign for Prison Phone Justice.

 

Contact: Brian Dolinar

Program Director

Urbana-Champaign Independent Media Center

202 S. Broadway Ave.

Urbana, IL 61801

briandolinar@ucimc.org

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The Water Project: Examining our relationship with our most precious resource

Posted on 06/30/2017 by Nancy Dietrich

Performing The Water Project at the IMC

Nancy Dietrich is a resident of Urbana who became an environmentalist because she likes to breathe clean air and drink clean water.

“Destruction of water resources and of forest catchments and aquifers is a form of terrorism. Denying poor people access to water by privatizing water distribution or polluting wells and rivers is also terrorism.”
~Vandana Shiva, Water Wars: Privatization, Pollution and Profit

Water is essential for all living things. It is also a convenient dumping ground for waste, and a commodity to be bought and sold. With these three themes in mind, the ensemble of Kate Insolia, Efadul Huq, Maddie Terlap, Madelyn Childress, Rosanne Brighton, Katie Fenton, Yu-Yun Hsieh and Latrelle Bright met once, sometimes twice, a week over the course of several months to learn, discuss, collaborate, create and then perform The Water Project, the latest theatrical performance directed by local theater maker Latrelle Bright.  Katie Fenton served as dramaturge and Yu-Yun Hsieh as sound designer for the performance.

According to her website, latrellebright.com, “through research, devising and development, six local folk immersed themselves in water issues and created this performance from their findings and rumination, infusing sound, poetry, movement and song.” Phase one of the project consisted of research and learning: the group met to watch documentaries, discuss articles on water issues, and listen to invited guests. Phase two was the development phase. Using an age-old technique called “devised theater,” the ensemble began to collaborate on the piece itself:  writing poetry & prose, creating movement pieces, and sharing their creations with the group for feedback, where the pieces were finessed and finalized by the entire ensemble. Phase three was rehearsal and performance.

Latrelle conceived of The Water Project as a way to raise awareness of the numerous water issues that confront our society today, to meet with like-minded people who care about these issues, and to find a way to merge the academic with the artistic.  Latrelle studied musical theater at the Boston Conservatory, and has also studied at the International University in San Diego and Florida State University.  She became interested in environmental issues as an undergraduate, but felt that there was a culture around the environmental movement that didn’t include people like her. This project has given her a way to meet and create with others who don’t necessarily fit into the usual environmental movement mold.

“When creating this piece, I felt like–this is community; this is democracy. In other theater performances I’ve been involved with, there is a hierarchy, which is typical in theater.  Instead of top-down, this was side-by-side,” she reflects. This was one element that led to The Water Project debuting at the IMC. “I knew the IMC folk would appreciate it. If it would have been held at a more traditional theater, people would have expected traditional theater,” she says.

Efadul Huq, one of the performers in The Water Project, became interested in the project because it sounded fun and engaging. Efadul is a PhD student in the U of I’s Urban and Regional Planning program, and has a background in creative writing. In summarizing how the performance was created, he emphasized the importance of learning together, as well as how the piece was improvised over time.

“This was my first time doing devised theater,” he said. “Latrelle gave us exercises and prompts about the topic of water for us to think about. Then we created pieces and brought them back to the group, and the group would make comments and changes. It was different; more dynamic than regular theater.” Latrelle notes that devised theater is an old form of theater, and it comes naturally to us: children, for example, perform devised theater. “Even though you can get a degree in it, you don’t have to have a Master’s degree to be human,” she says. “Creating theater with people in community, with folks who don’t necessarily have training in theater,” was a powerful experience for Latrelle in directing and performing in this piece.

As the slogan goes, the personal is political. One of the goals of The Water Project was to think about, and get audiences to think about, how we access water and how water becomes a tool of domination depending on who controls access to it. “I wanted to work with Latrelle on this project because I knew it would be political; it wouldn’t just be ‘let’s celebrate how wonderful water is.’” Efadul says. And it did not disappoint in that way.  Many examples of the political aspects of water are evident in the performance, including a piece called Resistance: Flint, MI (see sidebar).

Overall, upon reflecting on the question, “Why a piece about water?”, Latrelle responds, “because we don’t think about it enough. Many organizations are engaged in water issues.  I hope we’ve planted another seed. There are so many issues to care about, but water is essential to everything.” And Efadul reflects, “there are so many things that divide us, but water connects us; it grounds us. [The Water Project] helps us reflect on our shared problems, and how it connects us all. Water is life.”

Latrelle states that there may be room in the piece for further development, specifically to focus on solutions; on ways that people are making access to water work for them. Perhaps a second act is in the works? Stay tuned.

For more information about Latrelle Bright and The Water Project, check out her website at: Latrellebright.com.

Latrelle Bright, Director/Performer

For sidebar/box:

Resistance:  Flint, MI
Written by Katie Fenton
Performed by Kate Insolia

There was once, no
There is one now, a mother

The woman whose eye lashes were falling out?
Did you hear about her?
She took a jug of water, brown, all brown from her tap, to the city council.
The same water that was eating away machine parts in another part of town.

And guess what the officials told her?
It met the federal standards of 15 ppb.
And they toasted each other with crystal glasses full of water, crystal clear.

The world of alternative facts did not begin yesterday.
It was already here among the rulers everyone had trusted

Do you know how it feels to watch your 3-year-old always sick?
To not see him grow?
You start putting a gallon of water by the bathroom sink for brushing baby teeth.
You put crates of water all around kitchen, making a small home even smaller.
You send your children to shower at friends’ houses or take a bath with bottled water…
You do not know anymore what is caution and what is paranoia…

And the fact is, the water tested at 400 ppb when flushed.
When following the protocol set out by officials at a town hall.

And so sometimes resistance takes the shape of a 37-year-old staying up all night
teaching herself science of water testing while her children sleep.
Gathering information and gathering allies.
Experts in their field.
Who had never seen lead levels this high.
Levels so high the the water coming out of her faucet qualified as toxic waste.

Because the fact is, the water tested at 13,200 ppb when tested immediately.
Correctly.

Sometimes resistance means breaking down experimental protocols, timing of samples, instruments of control, and records of minerals to explain to yourself why one of your twins is smaller than the other one…

Sometimes resistance is constantly calling city officials, the EPA, the DEQ, the CLU, calling and calling until you find someone who will listen. Unleashing a chain of investigations that would last months. Years.

Sometimes resistance is staring through the night at the trail of injustices needled through generations, through our very DNA.

 

 

 

Posted in Arts, Community, Environment, Human Rights, Voices of Color | Tagged , , | Comments Off on The Water Project: Examining our relationship with our most precious resource

Restoring Life’s Mutual Economy

Posted on 06/30/2017 by George Hardebeck

by George Hardebeck

Success has been sold as taking as much as we can, as fast and long as we can, replacing Life’s true green for printed green. Economy, as separate from ecology, is a grand delusion to suit the great addicts seeking

their continual flow of sick fixes – endorphins flying to a rage on Wall Street, promoting their belligerence through ‘mainstream’ corporate 6 Mogul Media, at any cost – 1000’s of species weekly at 100 to 10,000 times the normal extinction rate. 100 times the normal temperature,would place us as more successfully consumed than Venus, while most of us, even in ‘the green movement’, are not talking about this. Why?

Addicts must have more. Wendingo, a term by our Eastern Indigenous, qualifies monsters that must have more until they consume even their own bodies. These Wendigoag at the helm – snake oil salesmen and closet kings, now flushed out from behind the curtain – are waging havoc throughout the realm.

Not so driven, most of the rest of us go along as trained, complicit in our complacency, especially among the loyalist Pax Americana. The Pax Roma were those at the center and top of the economic empire in Rome, who,doing… well enough…would not end the system, while this dis-ease could consume all lives beyond, within reach, as with Pax Britannia. Loyalists to the empire sing our song of independence likeyouth still seeking to hold onto an irresponsible freedom, forgetting our return to inter-dependability,denying how mutual society depends upon responsible freedom -as fur traders learned when marrying into Indigenous cultural elders and hosts, here, bearing our American Revolution, French, Russian and so on.

We began to fall back into the pyramidal scheme about as soon as we thought we were breaking free, blind to the lesser nature of this sick construct. Like the alcoholic family, this dysfunctional system can have it’sheroes, scapegoats, lost children and mascots. Imperialism learned that keeping all compartmentalized in blocks and tiers, could keep us busy at each other’s throats, lest we rise to oust the self-centered bullydom -like the family maturing to put the addict into treatment – to end abuse and all begin recovery.

Our very brains may have grown to be human, some science considers, when expanding linguistics for rallying together to oust bigly apes beating chests on the knoll. The River Dance style of Irish dance seems was made more rigid, as the Brits and Scots protestant loyalists, who scalped and massacred them on the way in, had the native Catholic Irish keep their hands by their sides andfaces forward to not be plotting, and passing notes, if they wanted to restore their suppressed culture. Keeping Irish Catholics tiered lower than Presbyterian Scot loyalists kept the Imperialist’s money world going around, even to the tune of selling nine times the potatoes that they forced the Irish to monocrop, needed for the Irish to survive the infamous famine – another round of genocide.

We’ve seen uprisings like the Bacon Rebellion of the 1600’s on the East coast, quelled by the greed leading elites coughing up some of their spoils to lift the whites to separate them from the blacks a tier – as the Koch’s just supported congress to put repealing Obamacare on hold, realizing loosing some of their pirated booty could keep us pouring the gold down their gullets.Sex, race, color, creed, species, party… any schism – it’s all good, as long as we are divided for conquer.

Movements are in the works for our re-turn, with players like YES Magazine, and The Bioneers connecting our fragmented dots of wellbeing, re-linking Life’s web, connecting the Amazon’s richly Indigenous with Pennsylvania farmers fighting corporate pig farms, aided by the work of Mari Margil and Thomas Linzey of the Community Environmental Legal Defense Fund (CELDF). When the CELDF of Pennsylvania joined their skills with the wisdom of the Indigenous of the Amazon struggling against big oil, Ecuador’s revised national constitution bore the Community Rights / Rights of Nature Movement, and networks, into a global movement to rejoin

Life’s own revolutions, realigned. Looking into why their not-for-profit firm, with The People of PA, had so little recourse against corporations writing permits granted by the state, CELDF uncovered how an imperial construct was formed as the architectural structure of our federal constitution, for rule by the opulent -by James Madison, with the help of George Washington and friends behind closed doors-much like the failed Trans Pacific Partnership (TPP).

Placing property and commerce at the core and top of this pyramidal construct, corporations and banks, any large estate owners – all agencies of such, joined in as leaders of nation over state, over local community, over The People and all Life. So, CELDF found they could write constitutions to obstruct and dismantle this unjust federal source code, our national DNA that deceptively concocted our new American neo-imperial dream – which is for most a nightmare. Other founders of our constitution, would not ratify it without driving in our Bill of Rights for We The People. Still, without mutual economy, there is no mutual society.

Hundreds of communities using CELDF, nationally and worldwide, now organize to rewrite constitutions, placing peoples, community and nature, above corporations, property and commerce. New Hampshire, Colorado and Oregon are on it. Bolivia changed core laws, after Ecuador. Nepal joined in and brought Rights for Climate into the conversation; India for rights to heritage seed… and so many more. There are great talks and conversations on line for learning more of this transformative movement that seems, in many ways, more powerfully devising the change we all need than the Paris climate talks. We The People 2.0, The Second American Revolution is a film portraying this movement being shown in theaters to homes – as we are sharing locally, with discussion among related groups and individuals.

Even while such work is core, handing us the key and showing us the door, we need to do our homework to envision what we may move into across the threshold. Otherwise, we may be again prodded by violence, and seduced by monetary faux value to fall into another abusive form – while all Life calls us to restorative justice, in reconciliation ecology – Michael Rosenzweig’s term from Win Win Ecology, and in Restoration Economy, which Storm Cunningham’s book of this title shared would be the greatest part of our economy by 2010. A clue to renewing our vision, to reject ‘trickle-down reaganomics’ by those at the ‘top’ of this imperial pyramidal model spun, is realizing how We The People trickle down to our public and commercial servants; as is recognizing that with Life as the source of all we share, economically and trade, that we need to live Life on her terms, meekly again, sharing and caring for all beings – All Our Relations, as her own.

Stay tuned with the Independent Media Center, as we seek to support panel discussion for reforming our natural, mutual economy, realigning in Life’s movement, ongoing – revived in her revolutions.

 

(George Hardebeck hosts WannaBe Cafe, his radio show at WRFU.net out of the Independent Media Center, where he hosts a table for such conversation on Thursday nights, and another such space with Makerspace on some Wednesdays, as a 12- step group called Earth Anonymous/ACDC-Adult Children of Dysfunctional Culture, to move sharing, listening and discernment into an eco-cultural arts guild to change practices.)

 

 

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Solar in Urbana-Champaign

Posted on 06/30/2017 by Andy Robinson

CU is heating up with recent solar activity.  Solar panels are appearing on houses, businesses, churches, and in fields across the county. The dramatic drop in installation costs, along with overlapping federal and local incentives, make this a boom time for solar. The recent IL Future Energy Jobs Act continues requirement for utilities to offer net metering, re-establishes the renewable energy credit market auction, and opens possibilities for community solar farms. Net metering allows customers to feed excess electricity back into the grid, thereby not requiring costly batteries.

UI Solar Farm

Last year saw the startup of the University’s new 4.68-megawatt solar farm on Windsor Road near First Street, which produced 2% of the campus electricity in 2016. The University has a 10-year power purchase agreement (PPA) with the developer, Phoenix Solar, LLC., to deliver all electricity produced directly to the campus grid, and the University will own all the associated Renewable Energy Certificates (RECs) and emission credits. While this 18,867 panel, 20.8 acre farm is the largest in the Big Ten, it is only a beginning for the University, which is working on ways to reach the goal of 32% renewable power by 2020. These include power purchase agreements with a local wind farm, plans for solar arrays on suitable campus buildings and parking garages, and potentially another solar farm in the future. A new power purchase agreement with the Rail Splitter Wind Farm north of Lincoln, IL will provide an additional 7% of campus needs from local wind.

Current campus solar installations include rooftop solar panels at the Wassaja Residence Hall and the Business Instructional Facility, ground-mounted panels at the Building Research Council and Allerton Park, and solar thermal tubes helping to heat the pool at ARC.

Homes and Businesses

The Solar Urbana-Champaign 2.0 group buy program is looking to repeat its success from last year, when 81 homes and businesses took advantage of overlapping federal tax and local renewable energy credits. These overlapping incentives looked like they would end last year, but they were renewed, so there is a second chance to take advantage of them. New Prairie Construction in Urbana has been chosen by the Midwest Renewable Energy Association as the prime contractor for the program, based on their experience, qualifications, and price. This volume purchase program is good through August 31, and site assessments are free for anyone in the county.

“Last year’s group buy resulted in over 80 installations of solar on homes and commercial properties all over Champaign County,” said Scott Tess, Environmental Sustainability Manager for the City of Urbana. “It was one of the most successful programs of its kind in the region. We wanted to build upon the strong interest that we know exists here.”

A listing of local info sessions can be found at: http://solarurbanachampaign.com.

Churches

Faith in Place has been leading efforts to get houses of worship involved with solar by hosting workshops and giving expert advice. Several years back, Faith United Methodist in Champaign put up solar thermal tubes to offset their hot water heater. In 2015, First Mennonite of Urbana put on a 9-kilowatt solar PV array. Earlier this year, the Unitarian Universalist Church of Urbana-Champaign put up a large 24 kilowatt array that will offset 70% of their electricity use. They are one of the first churches in the region to utilize a power purchase agreement to pay for the system over time and utilize the federal tax credits. The McKinley Foundation is scheduled to receive a similar array with a PPA structure this summer. https://www.faithinplace.org/program-implemented/solar-panels.

Community Solar Farms

The Future Energy Jobs Act that passed last year included language for community-scale solar farms using a type of virtual net-metering. This would be a PPA type of arrangement where homeowners with shaded roofs can sign a long-term agreement to buy their electricity from a nearby solar farm. Several groups have had informal meet-ups around town to brainstorm what a community solar farm could be. Some discussions have included considering using one of the town’s old landfills or other brownfield spaces. More details of how these programs will be enacted are expected from the Illinois Power Authority  in June.  https://www.illinois.gov/sites/ipa/Pages/Renewable_Resources.aspx.

UUCUC 24kW Solar PPA

As of March 29, 2017, the Unitarian Universalist Church of Urbana-Champaign (UUCUC) has a new 24-kilowatt Solar PV array that will offset about 70% of their annual electric use. The array was installed by Hawk Energy Solutions and Ruyle Mechanical of Peoria and is operated by Hawk-Attollo LLC. The church will purchase all the electricity generated through a power purchase agreement (PPA). This PPA allows the church to pay over time, and the installation to utilize the 30% Federal tax credit, accelerated depreciation, and the Illinois Solar Renewable Energy Credit auction.

There are 81 300-watt panels with Enphase microinverters that cover about three-fourths of the flat roof and are warrantied to last 25+ years. The church recently installed a new white membrane over the old leaking rubber roof. The solar array doesn’t penetrate the membrane, but instead rests on metal feet on rubber mats held down by concrete blocks.

With the power purchase agreement, the church will buy electricity from the solar array at $0.04/kilowatt-hour (kWh) (half the total Ameren rate for supply and delivery). The church has the option to buy out the solar contract in year 7, and the savings from the system is expected to pay for itself around year 12. Factoring in the church’s investments of about $38,000 over 6 years, the effective levelized cost of electricity over 25 years comes out to $0.0475/kWh. This will save over $120,000 over the 25-year lifetime of the system.

An initial estimate is that the solar array will generate 32,000 kWh/year and offset 49,600 pounds of CO2 per year, equivalent to 580 trees per year.  In the first month of operation, the panels offset the carbon of 51 trees, and about $300 of utility bills.

An integral part of this system is the real-time energy monitor on the solar production and on the building use. The energy monitor actually has four sub-meters for the four wings of the church. This shows instantaneously how much energy is saved turning lights off or knowing if the air conditioning or dehumidifiers are left running all night.

This project originated through a workshop with Faith in Place, where Cindy Shepherd and Jason Hawksworth presented how the PPA scenario could work for houses of worship. Of the six congregations in attendance, four received solar bids, and at least two of them are installing systems this year.

(Andy Robinson is a Green UU Church and solar project leader)

 

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Death with Dignity film screening announcement

Posted on 06/30/2017 by Nancy Dietrich

Free showing of award-winning film:
How to Die in Oregon
A film about death with dignity and choices at the end of life
Saturday, July 8
9:30am- 12:30pm
Urbana Free Library
Sponsored by: Death with Dignity Group of the
Unitarian-Universalist Church
Final Options Illinois
Funeral Consumers Alliance of Champaign County

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March for Support of Immigrants at July 4th Parade

Posted on 06/30/2017 by Al Kagan

March for Support of Immigrants at July 4th Parade

Tuesday, July 4 at 11 AM – 1 PM

In an effort to demonstrate local support for immigrants in our community, the C-U Immigration Forum is organizing a huge participation in the July 4th Freedom Parade.

Our goal is to have 500 people march with us in the parade. If you are free to join us, please do so but also help spread the word among family, friends, co-workers and other organizations or faith communities you are active with.

We are encouraging people to sign up so we can track how many folks are participating and also to send out updates about details of the event. Sign up here:
https://tinyurl.com/JoinUsOnJuly4

Show up, speak out in your own unique way for the support of local immigrants and the progress of human rights. You can also join us in raising your voice and showing support in other ways:

Join us for a sign-making party on Saturday, July 1st from 2pm-4pm at the University YMCA, 1001 S. Wright Street. This is a kid-friendly event with food and plenty of crafty supplies. Immigration Forum t-shirts are also available. You may order your t-shirt here: http://tinyurl.com/IFt-shirts. 

Thanks for your help and support.

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Food Not Bombs offering free vegetarian meals every Saturday at West Side Park

Posted on 06/30/2017 by Public i

Food Not Bombs is an autonomous community organization that seeks to curb food waste and address food insecurity locally, is serving a free, freshly-cooked vegetarian meal in West Side Park, every Saturday at 6 p.m. All are welcome.

If you’d like to come eat, make a donation, or get involved, please visit us on Facebook, linked above — or send us an email at: foodnotbombschampaign@gmail.com.

 

 

 

 

 

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