Champaign: the City Above the Law

Posted on 02/15/2012 by Belden Fields

Take one: an individual asserts his rights under the Illinois Freedom of Information Act

In 2009, dentist G. Mark Gekas lodged a complaint with the Sangamon County sheriff’s office that he had been brutally mistreated by deputy sheriff John Gillette during a traffic stop. The internal-affairs branch of the sheriff’s office investigated and determined that the deputy had done nothing wrong. Dr. Gekas was not satisfied with that determination, so he filed a freedom of information request (FOIA) asking the sheriff to provide him with a copy of all the complaints that had been previously filed by citizens against that deputy.  He also asked for a copy of all the records pertinent to these complaints.  The sheriff reused to comply, stating that the records were in the deputy’s personnel file and were thus, confidential. Pressing forward, Dr. Gekas made an administrative appeal, and was again denied. He moved up the chain to the circuit court.  That court did look at the deputy’s files and found that there were twenty-seven complaints against him; however, the judge ruled that Dr. Gekas could have access to only four of these– either because the deputy had been cleared of some by the internal unit, or because the others were not similar to Dr. Gekas’s complaint. Continuing his fight, Dr. Gekas went to the Fourth District Appellate Court.  That court ruled in favor of Dr, Gekas, stating that:

Insomuch as the 23 files document investigations of alleged wrongdoing by Deputy Gillette in the course of his public duties, they are not his personal information, and the disclosure of those files would not invade his personal privacy…We reverse the part of the judgment allowing defendant to withhold the file pertaining to plaintiff’s allegations against Gilette.  We also remand this case with the following directions.  Of the remaining [the 23] files, the court shall identify, and order defendant [the sheriff] to provide to plaintiff [Gekas], all files that relate to allegations of wrongdoing by Gillette in the performance of his duties as deputy sheriff.

Take two: CU Citizens for Peace and Justice and the News-Gazette demand their rights to information

In March of 2010, the City of Champaign was set to begin collective bargaining sessions with the Fraternal Order of the Police. Prior to these sessions, CU Citizens for Peace and Justice (CUCPJ)  presented three demands to the City: 1, that the city adopt a residency requirement for police officers; 2, that officers be tested for drug and alcohol use in cases where they discharge their weapon or inflict great bodily harm on someone; and 3, that “all citizen complaints, whether founded or unfounded, will be placed in the officer’s personnel file and be accessible to the public…[and] shall not be removed from the officer’s employee file.”  The latter was important because written reprimands are expunged from the files after two years and cannot be referenced or used in further disciplinary actions.

None of CUCPJ’s demands was enacted.  On March 31, 2010, the News-Gazette, filed a Freedom of Information request asking for names of police officers against whom citizens have filed complaints during the past five years. When adult citizens are arrested and charged, their names are made public even before they are found guilty or innocent.  Why should there be a double-standard? The city released dates and types of abuses charged against officers, but redacted the names.  The Gazette then took the matter to the state ‘s Public Access Counselor in the Attorney General’s Office.  It took until March 2011 for the counselor to finish his review.  He ruled that the city did not prove that it had a legal basis to redact the names and that they should be released.  The legal office for the city  disagreed with the decision and refused to obey.  The Gazette refiled the request to no effect as yet. (NG, June 29, 2011, Sec. B, 29, p. 1). Then, in two separate settings in June and July 2011, Sangamon County circuit judge Patrick Kelley, ruled that the records must be turned over.

Take three: a response disdainful of law and the citizenry

So here we have three rulings in state district court, a ruling in a state appellate court, and a finding by the Attorney General’s office that complaints of abuse or brutality on the part of police officers-names included, are to be made public. This would allow people to assess whether the abuse they feel they have suffered is part of a pattern of abuse by an individual officer, and if such abuse is routinely tolerated by a police department.  That is critically valuable information; it would allow communities to get rid of so-called “bad apples,” reveal whether or not there is wide-spread toleration of abuse in a department, and build public confidence in the integrity of the department and its commitments to respecting the rights of the people it is supposed to protect.

The city continues to assert that what we are dealing with here is “unsettled law.”  I would argue that what we are dealing with is a city that is showing contempt for the law; a city that rigorously enforces the letter of the law  when it comes to citizens (especially African Americans ones), but refuses to obey higher administrative and court rulings at its discretion.

If it ever really was, it is certainly no longer a matter of bargaining with the police union.  It’s the law. If Champaign were a nation-state, we would call such arbitrariness in the respect for law tyranny.  It is especially disgraceful that this is permitted to happen with at least two lawyers sitting on the City Council.  That council, directly responsible to the citizenry,  should oblige the city attorney and city manager to at least obey the law as it is presently understood by the courts and the state from which the city derives its police powers.

 

Posted in Human Rights, Policing | Comments Off on Champaign: the City Above the Law

Occupy Here and Far, a Trip that inspired a Local Gathering

Posted on 01/25/2012 by Marya Burke
In November, I spent a week in downtown New York City. I’ve been there a fair few times before, though this time I had made myself a mission to go and learn as much as I could about what was happening on the ground at Occupy Wall Street. I left Urbana days after the encampment had been raided, and after traveling, I was nervous in a way that I had never been before to get off the subway at Wall St. When I walked up the concrete stairs, I looked around and saw all men. Some in suits, behind the police barricaded New York Stock Exchange, some in uniforms, enforcing that the barricades remain where they are, it looked barren, desolate and guarded. I’m not getting arrested I told myself. I’m not doing anything wrong- I wasn’t, though similar to how I slow down on the highway when I see authority even though I am not speeding, I had the same reaction to seeing police and stock brokers uFor more information, we would love to see you there!pon getting off the subway the first day I got to New York.
Not every subway stop that one can walk up from is this heavily guarded, I think my luck was just that I landed at one with a particularly heavy police presence that day. Nevertheless, there is a lot of police presence down there, and only some of them are in uniforms. I found my way to Liberty Plaza, the center of where it all started. I found myself discouraged after not too long from the lack of organizing that I encountered there. Then I found the “people’s librarian” and he directed me to 60 Wall Street- the Deutch Bank lobby where a large majority of the meetings were happening.
I felt pretty well at home at that first meeting that I went to. It was a movement building meeting that attracted a lot of new comers on the monday before thanksgiving. The new comers were from other city’s GA’s mostly, though some had never been. It wasn’t a huge, meeting like Direct ACtion or Facilitation, though the spirit of excitement was the same. There was a woman from Italy who spoke about getting outreach and sang the praises of motivating power of real people sharing why they are there. The why that keeps people coming back through lines of cops, even when it’s scary, the fear of what may happen if we don’t do this, and the feeling all throughout their being that the time is now.
When I returned, I shared my experiences with others at The School for Designing a Society and we began the work to host a local event; Truck Stop for the Long Haul. This would allow for reexamining the whys of Occupy, and focusing in on our what so that we have a better chance of making this a lasting movement that brings about the change that we want to see. The Truck Stop for the Long Haul included workshops, eating, and networking with all kinds of folks here in CU. Some of the workshops included the following:
*cybernetic approaches to consensus
*alternative structures to hierarchy
*tech in and for the movement
*caring for the social environment
*making protest alluring and enchanting
*occupy the heart yoga (yep that’s right, yoga)!
To hear more about what happened at Truck Stop for the Long Haul, pick up next month’s issue of the public i!

 

Posted in Uncategorized | Comments Off on Occupy Here and Far, a Trip that inspired a Local Gathering

Playing Both Sides, Winning Neither: Passage of the National Defense Authorization Act

Posted on 01/25/2012 by Jimmi Jay
Jimmi Jay is a senior at the University of Illinois studying accounting, but interested in issues of economic, social, and political justice.In January, President Barack Obama signed into law the $662 billion National Defense Authorization Act. Obama took this move despite advice from key members of his administration, including Defense Secretary Leon Panetta, FBI Director Robert Mueller and Director of National Intelligence James Clapper. General intuition would lead one to believe that the Defense Secretary, the FBI director, and the Director of National Intelligence would be the last people in the White House to show concern over civil liberties, but even they thought the power authorized to the President under this act was far too great. He signed despite his own reservations regarding the provision within the act that would authorize the government to indefinitely detain United States citizens without trial; reservations which he initial said would lead him to veto the act. Many legal analysts argue that the provision to indefinitely detain US citizens suspected of terrorism  is unconstitutional.Though Obama signed, he did take the rare action of issueing a signing statement. He himself asserts that this provision, “would break with our most important traditions and values as a Nation.” The President pledged that his “Administration will not authorize the indefinite military detention without trial of American citizens,” but who is to say that he will not rescind this promise just as he did in not abiding by his threat to veto the entire act? Whether the Obama administration follows through on this promise or not, the issue has far-reaching implicaitons. There is no guarrantee that  any future President will abide by Obama’s choice. It would not be a wild conclusion to believe that provisions in this act could usher in an epoch characterized by the same paranoias and breaches of power seen inb the McCarthy era.This act also maintains existing transfer restrictions for detainees in Guantanamo Bay, even though many have been cleared for transfer. Of this, Obama said that where the restrictions “operate in a manner that violates constitutional separation of powers principles, my Administration will interpret them to avoid the constitutional conflict.” This suggests that he may ignore the transfer restrictions, but they have been in place for a year without challenge, so this seems doubtful.The passage of the National Defense Authorization Act is another step in the long track record of the reduction in our civil liberties since September 11th. There was the Patriot Act passed in October 2001 by President George W. Bush reducing our privacy to nonexistence; the signed extensions to the Patriot Act by Obama in May 2011 allowing for search and seizure without probable cause; the executive authorized assassination of US born and educated cleric Anwar al-Awlaki, setting a new precedent on the power wielded by the President – far greater than that under President Bush. And now the passage of the National Defense Authorization Act.

The passage of this act offers us a perfect microcosmic view of the flaws in Obama’s presidency. In his 2008 campaign, he preached reform and progress, but as it is apparent now, that was simply liberal rhetoric wielded masterfully to sway a marginalized and disillusioned American population.The passage of this act– revealing as it does our President’s failure to uphold promises, and the shortcomings of the United States political process to bring about any substantial change, should make you, as it as made me, truly indignant.

Posted in Uncategorized | Comments Off on Playing Both Sides, Winning Neither: Passage of the National Defense Authorization Act

A Residency Requirement Might Help Police Situation

Posted on 01/18/2012 by Dannel McCollum

A Residency Requirement Might Help Police Situation

 

Dannel McCollum, a former Champaign mayor and a Democratic candidate for the state Senate in 2002, is a historian and a freelance writer.

 

This piece originally appeared in the News-Gazette on Dec. XX, 2011.

 

Dannel McCollum

 

I was shocked to see the Champaign police video of the arrest in June of a young black man for jaywalking in Campustown. The apparent physical violence of the arrest and the use of pepper spray for so trifling an offense seemed clearly over the top. Unfortunately, the Champaign police review of the arrest was perfunctory at best. Once the video of the arrest became public last month, the dismay of the public and city council members was immediate.

 

In an attempt to get ahead of the public outrage, the city manager asked for an independent review of the incident by the state police. That agency, apparently uncomfortable dealing with Champaign’s hot potato, in record time returned what could be described as a whitewash of the incident, concluding that the CPD’s handling of the arrest was within department training and procedures.

 

Like many on the Champaign Police Department, the arresting officer does not live within the limits of the city, a situation which I believe is part of the problem. In the 1970s or early ‘80s, in the give and take of labor negotiations, the city managed to gain a residency requirement – to work for the city the employee had to live in the city. But in the municipal election of 1987, the unions lobbied hard to get the residency requirement abandoned. Gaining the support primarily of several newly elected council members, the requirement, a concession gained through collective bargaining, was to my dismay unilaterally abandoned by the council. As the newly elected mayor and a seasoned council member, I was appalled. If the city was good enough to work for, it was good enough to live in.

 

More to the point, I believed that it was important for city employees, especially those involved in public safety, to share the urban experienced by being directly in contact with their fellow citizens and conversant with their problems. But taking advantage of the concession, many workers moved out of the city. At present, four out of five Champaign police officers live outside of the city.

 

As a long term resident of the city, 74 years and counting, I have seen our police department professionalize into a highly competent force with many outstanding members. But the exodus of officers from the city has had unfortunate consequences. Rather than a “we” feeling between the police and the public, it has become instead a more “us” and “them” situation, which has caused many to perceive the force as more like an army of occupation. To some extent, this latest event is an example of what can result.

 

There are no miracle answers to the current difficulties in police-community relations. But certainly a reinstitution of the residency requirement, at least to the extent of living within the confines of Champaign-Urbana, would be a major step forward. From my point of view, it should be a condition of employment, a right of the city to impose, outside of labor negotiations. Other strategies should be pursued as well – the status quo is not working.

 

Posted in Human Rights, Policing | Comments Off on A Residency Requirement Might Help Police Situation

What Difference Can a Mascot Make?

Posted on 12/19/2011 by Karen Sixkiller

Champaign-Urbana, IL, 2011 — When I first arrived at the University of Illinois as a new Ph.D. student in 2009, I had no opinion about the retired mascot nor did I really care. Like many people it was inconceivable to me that something as frivolous as a school mascot could inspire the tornado of anger, threats and controversy that I now realize is taken for granted in Champaign-Urbana. It was confusing to see the plains-esque iconography in a region where the native indigenous peoples had never worn war bonnets. My own native indigenous heritage is not from either region so the icon itself didn’t come across to me as offensive, but it did strike me as very odd and definitely stereotypic. It wasn’t until I saw some footage of the personified mascot performing and effigy lynching and burning performed by opposing teams that I understood the offensive nature of the performance and symbolism inherent in the situation.

In 2005 the NCAA required multiple universities to retire mascots deemed offensive and disrespectful in order to continue to be included in the Pac 10. The University of Illinois was one of them. Currently the University of Illinois has no mascot, no unifying symbol besides a Times-Roman capital letter “I”. Sure, there are people who still print and perpetuate the past mascot (a trademark infringement the University then is obligated to take costly legal action against), but officially there is no mascot. No unifying symbol to bring 40,000 students of varying ages, socio-economic backgrounds, cultures, countries and interests together. No face to relate to, no icon to market and wear proudly. I wonder how much income the UofI is losing by not having a popular mascot?

Alumni and Champaign-Urbana community members were the strongest and most vocal source of resistance in the University of Illinois mascot retirement debate. Individual alumni and multiple alumni associations have threatened to remove financial support if the retired mascot is replaced. Six years later U of I students are graduating without ever having a mascot. We, the actual students, have been denied even the opportunity to form similar feelings of pride and passion for our academic institution. Through no fault of our own, and without our consent, the past mascot was retired. No one is stopping alumni from fondly remembering their alma mater and “college days” mascot. Why are the current students forced to doubly suffer the lack of having a mascot and the rancor of useless posturing and protests?

Personally, I feel like a Vietnam or Gulf War veteran sometimes. Day after day I battle the relentless onslaught of lectures, chapter reading, paper writing and exams. After putting in a tour of duty, I thankfully go to the stadium for some well earned R&R, someplace safe where I will be welcomed and know that I “belong”. Only to be met by picket lines and protestors and a confusion of suspicious cliques. The fans wearing “Chief” paraphernalia shun those who do not, assuming they must be “anti-Chief.” Other fans have formed a group around a giant orange fuzzy ball and seem to be some sort of “Orange Krush” secret society, how can I get in? Entire sections of the stadium are filled with people wearing orange and others with people wearing blue and still another with people from the opposing team… or are they from my team? All I know is they all seem happy over there, and in the orange and blue striped sections there is a definite feeling of unrest.

A mascot is ultimately supposed to be a symbol of luck, something to rally behind and bring people together. There is a new registered student organization at the University of Illinois who call themselves, “Students4aNEWmascot,” (the “new” part is superfluous since there actually is no mascot right now) and they are organizing an art contest that anyone can enter to ameliorate the situation. Champaign-Urbana community members, students, and alumni are being invited and encouraged to vote on the top 5 artistic entries that meet NCAA guidelines.

Student organization members see the adoption of a new mascot as an important first step toward moving past the past mascot controversy. They recognize that the past mascot will always be a part of the University of Illinois’ history. Some of the Students4aNEWmascot members even feel that the past mascot was appropriate and respectful, while others do not; however all of them agree that a new mascot is needed for the present and future.

What difference can a mascot make? I would argue that a “new” mascot for the University of Illinois could make significant and lasting differences in the campus and community climates and financial stability.

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged | Comments Off on What Difference Can a Mascot Make?

“Hungarian Tea Party” or “Occupy Brussels”?

Posted on 12/19/2011 by Richard Esbenshade

by Rick Esbenshade

In a “letter to Hungarian farmers,” a candidate for the European Parliament launched her 2009 campaign—in a country reeling from the first and hardest blows of what would become a Europe-wide crisis—with a list of demands: for local ownership of land, preferences for local production, and “human-scale farms that sustain Hungarian families and preserve villages.” However, this was no Green or Socialist candidate, but one from an extreme right-wing party, called Jobbik Magyarországért Mozgalom, or “The Right Ones’ Movement for Hungary.” Despite never having held office of any kind before, she won her seat, and is now the sixth-most popular politician in the country.

While massive street demonstrations in Greece and Spain have shown the high level of popular resistance to austerity programs imposed as the ‘only viable solution’ by the European Central Bank and political leaders, no major West European party has reflected this opposition. In contrast, the current Hungarian right-wing government and the more extreme Jobbik, echoed by parties in Slovakia and Poland, have largely opposed the oppressive neoliberal demands of the EU. The idea of ‘right-wing’ political forces pushing ‘left-wing’ measures is something difficult to understand in the US and even West European political contexts, but makes sense in light of this region’s different history. In essence, Tea Party-type movements have come to oppose rather than endorse the program of the European economic elite.

EU-cigi

(Caption: A Jobbik anti-EU poster: “It’s all the same which one you suck on.” The cigarettes show the logos of various pro-EU parties. At bottom: “The EU gravely damages the health of you and your country.”)

Eastern Europeans ended forty years of Communist rule in 1989. Citizens, tired of material shortages and the lack of political choice and national independence, thrilled at the ‘return to Europe.’ They expected the ‘normal’ life, prosperity and democracy, which they envied in their West European counterparts. However, the realities of system change, power and wealth inequalities, domestically and in Europe as a whole, and the role available to the region in the post-Cold War ‘new world order’ quickly led to disappointment and discontent. Privatization of state-owned enterprises and public resources concentrated wealth in the hands of a politically connected few, many of them former Communist officials. Application of strict capitalist criteria resulted in massive layoffs and plant closings, while social benefits such as childcare, subsidized public transport and vacations, and guaranteed employment and health care were scaled back or eliminated. By the time Hungary and seven other former socialist countries were admitted to the European Union in 2004, most East Europeans had become skeptical or downright cynical about the benefits that European integration could offer them. The new members faced significantly lower standards of living than in any of the existing members, generally higher unemployment, deteriorating services, public insecurity, and political and ethnic conflicts at home and across borders. To rub in their clearly inferior status, the promised free movement of people across the Union was delayed for up to seven years, while the immediate free movement of capital allowed German, French and other companies to take over local ones and, often, shut down domestic production in order to take over market share. Political frustration, and even nostalgia for the Communist past—when citizens felt oppressed but at least everyone had a job, a place to live, safe streets, and reliable and free social services—became rampant.

Despite this nostalgia, the complete discrediting of socialism as a political alternative—by Right and Left parties alike—left no easy path for resistance to the neoliberal EU program. In Hungary and several other countries, it was nominally left-liberal governments—led by ‘Socialist’ parties formed from the remnants of the Communist ones—which actually pushed through the harsh restructuring and austerity programs of the 1990s, causing shutdowns of factories and hospitals, withdrawal of subsidies for basic necessities, and general economic pain. Thus the way was open for nationalist parties to, while preserving their rhetorical anti-communism, take on a critical stance towards the imposed demands of EU accession and international markets.

imf_eu

(Caption: From a Jobbik website, this cartoon shows the EU and IMF burying Hungary in credit/debt.)

In Hungary, this role has been filled by the Alliance of Young Democrats-Hungarian Citizens’ Party (AYD-HCP), in power since May 2010. AYD-HCP formed in 1989 as a liberal youth party, but beginning in the mid-1990s moved steadily to the right, to the point where it now promotes a “Christian Hungary,” condones racism and even violence against the Roma (Gypsy) underclass, and vilifies political opponents (liberals) as communists and traitors to the nation. Though AYD-HCP gained barely more than 50% of the votes in the last election, electoral rules turned that into a two-thirds majority in Parliament. This dominance has allowed the new government to take full control of all aspects of the state and push through a new Constitution, which has been criticized by the opposition, the EU and independent media as anti-democratic and practically guaranteeing a hold on power for decades. At the same time, Prime Minister Viktor Orbán has blocked further cuts to social programs and public employment (after those begun under the previous left-liberal government, and stepped up in response to the 2008 economic crisis), instituted a bank tax, and in general promoted Hungary’s interests against those of bankers and EU policy. Although he and his party’s motivations are more nuanced than just ‘defending the people against the power’—AYD-HCP is itself allied with certain big economic interests—their rhetorical and to some extent actual stance has proven to pay dramatic political benefits.

In addition, the aforementioned Jobbik surged into Parliament as the third-largest party, barely behind the Socialists who formed the previous government (and are the only notable opposition to the right-wing dominance). The Jobbik are known for their demands for the ‘lost’ Hungarian territory, allocated to neighboring countries in the post-World War I settlement; overt racism and violence against Roma, gays and foreigners; and an associated paramilitary arm that carries out street demonstrations in uniform and employing insignia and a salute reminiscent of the Arrow Cross, the Hungarian fascist movement of the 1930s and ‘40s. Yet they are the only parliamentary party calling outright for withdrawal from the European Union, are harshly critical of the international financial system, and strongly defend (at least rhetorically) the living standards of ordinary Hungarians.

Bankokracia

(Caption: “Aren’t you afraid, banker?!” from a Jobbik demonstration)

European fascism in the interwar period was famously a mix of authoritarian, repressive politics and the promotion of the welfare of the nation and the ordinary citizen (thus National Socialism). The current Hungarian government, with its attacks on the independent media, political opposition and minorities, feels more and more like a Mussolini-type fascist regime. Its heavy-handed tactics have already alienated many Hungarians from all classes; but the significant support it does retain stems in large part from the fact that, in contrast to the previous government’s unfailing appeals to orthodox Western liberal ideas of the unfettered free market, it does seem willing to stand up to the European and global order and defend ordinary Hungarians in this time of austerity and the dismantling of the welfare state, as demanded of Greece, Italy and other EU ‘crisis cases’. The political situation in Hungary, and other former socialist Eastern European countries, offers no easy choices for an American leftist. But it is a window on contradictory and uncomfortable trends—the convergence of social conservatism with economic nationalism, of intolerance at home with resistance to the neoliberal order—that are also present in our own convoluted political landscape, and are intensifying across the globe as the crisis deepens.

Posted in Uncategorized | Comments Off on “Hungarian Tea Party” or “Occupy Brussels”?

Cartoon on June 5th Incident

Posted on 12/19/2011 by Public i

Posted in Policing | Comments Off on Cartoon on June 5th Incident

Police Violence in Champaign: City Manager Holds a Not Very Newsy Press Conference

Posted on 12/19/2011 by Belden Fields

 

 

Belden Fields

 

After the Sunday November 20 issue of the News-Gazette published a front page article on excessive violence against a black youth by the Champaign police near campus on June 5, Champaign City Manager Steve Carter issued a two-page news-release and invited the press to schedule an interview with him that afternoon.  I accepted the invitation, as did reporters from WILL and WCIA.

 

After giving a very brief statement that did not go beyond his press release, he asked for questions.  When some of the reporters asked him for more detail, he said that he did not want to go into details.  He would not even state the race of the officer (he is white) or the officer’s victim (he is black).

 

I attempted to put this case in the context of a long history of excessive force against blacks in Champaign, by reminding him of a list of specific cases that I had presented to the city council on January 13, 2010.  These included: the cases of 81 year-old Renee Holt who was grabbed by the throat and forced to the ground in her own apartment; Mildred Davis whose house was sprayed  with bullets when people (including children) were inside; Brian Chesley, a young man who was slammed down on cement; the late Kiwane Carrington who was shot and killed; and Calvin Miller who was beaten just a few weeks ago.  Mr. Carter said that all of those before the Miller case had been investigated and that Calvin’s was still being considered.  But he did not want to talk about the pattern of behavior, only this case which happened be to caught on video—but no details please.

 

I informed Mr. Carter that when police officers from the 3 local forces (Champaign, Urbana, and the University) spoke to a group of university students who were concerned about the police treatment of youth after the Chesley case, a graduate student had informed me that the Champaign officer had told the students not to worry because the police would know they were students and not treat them the way they treated nonstudent youth in the neighborhoods.  Mr. Carter said that he did not believe the graduate student’s story.  But I know her to be someone of the highest integrity.

 

I asked Mr. Carter if a drug or alcohol test was done on the officer in the June 5 incident.  He said that it was a long time ago.  I said, ok, and rephrased the question, HAD drug and alcohol tests been done?  No answer.

Drug and alcohol testing on officers who had been involve in violence against citizens was one of the demands on the city made by the C/U Citizens for Peace and Justice back in March 2010.  Not one of those demands has been met by the city.

 

Given the seriousness of the charge against the officer and the corroborating video, I asked if the City of Champaign would now obey two Illinois court decisions and release to the News-Gazette and other news organizations the names of officers who have had allegations of abuse filed against them.

He said that is was still not settled law and that the city would continue to wait.

 

I asked if this case, coming after a long string of allegations of police abuse in Champaign did not strengthen the case for a civilian review board with subpoena power.  He said that there were currently discussions on the city council about that and there will be a study session.

 

I asked why there were so many complaints against the police in Champaign, complaints involving the serious human rights violations

of excessive violence and racial discrimination, when we do not have them coming against the Urbana or University police forces.  Why can’t the Champaign force police less violently.  He said that he couldn’t speak about the Urbana or University forces, but that the whole use of force issue was going to be reconsidered.

 

Finally, I asked whether given his steadfast defense of the department when it was faced with a string of charges of abuse in the past, he might consider resigning given what has come to light now.  He said that he has not been considering that.  So, while Champaign will have a new police chief next year, the chief executive officer of the city intends staying put.  Only the council has the power to oblige him to leave.

Posted in Human Rights, Policing | Comments Off on Police Violence in Champaign: City Manager Holds a Not Very Newsy Press Conference

Community Members, City Leaders Search for Answers in June 5 Arrest

Posted on 12/19/2011 by Belden Fields

Jerehme Bamberger

 

A squad car video of a confrontation between a Champaign city police officer and a local African American youth has raised serious concerns about the relationship between the CPD and high-ranking city officials in the last week.  The comprehensiveness of the News-Gazette’s reporting on the topic has also been called into question.

 

The video depicts two acts of force by a Champaign city police officer taken against a reasonably compliant youth who is initially stopped for jaywalking on Green Street at around 2:30 AM.  In response to repeated inquiries as to the reasons for his detainment, the young man is pepper sprayed and put in handcuffs.  He is put into the back seat of the arresting officer’s squad car and taken to a nearby parking lot, where the officer then exits the car and demands identification.  In response to the arrestee’s further requests for fair treatment, the police officer lunges at him while putting his hands around the handcuffed young man’s neck.

 

The video was anonymously released to the public via WRFU’s The Show on Sunday, November 20th.  Champaign’s city manager Steve Carter, who has the final say in the review process for police use of force, held a press conference that same day.  He claimed he had first seen the video the week before and called it “troubling,” adding that he had asked the Illinois State Police (ISP) to review the CPD’s reports.  He also said he was “surprised” that the initial police report “didn’t have more information… They didn’t have witness statements attached to it.”  Carter did not mention that the video had been released to the public.

 

Also on the 20th, the News-Gazette published a front page article on the incident.  The article features a lengthy statement from Mark Lipton, then the defense attorney for the young man.  It also reports that Champaign County State’s Attorney Julia Rietz had seen the video “earlier this month” and had subsequently decided to dismiss the felony charge of resisting a peace officer.  At no point is the release of the video on Youtube mentioned in the article.

 

Two days later, the Tuesday after the video was leaked, more reactions to the incident and subsequent outcry surfaced.  The ISP review was summarized in a press release published at 6:08pm.  The ISP notes that

 

Champaign Police Department policy states that the use of OC spray “is intended to be used primarily against unarmed subjects who officers reasonably believe have indicated physically and/or verbally that they intend to resist arrest or assault an officer or other person.”

 

It further claims that the youth was “disrupting traffic,” that the CPD officer merely “directed the group to relocate,”  and that the young man became “combative,” despite the fact that none of these claims is substantiated in the video.

 

Indeed, at 7:30 the City of Champaign issued a News Release in which it unequivocally disagreed with the ISP’s conclusion.  In the statement the City says that the ISP “did not go far enough.”  It goes on to announce that the City is in communication with the FBI, which is expected to “conduct a full review and assessment of this incident,” as well as the City’s intention to hire “an independent firm to complete a thorough review of the Use of Force Policy and Training

.”

 

At about the the same time Champaign County State’s Attorney, Julia Rietz, issued a statement confirming that she would be dismissing the charges against the arrestee, explaining that “everyone other than the two foot patrol officers made bad decisions.”  Even after making this admission, she also has refused to charge the arresting officer with any crime, despite the fact that he is clearly seen taking unnecessary violent action against a handcuffed youth.

 

Prior to the release of  ISP’s report, the Illinois Fraternal Order of Police’s (IFOP) Labor Council also made a statement on the developing situation.  They are the only organization covered by the News-Gazette that mentioned the public availability of the video, although they erroneously claim that “members of the public” had “base[d] their opinions on a snippet of a video that was actually nearly an hour long,” when the entire 53 minute clip had thousands of views on Youtube (as of this writing the full clip has more than 13,000 views).  The IFOP dismisses the citizens whom they serve, claiming that they “have absolutely no police or use of force training.”  They further assert that “the officer had to use force” the purpose of which was “to inflict pain in order to gain compliance and control.”  Finally, the IFOP representative seeks to stifle public discourse, concluding the statement by saying that “publicly criticizing the officer only serves to divide the community and demoralize a professional and nationally recognized police department.”

 

Hours after the IFOP, ISP and City commentary was released by the News-Gazette, the newspaper published a public statement from Mayor Don Gerard.  In it, he calls the ISP investigation “unacceptable,” adding that although the officer’s actions may have been technically within the standards set by the CPD use of force policy, he thought many officers would have handled the situation differently.

 

Meanwhile, at the same time that the News-Gazette began rolling out commentary from the top of the Champaign city government, community members gathered to discuss their responses to the video, as well as to the systemic police harassment of African American youth in Champaign.  Clergy, business and labor people, youth and parents sat in the sanctuary of Salem Baptist Church,  where after an extended period of public comment they ratified a document that reads as follows:

 

Black Community of Champaign, Illinois

Town Hall Meeting on Police Brutality,

November 22, 2011

List of Demands

ñ We urge a federal rather than a state level investigation of the June 5, 2011 incident.  Because of the close relationship between the state and the Champaign Police Department we have no faith in a state investigation.

ñ We urge the State’s Attorney Julia Reitz to charge not only the officer that used excessive force– pepper sprayed and choked the young man– with the appropriate charge but to also charge the officer that helped handcuff him and those officers that failed to prevent these crimes.

ñ We ask for the identification of the individuals that participated in the complaint process as it relates to the June 5, 2011 incident.  We demand a complete timeline of the review process. When was the City Manager Steve Carter first made aware of the complaint?  When did he first receive Chief Finney’s ruling that the officer’s actions were within the use of force guidelines? When did he first decide that Finny’s report was “incomplete”?  When did he first view the video?

ñ We urge the City Council to immediately place City Manager Steve Carter on administrative leave without pay and to launch an investigation into his role in creating and maintaining a culture of racial terrorism – racial profiling, excessive force and misconduct – that pervades the Champaign Police Department

ñ We demand the creation of a citizen’s review board that has subpoena power, to require sworn testimony of police officers and all other parties involved in complaints about police conduct.

ñ We demand a local residency requirement that requires all city employees to reside within the municipal boundaries of Champaign, Illinois.

ñ We demand community policing rather than the “problem centered approach” currently used by the Champaign Police Department.

 

Posted in Human Rights, Policing | Comments Off on Community Members, City Leaders Search for Answers in June 5 Arrest

Heather Ault: Visualizing 4000 Years of Choice

Posted on 11/28/2011 by Marya Burke
Adapted from Sunday 20 November 2011 Interview By Eleanor J. Bader published online in  On The Issues Magazine | Op-Ed
Heather Ault holds a Master of Fine Arts and her current position is as a graphic designer at the Office of Online and Continuing Education at the University of Illinois in Urbana-Champaign. She uses her art as a medium for activism in support of the pro-choice and feminist movement. 

Unearthing History

Growing up, Heather Ault never imagined that people, especially women, have engaged in control over reproduction for more than 4000 years. She thought contraception was a recent phenomenon. Similarly, she’d rarely thought about women’s rights or community empowerment.

 

All this changed when she moved to San Francisco in 1997. “San Francisco … pulls you into local politics and I found that I loved [it].” Ault began canvassing for the Women’s Choice Clinic in Oakland, going door to door to raise money. After a year, she moved to NARAL Pro-Choice America. In 2000, she moved to Humboldt County and became active in a group called Democracy Unlimited. She also enrolled in Intro to Women’s Studies. Despite having worked for both a clinic and NARAL, she and her coworkers never spoke about reproductive history. The class opened her eyes. She remembered being surprised by what she didn’t know, citing as an example when she learned that abortion had been legal before it became illegal; “that blew my mind.” Her curiosity piqued, she began researching the history of abortion and contraception. After hungrily consuming Linda Gordon’s 2002 book, The Moral Property of Women, Ault began digging in earnest.

 

Ault’s interest had personal roots as well. “The idea of controlling pregnancy was, for some reason, something I really needed to understand. I wanted to know where the desire to control fertility came from, not so much from a theoretical or feminist perspective, but from a more primal place that is deeper than politics or policy. I felt driven to understand where this choice originated when I realized how meaningful my own journey through an unwanted pregnancy had become.” This journey included her choice to have an abortion.

 

She noted that, “I’d assumed that prior to the Roe decision in 1973, there was just illegal abortion, that women had never been at the center of any reproductive practice. As I dug,” she continues, “I found a lot of information … about birth control and abortifacient products going very far back in American, and world, history. I was shocked to see these practices [advertised in] women’s magazines throughout the 1800s.”

 

As Ault’s research unfolded, her desire to share her knowledge magnified. Finding the best outlet was easy. “I put 20 or 25 images on transparency paper and showed them to my women’s studies class.” She asked the students two telling questions: When did they think contraception had been invented and who had invented it? The largely female class was of one mind: Contraception was a 20th century invention developed by men. “This confirmed that no one knew the real history. ”

 

History and Vision

Ault moved to Illinois to study art at UIUC in 2007. She continued to probe reproductive history; however, she focused on connecting this history with her art. She used graphic representation to document the intense need to control fertility. She considered many options— including hanging message-laden pieces of female lingerie inside a red tent— but eventually took her cue from Josh MacPhee and the Just Seeds Poster Collective. The Collective’s displays of posters wheat-pasted onto urban walls inspired Ault’s vivid wall hangings. Her first gallery display, four posters depicting the history of the condom and showcasing herbal abortifacients, sold almost as soon as it went up.

 

Since then, Ault has created 50 brightly colored posters. Entitled, 4000 Years of Choice, the posters introduce a raft of little-known information. For example, in 1500 BCE, the Egyptians used a contraceptive plug made from an acacia plant, honey, and lint; Roman physicians wrote about using wild cucumbers to end unwanted pregnancies; and, throughout the 1960s, Patricia Maginnis, founder of the Society for Humane Abortion, stood on San Francisco street corners handing out information on obtaining safe and affordable (and illegal) abortions. Ault’s paean to Maginnis — a bright red likeness on a peach background — calls her the, “first abortion rights activist in history.”

 

Defending the Right to Choose

Ault is fixated on messaging. She was impressed by Shepard Fairey’s campaign posters for Obama. “His [one word posters] HOPE … made everyone feel hopeful.” She felt this same power at the 2007 March for Life. “It was the first pro-life event I’d ever been to and it raised a lot of questions for me about how we can empower and affirm our movement more …. We use terms like fight, defend, and struggle and use the coat hanger …. which suggests death and desperation, not empowerment.”

 

Back in Illinois, Ault thinks we can do better. Her new posters use one large word — words like affirm, cherish, discover, love, unite, “to note our history and invoke victory.” They boast, “bright, lollypop colors … [that] are cheerful and inviting.”

 

Debra Sweet, executive director of the World Can’t Wait, calls them inspiring. “Their presence doesn’t preach, … [they] just show how much women have searched and acted, with what they had at hand, to control their reproductive lives.” Dr. Susan Wicklund posted them throughout her Mountain Country Women’s Clinic in Livingston, Montana. “Patients stop and read them. … Putting choice in a historical perspective is enlightening and comforting.”

 

In 2010, Ault went to Germantown, Maryland to help defend Dr. LeRoy Carhart and hisclinic against anti-choice protesters. She was appalled by the invisibility of pro-choice ideas and immediately got to work painting enormous banners: Trust Women, Good Women Have Abortions, and We HEART Dr. Carhart, among them.

 

New Strategies

Ault has a strategy to undo some of the stigma surrounding clinics and the abortion procedure itself. “I feel like the most important thing we can do to defend clinics is to show up with big, bold, positive messages that say ‘we’re here to celebrate choice.’ [We could also use clinics for] events, celebrations and parties to create something positive between the health center and the community. The pro-choice movement needs to do more than merely react to anti-choice activity.”

 

She is also eager to strategize about spreading the pro-choice message. “The history of abortion and contraception has remained largely unknown because it has not been translated into visual culture. We live in a time where the narratives of our lives are formed largely by media. The anti-choice movement realized this early on and capitalized on the fetus as their symbol for life. The feminist movement has been less effective in crafting equally compelling visual symbols to articulate the values or freedom, autonomy, and rights.”

 

“I believe art has the ability to encapsulate consciousness-raising ideas in formats that are widely accessible.” Ault has seen this happen. “At the U.S. Social Forum, I talked to hundreds … all of whom were deeply moved by my exhibit. In clinics where my posters are hung … I have been told that the atmosphere has been transformed into one with more positive energy and casual conversations about abortion. A visiting law professor at the University of Illinois who had worked for Planned Parenthood in Washington D.C. commented that, in our one-hour conversation, her entire understanding of the social and political context for abortion had dramatically shifted.”

 

Ault’s enthusiasm and fire are hard to resist. She continues to focus on the persistent challenge: How can we better champion reproductive freedoms and sexuality? And, how can we brighten the light on the proud history of our movement?


Posted in Human Rights, Uncategorized | Comments Off on Heather Ault: Visualizing 4000 Years of Choice

Pleas, Pleas and More Pleas

Posted on 11/10/2011 by Timothy Kendrick

SourceURL:file://localhost/Users/Neil/Desktop/TKendrick%20Pleas%20Article.doc @font-face { font-family: “Times New Roman”; }@font-face { font-family: “ArialMT”; }p.MsoNormal, li.MsoNormal, div.MsoNormal { margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt; font-size: 12pt; font-family: “Times New Roman”; }table.MsoNormalTable { font-size: 10pt; font-family: “Times New Roman”; }div.Section1 { page: Section1; }

This is to inform my people about the way they play at the County

Courthouse.  They lock us up, charge us, and indict us on outrageous and unrelated charges just to trick us into “coppin’ a plea.” Everybody plays a role: the arresting officer, the state, the judge, the court appointed attorney as well as a paid attorney. We have to come together just like them. First and foremost, they try to fool us by telling us to ‘waive our preliminary hearing.’ The State has to present evidence and police reports to a selected grand jury that decides whether the claims against you are enough to go forward with your case. This is the first step in the process to get us to waiving our rights, which can be very detrimental in the appeal process if in fact, you lose the case and want to appeal. Never ever waive your rights. Always exercise them no matter the circumstances.

 

The next step is to always ask for a speedy trial by jury. Never take a trial by judge because remember, they’re always working together.

The reason you ask for a ‘speedy trial’ is because they are counting on most everyone to take a plea and the courts are so backed up, they would not have time to collect, process and examine all evidence in all the cases, let alone contact and prep all witnesses. However, you don’t need to wait on them to act like they are going to take you to trial when they aren’t.  All they want is a copout/plea. So everything else is most likely a bluff. Their assumption is that everyone charged IS guilty and you won’t go to trial unless you can totally prove your innocence.

 

Now if you are guilty as charged, you may want to take a plea.

There have been cases where you have a person dead to the wrong and the State didn’t care about the victim or the victims’ families; all they want the defendant to do is cop a plea or become an informant for the State.

 

People can be guilty of heinous crimes and the State will choose to give that individual a 6-year copout plea, which is good for the accused, but not for the victim or the victim’s family. No justice either way is coming out of the “plea factory” of the County Courthouse.

Posted in Uncategorized | Comments Off on Pleas, Pleas and More Pleas

The US Today: Economic Stagnation, Political Paralysis

Posted on 11/10/2011 by Mark Weisbrot

Mark Weisbrot

 

First published in the Guardian guardian.co.uk, Friday 7 October 2011

 

Given mass unemployment and stimulus spending blocked in Washington, no wonder people are taking to the streets

The monthly employment report for September, released Friday, shows how far America remains from an economic recovery that might feel different from a recession to most of the public, nearly four years after the Great Recession began. Unemployment remained at 9.1% in the household survey. With a jump of 342,000 thousand additional people involuntarily working part-time, the labor department’s broadest measure of unemployment (which includes these workers and others who have quit looking for work because they can’t find it) rose to a near-record 16.5% of the labor force.

As my colleague Dean Baker pointed out, the 103,000 jobs gained in September brought the total jobs added over the last three months to just enough to keep pace with the growth of the labor force. If present trends continue, we are going to be looking at intolerably high levels of unemployment for years to come.

The distribution of unemployment is also breaking records for ugliness. Some 44.6% of the unemployed have been out of work for more than six months. This kind of long-term unemployment is unprecedented in the post second world war era, and it causes permanent damage, as many of the long-term unemployed never get jobs again. Their children suffer as well, with damage to their education.

No wonder people are taking to the streets, in a phenomenon not seen since the Great Depression: mass protests targeting economic policy. As in Europe, where the 15-M movement in Spain, the general strikes in Greece, and mass protests in other countries have attracted widespread popular support, the movement of “the 99%” targeting Wall Street is a response to the failure of our political class to do what is obviously necessary for even the immediate future. There is a chance, at least, that it will be joined by increasing numbers of “the 16.5%” (unemployed or underemployed); the “15.1%” (below the poverty line); and “the 88%” (of the labor force without union representation) – and all the other effectively disenfranchised Americans that make up the 99%.

It is a good sign that President Obama has shifted tactics and, instead of begging for crumbs from the Republican leadership, is now willing to say publicly that they will be held to account if they refuse to pass his proposed legislation that would reduce unemployment. However, his proposed jobs bill is too small to make much of a dent. Goldman Sachs, which represents “the 1%”, noted that it would not even bother to change its forecast for growth next year, because even if Obama’s proposal were enacted “in its entirety”, it would only shift the effect of fiscal policy from a negative 1.1% of GDP to a positive 0.4%. Of course, this would still be a noticeable improvement, but Goldman Sachs is counting on the likelihood that much of it won’t pass Congress.

More importantly, a positive overall stimulus of 0.4% from government – again, only if Obama’s whole package were to become law – is pathetic in a time of such dire mass unemployment. One reason it is so small is that state and local governments have been tightening their budgets, shedding jobs since the recession began. This is a big drag on employment and growth. State and local governments have lost 259,000 jobs over the past year; in a time of normal growth, they would be adding that many jobs in a year.

To get us out of this hole, the federal government would have to do much more. That has been the problem from the beginning: even the main stimulus bill (the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act) that began in February of 2009 replaced only about one-eighth of the private spending that was lost as a result of the bursting of the real estate bubble. But as that stimulus ran out, employment gains petered out and the economy fell into its current state of stagnation.

For all of our political leaders’ spectacular failure – the lack of leadership from the White House and the successful economic sabotage of the Republicans – we can give special thanks to the major media. With a handful of exceptions, they have been the great enablers throughout this malaise, lending credibility to ridiculous arguments that America is constrained by a “debt crisis”. The federal government’s net interest payments on our public debt are running at around 1.4% of GDP, about as low as they have been in the past 65 years.

We are now more than one third of the way through a “lost-decade”, having barely caught up with our income at the end of 2007, when the recession began. Thank God there are people in the streets who understand that there is nothing inevitable about this misery. It is their strength and organisation that is currently our best hope for a better future.

 

 

Posted in Labor/Economics, Politics | Comments Off on The US Today: Economic Stagnation, Political Paralysis

Black Youth Beaten by Champaign Police

Posted on 11/01/2011 by Brian Dolinar

It has been two years since Kiwane Carrington was killed by a Champaign police officer, but 18-year-old black youth, Calvin Miller, is still afraid of the police. So when a Champaign cop attempted to pull him over for no apparent reason, he panicked. He only wanted to get home that night.

According to Calvin, he had dropped of a friend at around 1 a.m. on Monday morning, October 24, 2011, and was driving home when a Champaign police car pulled up behind him on Marketview Drive. Calvin says he obeyed all the traffic laws and drove the speed limit. The officer turned on his lights. Close to his mother’s house, Calvin kept driving with the hope he could make it there. After a couple blocks, he turned into a residential driveway on Arcadia. Calvin got out of the car and started to run toward his house.

Police told him to stop and Calvin says he responded by getting on the ground. As Calvin tells the story, officer John Lieb approached and hit him in the face with his baton several times. “When they told me to stop,” Calvin said. “I stopped. He didn’t need to beat me in my head.” Calvin put his hands up over his head, but the cop kept beating him, injuring him on his forehead, eye, and jaw. He rolled over onto his stomach and was placed in handcuffs. Lieb pepper sprayed Calvin directly in his face while he was handcuffed. He was then placed under arrest. He bailed out of jail the next morning.


Incidentally, Calvin is also the son of local black activist Martel Miller, who has consistently appeared at city council meetings reporting on the brutality of the Champaign police. I saw Calvin at rallies and teach-ins with his father after the Kiwane Carrington incident. While not as politically active as his father, he was deeply affected by the killing of Kiwane, who was only a year younger than Calvin at the time of his death. Calvin has no criminal background, but remains scared of the police. He is currently a student at Parkland College.

Posted in African Americans, Policing | Comments Off on Black Youth Beaten by Champaign Police

Acceptance Speech by Danielle Chynoweth for Woman of the Year Award 2011

Posted on 11/01/2011 by Brian Dolinar

On October 13, 2011, UC-IMC co-founder Danielle Chynoweth was presented with the Woman of the Year Award at an event organized by the News-Gazette. To a packed room of more than 300 people, she gave the speech that appears below.

Thank you.  I feel honored to be named Woman of the Year in our community. When I came here after college, I fell in love with the trees that touch over the streets, the quiet busy-ness of our town where there is encouragement to think and create. This place opened itself as a playground for my imagination. In my first year here, I got the chance to conduct a lesbian feminist chorus singing Bulgarian tunes, produce radio theater on WEFT, and get my first job as a web designer by hauling a portfolio of paintings into the Beckman Institute.

No matter what adventure I am on – building radio stations in Kenya, teaching media in Burma, reporting on freedom of expression issues in Thailand – I am always so happy to return here. I still don’t think any of us have been able to articulate the recipe for the special sauce of this town – and so, it remains our hidden secret.

The News-Gazette asked me what I attribute my success to and, after some thought, I said the ability to see what isn’t there yet. By that I mean seeing the invisible as well as the possible. This is what is common to my work in media, art, and policy.

To see what isn’t there – what doesn’t yet have an existence in the public consciousness – I/you/we have to go to where the silences are.

One way I approach this is to cultivate a sense of myself as simply a person, who is no more or less than anyone else, who can talk to anyone about anything, and who commits to working with those affected by problems to solve them.

So when my elderly co-worker told me she was facing homelessness because her trailer park was being demolished to make room for an apartment complex, I knocked on doors in her neighborhood and listened people to tell their story. We organized Friends of Lincoln Mobile Home Park, making the problem visible to the community as a whole, and successfully advocated for relocation assistance for hundreds of residents who were losing their homes.

When I was invited to run for city council, as a young outsider up against the old guard, I knocked on 600 doors in my neighborhood, holding conversations about what we want for our city – some of the conversations running for hours into the evening. This was one of the most pleasurable times of my life, when I got to experience the intelligent curiosity of my neighbors. Out of this I saw a series of possibilities – a public arts program, public broadband, civilian oversight of the police, bike paths – all of which we did – as well as things we could still do – set a zero waste goal for the city, develop a grassroots, participatory budget process, help those marked with felony convictions grow their own micro-enterprises.

I was one citizen going to where the silences are and advocating for new possibilities, but I wondered how to develop an infrastructure that would enable many people to do the same.

So a group of twelve gathered in my living room 11 years ago to conceive of an independent media center that would provide the tools and training to surface many unheard voices in our community – to provide a forum to talk about problems and seek solutions together.

A few years into our project, we looked at a nearly empty post office building in downtown Urbana and saw a community media and arts center. We wanted to use the power of creativity to bring white, black and brown together, and provide fertile soil for ordinary people to plant their audacious projects.

Our decentralized structure and Do It Yourself ethos has allowed the IMC to grow to over 1200 volunteers – with a Books to Prisoner program that has shipped over 60,000 free books to inmates, a bike project that has recycled over 1500 bikes into the community, a performance venue and gallery, radio station, newspaper, artist in residence program, and non-profit incubation supporting 59 local and international projects. Out of one vision grew a structure to grow many visions.

I want to live in a community that seeks to reveal, rather than hide, poverty and discrimination, to surface it, to see it, to bring everyone into the conversation, to talk about how it affects every one of us, to seek its roots, to try out solutions, to reflect together, to change our minds, to try again. I want a community that is honest about its history, able to truly see the situation of all of its residents in the present, and has the courage to take on seemingly unsolvable problems towards a shared future.

Can we envision a Champaign-Urbana without a single homeless child? We have at least 163 homeless children amongst us – which would fill about half of this room.

How many years shall we plan to overcome the deep inequalities by race? 2, 5, 10, 20? Can we set our sights on this and chart a course for how to get there?

We do not have to accept unacceptable problems simply because we inherited them.
Local communities, like ours, can be sandboxes where we can learn how to make democracy, where people participate in the decisions that affect their lives, with outcomes that are tangible and motivate them to continue to participate and grow as humans.

I want to end with a poem I wrote about the ability to see what isn’t there yet and locate new possibilities that I wrote one month before I conceived my son, Ezra Shine Chynoweth, last year.

Conception
Thursday, June 10, 2010

Make a decision,
and the consequences
will curl at your feet
like clipped locks of hair,
signaling the effort
towards change.

Words make the world,
so choose them.

Each day,
people turn to me
to make decisions,

to conjure a future
out of the phantom present,

to face impossibility
with confident assertion,

and to make something
through my angry, impatient
longing for it.

Once it is there,
it has always been.

People gather into it
like a boat,

press their paddles
against history,
and push off this
ground -–
traveling to another
place in time.

…

Can a soul be made by wanting it?

This is, perhaps,
how all things, and beings,
are made.

I will seek
at every moment
to make a world
new and
exciting
for all of us.

Posted in Uncategorized | Comments Off on Acceptance Speech by Danielle Chynoweth for Woman of the Year Award 2011

Occupy CU Rallies Held Locally

Posted on 11/01/2011 by Brian Dolinar

In solidarity with the Occupy Wall St. movement in New York, local events have been held in Champaign-Urbana. On October 8, the annual Unity March was organized by Jobs With Justice, CU Citizens for Peace and Justice, and a newly-formed organization Occupy 217. They marched through downtown and temporarily occupied Chase Bank.

Elizabeth Simpson, Carol Ammons, and Brad Donalds (left to right) fill out withdraw forms to get back their portion of the bailout funds handed out to Chase Bank.

On October 15, some 350 people marched and held a rally in Westside Park.

Posted in Uncategorized | Comments Off on Occupy CU Rallies Held Locally

GEO Victory! Arbitrator Rules in Favor of Tuition Waivers

Posted on 11/01/2011 by Rodrigo Pacheco-McEvoy

Tuition waivers have long been an important issue for graduate employees at the University of Illinois. As such, the recent arbitration victory for the Graduate Employees Organization (GEO) against the UIUC administration marks the beginning of another long battle regarding tuition waivers at UIUC.

The timeline for this arbitration victory in particular dates back several years. In November of 2009, over 1,000 GEO members went on strike to prevent the reduction or elimination of tuition waivers for graduate employees. This was the fifth largest work stoppage in the United States in 2009. The GEO won contract language protecting tuition waivers for current and future Teaching and Graduate Assistants at UIUC.

However, in the summer of 2010, the GEO learned of a policy change affecting tuition waivers for incoming graduate employees in several departments in the College of Fine and Applied Arts (FAA). Effective fall of 2010, incoming graduate employees in these departments were no longer granted waivers for out-of-state tuition. Even with temporary scholarships, many Fine and Applied Arts graduate employees, earning between $7,000.00 and $9,000.00 per academic year, were left with additional fees totaling up to $1,000.00. The majority of these students already struggle with some of the lowest wages on campus.

Longstanding practice in these departments had been to cover full tuition, since many graduate students come to UIUC from out-of-state. Unlike at many other universities, gaining in-state residency for tuition purposes at UIUC requires that students live and work in the state for at least one year before beginning their education. The caveat, of course, is that employment cannot be through the university.

This change in tuition waiver policy in FAA was a clear violation of the GEO’s contract with the Illinois Board of Trustees. So in 2010, the GEO filed a grievance alleging a contract violation, while GEO members launched a public awareness campaign that included email and letter drives, communication with elected officials, testimony to the University of Illinois Board of Trustees, and other events.

On September 18, 2011, an independent arbitrator declared the University’s tuition waiver policy to be in violation of its contract with the GEO. In addition, the arbitrator ordered the U of I administration to make whole any harm done to graduate employees.

This arbitration victory marks a significant achievement for GEO members. Not only does the ruling secure tuition waivers as a benefit of employment for graduate employees, which is absolutely necessary to maintain accessibility to public higher education at UIUC; it also helps protect the arts from budgetary cutbacks.

Tuition waivers are a benefit of employment, which represent no cost to the University. Preventing the reduction of tuition waivers will preserve the quality of education at Illinois, while protecting vital labor standards. As University administrators have affirmed multiple times, tuition waivers are essential to Illinois’ status as a premier public research university. By moving to reduce tuition waivers from incoming graduate employees, the UIUC administration signaled a clear lack of support for the arts at UIUC, which is home to some of the most highly regarded programs in arts and humanities in the country.

This is yet another example of flawed budget priorities at UIUC, where the most vulnerable members of the University community are frequently asked to shoulder the burdens of budget shortfalls. Restricting access to graduate education to only in-state students and to out-of-state students who can afford tuition would reduce diversity among instructors at UIUC, which would lessen the value of an undergraduate education.

“This ruling is significant not only for the GEO, but for higher education unions throughout the country,” said Michael Verderame, GEO Grievance Officer. “The arbitrator affirmed that our contract operates as it would for any other union. The university can’t just ignore the contract by claiming it doesn’t apply to incoming students.”

While the GEO has much cause to celebrate, the story of tuition waivers and the arts at UIUC is not over. The GEO is entering another bargaining year. According to GEO Co-President Miriam Larsen, “based on the effort UIUC officials have put into defending their reduction of employee waivers in violation of its contractual agreements, we anticipate that tuition waivers will be a major subject of bargaining in 2012. Our members are fully committed to protecting the tuition waivers that make a high quality graduate education accessible to a diverse student body.”

For more information, please contact Rodrigo Pacheco-McEvoy, GEO Communications Officer, at Rodrigo.pacheco.mcevoy@gmail.com. More information can also be found on the GEO website at www.uigeo.org.

Posted in Education, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign | Comments Off on GEO Victory! Arbitrator Rules in Favor of Tuition Waivers

Day of Action

Posted on 11/01/2011 by Belden Fields

DAY OF ACTION

 

by TOM THOMAS

 

(Tom Thomas is a local poet and co-host of the Saturday

International-World Labor Hour on WEFT, 90.1 FM)

 

A National Day of Action

Is what we are having today

So we may protest infraction

And get some Justice, if we may!

 

In UNITY we’ll march today

Upon the sidewalks labor-laid

We WILL say what we have to say,

For from our Dreams we have NOT strayed!

 

Our ‘Financial-Apocalypse’

Was brought upon us by the banks-

The banks like J.P. Morgan Chase

Who rob you without saying, “Thanks!”

 

They are like giant cannibals

Devouring each Home and Life-

We SEE beyond the big vault’s walls

Where hide the ones who bring us strife!

 

‘Twas almost a Hundred-Billion

That we Taxpayers had to pay-

They robbed us all, without a gun,

And don’t expect them to re-pay…

 

Unless enough of us speak out

When Tax-time comes around again,

And that will take the loudest shout

That in our Land has ever been!

 

Our shouts should be heard from Wall Street

Clear to the San Francisco Bay,

And in the streets we’ll put our feet,

Demanding JUSTICE in OUR day!

 

A National Day of Action

Is what we are having today

So we may protest infraction,

And get some JUSTICE, if we may!

 

Posted in Uncategorized | Comments Off on Day of Action

Acceptance Speech by Danielle Chynoweth for Woman of the Year Award 2011

Posted on 11/01/2011 by Danielle Chynoweth

On October 13, 2011, UC-IMC co-founder Danielle Chynoweth was presented with the Woman of the Year Award at an event organized by the News-Gazette. To a packed room of more than 300 people, she gave the speech that appears below.

Thank you.  I feel honored to be named Woman of the Year in our community. When I came here after college, I fell in love with the trees that touch over the streets, the quiet busy-ness of our town where there is encouragement to think and create. This place opened itself as a playground for my imagination. In my first year here, I got the chance to conduct a lesbian feminist chorus singing Bulgarian tunes, produce radio theater on WEFT, and get my first job as a web designer by hauling a portfolio of paintings into the Beckman Institute.

No matter what adventure I am on – building radio stations in Kenya, teaching media in Burma, reporting on freedom of expression issues in Thailand – I am always so happy to return here. I still don’t think any of us have been able to articulate the recipe for the special sauce of this town – and so, it remains our hidden secret.

The News-Gazette asked me what I attribute my success to and, after some thought, I said the ability to see what isn’t there yet. By that I mean seeing the invisible as well as the possible. This is what is common to my work in media, art, and policy.

To see what isn’t there – what doesn’t yet have an existence in the public consciousness – I/you/we have to go to where the silences are.

One way I approach this is to cultivate a sense of myself as simply a person, who is no more or less than anyone else, who can talk to anyone about anything, and who commits to working with those affected by problems to solve them.

So when my elderly co-worker told me she was facing homelessness because her trailer park was being demolished to make room for an apartment complex, I knocked on doors in her neighborhood and listened people to tell their story. We organized Friends of Lincoln Mobile Home Park, making the problem visible to the community as a whole, and successfully advocated for relocation assistance for hundreds of residents who were losing their homes.

When I was invited to run for city council, as a young outsider up against the old guard, I knocked on 600 doors in my neighborhood, holding conversations about what we want for our city – some of the conversations running for hours into the evening. This was one of the most pleasurable times of my life, when I got to experience the intelligent curiosity of my neighbors. Out of this I saw a series of possibilities – a public arts program, public broadband, civilian oversight of the police, bike paths – all of which we did – as well as things we could still do – set a zero waste goal for the city, develop a grassroots, participatory budget process, help those marked with felony convictions grow their own micro-enterprises.

I was one citizen going to where the silences are and advocating for new possibilities, but I wondered how to develop an infrastructure that would enable many people to do the same.

So a group of twelve gathered in my living room 11 years ago to conceive of an independent media center that would provide the tools and training to surface many unheard voices in our community – to provide a forum to talk about problems and seek solutions together.

A few years into our project, we looked at a nearly empty post office building in downtown Urbana and saw a community media and arts center. We wanted to use the power of creativity to bring white, black and brown together, and provide fertile soil for ordinary people to plant their audacious projects.

Our decentralized structure and Do It Yourself ethos has allowed the IMC to grow to over 1200 volunteers – with a Books to Prisoner program that has shipped over 60,000 free books to inmates, a bike project that has recycled over 1500 bikes into the community, a performance venue and gallery, radio station, newspaper, artist in residence program, and non-profit incubation supporting 59 local and international projects. Out of one vision grew a structure to grow many visions.

I want to live in a community that seeks to reveal, rather than hide, poverty and discrimination, to surface it, to see it, to bring everyone into the conversation, to talk about how it affects every one of us, to seek its roots, to try out solutions, to reflect together, to change our minds, to try again. I want a community that is honest about its history, able to truly see the situation of all of its residents in the present, and has the courage to take on seemingly unsolvable problems towards a shared future.

Can we envision a Champaign-Urbana without a single homeless child? We have at least 163 homeless children amongst us – which would fill about half of this room.

How many years shall we plan to overcome the deep inequalities by race? 2, 5, 10, 20? Can we set our sights on this and chart a course for how to get there?

We do not have to accept unacceptable problems simply because we inherited them.
Local communities, like ours, can be sandboxes where we can learn how to make democracy, where people participate in the decisions that affect their lives, with outcomes that are tangible and motivate them to continue to participate and grow as humans.

I want to end with a poem I wrote about the ability to see what isn’t there yet and locate new possibilities that I wrote one month before I conceived my son, Ezra Shine Chynoweth, last year.

Conception
Thursday, June 10, 2010

Make a decision,
and the consequences
will curl at your feet
like clipped locks of hair,
signaling the effort
towards change.

Words make the world,
so choose them.

Each day,
people turn to me
to make decisions,

to conjure a future
out of the phantom present,

to face impossibility
with confident assertion,

and to make something
through my angry, impatient
longing for it.

Once it is there,
it has always been.

People gather into it
like a boat,

press their paddles
against history,
and push off this
ground -–
traveling to another
place in time.

…

Can a soul be made by wanting it?

This is, perhaps,
how all things, and beings,
are made.

I will seek
at every moment
to make a world
new and
exciting
for all of us.

 

On October 13, 2011, UC-IMC co-founder Danielle Chynoweth was presented with the Woman of the Year Award at an event organized by the News-Gazette. To a packed room of more than 300 people, she gave the speech that appears below.

 

Thank you.  I feel honored to be named Woman of the Year in our community. When I came here after college, I fell in love with the trees that touch over the streets, the quiet busy-ness of our town where there is encouragement to think and create. This place opened itself as a playground for my imagination. In my first year here, I got the chance to conduct a lesbian feminist chorus singing Bulgarian tunes, produce radio theater on WEFT, and get my first job as a web designer by hauling a portfolio of paintings into the Beckman Institute.

 

No matter what adventure I am on – building radio stations in Kenya, teaching media in Burma, reporting on freedom of expression issues in Thailand – I am always so happy to return here. I still don’t think any of us have been able to articulate the recipe for the special sauce of this town – and so, it remains our hidden secret.

 

The News-Gazette asked me what I attribute my success to and, after some thought, I said the ability to see what isn’t there yet. By that I mean seeing the invisible as well as the possible. This is what is common to my work in media, art, and policy.

 

To see what isn’t there – what doesn’t yet have an existence in the public consciousness – I/you/we have to go to where the silences are.    

 

One way I approach this is to cultivate a sense of myself as simply a person, who is no more or less than anyone else, who can talk to anyone about anything, and who commits to working with those affected by problems to solve them.

 

So when my elderly co-worker told me she was facing homelessness because her trailer park was being demolished to make room for an apartment complex, I knocked on doors in her neighborhood and listened people to tell their story. We organized Friends of Lincoln Mobile Home Park, making the problem visible to the community as a whole, and successfully advocated for relocation assistance for hundreds of residents who were losing their homes.

 

When I was invited to run for city council, as a young outsider up against the old guard, I knocked on 600 doors in my neighborhood, holding conversations about what we want for our city – some of the conversations running for hours into the evening. This was one of the most pleasurable times of my life, when I got to experience the intelligent curiosity of my neighbors. Out of this I saw a series of possibilities – a public arts program, public broadband, civilian oversight of the police, bike paths – all of which we did – as well as things we could still do – set a zero waste goal for the city, develop a grassroots, participatory budget process, help those marked with felony convictions grow their own micro-enterprises.

 

I was one citizen going to where the silences are and advocating for new possibilities, but I wondered how to develop an infrastructure that would enable many people to do the same.

 

So a group of twelve gathered in my living room 11 years ago to conceive of an independent media center that would provide the tools and training to surface many unheard voices in our community – to provide a forum to talk about problems and seek solutions together.

 

A few years into our project, we looked at a nearly empty post office building in downtown Urbana and saw a community media and arts center. We wanted to use the power of creativity to bring white, black and brown together, and provide fertile soil for ordinary people to plant their audacious projects.

 

Our decentralized structure and Do It Yourself ethos has allowed the IMC to grow to over 1200 volunteers – with a Books to Prisoner program that has shipped over 60,000 free books to inmates, a bike project that has recycled over 1500 bikes into the community, a performance venue and gallery, radio station, newspaper, artist in residence program, and non-profit incubation supporting 59 local and international projects. Out of one vision grew a structure to grow many visions.

 

I want to live in a community that seeks to reveal, rather than hide, poverty and discrimination, to surface it, to see it, to bring everyone into the conversation, to talk about how it affects every one of us, to seek its roots, to try out solutions, to reflect together, to change our minds, to try again. I want a community that is honest about its history, able to truly see the situation of all of its residents in the present, and has the courage to take on seemingly unsolvable problems towards a shared future.

 

Can we envision a Champaign-Urbana without a single homeless child? We have at least 163 homeless children amongst us – which would fill about half of this room.

 

How many years shall we plan to overcome the deep inequalities by race? 2, 5, 10, 20? Can we set our sights on this and chart a course for how to get there?

 

We do not have to accept unacceptable problems simply because we inherited them.

Local communities, like ours, can be sandboxes where we can learn how to make democracy, where people participate in the decisions that affect their lives, with outcomes that are tangible and motivate them to continue to participate and grow as humans.

 

I want to end with a poem I wrote about the ability to see what isn’t there yet and locate new possibilities that I wrote one month before I conceived my son, Ezra Shine Chynoweth, last year.

 

 

Conception

Thursday, June 10, 2010

 

Make a decision,

and the consequences

will curl at your feet

like clipped locks of hair,

signaling the effort

towards change.

 

Words make the world,

so choose them.

 

Each day,

people turn to me

to make decisions,

 

to conjure a future

out of the phantom present,

 

to face impossibility

with confident assertion,

 

and to make something

through my angry, impatient

longing for it.

 

Once it is there,

it has always been.

 

People gather into it

like a boat,

 

press their paddles

against history,

and push off this

ground -–

traveling to another

place in time.

 

…

 

Can a soul be made by wanting it?

 

This is, perhaps,

how all things, and beings,

are made.

 

I will seek

at every moment

to make a world

new and

exciting

for all of us.

Posted in IMC | Comments Off on Acceptance Speech by Danielle Chynoweth for Woman of the Year Award 2011

Errata to City Court Article

Posted on 11/01/2011 by Belden Fields

I would like to correct two errors of fact that I made in an article on Champaign’s City Court in the November 2010 issue of the Public i  First, I stated that the “court/expense fee,” the fee that a guilty party had to pay in additions to the fine, was $750.  That is wrong.  $750 is the maximum fine that can be levied against someone who is found guilty of violating the city ordinance.  The actual additional fee collected by the court is $115 plus $25% of the fine.  Second, I said that the sheriff could use monitored home confinement instead of holding people in jail.  That too is wrong.  People found guilty of contempt of court for not paying the fines and court costs are not eligible for home monitored confinement.  I apologize to the readers for these errors.

Posted in Human Rights, Politics | Comments Off on Errata to City Court Article

Al Jazeera Reporter Visits UCIMC

Posted on 11/01/2011 by Public i

Franc Contreras, a reporter for Al Jazeera based in Mexico City stopped by the IMC when he was in town. He gave a talk on campus about the drug war in Mexico sponsored by La Casa, the Department for Dept. for Latino/a Studies, and others.

Posted in IMC, International | Comments Off on Al Jazeera Reporter Visits UCIMC