Fernando Lorenzo-Raymundo, center, was arrested by federal agents who carry out Trump’s immigration dragnet. These two agents have been identified as also being present for a previous arrest in March. Photo by author
This article was originally published on the author’s Substack on April 7.
ICE Arrests Resume at the Courthouse
My phone rang early on Tuesday morning last week just before 9 a.m. It was Lis Pollock, head public defender at the Champaign County courthouse, who said in an angry tone, “ICE is here, they are outside Courtroom L.”
It was April Fool’s Day, but it was no joke. I finished brushing my teeth, hopped in my car, and ten minutes later I was outside of Courtroom L, which is traffic court, where I saw four federal agents waiting. Continue reading →
The United States fancies itself the exemplar and guarantor of democracy around the world. Whether it’s toppling elected governments, withholding basic necessities, or simply bombing women and children, the US will not be stopped in its endeavor to spread democracy. Rather than limiting our vision to that set by elites who tout democratic platitudes to further imperialism abroad and tyranny at home, the progressive movement should push our public institutions to build a democratic economy for all.
Despite its self-branding, the United States is not a democratic utopia. The president can be chosen without a majority, the legislature gives the citizens of small states 40 times the representation of larger ones, and the judiciary stands above any electoral scrutiny. Furthermore, our elections allow for private interests to deploy unlimited amounts of money to privilege candidates who will further their issue set. Continue reading →
Francis A. Boyle with Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat. Photo from iHRAAM – International Human Rights Association of American Minorities, ihraam.org
Francis Anthony Boyle passed away suddenly on January 30, 2025 at age 74. Francis A. Boyle was always in the right kind of trouble.
Boyle was an international and human rights lawyer and professor in Urbana. He spent his life pursuing the prosecution of war crimes, crimes against humanity, and acts of genocide. He was known throughout the world for his successful arguments in the International Court of Justice (ICJ), the International Criminal Court, and the Kuala Lumpur War Crimes Tribunal.
He was the first lawyer to win anything under the Genocide Convention of 1948 at the ICJ—the highest legal authority in the United Nations system. In 1993, he single-handedly won two World Court orders for the Republic of Bosnia-Herzegovina against Yugoslavia, directing the Serb-dominated rump Yugoslav Army to cease and desist from committing all acts of genocide. Until then, it was widely denied that genocide was taking place. Continue reading →
The author at age 2 with her father. Photo courtesy of the Prochaska family
My Dad looked the same for the 38 years I knew him: tall and lanky, with a full gray beard and a curly ring of hair on his partially bald head, which he covered with a black hat when he left the house. This hat was emblematic of him. It resembled an Astrakhan in style but was made of wool, not fur. Bought in Algeria during his dissertation fieldwork, it had local tailoring accents with hints of a fez, though it was not a traditional one. I’ve never seen a hat like it anywhere in the world—totally unique, understated, yet tasteful. It suited him perfectly.
My Dad lived his feminism, challenging me to stand on my own while ensuring I had the tools to succeed. It’s hard to untangle how much of who I am was shaped by who my Dad was. I honor the importance of collective history and cultural context because of him. I also inherited my existential anxiety and superpower of deep focus (alongside time blindness) from him. Continue reading →
WEFT 90.1 FM, WRFU’s Sister Station, Needs Your Support
For several years, WEFT’s feed line cable, which runs from the transmitter on the ground near Mahomet to over 300 feet up the antenna, has been deteriorating. In December, 2024 WEFT was forced to broadcast at lower and lower power, although streaming continued uninterrupted. On March 25th we were broadcasting live at only 1 percent power.
WEFT brought in the needed expertise from Chicago and completed extensive repairs. WEFT also paid a Washington, DC attorney to prepare the FCC paperwork filing informing them that the station had been operating below full power, and that measures were being taken to correct the problem.
Since April, WEFT is back broadcasting on 90.1 FM at 100 percent power. But high-power broadcasting requires equipment that needs constant monitoring, maintenance, updating, and repair. Issues of static are still being addressed. That puts the whole project at around $45,000.
To cover these costs and ensure that WEFT continues to be a voice for Champaign/Urbana, we have opened a capital campaign to cover the costs. Please consider donating at this crucial time. Visit weft.org and “Donate Now.”
This article, lightly edited for style, was previously published on January 28, 2025 in the News-Gazette as a “My Turn” guest column, under the title “Echoes of William Shirer’s Berlin Diary.” Used with permission.
One of the first acts of Donald Trump’s presidency was to pardon more than 1500 federal prisoners serving sentences for the assault on the US Capitol on January 6, 2020, including the leaders of 14 far-right militias and white supremacy groups. This, combined with an executive order authorizing an inquiry into the alleged politicization of the Department of Justice under the Biden administration, delivered a succinct message to American would-be brownshirts: extralegal violence supporting Trump’s political projects would be not merely tolerated, but protected. Continue reading →
The headlines stated that the swing states might go blue, carried by women angry over the decision to overturn Roe v. Wade, or by Latinos who would not hand their states to racists like Donald Trump, or by those who wanted to uphold the Constitution by rejecting the candidate wanting to trample on it.
Admittedly, I was one of those that hoped for a Democratic victory. I too was eager for those swing states to deliver the win for a racially mixed Black woman to become America’s 47th president. But I forgot who the most powerful swing voters were. Fox News might have been correct in noting that many Black men and the Latino community contributed to Trump’s victory, but this merely scapegoated already vulnerable groups. That focus left the biggest and most influential group of swing voters, white males, off the hook. Continue reading →
American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) of Illinois recently sent an open letter to the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign warning administrators that new guidelines surrounding “expressive activities” are having a chilling effect on student expressions of free speech. Despite UIUC’s expressed “unyielding allegiance to freedom of speech,” student protesters with the group Students for Environmental Concerns (SECS) experienced what the ACLU described as “overzealous enforcement of university regulations” when they undertook their annual Climate March at the end of September. The regular event, which the group has been hosting for well over a decade, has never received any kind of disciplinary action in the past. This year, three individual students faced disciplinary action and the organization was placed on a multi-year probation. Students were put on “academic hold” and had to participate in disciplinary meetings. Continue reading →
This letter was sent on January 28. It has been lightly edited for style.
Dear Champaign City Council,
Since May 7, 2024, the Muslim community here in Champaign-Urbana has shown up to city council meetings as part of a diverse coalition of people who want to see the city of Champaign take a strong stance against genocide.
On August 20, 2024, local Palestinians shared their stories and their grief with the council. They were met with silence. These community members took risks to themselves, their families, and their mental health to ask the city to take action against genocide. Watch CU MAC’s short film on that evening as a reminder.
Palestinian community members can no longer take the risk to come to City Council. It is detrimental to their mental health to have to be vulnerable in public and be met with no empathy, no apologies, and rarely even dialogue. Fewer and fewer Muslims feel comfortable at their own city council meetings. Continue reading →
This summer, after more than six years of traveling around Illinois looking at herbicide damage, Prairie Rivers Network (PRN) released Hidden in Plain Sight, a report that is the culmination of our research.
The report found that trees are dying, gardens threatened, and children exposed to drifting herbicides across rural and urban Illinois. Herbicide drift, primarily from the agricultural industry, is damaging wild and cultivated plants and trees, threatening human health, and impairing our ability to adapt to climate change. Continue reading →
The north-end community acknowledges that Champaign-Urbana is facing a growing population of homeless individuals. We fully understand the need, and benefits, of the Hope Village development. We realize it is vital that empathy be shown for the homeless and a sense of hope and opportunity be given. It’s also crucial that all citizens impacted by this project be understood. It’s not fair to jeopardize a vulnerable population to benefit another; therefore, the residents must have equitable treatment and respect.
The historically African American Champaign subdivision immediately impacted by this project is Carver Park, along with surrounding neighborhoods of both Urbana and Champaign. Hope Village, a tiny-homes project in the northernmost section of Urbana, began abruptly without input from the surrounding community. Continue reading →
An assortment of requested books being organized for shipment to IDOC facilities
There are about thirty Books-to-Prisoners programs across the US that provide free books to the incarcerated, but changes in regulations and technology practices are threatening their future. While these changes are not specifically book bans, they will directly affect the ability of the incarcerated to access reading material. Reductions in free book programs would impact self-education—a proven factor in reducing recidivism—and sever yet another link between those on opposite sides of prison walls. More importantly, these changes are creating yet another opportunity for private corporations to profit from a literally captive audience and their families.
A Local Tradition Since 2004
The UC Books to Prisoners program (B2P), has served Illinois Department of Corrections (IDOC) facilities across the state since 2004. It also operates a lending library at Champaign County Jail, and stocks the Champaign County Juvenile Detention Center library. Volunteers organize requests, gather books from donations, supplement these with occasional purchases, and mail the books to facilities. Continue reading →
iStock / Google Maps / Illustration by Katie Kosma. Used by permission
This article was originally published in Columbia Journalism Review on November 22, 2024. It has been shortened to fit and lightly edited for style.
At the end of November, 1999, when the World Trade Organization met at the Washington State Convention and Trade Center, so many thousands of protesters arrived on the scene that they effectively ended the conference; what ensued became known as the Battle of Seattle. Among the union members, environmentalists, and students who descended on the city was a group of volunteers keen to document the action live, by making use of the newly emerging internet. They were not, strictly speaking, journalists. One was Evan Henshaw-Plath, a coder and activist in his twenties who liked to pick up lefty mags at food coops and Whole Foods; in 1998, he’d created a calendar site called Protest.net. He and his cohort had grown frustrated by what they saw as a recurring problem: demonstrations seemed to receive press coverage only if conflict erupted––a clash with police, property damage, a scuffle with counterprotesters. “The response from journalists, even sympathetic ones, was that they needed a hook,” he recalled. “They needed a story.” As the WTO convened, a group of volunteers set up a makeshift media center, to do reporting of their own; he joined in to provide tech support. “Someone put a laptop with a camera and one of these Ricochet modem things in a heavy backpack,” he said. They set up a video stream of the protests—and of the pepper spray, tear gas, and stun grenades lobbed by police. The posts appeared on a website under the name IndyMedia, reaching more than a million people worldwide.
The site was intended to last only as long as the demonstrations. “The resistance is global,” the opening post went. “The web dramatically alters the balance between multinational and activist media. With just a bit of coding and some cheap equipment, we can set up a live automated website that rivals the corporates.” In the twenty-five years that followed, IndyMedia revealed the extent of that promise well beyond its early bloggers’ imaginations, as it grew into a full-fledged open publishing network of activist journalism, with some two hundred community centers and national and global online hubs. “It connected the development of local journalism that was for and by poor and working people of the Left, and it was able to scale from there,” Todd Wolfson, professor of journalism and media studies at Rutgers University, said. Its rise did not come effortlessly—IndyMedia’s anarchic roots and vast reach at times posed logistical challenges—and the emergence of social media eventually came to displace much of its infrastructure. (Henshaw-Plath became one of the first employees of Twitter, where he adapted IndyMedia’s live feed into the company’s signature product.) Many of the centers have since closed. But to Wolfson and Victor Pickard, a professor of media policy at the University of Pennsylvania, who jointly run an initiative called the Media, Inequality, and Change Center, IndyMedia still presents the most promising model in recent history for how grassroots community journalism can work. Continue reading →
The GOP Embraces Free Speech. An OtherWords cartoon by Khalil Bendid. Used by Creative Commons license CC BY-ND 3.0
The Editorial Collective of the Public i has decided to periodically republish past articles written for us by our late colleague and cofounder Belden Fields. We will also be publishing a special memorial issue for Belden around May, traditionally the month for celebrating International Workers’ Day and the labor movement, a movement to which Belden was deeply devoted, but also when appropriate highly critical of. For this issue we are republishing “D. J. Trump: Privileged Inciter-in Chief” from our May 2021 issue. As we enter the early weeks of the new Trump administration, this article has renewed and particular relevancy. It addresses the double standards embedded in our judicial system that too often allow lawbreakers like Trump and his privileged allies to escape punishment for their crimes, while poor and working-class individuals, especially those of color, endure unreasonably harsh sentences. Moreover, considering what has happened in the first weeks of the second Trump administration, this article suggests how the January 6 insurrectionists are useful tools in his authoritarian project. Indeed, as Janice Jayes points out in another article in this issue, there is method in the madness of pardoning violent extremists. Trump now has brownshirts, armed and dangerous extremist militias, available to do his bidding.
The federal anti-riot law (18 U.S. Code § 2101) was originally enacted in 1968 to silence and punish civil rights and anti-Vietnam War activists, but has been amended after constitutional challenges since then. It now states: Continue reading →
Please join the University YMCA and Diversity & Social Justice Education for our Spring 2025 Friday Forum + Conversation Café series. We will hear from community leaders tackling our most pressing public concerns through an unwavering pursuit of social justice. We are excited to focus the fall series on Democracy.
All presentations are open to the public and free on Fridays at 12 pm in Latzer Hall at the University YMCA. Free lunch is provided.
2/7 – Inclusion for All of Society, Sean Garrick, Vice Chancellor for Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion
2/14 – Democratic Erosion and Women’s Political Power: Perspectives from Europe, Saskia Brechenmacher – Carnegie Fellow in Democracy, Conflict and Governance, with focuses on gender and civil society
2/21 – Bridging Differences to Build a “Beloved Community,”Allison Briscoe-Smith – University of California Berkeley Greater Good Science Center and 2025 Illinois Interfaith Conference Keynote Speaker
2/28 – Breaking Chains, Building Communities: The Story of the AME Church, Terrance Thomas, Bethel AME Church
3/7 – Defending Immigrants under a Trump Administration: An Immigrant Advocate’s Perspective, Diana Rashid, Berkeley Public Interest Law Fellow and Attorney, National Immigrant Justice Center, in conversation with current La Colectiva students
3/28 – “Plumas Negras” by Juliette Carrillo, University of Illinois Department of Theater
4/4 – To Thy Happy Children of the Future: Divestment as Progress, Students for Environmental Concerns, in conversation with Jim Hinterlong, UYMCA Executive Director
4/11 – The Art of Recreating Transnational Solidarities Against Global Apartheids, Woman Life Freedom Collective and Humane Urbanisms Project
4/18 – Stories From Her Work as a Tribal Attorney, Land Defender and Founder of the Giniw Collective, Tara Houska
In 2016 students in CU recorded their fears following the election
Across Champaign-Urbana immigrant assistance organizations, schools, and local governments are worried but actively planning for the next administration. Eight years ago they underestimated Donald Trump, dismissing his vitriol as mere campaign posturing. This time they know that the incoming president has a plan that could endanger us all. By characterizing immigrants as a national security threat Trump could unleash Patriot Act provisions not just against immigrants, but against organizations that work with them, and possibly any who oppose his policies. And while the official actions the administration might take are sobering, the unofficial possibilities are even more alarming. Trump’s vilification of immigrants provides the justification for private actors to take the law into their own hands. For those who find that hard to imagine, just remember January 6, 2020.
Haunting Memories of 2016
“Eight years ago we had children crying in the hallways.” A local school employee sits opposite me in her office a few days after the election. In the hallway outside there is a display for the Mexican Day of the Dead. Inside, flags from the many countries represented in the student body decorate the walls. “The teachers didn’t know what to do with them,” she continued, “so they sent them down to my office. They were a wreck.”
They shared their worries, she recalled. “How will I live if they take my parents? I’m too young to get a job.” “What if my parents just don’t come home one day?” “Can they arrest me even though I’m just a kid?” “How long would my dad stay in jail before they deport him? I don’t want him to be cold.” There are hundreds of children in the CU school system who live in mixed-status families. Even if only one member of the family lacks documents, they all worry.
Image by Mangokeylime, used under Creative Commons License CC BY-SA 4.0
Buckle up—it’s happening again. Donald Trump will be president of the United States on January 20, 2025. The next four years will be a constant struggle, as we fight to retain the meager rights and supports we currently possess in this cutthroat society, with all three branches of national government stacked against us.
The Democratic Party has once again demonstrated that “Republican-lite” is an ineffective political project. Aside from the uninspiring, completely lackluster policies emanating from the “at least I’m not Donald Trump” camp, any argument as to electability or political advantage in contrast to authentic leftist policies can be soundly put to bed with the failed Harris campaign.
A group of Vote Yes on Question 1 campaigners stands in front of their farmers market booth in October. Photo by the author
As the Champaign-Urbana community considers how we’ll navigate a second Trump presidency, we can learn from the organizing that led to local ballot victories this past November. The massive effort that made these ballot wins possible holds part of the answer to the question many of us are asking: what do we do now?
In Cunningham Township, voters overwhelmingly passed advisory referendum Question One: “Shall the United States federal government and subordinate divisions stop giving military funding to Israel, which currently costs taxpayers $3.8 billion a year, given Israel’s global recognition as an apartheid regime with a track record of human rights violations?”
