Chicago Renaissance Woman Margaret Burroughs Dies at 93

Posted on 02/24/2011 by Brian Dolinar

Magnificent black women
the poets and singers have been remiss
have sung too few poems and songs of you
And the image makers have not recorded your beauty.

On November 21, 2010, long-time Chicago artist and activist Margaret Burroughs died at age 93. Producing poetry, block prints, paintings, sculptures, and participating in theater, she was a modern day renaissance woman. She leaves behind two major institutions the Du Sable Museum and the South Side Community Art Center that are her legacy to a life dedicated to promoting African American art and culture.

In 1917, Margaret Taylor was born in St. Rose, Louisiana not far from New Orleans. In her autobiography Life With Margaret, she tells how her family left the South after the Ku Klux Klan visited their house one night. They moved to Chicago where there were “no lynchings.” Her parents wanted to find out if “the democracy promised by America existed, somewhere.”

Malcolm—by Margaret Burroughs

After graduating from Englewood High School, she earned a teacher’s certificate. She went on to become an art teacher at Du Sable High School, in the heart of Chicago’s South Side, for more than 20 years. While teaching art, she was also making it. She found that there were virtually no opportunities for black artists to exhibit their work in the Chicago galleries. It was the Depression and few could afford to take classes at the Art Institute. She helped to found the South Side Community Art Center (SSCAC) as a place where aspiring artists could attend art classes and show their work. With backing from the Federal Arts Project, one of Roosevelt’s innovative New Deal programs, it was one of dozens of dozens art centers across the country dedicated to taking “art to the people.” The organizing committee purchased an old mansion at 3831Michigan Avenue built by baseball magnate Charles Comiskey. The ground floor was turned into a gallery, the rooms on the second floor were used for workshops, and the top floor was a performance space. When the art center was officially opened in 1941, First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt was at the dedication ceremony. Crowds of people filled the street for two blocks to witness the event.

A Black Girl—by Margaret Burroughs

The SSCAC became a meeting grounds for artists in the period now known as the “Chicago Renaissance,” a literary and artistic awakening that took place a decade after the “New Negro” movement in Harlem. Burroughs was part of a group of artists that also included Charles White, Archibald Motley, Charles Sebree, Elizabeth Catlett, Marion Perkins, and George Neal. She was married for a short time to Bernard Goss, fellow artist and co-founder of the SSCAC. She was remarried later to Charles Burroughs, her life-long partner.

Also an activist, Burroughs was in the local branches of the NAACP Youth Council and Carter G. Woodson’s Association for the Study of Negro Life and History. She associated with both liberals and leftists. In the 1930s, she participated in rallies for the Scottsboro Boys, part of a campaign fought by the Communist Party to free nine black youth accused of raping two white women in Alabama.

The Extended Family—by Margaret Burroughs

During the McCarthy era, she did not back down. When she was questioned by the Board of Education about the “Communist sympathizer” Paul Robeson, her teaching job was at stake, yet she still openly expressed admiration for her good friend. In 1958, she fought to bring W.E.B. Du Bois, who had also been called a “red,” to Chicago. A lengthy FBI file was kept on her. Although she believed in changing the system, what she called a “racist capitalist society,” she denied ever being a communist.

Burroughs is perhaps best known for her role in establishing the Du Sable Museum, located at 57th and Cottage Grove in Washington Park. Named after the black founder of Chicago, Jean Baptiste Point Du Sable, it is a must visit for anyone interested in African American history. The museum draws from its collection of 15,000 pieces and also hosts travelling exhibits. In the summer, there are jazz performances and films held in the park. Burroughs visited Urbana-Champaign several times. Her prints hang on the walls of the Bruce D. Nesbitt African American Cultural Center on campus. She was last here on January 31, 2009 to kick off Black History Month.

Throughout her life, Burroughs was a champion of art. In her later years, she went into Illinois prisons to teach creative writing classes. She continued to mentor young artists. “When you don’t keep moving, you die,” she said. At age 90, she visited Venezuela to witness first-hand the socialist government of Hugo Chavez. After she passed away, President Barack Obama said that Burroughs was “widely admired for her contributions to American culture as an esteemed artist, historian, educator, and mentor.”

Posted in Arts | Leave a comment

Spirit of the Dance

Posted on 02/24/2011 by Isak Griffiths

Listen to Guinea Drumming
Imagine six weeks without running or potable water, a common language, or toilet paper… where rats commonly nibble on children at night… where no one else believes your god exits… where your shower is a bucket and the only bathrooms are public huts over room-sized holes in the ground topped with concrete slabs with four-inch holes in the middle… where a medical ward looks and reeks like a hospital from the Dark Ages… The highway through the capital city is lined four feet high with trash. Sewage trickles in small streams throughout marketplaces and flies eat away at your food in the marketplace for hours or days before it is cooked and served to you. The school system is so broken that the few who get through the eighth grade are usually eighteen to twenty years old; and when they do there are no jobs. Yet Guinea has the third largest river in Africa, a seaport, gold, uranium, coconuts, bananas and more.

Artisan in Conakry crafting lid to a pan

Somehow the people not only endure, but they do so with strength of character, and a sense of interconnectedness, boundless beauty, creativity and grace. This was my destination. I was to set out in December of 2009. Guinea was a country immersed in turmoil and political unrest. Almost exactly one year prior to my visit, the ruling dictator died and a new tyrant named himself President. The year of 2008 was one of protests and violence.

Three months before I left there were multiple massacres and two days before I got on the plane, the “President” was shot. I went anyway. I’ve had an odd life. It didn’t faze me to be frequently surrounded by young men wearing bullet straps and carrying assault rifles. The severity of poverty was essentially what I expected to see, heart-wrenching at times but not shocking. There were times I was stunned, overwhelmed, surprised or amazed, but I was most often intrigued.

Artisan in Conakry crafting lid to a pan

I never dreamed I would deal with money changers, be a woman at the well toting water on my head, cook in a cauldron on ancient stones while feeding the fire six-foot logs, or be physically cowed by 200 children who both wanted to touch me, and were terrified of me. Having heard of the corrupt police system, I took the precaution of hiring a local cop (who was great) to escort me through the barrage of checkpoints. People spend two to five minutes every time they greet someone asking how each person in the family is, how things have been, how they slept, how the morning is, etc. It’s the only way people in Guinea know how to say “hello.” The community makes nearly everything by hand and can fix anything. A car may have half a frame, no door handles, missing fenders and no stuffing in the seats, but it will corner like it’s on rails.

I watched people make clothes, shoes, jewelry, farm equipment and makeshift car parts. I watched an artisan craft beautiful and perfectly smooth, circular dinner plates from what was probably once a crumpled car door. The clay huts they build using sun-dried hand-made bricks are cool and breezy on the hottest summer day. There are no street or store signs because people do not read or write; they must simply remember correctly what they need to know and where everything is. To travel, people stand on the side of the road shouting their destinations; if that’s where you are going you stop and take them with you.

There are no wheelchairs, no special schools, and people cannot afford special doctors. You either adapt or you don’t. For those who can’t, their families take care of them as best they can. But those who find a way to contribute and participate are full—and I do mean full—members of society. I met a man over 6 feet tall who was extremely well educated; he would collapse himself and somehow fold up his body to walk or climb with his hands and not require assistance for any task. People with Down Syndrome, mental retardation, missing or distorted limbs, and more… no one stared at them, spoke to them any differently, or failed to acknowledge their existence.

For the few there who write, it is a slow, difficult and painstaking process. Yet there was no more shame in being illiterate than there was in being naked. Clothes and reading are both tools; highly useful tools sometimes, but tools. I met a girl about 9 years of age wearing a three-year-old’s dress as a tank top, and a chief of three villages who was wearing a complete woman’s ensemble: pants, blouse, winter coat and granny glasses. Spade blades were common dustpans, fishing nets tied baggage to the tops of cars, and a system of drawn lines instructed exactly when and how many medications to take. Tools didn’t come with rules; use and fit were paired as needed.

NOT “SIMPLE,” IT WAS SENSIBLE
Without cars, cell phones and western underwear, life in Guinea feels like antiquity. Men walk along dusty roads in sandals and long robes; and women nurse babies while sifting chaff from grain. When villagers gather to talk, it is like sitting inside early scriptures or Homeric odysseys: circular and repetitious patterns, rhythmic rise and falls, poetic pacing. I’ve seen great speeches and wonderful storytelling, but this is different. Individual men could talk nonstop for hours and not only keep the people engaged, but keep them hungering and clamoring for more. I couldn’t understand a word, but even I could become enraptured, barely breathing and not wanting the moment to end. Between the sun and the dust, drawing water from the wells, sifting grain, endless walking, flocks of children, and the true power of the spoken word, I have had a glimpse of the life of generations before me, and that has changed me.

Welcome to village of Leah Dula

I went to Guinea to study drumming. What I brought home was the spirit of the dance. Babies who couldn’t stand without support would dance. Tiny, ancient people would stand to stretch their arms to the sky, smile, and dance. By ones, by twos, by entire villages, they would dance with every ounce for each other, for the heavens, for themselves. These are some of the poorest people in the world, and they have so much joy they have to dance.

Posted in Arts, International | Leave a comment

CU In Solidarity With the People of Egypt

Posted on 02/24/2011 by Public i
Posted in Human Rights, International | Leave a comment

The School for Designing a Society is in Session!

Posted on 02/24/2011 by Snow Leopard

Established in 1991 in Champaign-Urbana, the School for Designing a Society is an ongoing social experiment by teachers, performers, artists, students, activists, and others in making temporary living environments where the question “What would I consider a desirable society?” is discussed in serious, playful, and thoughtful ways and the entire process is incorporated into creative responses.

How does the school, and its approach, offer an important and unique opportunity for our community? For those people who sense, that something is wrong with the world we live in (both in how we have to live it here in the United States, and how the United States is treating the rest of the world), the question remains: what are we supposed to do about it? It’s not enough just to notice how increasingly impossible it seems to find any leverage point to jam the Machine. Since the election of President Obama and the wave of relief that seemed to bring with it a sense that all problems were now essentially solved, it seems harder than ever to convince anyone that something needs to be done. Even when we convince people and find a leverage point, the all-devouring apparatus of neoliberal capitalism and fast-reacting markets seem to co-opt all socially beneficial innovations and turn them against us in an eye blink.

It can seem hopeless. And to be honest, most efforts will continue to be idle (if not complicit) gestures so long as we refuse to reject the premises on which the whole mess rests. Addressing those premises is doubly challenging because they appear to shift as our world circumstances change. How then can we know what to do or where to start? This is where the School comes in. We move from the idea of thinking outside the box to rejecting the box.

The School for Designing a Society provides a framework for approaching seemingly intractable current social problems and offers an alternative vantage point. What one does with this can’t be known in advance, but it’s at least certain that one’s efforts, if made from a real commitment to create a more desirable society, will not be simply another idle or complicit gesture.

CURRENT COURSES
From 7 February to 2 May 2011, the School will be offering three “foci” as well as weekly “community” meetings at the Independent Media Center in Urbana. Not your conventional classes or seminars, the three foci will investigate Connecting Cybernetics and Social Change, Feminist Composition Design and Performance, and Microtonal Design and Performance.

Connecting Cybernetics and Social Change Cybernetics as an interdisciplinary field of study was proposed in the 20th century by scientists who wanted to fight fascism. From this study there ensued various unexpected theoretical and practical attempts and tendencies. A starting point for this course will be the view of cybernetics as a praxis for generating radical projects, where radical means getting at the roots of a problem; changing whole frameworks. The questions of cybernetics—regulation, self-regulation? observation, self-observation? stability, dynamics?—are invited to help actively answer the questions of social change: which social? how change? This focus meets every Tuesday and Thursday from 1:00PM–2:30PM.

Feminist Composition, Design and Performance. The area to be explored concerns the articulation of connections between feminist ways of thinking, and composition, design, performance. Women, men and other feminists are invited to participate. We’ll compose, design and perform, asking ourselves, what does it mean—what does it do—to think of ourselves as feminist in 2011? And what does it do—what does it mean—to think of ourselves as composers in the radically commercial and communicative environment of 2011. In addition to composing, we’ll hone our notions and commotions in at least two major practical projects: we will design Urbana’s first ‘Sound & Arts Garden’ for the Boneyard Arts Festival, April 7—April 10th 2011; and we will compose the Betty Beethoven and Coco Coltrane Composer Camp for girls, to take place at the Urbana Independent Media Center, during the summer of 2011. This focus meets Tuesdays from 3:30PM–6:30PMand Wednesdays from 12:00PM–5:00PM

Microtonal Design and Performance. Microtonal Design is a seminar for unsticking the ear and everything attached to it. To design in Microtonal systems is to offer an alternative to what everyone already knows, to sing “out of tune” with conventional wisdom. It is a unique contribution to the question of designing a society. We don’t have to accept our culture’s One True Tuning. You don’t have to be an expert. You do have to be willing to experiment! Domains to design in include: new and modified instruments, scales, scores, language, tools, and concert formats. Microtonal Design is taught by members of OddMusic U-C. All levels of experience are welcome. This focus meets Wednesdays from 8:00PM–9:30PM, Thursdays from 3:00PM–4:30PM, and Saturdays from 11:00AM–5:00PM.

Community Plenary Meetings: Along with these foci will be plenary community meetings Mondays from 5:30PM–7:30PM.These weekly meetings are for all students and organizers, include presentations on topics fundamental to designing a society, and serve as check-ins for design groups. Out of this meeting arises the reflective ‘we’—a school-community of learner-livers looking out for one another.

In addition, monthly public performances will share traces and works-in-progress from the foci. These performances offer “fail-safe” opportunities to explore new skills in composition, performance, acting, directing, program sequencing, and other aspects of public performance. A final “grand finale” is planned as well, as an opportunity to display the first fruits of long-term projects undertaken by participants and organizers alike.

Visit the website at www.designingasociety.net/ for more information about participating in these foci. Currently enrolled students may be able to arrange independent contracts for credit from their respective colleges.

Posted in Education, UC-IMC | Leave a comment

SOLHOT Saving Yourself First

Posted on 02/24/2011 by Porshe Garner

Here in the local community, I am a part of a phenomenal group called Saving Our Lives Hear Our Truths (SOLHOT). SOLHOT is a space organized for and by Black women and girls. Within SOLHOT, female student volunteers from the University of Illinois at Urbana Champaign come together with Black girls (6th to 12th grade) in the Champaign, Urbana, and Rantoul communities to share their stories and lived experiences, sing, dance, and cry through celebration of self.

In my two years of working with SOLHOT I have had the pleasure to witness the growth and development of all SOLHOT spaces. Currently, SOLHOT operates in 2 middle schools and 2 high schools, not to mention the many conferences and performances that are attended and given yearly, all in the name of Black girlhood celebration.

Each meeting, the volunteers and girls return to SOLHOT for a refreshing way to start or end their week while delivering new and invigorating discussions and activities. How is SOLHOT able to deliver something new and stimulating every week? Bringing something new to the table is accomplished through daily reflections that enable women and girls to fully participate and engage in the celebration of individuals and the collective space. Doing daily reflections is the most difficult task when trying to improve the group as well as oneself. Some of the hardest moments in the space include stories about past/present relationships, learning to unlearn, racism, facing and breaking traditions, recognition about the ways in which we are affected by our institutions, fears, insecurities, and many more deep and heart felt experiences. However, through these “difficulties,” everyone has the opportunity to mature, self-reflect, and celebrate our own lived experiences as well others. These most difficult times contribute to many projects, activities and discussions that challenge us to think more critically and analytically about why self-reflection and celebration affect every day lived experiences (positively or negatively).

One major principle of SOLHOT is to “save yourself first.” This particular principle is how SOLHOT differs from most girl groups, we are not in the practice of girl saving. In the vein of “saving yourself first,” volunteers in SOLHOT do not come into the space with the misconceived notion that the issues we face are more important than those the girls face. Nor do we enter the space trying to hide our concerns. If we do enter the space believing that our issues are more important, that we have all the answers or trying to hide our own struggles, SOLHOT will become unproductive and stagnant. SOLHOT cannot and will not function fully unless our truths are re-vealed, acknowledged and respected.

Since we (volunteers and girls) are all human, this can happen; however, this is when self-reflection and saving ourselves first is critical. Although I have been working with SOLHOT for two years now, it is still refreshing to be reminded of the importance of self-reflection. Since I do SOLHOT as a way of life, meaning I do not just participate in SOLHOT in the loosely structured afternoon space, I am always thinking about SOLHOT.

While watching the movie Devil (2010), I was reminded of self-reflection. This horror film is about 5 individuals who are trapped in an elevator and realize that the devil is amongst them. One of the trapped individuals was able to save himself because he confessed a sin he had tried to cover up and forget. Once he was honest with himself he was able to evade the devil and death. Of course this resonated with my experiences in SOLHOT.

In my mind , I screamed, “save yourself first!” When you address your own issues without trying to save others from theirs, then and only then will you be able to help others. Unlike the movie, however, it may not be the actual devil you evade, but the meta-phorical demons (issues) that we try and hide and forget. In SOLHOT, we recognize that it is imperative that we all actively engage in self-reflection for the sake of black girl hood celebration and personal well-being.

I myself have experienced the difficulties of addressing those “demons,” but managed to confront them when I took the time to reflect on the space as well as myself. A perfect example occurred during a SOLHOT session. Both volunteers and girls spent time sharing who we REALLY are as a way to really get to know each other and for us all to be vulnerable in the space. From the discussion we, the volunteers, initially thought we had had “the breakthrough” we had been striving for, however, the more I reflected the more uneasy I felt.

Then it dawned on me in an “ah-ha” moment. The reality of my reflection hit with full force and I feared what it truly meant. This “breakthrough” session started to look more and more like the ‘girl saving’ model we were tryingso hard not to follow. I realized while reflecting on the space and my personal intentions that I had become so wrapped up in how I thought the space should work for the girls that I didn’t take the cues they were giving me. In that moment, the space was not about the girls in SOLHOT and that is NOT SOLHOT. All the girls wanted to do was come to SOLHOT and discuss and hangout, yet we had required that they come and share despite not being totally comfortable. From that reflection I learned that it is not about me and how I feel the group should work. SOLHOT is about the girls and how they can learn from the space by just being there. As adults, we cannot justly inflict our own expectations and try and make them work out our way. SOLHOT expects us to be ourselves-period. Without self-reflection I would have continued to run the space how I saw fit and not how it needed to be run. As a result, I took a step back, re-grouped, and improved the space based on the girls’ needs not my own.

Reflection is difficult, but so very necessary, especially when working in spaces like SOLHOT. It is through reflection that our work is able to grow and improve. It is through self-reflection and “saving oneself first” that SOLHOT will be relevant and exist for years to come.

Posted in African Americans, Voices of Color | Leave a comment

Technology and African-American History

Posted on 02/23/2011 by Noah Lenstra

As the Urbana-Champaign Big Broadband (UC2B) $30 million high-speed Internet infrastructure is constructed throughout Champaign-Urbana, we must come together as a community to find ways to use this technology to support all sectors of our local population. eBlackChampaign-Urbana is a project that investigates how the stories and struggles of the local African-American community can be aggregated online from multiple archives, libraries, museums and personal collections and whether this aggregation could inspire local individuals in the present and future to see technology in a new way. We are interested in helping individuals not only download content, but upload content as well, about themselves, their families, churches and community histories so that when the community goes online it will find itself.

Our latest project is to find ways to utilize the most common data-set that every community has: Yearbooks! We already have digitized the Cotillion Yearbooks, a program of Gamma Upsilon Psi that since 1972 has organized college scholarships for young African-American women in our community.

The Cotillions were started by Phi Beta Sigma and Zeta Phi Beta in 1972, under the leadership of Alvin Griggs, Willie Summerville and others. In 1974, Kathryn Humphrey and Margaret Smith founded Gamma Upsilon Psi Society to assist the fraternities with the Cotillion. In 1977 Gamma Upsilon Psi became the sole sponsor of the program, and has continued it to the present day. Visit the Society’s website for more information on their
upcoming Ball, to be held April 23, 2011. The Yearbooks of these events are an amazing resource, as every year they feature not only biographies of the Debutantes and their escorts, but also brief notices from area churches, businesses and individuals who sponsor the young women’s education. We are currently seeking the Cotillion Yearbooks from 2004-2008. If anyone has a copy they could lend to us to digitize we would be grateful. These digitized files will be backed up at local archives and libraries for long-term preservation.

We are currently looking at ways to make this very large collection of digital information more accessible. The digital yearbooks contain nearly 10,000 pages on local African-American history and we are experimenting with various ways to index the collection, which is already full-text searchable, transparent so that individuals can access them by name, church, school, or business. In addition to making what we have already digitized more accessible, we are also looking to extend our work by beginning a project to digitize an even larger source of information, the high school yearbooks of Champaign and Urbana public schools. This project is just getting started and we welcome all to join us. We would be happy to lead digitization workshops for groups to continue this process.

COMMUNITY TECHNOLOGY
In addition to digital history, the eBlackCU project has also lead a series of events on community technology in Champaign-Urbana. Over 250 people have attended these events, held November 5 and 6, 2010, and January 8, 2011, and the full record of them is available online at eBlackCU.net. We need to continue this momentum and involve more people in the process of embedding digital technology into our local community. The next event in this series will be held at the Champaign Public Library, Robeson Room A & B, from 9 a.m. to 1 p.m. on Saturday, March 18. This event will feature: Informational panels/discussions on: UC2B; the eBlackCU
digital library; Jobs and technology; Youth and technology; and Churches and technology. Light refreshments will be served.

We will have computer stations with volunteer instructors set up for you to:

  1. Get an e-mail account/Facebook account if you don’t have one and want one
  2. Learn how to digitize information and take home a free CD of your digitized material. Bring in your own material (scrapbooks, flyers, photographs, books) or digitize texts we will have on site.
Posted in Technology | Leave a comment

UC2B and the Digital Divide in Champaign-Urbana

Posted on 02/23/2011 by Laura Allured

In recent years, there has been a lot of talk about universal access to and affordability of high-speed internet services. In the 2009 stimulus package, $7.2 billion was allocated for broadband development and employment in underserved (rural) and underserved (generally low-income) areas. Last year, the Federal Communications Commission created the National Broadband Plan. Already this year high-speed internet was again discussed in the State of the Union address, which put an emphasis on wireless internet access.

Why all the fuss? Because high-speed internet access creates economic, educational and political opportunities. Communities that are trying to get by without a reliable broadband connection are at an enormous disadvantage nationally and even globally. There are also many barriers that technological illiteracy could pose to an individual’s life. For example, it is nearly impossible to find employment without using several types of technology to create a resume, fill out a job application, and send them to an employer.

Champaign-Urbana is not unserved by any stretch of the imagination, but there are underserved areas. A survey done in the summer of 2009 found that, in about 10% of the two cities, less than 40% of homes have an internet connection. It is a travesty that the town hosting PC Magazine’s Most Wired Campus in 2008 has so many people on the disconnected side of the digital divide.

In an attempt to help solve this problem here in Champaign-Urbana, the two cities and the University applied for and won a $27 million federal grant to build a network, known as UC2B, that will connect homes in the underserved areas of town, and community anchor institutions such as schools, libraries, churches, and city buildings citywide. The grant is targeted at underserved areas (so the network will only immediately serve a small portion of Champaign-Urbana), but we all expect the project to continue further build-out following the completion of the first phase. Another goal the cities had for UC2B was to create construction jobs during its creation, and other economic opportunities later, with an emphasis on areas that are currently economically disadvantaged. In order for that goal to be realized, the community will have to fight for those jobs and make sure that opportunities are accessible to local companies.

Other organizations are also doing projects that will improve broadband access in Champaign-Urbana.

  • The Graduate School of Library and Information Science’s Community Informatics students provide technical expertise to nontechnical innovators, through a variety of programs.
  • The Independent Media Center has a selection of programs like the Chambana.net datacenter, the CU Community Helpdesk, and Makerspace Urbana.
  • Comcast is expected to develop a low-cost tier of service as part of the agreement it made when it acquired NBC, and it will use its recently rolled out DOCSIS-3 to offer faster internet access than is widely available today.
  • Volo Broadband, a local Internet Service Provider, is rolling out enhanced wireless infrastructure in some areas and providing fiber-based access in others.
  • On the jobs side, Metanoia Centers is promoting a “community benefit” approach to building UC2B.
  • Backbone Builders is working to ensure that the people that work on UC2B and similar projects come from the local population, and that the jobs create long-lasting benefit for the local economy.
    These initiatives will improve the quality of internet access, how many people that access reaches, and the practical benefit that technology provides to our community. These intertwined issues of access to technology and economic power can’t be solved without the community’s involvement and direction. Luckily, there are many ways to get involved. Of course, you can contact your city council member to let them know your position on these issues. But more interactively:
  • Since UC2B is funded with tax dollars under supervision of public entities, all of the UC2B Policy Committee meetings, and many other meetings, are open to the public. You can make your voice heard in person here for a full list of UC2B meetings and events.
  • UC2B’s website has background information about the project. • The Chambana Broadband Connection (connection. volo.net) is a blog about UC2B, national broadband news, and technology tips and tricks run by Volo Broadband.
  • Finally, eBlackCU, a project aiming to create a strong African American community in Champaign-Urbana, has been very active in the discussion of UC2B. They will be holding a meeting on March 19th at the Champaign Public Library on technology, UC2B, and the future of Champaign-Urbana. Attend a meeting, comment on a blog, or show up at an event, but make your voice heard to ensure broadband develops in a way that solves real problems.
Posted in Technology | Leave a comment

Home Street Home

Posted on 02/23/2011 by Alex Roth

Listen to Alex and Sammy talk about homelessness here

CONSIDER THIS:
As I write this article, I can look out my balcony and see a number of homeless people asking for food and money on Green Street in Champaign. People pretend to send text messages or cross the street just to avoid confronting dingy-looking adults. We all have problems, so why not ask someone, “Will you allow me to help you?” It took a first-hand perspective and some guidance from a man named David Pirtle for me to understand the gravity behind this concept. Pirtle started his journey here in Champaign, where he once attended Parkland College. While battling with schizophrenia he wandered the country for several years and found himself homeless in Washington DC. Someone finally reached out to him, helped him get cleaned up, and he now works with the National Coalition for the Homeless advocating for the rights of individuals within the homeless community of the District of Columbia.

I met Pirtle in January, during which a sponsored group of University of Illinois students pretended to be homeless for 48 hours in the nation’s capital. He asked the thirteen students in my group for a ballpark estimate of the number of homeless people in Champaign County. Over 550 people are homeless, one-third of those are children, and the number is increasing. I was stunned. How could I be so unaware of such enormous misfortune in my own backyard?

I got to know many incredible people associated with the National Coalition because of the opportunity presented by The University of Illinois’ Alternative Spring Break. The program provides students with seasonal opportunities to travel somewhere in the US to volunteer for a social cause. I chose the DC trip because it uniquely offered the opportunity to directly confront both a local and universal issue: homelessness. I’d traveled before and accustomed myself to foreign cultures. Never, though, had I sat down and considered the devastating nature of the oft overlooked homeless community.

NCH volunteers

I prepared for my Alternative Spring Break by eating less and reading statistics about poverty. My bags were packed, but I was far from ready for the next seven days. Our trip began when our group arrived in downtown DC and made our way to hear stories from a Faceless Panel at the National Coalition for the Homeless (NCH). On the way, I experienced a moment of tremendous impact. Outside DuPont Circle Station, a homeless man sold Street Sense newspapers for a suggested $1.00. On the pages, I noted a verse from Walt Whitman’s ‘The Wound Dresser’, “…I sit by the restless all the dark night. Some are so young, some suffer so much. I recall the experience sweet and sad.” I felt remorse for all the longing people suffered I’d never even acknowledged. Anthony, homeless and now a friend, made his money selling issues of Street Sense. I share Whitman’s bittersweet sentiment when I heard from the vendor that even though few city residents buy the paper, homeless people feel empowered by the voice it provides. Street Sense is an NCH-founded publication, written and distributed by the homeless people of the city in an attempt to spread awareness of the homeless community and raise money for its cause.

Later that day, my group heard ‘How I became homeless’ stories at the NCH from Dave Pirtle and ‘Little’ Steve Thomas. The two mentors moved us with their narratives, hailing the importance of keeping an open mind with strangers. With pride they told us how happy they were for Ted Williams, the homeless Clevelander who found a new life thanks to a passerby’s consideration.
“Stories like this are great,” they said, “but many [homeless people] are out there with serious mental and physical problems. The key here is that one homeless man found his way, but the spotlight is quickly lost for the homeless community.” Not all homeless people have marketable skills, so walking by a ‘normal’ homeless person and thinking, “Isn’t it a shame,” won’t cut it. The way Steve told his story, I could see into his past; I could see his memories in his thousand-yard stare. He told us about his missed opportunities and how he didn’t appreciate them.

”Richie” by Tammy Grubs

“You’re one bad decision away from homelessness,” he told us. “I probably started over more times than any three of you will.” It was on Pennsylvania Avenue in Washington, the most powerful place in the world, that Steve first understood the reality of homelessness. His voice was so traveled, it was hard to imagine what he looked like thirty years ago. “Has he ever been on a vacation?” I wondered. Hard times stole a piece of his personality for a time, but Steve eventually found his way back to a healthy mind with the help of a caring stranger. Forever indebted to the man, Steve now helps others. For the next two days, my group embarked upon our ‘vacation’; we begged during the day and slept on cardboard at night. There were mixed feelings about our motives, to be certain. We were on our own, with no way to contact anyone, buy food, or even sit comfortably for a prolonged period of time. Nobody wanted us anywhere. Some of our group members even got yelled at when they were trying to rest at a church. Library cards, job interviews, and Neosporin for a hurt friend were all out of the question. I felt humiliated asking for food and money, but I didn’t know what else to do. The spark in our eyes faded quickly.

With little to do, no sense of location, and people refusing to acknowledge our existence as panhandlers, we began to live moment by moment. Our hunger, lack of sleep, and low body temperature kept us from doing anything really productive. There wasn’t a single point where we were able to do what we really wanted to do. There was no privacy and we felt terrible about begging all the time. We certainly weren’t living the lives of homeless people, but we got a brief glimpse into their reality.

One of the happiest moments in recent memory was when an employee named Marquat disregarded a long customer line to sneak me and my friend some warm food. After a long, cold, hungry day walking around the city, this was a godsend. Though few and far between, these Samaritan acts gave us hope. Imagine going years without anyone knowing your name, though.

I am by no means Mr. Perfect when it comes to lending a hand to the homeless. But after experiencing homelessness on a first-hand basis in DC, I’ve realized it’s possible to be a perfect friend to those in the most trouble, even if just for a moment. Of course, it will take institutional reform to reduce the effects of homelessness on a larger scale. However, you –and I mean YOU – can take Steve’s advice and acknowledge that “inside every homeless person, there’s a superstar waiting to get out.” Help them rediscover their identity.

Some Suggested Resources
Find out more about advocacy, projects, facts, and news from the National Coalition for the Homeless at www.nationalhomeless.org. On the site, you can find a link to an NPR interview featuring David Pirtle. To find out about Homeless shelters in your area, check www.homelessshelterdirectory.org. Street Sense, the magazine by homeless people in DC, can be found at www.streetsense.org/ Check out www.hud.org for national, state, and local government-sponsored projects and news Roth with a NCH guest regarding homeless people.

Posted in Homelessness, Human Rights | Leave a comment

Racial Microaggressions and its Impact on Campus Climate at the University of Illinois

Posted on 02/23/2011 by UIUC Center on Democracy in a Multiracial Society Racial Microaggression Research Group

On November 4, 2008, the first person of color was elected President of the United States of America and Commander in Chief of the Armed Forces. It is true that President Obama did break down some racial barriers, However, many Americans have the inaccurate notion that racism no longer exists in post-civil rights America. Although civil rights legislation ended the legal exclusion of African Americans, Latinos, Asian Americans, and Native Americans from various social and political spaces, barriers still exist that perpetuate racial inequalities. Contemporary racism includes more subtle and indirect forms, found embedded in day-to-day actions, social relations and institutional rules and regulations.

UIUC’s Center on Democracy in a Multiracial Society’s Racial Microaggression Research Group: From left to Right: J. Michael Wallace, Jioni Lewis, Ashlee D. McLaughlin, Ruby Mendenhall, Sang Lee, Stacy Harwood, and Margaret Browne Huntt


These more invisible forms of racism are called racial microaggressions. Racial microaggressions are derogatory indignities that demean, exclude, and invalidate people of color and their experiences. Individuals often perpetuate racial microaggressions without consciously knowing they communicate or behave in this way when interacting with racial and ethnic minorities. Our research focuses on how racial microaggressions occur on predominantly white campuses. We conducted focus groups with students of color attending the University of Illinois to gather a more detailed understanding of the subtle and complex phenomena of racism on campus. Three types of microaggressions provided a window into what students of color experience as they walk from the dorm to the classroom. We learned how the individual interactions between two people become part of a large landscape on campus, where some spaces become known as white spaces and other as safe spaces for students of color.

Derald Wing Sue and his colleagues break down racial microaggressions in to three types of microaggressions: microassults, microinsults and microinvalidations. Microassults are “explicit racial derogation characterized primarily by a verbal or nonverbal attack meant to hurt the intended victim through name-calling, avoidant behavior, or purposeful discriminatory actions.” What makes these different than old-fashioned racism is that microassults often occur in more private settings, away from public scrutiny. The most controversial racial microassult on campus is the continued presence of the Chief Illiniwek mascot.

While no longer an official mascot, students, university staff and community members still wear t-shirts and sweaters with the mascot, additionally; the local establishments have posters and stickers of the mascot on their windows, walls and doors. Other examples of microassults include the theme parties, such as “Tacos and Tequila,” where students dressed as Mexican gardeners and nannies. Despite efforts to curb these parties, racially motivated events continue on the university campus, and many go unpunished. Students of color also report white students making blatant racist comments, for example, an undergraduate in our focus group told us “…a block away, he turns around and gives us the finger and tells us, “Asian motherfuckers to go back into your Asian fucking house!”

Microinsults are behaviors and “communications that convey rudeness and insensitivity and demean a person’s racial heritage or identity.” Many times the perpetrator is unaware of the insult. Taken alone these statements might not appear to be insults, but when a person of color hears them repeatedly, they become insults. For example, when a professor comments to a black student, “you are so articulate,” this seems to be a compliment, but when the student hears this repeatedly it suggest that perhaps that people are surprised that a black person can speak with intelligence. Students in the focus groups shared many examples where instructors, staff and peers made assumption about their intelligence based on their race or ethnicity. Student spoke extensively about having to deal with double standards. They have to work harder in class to prove themselves to the instructors and peer, they have to dress nice to avoid be treated like a criminal or harassed by the police both on and off-campus.

Microinvalidations are “communications that exclude, negate, or nullify the psychological thoughts, feelings, or experienced reality of a person of color.” One student told us “On most occasions with people I will say what I have to say but in my classes I would be quiet, I didn’t want to say anything, I was afraid to mess up because every time I would go into class, I would have to prepare for battle. I had to prepare to go in and defend myself. They would ask me, why and where did you get that? I was like, I don’t have to tell you where I get it from. It’s my life. I was like “do you need me to write a book so I can cite myself? If you want me to, I’ll do it. I’ll cite myself.”

Similar to microinsults, the perpetrator is often unaware of the racial microinvalidations. Examples of racial microinvalidations include when a white person says they don’t see race or denial of racism. Asian and Latino/a students in our focus group told of having to respond to questions about their birthplace and citizenship status despite being born in the United States, the student feels as though they’ve become a foreigner in their own home.

Students in the focus groups also talked about the police closing down a popular campus event attended by students of color, particularly African Americans. Some students felt race had a lot to do with the police response to a fight outside of the party. Those inside the party expressed concerns about excessive use of force, the police yelling at students and being treated like criminals even though they were not involved in the altercation.

As racial microaggressions become “normalized” they embed themselves into policy making and organizational culture. These macro-level microaggressions occur systematically and create environmental racial microaggressions, such as when students of color feel unwelcome and invisible in specific classrooms, dorms, offices, events, fields of study, and other spaces on campus. Racial microaggressions provides us a way to talk about what students of color experience daily at the University of Illinois campus. While some brush these things off as “kid being kids” or claim it was just a joke, the impacts are cumulative. Our study helps to unpack these often hidden racial processes and expose the fact that students of color often deal with the negative effect that racism can have on their academics, which is a burden that their white peers do not have to experience.

While we have focused on racial microaggressions occurring on the university campus, we can easily extend this work into the Champaign-Urbana community. Racial tension in schools, racial profiling by the police, and residential segregation can be explained in part by the existence of environmental racial microaggressions. While much has been gained concerningequality since the Civil Rights Movement, socially and institutionally there is still much work to be done.

If you are interested in reading more about racial microaggression, please contact the Center for Democracy in a Multiracial Society at the University of Illinois.
Web: http://cdms.illinois.edu
Telephone: 217.244.0188
Email: cdms@illinois.edu.

Posted in African Americans, Human Rights, Indigenous, Latino/a, Voices of Color, Women | Leave a comment

Timothy Kendrick’s Legal Nightmare Finally Ends

Posted on 02/23/2011 by Mark Enslin

A Texas man’s two-and-a-half-year-old drug case in Champaign County finally came to an end on February 9, 2011 in Judge Tom Difanis’ courtroom after State’s Attorney Dan Clifton suddenly dropped the case. The alternative was for Judge Difanis to rule on an 8-page Motion to Dismiss for lack of a speedy trial. Had the State not dropped the case and the judge not granted the Motion to Dismiss, then the trial would have commenced. Timothy Kendrick was arrested on Sept. 4, 2008 when coming from Houston, Texas to pick up his brother in Champaign to go see their mother in a Chicago hospital.

The apartment where Kendrick went to pick up his brother was raided within that half hour by the Drug Enforcement unit of the Champaign police with a search warrant. Kendrick claims that of the five adults who were either present on the scene or brought in from the parking lot, one of them was let go and Kendrick’s fingerprints were the only ones taken. He says his photo id was taken from his pocket while he was handcuffed and a crime scene photo was taken with his ID propped up in a kitchen cabinet, above a drawer where drugs were found. According to Kendrick, police made deals with others at the apartment, including the leaseholders, as well as someone arrested on a different warrant, the following day. Kendrick had no knowledge of the drugs found in the apartment and was not open to “working for the State.” Kendrick spent a lengthy 21 and one half months in the Champaign County jail on a $100,000 bond. He was originally charged with one count of Manufacturing and Delivery of 100<400 grams of cocaine. During the first nine months of his incarceration, he was not allowed to come to court, although the docket erroneously reported him as appearing with his lawyer three times. “This was a violation of my due process rights,” said Kendrick. The Speedy Trial Act requires an automatic 120 (court) days or 24 weeks from arrest to trial, excluding continuances for the defense. On June 22, 2010, Judge Clem remanded his case to the court of Judge Blockman who dismissed it for lack of a speedy trial. The State’s Attorney asked for the case to be dismissed “without prejudice,” which allowed them to bring new charges. Kendrick remained in jail and the following day (June 23) was arraigned on a new indictment of 3 counts: controlled substance trafficking, unlawful criminal drug conspiracy and unlawful possession with intent to deliver a controlled substance, but the dates were extended backwards for a year from Sept. 4, 2008 to September 4, 2007. The following day, June 24, 2010, Timothy Kendrick was still in jail when deputies came to him with orders for him to be released on his own recognizance. He was to return to Houston, Texas to report to his parole board. Kendrick was given a court-appointed attorney, Michael Zopf, in July of 2010. Kendrick had to travel to Champaign County from Houston seven times for court appearances. His lawyer filed a motion demanding a “Bill of Particulars” from the State to explain what he supposedly did in the year before he was arrested, i.e. the new charges. Judge Difanis gave the State a time limit of 40 court days to answer the demand and still they twice asked for a continuance. The second time, December 22, 2010, Judge Difanis sanctioned the State by barring all the informants’ testimony from appearing for the State. Thereupon, Zopf prepared a motion demanding dismissal on the grounds of lack of a speedy trial, linking the two cases, which both center on the day of arrest on September 4, 2008. That motion would have been heard on February 9, 2011, but the State dropped the charges before the decision could be ruled upon. Today, Kendrick is free, but it has been a difficult path. “It has been a long hard fight,” Kendrick said, “but I knew I was innocent and never gave up.”

Posted in Uncategorized | Leave a comment

A Response From Civil Society

Posted on 02/23/2011 by Rev. Dr. Eugene Barnes

Our vision at Illinois People’s Action (IPA) is to live in a state where our shared core values of justice, empowerment and family become the norm. To bring this vision into reality, we engage in faith-based community organizing and leadership training with congregations, labor, ethnic and grassroots groups across the state of Illinois.

Is there a shared language that business and community leaders need agree upon in order to serve the interests of both groups in ways that ensure growth; provide a well-trained workforce; build good reputations; and that will provide an inclusive, webbed-infrastructure that develops leadership capacity among historically marginalized groups? Will this language require more than good intentions, demanding a high level of skill, a frank acknowledgment of power disparities, and a major investment of time and effort? And, if there be such a language, how receptive will it be to the huddled masses?

George Hegel proposed that the truth is found neither in the thesis nor antithesis but in an emergent synthesis that reconciles the two. My friend and colleague, Vince Martin (author of Blessed are the Peacemakers), penned; “Synthesis was Dr. King’s great strength in philosophy, theology and civil rights issues. He had the ability to pick out valid elements of seemingly mutually exclusive points of view to reach a higher degree of truth.” Richard Niebuhr framed King’s dialogue, responsible action in society, as the response to the other person within a community context; and, theologian Dietrich Bonheoffer called it, “living for the sake of others,” that spoke to the humanity within each of us.

Unlike the synthesizing approach of King and others, the contemporary political philosophies known as liberalism and conservatism-born of socialism and capitalism respectively-appear more interested in “beating” the other side than in coming to a higher, more complete truth. This higher truth reconciles the dichotomy of man being both steel and velvet; who at times can be quite stern, but as resiliently needed, also be sensitive to the needs of others. I can embrace my enemy in love and I can still abhor his aberrant societal behavior that seeks to tear asunder the bonds of the human pact.

Becoming that man or woman of steel and velvet prepares one to face today’s headlines replete with a buffet of issues ranging from the subprime debacle that has resulted in mass foreclosures to record unemployment exacerbated by the foregoing. Through it all we have come face to face with the demon in the abyss that lets us know that no one is coming to save us but we, us! What is the character of civic engagement in a democratic society and what is the common currency that compels us to buy into this debate? Robert Putnam highlights the reliance of representative government on a healthy civil society, yet the inability of government to address fundamental social problems continues to gnaw at the heels of our consciences. There has to be a response from civil society and that response must address the inadequacies of the present pattern of unmet responsibilities.

Community organizing, that “living for the sake of others,” solicits a membership base from a broad spectrum of the community that is concerned with the well-being of the community rather than a specific issue. Community organizing believes in building its leadership from the bottom up and through a prescribed methodology, transforms its citizenry into an urban taskforce for change. New skills are learned, abilities are honed and couch-potatoes become advocates. Cardinal to organizing is the belief,
“Never do for others what they can do for themselves.” Rev. Eugene Williams, former union organizer and founding editor of Organizing Magazine believes that all Americans have the right and responsibility to participate in the public policy and program decisions that affect their daily lives. He envisions a time when congregations/community organizations commit themselves to building broad-based, multi-issue organizations to revitalize, protect and service the communities where they live, work and worship. Enter National People’s Action (NPA) and its branches all across the country.

Over the last year, NPA called for actions in Chicago, New York City and Washington D.C. that turned out 30,000 people and led to negotiations with Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke, FDIC Chair Sheila Bair, HUD Secretary Shaun Donovan, and U.S. Department of Labor Secretary Hilda Solis. Issues ranged from financial reform, worker rights, immigrants’ rights, to affordable housing. Together with allied community organizing networks, unions and local organizations we held more than 100 actions in 2010, including an action that led to the 60th vote in the Senate for financial reform, and helped pass the biggest overhaul of the financial system in 75 years.

We need a growing and united movement that is about fighting FOR a new economy that works for everyone, a democracy of the people, and racial justice. The NPA is one example of the ways we can come together. In the battle of big ideas we believe in community over individualism, a fair market over free market, equality and equity over the belief that equality already exists, and a government of the people instead of limited government. Those that have been left out in the past must be lifted up in the future. Governance is not just for the government; there has to be a response from civil society and civic engagement means more effective governance from we the people. Examples like the NPA demonstrate that the average citizen can challenge entrenched power brokers and claim a victory.

For information and questions, please visit us at Illinoispeoplesaction.org or info@npa-us.org. Join us as we hold our national conference March 5-7 in Washington, D.C. This year’s theme is Taking Back Our Democracy.

Posted in African Americans, Human Rights | Leave a comment

2011 Martin Luther King, Jr. Essays

Posted on 02/22/2011 by Public i

What is your dream for a Beloved Community? Since 2003, over 2200 local students have been challenged to examine the legacy of Dr. King in their lives, and their role in social justice. This year, students between 4th and 12th grades presented their thoughts about their dream for the beloved community, and what they can do to bring it about. Students where asked to describe a problem in their community that needs to be fixed for their dream to become a reality. Here is what they had to say:

Harald Adams, Grade 7, Urbana M.S., Searing
There are many other reasons that someone might bully someone. But most of the time, the bully has insecurities themselves and most likely they just need a friend or someone to talk to. ..Most of the time the bully needs just as much help as the victim if not more.

Sami Al-chaar, Grade 8, Jefferson MS, Ms. Baird
It is easy to think of bullies as bad people, but usually they are often deeply insecure.

Emmy Alameda, Grade 8, Campus Middle School, Mrs. Nolen
Is there a rule out there saying that these minorities can’t have well paying jobs? That the majority of nice new houses go to the whites? I never understood why the laborer who spends hours vacuuming and cleaning or waiting at a cashier station gets paid less than someone who sits on a chair all day at an office and barks orders at people.

Henry Ando, Grade 7, Urbana Middle School, Mr. Rummenie
My dream for the beloved community is that nobody, young, old, or somewhere in-between, ever has any reason to commit crime.

Elizabeth Atkinson, Yankee Ridge Elementary, Grade 5, Mr. Smith
If I was asked, “What is a problem in our society?” perhaps, for an answer, you might expect homelessness, or the economy, or maybe even homework. But I would simply smile and nod for all your suggestions, and when you were done, I would voice my opinion. Apathy. Not trying. Doing the bare minimum. Sure, you could get through school that way. Not great grades, but yeah, you could. But you probably wouldn’t get that job you wanted. Or your second choice. Or third. Or seventeenth. You could survive. But think about the big picture. No great novels would be written. No diseases cured. No important pictures. See what I mean?
The cause of this problem is simple. Kids do not understand the importance of education. In some places, education is rare and a luxury. In others, even knowing how to read is rare.
(Note: As you read the following sentence, please imagine a drum roll. Thank you.)
And now—the moment you’ve all been waiting for—How to prevent it. (or at least make it a rarity.) One way is for the parents to be involved with the school. Also it would probably help if the parents helped the kids with homework. Another thing would be simply the student having responsibility for his or her own learning, as my teacher puts it.
My dream is a community where everyone tries hard and succeeds, and where education isn’t thrown away like an old sock. Apathy is a problem that must be approached if this dream is to become a reality.

Quillin Bakker, Grade 7, Urbana Middle School, Mr. Rummenie
One organization in my community takes place at my church, New Covenant Fellowship” in downtown Champaign, called the “Daily Bread Soup Kitchen.” This organization makes hot food for lunch and sends sack lunches home for dinner. Anyone who comes in during the week Monday through Friday from 11:00 to 12:30 is eligible.

Lauren Barnhart, Grade 8, Jefferson Middle School, Ms. Baird
. . . Middle school can be a scary place as it is; school bullying, teenagers dealing with hormones, and so on. Now imagine middle school as a kid who has problems socially. You are subject to bullying because you act different, nobody understands you, and on top of all that, you can’t help it. You are scared. For some kids, this is the horrific reality. The sad thing about it is, people don’t care. In my school, I have witnessed people finding amusement from these kids; being “nice” to them just to get a laugh. Kids who are socially challenged often can’t deal with these issues on their own. People just don’t know what to think or how to react to this unique group of people, and this in itself is a huge weakness in my middle school community.
I recently worked with kids who have a variety of social issues. I spent the afternoon playing games with these kids. Honestly, it touched my heart. I didn’t spend more than an hour and a half helping out, but even after the quick 90 minutes, I could see that if you just look beyond each social disorder, you can see that each individual has their own unique personality that shines through; just like everyone who doesn’t have a social issue. Underneath it all, we are all just human beings with our own separate personalities. In some people you just have to look a little deeper to find it. Working with the kids made me want to change something. It made me want to find a solution to the problem that hangs above my middle school, and also, my community.

Amira Barre, Grade 08, Jefferson MS, Baird
My mother always told me that my tongue is a sword, which means I could really hurt other people by what I say.

Uma Basole, Grade 4, Stratton, Ms. Newman
Books lead to wisdom, wisdom leads to knowledge, and knowledge is power. Smart children leads to smarter communities, smarter communities lead to smarter cities. Smarter cities lead to smarter states and smarter states lead to a smarter nation.

Paul Berlocher, Grade 7, Urbana Middle School, Mr. Rummenie
In a beloved community there would be peace. There would be helpfulness. And a sense of brotherhood. These things may only be achieved at a personal level. Each person must chose to do all this on their own.

Destiny Burden, Grade 5, BTW, Ms. Middleton
This is really important you talk to your children before they grow up about the responsibility there is about being a parent.

Jared Busby, Grade 7, Urbana Middle School, Mr. Rummenie
Bullying has changed everyone over the years and in some instances has caused people to kill themselves. My dream is a community where bullying has not been heard of or practiced and will stay that way for a long time to come.
Bullying has a history behind it. Most bullies actually feel insecure about themselves and their social status. This drives them to make others feel worse than the bullies themselves. In recent years bullying has spread just from face to face encounters to the Internet, where bullies can hackle and cause distress to their victim any given moment of the day. Cyber bullies have even caused people to kill themselves.
The way I think we can stop bullying is through team work. Instead of just helping the victims, we should be finding and shutting down the bullies themselves. We are a community and if we work as one we can stop bullying. Stop bullying in its tracks THEN ensure it will not come again. Some precautions to take would be to work on identifying the bullies before they start to move on to bigger things, as well as to look for people that are victims before they become the bullies themselves. You also need to be able to protect yourself and ignore bullies because if you can make it so they have no reason to mess with you. I have found out the hard way that you cannot try to confront a bully because they will actually come after you.

Sarah Cameron, Grade 5, Wiley, Ms. Richards
Remember that bullying hurts the victim, but it also hurts the bully.

Merced Celis, Grade 8, Jefferson, Ms. Baird
Here in America we never think about the war. Many kids don’t think about the war that is going on against Afghanistan. They don’t know that somewhere out there, kids our age are outside running away from bombs, not knowing what they did to deserve it.

Curtis Chung, Grade 5, Wiley Elementary School, Ms. Cortright
A problem of my community, perhaps even the world, is pollution. A few years back, my mother took me back to her hometown in Southern Vietnam. The neighborhood was severely polluted. The ground was covered in litter, people wore crude masks to cope with the smoke and sulfurous smell and the water in little streams smelled terrible and could easily be mistaken as black ink. (YEEUK) After that horrific experience, I studied pollution and ways to prevent it. Sometimes you may read or hear about pollution. But there’s a lot of pollution you don’t know about.
Toxic waste is a huge factor in land pollution. Back then, one way to dispose of toxic waste was to put it in a metal container and have it buried. But, after a while, the containers would leak. The toxic waste would get into the soil and ground water. People in the contaminated area became sick and had to move away.
Air pollution: Most living things on earth need air. You need oxygen contained in the air to survive. But some of the air you breathe can have harmful substances in it.
You could probably prevent air pollution by car-pooling, going on the bus or not using a vehicle at all.
Water pollution: You might think, “Oceans are huge! We have plenty of water, right?” Guess again. Only 3% is fresh water. The rest is contaminated with salt. Out of this 3%, less than 1% is available. That’s why we must keep water clean. Dumping waste into clean water is called water pollution. Water can be polluted by many things like run off from soil, industrial waste and sewage.
My dream is to have a clean community. So next time, bike to your next destination, have a carpool, don’t litter and don’t throw stuff in a nearby lake. We could make a huge difference.

Esther Chung, Grade 4, Barkstall, Ms. Palmer
My perfect community is when the planet is clean and the birds are singing and everybody is happy. But that won’t happen if people keep on littering.

Jny Cockrell, Grade 7, Urbana Middle School, Mr. Rummenie
My dream for my community and America is that all types of prejudice would end. I believe what causes this problem is the respect shown towards certain people that is not shown to every body.

Ayanna Cowart, Grade 5, Booker T. Washington Elementary School, Ms. Middleton
I think a solution for preventing hate crimes and racism we should create a youth and leadership program for all ages.

Brianna Coulter, Grade 8, Campus MS, Ms. Nolen
Discrimination is keeping us from becoming a beloved community. Because discrimination makes us look at anyone who isn’t us and cringe away. Discrimination also makes us look in the mirror and hate ourselves.

Prithvi Dharmaraj, Grade 4, Booker T. Washington, Mrs. Mayer
You want to stop pollution? Well you can help stop pollution NOW! How? We can protest. Another thing is that littering is a problem of pollution. We can get more litter patrol in the park to get rid of littering. Also we could get more trashcans so litterbugs can throw away trash not litter.

Blakd Donaldson, Grade 11, UHS, Mrs. Hogan-Chan
No student should have a learning disadvantage because of minimal access to technology.

Aly Dorner, Barkstall, Grade 4, Ms. Palmer
You are outside on the community basket ball court when some one comes up behind you and starts yelling at you and calling you names. A crowd is starting to form, and then he starts punching you and kicking you. Everyone is cheering, “Loser, fight back, Blackie!” You are crying and whimpering with pain. That is racism and it needs to stop.
Racism is terrible. Sometimes people aren’t treated fairly because of their skin color and they get beat up and get called names. And some people don’t even get jobs because their skin type. A long time ago racism was worse, African Americans weren’t allowed in restaurants and they had to use a different drinking fountain. They had to sit on the back of the bus, and sometimes they couldn’t go to school all because of their skin color. But nowadays things are better, but sometimes African Americans are still treated unfairly. Treat everyone the way you want to be treated.
If people aren’t safe, that ruins a perfect community. A perfect community is where people are safe and happy. They are treated fairly and no one gets hurt. But racism keeps my dreams from happening. The way we can help stop it is to treat everyone fairly and keep everyone safe.

Ellesse Dorsey, Grade 5, BTW, Ms. Middleton
A lot of parents should also be more involved in their children’s life.

Daniel Driscoll, Grade 7. Urbana Middle School, Mr. Rummenie
Another thing we should have is a bullet train. Almost every other major country has one like Japan, England, Belgium, and Germany.

Mikhayla Eveland, Grade 11, UHS, Mrs. Hogan-Chan
Many families suffer due to the recession. When the economy began to go downhill, many companies were forced to lay off a certain number of workers which meant no incomes for some people.

Hunter Fitzwater, Grade 4, Barkstall, Palmer
My dream of a perfect community is kids playing safely on the sidewalk, animals freely roaming the forest, flowers blooming in the parks, fresh air, and clean water to drink. Pollution stops my dream from happening because it hurts animals and destroys their habitats. It also poisons the water and intoxicates the air.

Vanessa Frazier, Grade 5, Booker T. Washington, Ms. Middleton
My beloved community of Champaign Urbana has a problem. Many kids, teenagers even grown ups are fighting. Violence is really messing up our community, because shooting can go through people windows and hurt them and kill them. It can hurt children more than anything that’s not fair. Many people I know have been out there fighting in my local community; it is really messing up and tearing apart black on black crimes. Hate we shouldn’t fight we should leave it alone it’s not worth losing your life over a fight. Adults and teenagers are influencing kids to fight telling kids it’s okay to fight.
We should have more people to persuade them not to fight teenagers and adults not to fight. We should do more community service about fighting is not right. Stop all that that hate we should just get together and tell teenagers, adults fighting isn’t right you are setting a bad example for us kids. Having more community service would really help people stop fighting. It would really hurt relatives to hear or see that one of their family members got shot or hurt. Bad things really happen to people always fight it would really help mothers and relatives not to cry and be hurt if their kids don’t fight. We should have a new law that says if you fight you have to do 40 hours of community service.

Zelda Galewsky, Grade 11, UHS, Mrs. Hogan-Chan
If a plan of action is not taken soon, the country will continue to head down the slippery slope of obesity and vulnerability towards diet-related diseases.

Immanuel Han, Grade 8, University High School
. . . If I were to state such a problem, I would tell the reader that it is people out on the streets with no homes, no family, and no love. Everywhere I go, there are so many people out there that wander the streets of our community. They have no destination; no purpose. I believe that the saddest thing to witness is people who have no purpose in a place except for to worry about the next day.
My solution that I present to you is change. We, ourselves, must change our views of those who need help. We need to break our prejudices of these people who need our help. No one else is going to build homeless shelters for us. No one else is going to feed our own community’s people for us. No one else is going to want to solve our problems for us. I know that it is only then when we can even begin to consider giving spare change or offering people an extra sandwich. Change is the first step we, as a community, must take to try to tackle this problem.
To do this, I believe that the first thing that needs to be done is altering our views of the people in streets. We first need to break the prejudices we have of these people. These people may have all kinds of reasons of becoming that way. But I believe in a second chance.

Mariah Gonzalez, Circle Academy, 12th grade, Ms. Miller
Many people in my life have said: “It takes an entire village to raise a child.” Love and acceptance should be all around to everyone in a community from children to the elderly. If everyone loved one another, everyone would feel the social need of belonging and would work alongside his or her fellow citizens to achieve victory. If one individual felt like he or she was understood and accepted, imagine what that person would achieve to help their community.
Accomplishing love and acceptance in a community may take time though. Throughout human history war and bloodshed have been prevalent around the world due to hatred and discrimination. It is hard to change the habits that we have known for several centuries.
Many things can occur to help achieve love and acceptance in a community. For real change to happen though, people must come to the realization that change must happen within them. Every human must discover that despite their differences with others, that every person has potential. Current programs that are going on now, such as gay-straight alliances in high schools and colleges, disability awareness groups, and anti-bullying movements in schools across America, will hopefully cause people to come to a realization of others’ worth and to love and accept.

Sophie Hannauer, Grade 08, Jefferson MS, Baird
Even if you don’t do the actual bullying yourself, you may not be helping the situation. Every time you see someone being bullied, think about this phrase: “he who allows evil commits evil.” Always stand up for a person being bullied, even if you don’t know them. You will feel better if you do.

Damion Harderson, Grade 12, UHS
Books have an amazing way of transforming us from individual thinkers to worldly humanitarians, eager to erase evil for the greater good.

Karen Hernandez, Grade 7, UMS, Mr. Searing
This problem can be solved by starting to accept each other, and thinking we are all equal to each other, no matter what’s your language, race or from where in the world you are from.

Rylee Hinton, Grade 4, Barkstall, Ms. Palmer
Animal cruelty is not only bad for the animals but it’s bad for you. Because you can go to jail for multiple years for abusing animals. When you start out just by hitting animals it can lead to more serious cruelty such as dog fighting.

Jake Hogan, Grade 7, Urbana Middle School, Mr. Rummenie
STOP THE WARS! MAKE WORLD PEACE!!!!!!!! That is my ultimate dream.

Alice Hu, Grade 8, Uni High, Rayburn
Our teachers are not getting paid enough. They do much more beyond the call of duty, something the community should be thankful for.

Rachel Hurt, Grade 4, Barkstall, Mrs. Palmer
Gun violence is a choice between life and death, and guess, what, guns do not have a choice because they are just DEATH. And who would want that. Gun violence is my worst nightmare and can be your worst dream. We should all use our voices not bad actions to stop gun violence.

Briesha Jackson, Grade 12, Centennial, Mr. Maroon
Another reason why I think students are racist is because the teachers and adults with authority do not do anything about it. When some people hear racists remarks, they don’t do anything to stop the issue.

Ryan Johnson, Grade 04, Barkstall, Ms. Cecava
In my beloved community there are no guns or fights

Jacob Jones, Grade 8, Jefferson MS, Ms. Baird
Instead of trying to stop it immediately with harsh punishment we need to find out what the bullies are bulling people and see if we can help.

Binh Le, Grade 4, Barkstall, Mrs. Palmer
Don’t you want to have a clean place to live? If you do, then help to stop pollution. There are many things you can do to stop pollution. You can walk instead of driving.

Cherrin Lee, Grade 4, Barkstall, Mrs. Palmer
You have always though war was a game, but now you see it’s a bloody event, a battle for survival. You scream for help as people around you slowly thin out as they beg for mercy but their pleas fall on deaf ears. War is merciless.

David Lee, Grade 7, Urbana M.S., Mr. Rummenie
My dream is that no one will feel left out, threatened or discriminated because of their race.

Dominique Lewis, Grade 8, Jefferson M.S., Ms. Parmer
A positive example in my life is a lady who offers cooking classes for kids; while she helps us cook she talks to us about college, and how to succeed in our lives. She also shares with us obstacles we must overcome-like peer pressure.

Laura Litchfield, Central High School, 10th grade
Dear Unit 7 School District,
I am writing on behalf of my experiences in your schools. I would like to talk of some racial issues that I endured during my seven years of attending your schools. I am writing this letter because previous attempts to explain and express myself seemed to go unnoticed.
Elementary school was a definite struggle for me. I was insecure and not sure of my identity. I had some learning challenges and since I am half black that was double trouble for me. Also, my classes and the staff were all white, with the exception of my 5th grade class. Even before I knew it, I was breaking barriers. My way of overpowering not so obvious racial issues was to act out in class. When I felt embarrassed, angry, or just confused, I hid under my desk or did some random actions that would send teachers up the wall. One time I was sent to the office and I wouldn’t talk. I was also sent to the conference room and went under the table. My Mom was often called in to deal with me.
Instead of asking why, I’m going to tell you how I felt from the bottom of my heart. Now that I look back I can say that I was hurt. Hurt by the hidden racism that’d been unnoticed for so long. Hurt that my racial identity wasn’t recognized and affirmed. Hurt that learning about black history or why it’s so important to learn about cultures other than white wasn’t emphasized. Hurt that I had to constantly wonder about racial issues. Hurt that you worked into my head that race doesn’t need to matter. But, I can’t go back in time. That’s why I have a dream.
I have a dream that ALL schools can be racially accepting and understanding. I have a dream that schools are fun and safe learning environments for all students no matter what age, color, or how fast they can solve math problems.
I can’t make you change. I can only tell you how I felt and what can be done to help. Here are some ideas:
1. Hire people of color.
2. Bring guest speakers in to classes who can teach about different cultures and backgrounds.
3. Be sure to have more than white people put up on the walls.
4. Do more with Black History Month and more throughout all of American history. There is no law saying that black history month actually expires after a month. Feel free to catch up with the rest of society.
5. Have clubs that help students learn more about different cultures.
6. Listen to what students of color have to say. Build relationships with all students.
7. Recognize what racism is. Understand white privilege.
8. Know that racism is wrong. Know how racism hurts. And get over it. And, I think ALL of these ideas would help ALL of your students.

Dominique Luckett, Grade 8, Jefferson Middle School, Ms. Baird
My dream is to make an organization called To Make a Difference…We will take anyone because there are no bad people, just people who make good choices and bad choices, and if you make good choices then you are on the road to success.

Lisset Macedo, Grade 5, BTW, Ms. Middleton
Sometimes parents feel ashamed because they can’t help their kids and they feel like they should have gone to university to help their kids.

Trisha Mallare, Grade 5, Barkstall, Foersch
Many who are bullied lose confidence. They become isolated and unhappy.

Austin Maltbia, Grade 8, Jefferson, Ms. Baird
Violence is a big problem in my community. There are gangs, egos, and a lot of just troubled kids. These things all lead to kids doing violent acts.
Most people think these kids are just the bad kids. They have no hope to be successful in life. Well, those people are wrong. These kids could be successful. All they need is a little support (or maybe a lot). What I would like to do is start a comfort group for kids in my community. This comfort group is just a place where kids can vent out their feelings and have someone to listen to them. I think this comfort group could help kids understand that their not the only ones with this problem. I think this would make kids less angry at the world, and happier with their own life. This comfort group will have volunteer adults so they can know even adults care about them. This comfort group could give kids the support and care they need to concentrate on school and in the long run, help them get into college and get a job. The first thing I thought about when I was thinking about this group was “How am I going to get kids to vent out to a 13 year old kid?” Then, I thought about it. I thought, “If a kid really wants that much support, they’ll vent out to me anyway.

Breanna McCaslin, Grade 4, Barkstall, Ms. Palmer
Child abuse is a generational process. It gets taught down and down from generations. We need to stop child abuse.

Connor Meade, Grade 7, Urbana Middle School, Searing
Some administrators thought that if recess was taken away, and replaced it with study time, students would get better grades on tests…What they didn’t know was that they would be overloading the brains of children and making them learn less, which might be surprising.

Lontashia Meads, Grade 5, BTW, Ms. Middleton
Then when you have problems paying bills you wish you could go back to being a regular teenager again.

Omeed Miraftab-Salo, Grade 5, Booker T. Washington Elementary, Mrs. Mayer
Thousands of people are hurt and exploited because of a system of classifying people into unfair racial categories. This system unjustly regards of European descent as “better,” than blacks and Latinos everyday. Sadly, this happens in every community and is affecting ours too. I believe our community can become one of the few who are fighting against it.
Step 1, as the public we need to raise awareness about racism. Everyday many people are hurt and abused simply because of their race. Their lives are deeply affected by this whether it’s in school, work, or in their neighborhood. Our residents need to talk and alert people to the fact that this is happening in our society. Many people don’t know that there still is prejudice in their district!
Step 2, as a group we can speak out. If people don’t know how this is wrong, they can’t react to it. . . . This year I went to Detroit, Michigan to the 2nd annual U.S. Social Forum. It showed me how much we can achieve by coming together to fight. One of the workshops in the Social Forum took some of the racist all-white neighborhoods in the city and rented out houses. Then, they gave them to mixed and black families. Two months later, many people’s views in that neighborhood changed for the good. This method not only costs next-to nothing. But also, it is a lot more efficient in getting large groups of people to come together and fight injustice compared to other ways.
Step 3, help and encourage those who are guilty to stop. Instead, forgive them and help them to cease to continue doing it. We must not shout and accuse them of prejudice, and simply acknowledge it and go on. Also, we must HELP them change their selves for the better. It is our job to encourage and change and support people who are making this change of character.

Tara Moazemi, Grade 4, Barkstall, Mrs. Cecava
Does every kid in your community have a good education? In my dream community everybody has a good education. You can help every school give every kid in the school a good education by giving the school educational books that the kids can use in class.

Miyah Morris, Grade 08, Jefferson MS, Baird
Something that I can do to try and make a difference in my community would be to, go through all the things that I think are negative and actually go out and make them positive. In the morning or even when I’m walking, and I come across someone, I will speak.

Elena Newmark, Grade 10, Urbana High School, Ms. Dahlke
Since I was little, I have loved food; I have also been lucky enough to be able to eat amazing food. I have been blessed to have access to the Urbana Farmer’s Market, and the wonderful community of farmers and vegetables that come together every Saturday morning. But sadly, not everyone in Champaign-Urbana has access to such rich food, or can afford the ingredients required to make good food. One place that everyone aged 5 to 17 has access to, is the public school lunchroom. But public school lunchrooms have a bad (and well-earned) reputation for horrible food. The disgusting food served in school lunchrooms is a major problem because unhealthy school lunches are a major factor in the pandemic of childhood obesity. For schools trying to promote healthy lifestyles, the food that they are serving undermines what they are trying to teach.
Why do schools serve these unhealthy and disgusting lunches? Many of the reasons are cost and resources. Processed and packaged foods are much cheaper than buying raw ingredients; not only because they cost less to buy, but because they are cheaper to prepare. In Illinois, in the Midwest United States, there are hundreds of farms and farmers looking for business, and the schools in Champaign-Urbana could have local farms provide the meat and vegetables for their lunch program. The Farm to School program is a program that connects schools up with local and regional farms that will then provide the schools with fresh food for their lunches. It is a competitive grant program that is funded by the federal government with support from the USDA.
If our community decides to take these vital steps, not only will it help stop the growing problem of childhood obesity, but it will teach a generation of kids how to eat healthily and stay healthy throughout their lives.

Paula Norato, Grade 8, Campus Middle School, Mrs. Nolen
What is freedom? To you it is a little, But to me it is everything, To me, It’s a Real life, It means I can be myself, To quit pretending to be someone else. I came here to work with you, And I end up working for you. All I wanted was freedom…We had heard of the USA. How it was full of different Opportunities. A lot of Possibilities. But instead we got blame. Do you even know what equal is? That’s all we want To be Equal.

Cynthia Nyemitei, Grade 10, Centennial High School, Mr. Maroon
I dream of a society where teenage pregnancy and single parenthood isn’t a norm.
Teenage pregnancy has become a major problem in our society. It is very important to recognize the factors influencing teen pregnancies. Family structure plays a very important role in an adolescent’s life. Most teenagers live under unstable family situations which may at times lead to lack of love and affection, causing teens to seek for external love and warmth.
Another factor is coming from a broken home. Teenagers who come from broken families often feel rejected. They get torn between going back and forth to please one parent or the other.
Sexual abuse and rape could also be a possible factor influencing teen pregnancies. Teenagers, especially females who fall victim to sexual abuse feel worthless and have low self esteem. They begin to have a different mindset of sexual behavior, which makes them oblivious to the dangers of having unprotected sex with various partners. Adolescents who were born to teen mothers are more likely to have a baby in their teens. It is very difficult to break the cycle of teen pregnancy in a particular family.
I have a dream, a dream of a society where teen pregnancy is very rare. This dream of mine cannot be realized without each and everyone’s dedication. Please help me pass this message on to a friend. If you are a mother how much does your daughter know you care? If you are a father how much love do you show your daughter? Does she know how much you care about her future? Maybe yes, but what if NO! Then she probably might be on the journey of becoming a statistic.

Anwen Parrott, Grade 11, UHS, Mrs. Hogan-Chan
Eating disorders in young women, often caused by the unrealistic standard of beauty created by the media, has an enormous and widespread impact on our nation’s youth.

Michaela Patton, Chikako Barnes, Victoria Kindratenko, Grade 4, Stratton, Ms. Newman
If you know someone that smokes try not to breath in the smoke because it will damage your lungs and it’s bad for you. My friend’s grandma died because she breathed in someone else’s smokey air. That is why you shouldn’t smoke. SO DON’T SMOKE IT’S NOT A JOKE!

Brianna Pierson, Grade 7, Urbana Middle School, Searing
Last year in 2009,we used enough bottled water that can stretch the earth three times.

Kathy Qiu, Grade 11, University High School, Ms. Majerus
Child abuse and neglect has become a national epidemic. Many people have the misconception that only violent and “evil” people commit child abuse. On the contrary, most instances are actually caused by people who are unable to cope with their tempers in a time of crisis. Such crises often involve drug and alcohol problems, the stresses of child care, financial difficulties, and past experiences.
Methods to help prevent child maltreatment can be as simple as befriending a parent or child, and talking to neighbors about looking out for each other’s children. Such friendly actions demonstrate understanding, care, and involvement. These elements all help to build a safer, more compassionate neighborhood.

Annie Rong, Grade 11, University High School, Ms. Majerus
When we first moved into our present house, my dad took a painstaking liking to weeding. He woke up every morning before dawn to bend down on our front lawn and pluck. One, two, three; one, two, three. These weeds were the kinds lawnmowers could not reach and only my dad’s probing hands could cause their demise. . . .
One day, our doorbell rang. It was a surprise for us all since we had no acquaintances and expected no one. Eventually my dad opened the door while my mother and I peered against the windows. Our guest was an elderly man who carried a long stick with him. He and my father had a short exchange and the stranger gently handed the stick to my father before leaving with a wave.
The stick turned out to be an efficient and timesaving implement for weeding, it was designed so the user would not have to bend his back and reach for difficult places. My father, who had been complaining of back pains for several days now, was ecstatic at this gift. He went on his weeding rages with more enthusiasm than ever. This small gift, simple and perhaps strange it may seem, carried with it a significance that I’ve never though about before. It was an act of respect, a respect that grew between strangers without words, yet it was as real as one between best friends.
Coming down to it all, I believe that respect is the foundation for an ideal community. Should respect become the foundation of our community, no longer will the color of our skin or the background of our parents determine how others view us; rather, it will be our conduct and choices that speak for us.
Secondly, respect is something without borders. It is something that even the most distant strangers can share and it creates a bond so strong that it is almost unbelievable. Like a smile, it is something that everyone can understand and appreciate. Let respect become the core of our beloved community and we will create one that can cover the entire world.

Shoentera Russell, Grade 5, Kenwood, Ms. Rome
People don’t have to be any kind of police or FBI or anything else, but regular people can help out if we just put our minds to it. Then we can say, just like President Obama: “Yes we can.” People in the community can gather around and try to think of ideas of what we can do to help. This is why regular people don’t have to be police to help out in our community.

Kathryn Schwartz, Grade 7, Urbana M.S., Mr. Rummenie
If only we could look at the actions we make and see how they affect others. That would be the greatest lesson.

John Seyler, Grade 11, UHS, Mrs. Hogan-Chan
In the long run, being on the wrong side of the digital divide can affect a person’s future.

Marina Shah, Grade 11, Uni High, Ms. Majerus
If we as a community really care about all our fellow citizens, we should be spending money on rehabilitation programs and education to help people, rather than prisons simply to punish. Prisons succeed only in creating further problems for society.

Aaranya Shanbhag, Grade 4, Barkstall, Palmer
When I see someone bullied, I can speak up,
“This is not right!”

>Erin Sheahan, Grade 08 Jefferson MS, Baird
But then, shining through the night
Came a righteous glowing light
That covered over all its’ plight
And cast a glint among the dim
For deep inside the lily knew
That the end to all the sadness
All the hatred, all the madness
To bring light throught the darkness
That it must begin with you.

Elizabeth Singe, Grade 5, Next Generation School, Kerner & Feser
Even though we think reading is no big deal, learning to read is one of the most important things in a child’s learning process.

Kirsten Slaughter, Grade 11, Urbana High School, Mrs. Hogan-Chan
Many kids in our communities are growing up without any fresh fruits or vegetables. Buying fresh local produce is unfortunately becoming too expensive for some families to buy. A solution to this problem is simple—involve the entire community in raising fresh local fruits and vegetables.

Nick Smith, Grade 7, Urbana Middle School, Mr. Rummenie
People need to walk or bike instead of taking their car so that people are not polluting the air we breathe.

Sarah Stelzer, Grade 4, Leal, Huff
The environment is the community of the world.

Mohammad Sweid, Grade 4, Stratton, Ms. Newman
The thing that creates littering is when people are lazy to throw it in the trash so they throw it on the ground. If people stop throwing trash on the ground and throw it in the trash can they will make the world a better place for animals and for you and me.

Lincoln Taylor, Grade 7, Urbana Middle School, Mr. Rummenie
It’s up to the people of America. Stop smoking, stop littering, use more eco-friendly factories, use solar energy.

Josh Thompson, Grade 04, Barkstall,Ms. Cecava
Do you know what I’m going to do about it? All the bullies are going to go to anger management schools so that way they con’t beat up each other.

Jazmin Tweedle, Grade 7, Campus Middle School, Ms. Giermak
In my community of Urbana, the one problem that keeps recurring is the ridiculous amount of trash and littering. How can anyone ignore it?
One of the solutions I propose is to have a committee go around and start picking up trash. This is something my school members and I could accomplish, because it’s not that difficult to do.
Lastly, we could try to raise awareness about the problems that trash can cause to our environment. This is also possible for me to do, since I’ll be learning about programming and making websites soon in school. I can direct people to the website that I created, and they can read about all they can do to help with this extreme problem, and what happens when we litter. This could be a great project, being a fun way to raise awareness.

Asia Monique Wallace, Grade 4, Barkstall, Ms. Palmer
We can do this. Make this world a better place.

Desitesse Warren, Grade 12-Centennial,Gross
It is interesting to listen to others who have made mistakes and learned from them…This is my dream.

Emily Jane Warren, Grade 10, Urbana High School, Ms. Dahlke
There is an issue in our community that has remained under the surface for years. It has not gained much exposure in general media, and has been overlooked by those with the most power to eradicate the issue. Homophobia, though thankfully not as prevalent in our community as in others, is an issue that hits home and, believe it or not, affects everyone in a society. Homophobia, and sexuality as a broad topic, has come to be a taboo subject, dispelling most chances of solving it just for the sake of peoples’ shallow comfort levels.
Homophobia can take many forms. Bullying consists of violence or harassment, such as sexual harassment, nagging someone to disclose their sexual orientation, name-calling-like “faggot”, “dyke”, “homo”, “queer”, etc., other derogatory language-phrases like “no homo”, “that’s so gay”, etc., excessive and intrusive questioning, and endorsement of negative stereotypes. . . . On a larger scale, the enforcement of inequality, like job discrimination, the illegality of gay marriage, and the banishment of gays in the military, is blatant homophobia. Sometimes one knows what homophobia looks like, but might not be able to locate it. Society shows constant displays sometimes discrimination are active, and media, including films, television programs, the internet, music, magazines, advertisements, and other publications. Media can also shed light on LGBTQ issues, but are often contributors to public homophobia. These two areas can be especially harmful, because teens’ two main sources of information are friends and the media.

Imari Webb, Grade 8, Campus MS, Ms. Nolen
Well now, I step out
From under everything
You “gave” me
Into the world
How I see it,
Not how it lets me be,
But how I let it be.
I live equal.
You live free.

Kayla Webb, Grade 7, Urbana Middle School, Mr. Rummenie
One thing I think needs improvement in or “beloved” community is the lack of hope and compassion.

Bailey Westfall, Grade 10,Oakwood High School
We aren’t addicted
We can stop
Right after this one,
I’m done.

Liliana Zamora, Grade 11, Urbana High School, Ms. Hogan-Chan
The judgments against people with disabilities can be harsh and severely incorrect. Some people can’t even look past the fact that people with disabilities are normal people that can think for themselves. The extent of this problem can lead to both mental and physical abuse, politically incorrect language, and wrong information about certain disabilities. This treatment cannot be ignored. People with disabilities hear what is said and take it to heart. At Urbana High School, a student continually heard other students calling him “retarded” and now tells himself that he is “retarded” when he’s not. He’s sweet and he loves music. He has a mind of his own and he can hear what is being said. The high school then took it into their own hands to stop some of the language that can affect not only the students with disabilities, but everyone else as well.
At Urbana High School, the Social Justice Committee is made up of students, teachers, and other administrative figures. The committee was formed to make our community a more acceptable environment. The committee addresses all kinds of problems within the school and even the town. As part of the solution, the committee recommended that Urbana High school hold a Disability Awareness Day. As part of the event, twenty students will travel in wheelchairs for two whole school days. They will be able to experience the difficulty of having a physical disability and talk about it at the end of the day. The action is small, but the committee is expecting a big impact. It may just start with those twenty students, but it will end with so many more knowing the hardships of having a disability.

Ibeth Zarco, Grade 05, BTWashington, Mayer
One way of preventing harassment is giving teasers a punishment. Help you can give to intimidators is to give them consequences.

Irene Zharnitsky and Sofia Saleh, Grade 8, Campus Middle School, Mrs. Nolen
People judge you because of your race. The color of your skin. And the look on your face. All that can change. Though that might sound strange. If we work together. We can change the world forever. Into a better place. As long as we’re hand in hand. We can change the land, on which we stand. I have a dream and you should to. So why don’t you go see what you can do?

Posted in Youth | Leave a comment

A Letter to a Black Girl

Posted on 02/22/2011 by anonymous

To Whom It May Concern (and those who may think it doesn’t):

So, when exactly did it start? As I sit and ponder on when I can recall my first moment of  interaction with sexuality, I realize I can’t do it. I can’t remember. It’s as simple as that.
Sooner than later, I come up with the idea that I first came across sexuality when it was taken from me. I had never realized who I was sexually or if I was even a sexual being when a man decided he was confident in his sexuality enough and would affirm his ego. At that moment, sexuality had me. I didn’t have my sexuality.

The moment after my sexuality was taken, I wasn’t aware of exactly what was happening, but believe it or not, there was a secret decline in my spirit. My own personal sexual identity was stripped before it bloomed. At 6 years old. I hadn’t even realized that I had it, never got a chance to use it, identify it, locate or plan for it. Instead, mine was chosen by someone else and used strictly for his disposal, with no regard to the fact that I was his flesh and blood.

The interesting thing about all of this is that, it was someone old enough to understand and realize exactly what he was doing. See, he knew. I didn’t.

As I sit on this plane, I realize exactly how pissed I am. I’m deeply hurt actually. I mean, think about it. It’s disgusting. A grown man decided to introduce a 6 year old to the
harsh realities of life. I wasn’t born on July 4th, 1988. I was born into society on that day, in my day bed, at 6 years old. I didn’t have the opportunity to make my own decision
on whether or not I was even ready or able to engage in such behaviors. It troubles me sometimes to think that at such a young age, something can be bestowed upon you like that, but I realize that it is a part of a broader narrative that other black women face as well; young black girls in their adolescence, all the way up to grown black women in their
dealings with the real world.

I realize it’s not only a struggle I had alone, but it’s also a struggle that unifies us, silently of course, because we never seem to be able to talk about things like that. Even
as I write this, I realize I wasn’t able to talk about it, my mom wasn’t able to talk about it for me. My family still has no clue about it. Now, its time to talk about it.

I’M TALKING ABOUT IT
As I reflect, I realize that I didn’t know how that experience shaped how I think about my sexuality and things in that regard. It’s almost like, after that happened, I went through
years of a frozen consciousness so to speak; of thinking and feeling and realizing that experience was essential to how I thought and felt about sex and sexuality. It’s only now that I can remember, not remember as in recount the past, but remember and realize how that experienced shaped, shapes and influenced certain decisions and opinions about sex for me.
You know, it’s almost scary.
I wonder what that frozen period is called.
Is it blocking out the memory of pain?
Is it simply not existing in the consciousness of what happened to me sexually?
What is that?
Is that being silenced?
You will be surprised to know that I still don’t know what that is.
To all US Black girls who still don’t know what THAT is
or are still lost there, remember:
They have ignored what we say.
Our hopes.
Our truths.
The tangled web that’s woven.
For us, on behalf of us.
Know that their ears and minds cannot comprehend the navigation.
Instilled in the fibers of our being.
To possess the power to dismantle the matrix.
WE speak a language, seldom translatable.
In the name of ourselves.
In the name of being Black girls, speak and know.
And to society and everyone else involved,
Recognize The Revolution.

In complete openness, honesty and humility,
—A Black Girl

Posted in African Americans, Human Rights, Voices of Color, Women | Leave a comment

Bigger is Better! Help WRFU Erect Epic Radio Tower

Posted on 02/22/2011 by Tatyana Safronova

Volunteers work together to erect the antenna for WRFU above the Independent Media Center in Urbana-Champaign, IL

It happened one weekend in November five years ago. Some 200 people swarmed the Independent Media Center. By the end, when the clouds gathered over Urbana, a radio station was born. The volunteers had traveled from across the country to Champaign-Urbana. They hoisted a radio tower 65 feet into the air, placing it on the roof of the building, set up the station equipment and wired together what became WRFU 104.5 FM. Through direct action, our community and the wider community-radio network said, We are the media!

Now our not-for-profit community radio station is broadcasting in English and Spanish, promoting other non-profits through public service announcements, and talking about everything from sports and local politics, to Native American issues, experimental music and the blues, with shows about God, children’s bedtime stories, democracy and revolution. Of course if classical music or food’s more your thing, you could walk into the IMC today and pitch a show about pastry cooking, or an all-Bach hour. And if you really like comic books or travel you could do a show about that too. The original radio tower was always considered a temporary structure, designed to get us on the air, but we aimed higher, looking to our FCC license which permits us to operate from up to 100 feet. Now, we are working to build the permanent tower and it’s time for the community to organize again and act.

On March 7th, the Urbana City Council will meet to decide on our proposal to put up a 100-foot-tall, permanent, free-standing radio tower next to the IMC building. Our low-power station operates at just 100 watts, like one or two light bulbs, and must remain in the center of our community to be heard. But from 65 feet in the air, the signal often gets blocked by buildings and interrupted by the rise in the land as the signal travels from Urbana to Champaign. So, the view is surely better from one hundred feet up.

A taller antenna would allow us to broadcast further in every direction, reaching deeper west into Champaign and even beyond Savoy to the south. It would also allow us to reach more Spanish-speaking residents for whom we already have 12 hours of Spanish-language broadcasting. Mainly, however, the increased listener base would allow us to make a greater impact in the community as a hub for citizen journalism. The IMC is known as a place for education, activism and arts where volunteers can learn about media technology and produce media that’s important to them.

To help us with this project, participate and speak out. Come to a WRFU station meeting with a friend and suggest your own radio show, or ask for a tour. Meetings are held regularly on the first and third Tuesdays at 8 p.m. On March 7th at 7 p.m., come to the Urbana City Council meeting to show your support for the new tower, for citizen journalists and for your local community.

And finally, show your support by donating to WRFU. We have raised almost $12,000 for this project, which has taken priority in our long-term vision, but we also pay operating costs and rely on gifts and support from community members like you. For information about both the tower and how to donate, check out our website at www.wrfu.net.
To restructure one famous activist’s quotation, let’s be the media we want to see in the world.

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In Search of Coretta Scott King

Posted on 02/22/2011 by Courtney Suzanne Pierre

They say that behind every great man lies a great woman. This popular phrase holds true in the case of Martin Luther King, Jr. and Coretta Scott King. As Martin led marches and protests during the Civil Rights Movement, Coretta was by his side every step of the way. An activist in her own right, she often spoke at rallies in her husband’s place and continued to fight for the rights of oppressed people after his death. What was it like to be married to the leader of the movement? How did Coretta handle the expectations of being Martin’s wife?

I find answers to these questions in Coretta’s autobiography/memoir, My Life with Martin Luther King Jr. The narrative exposes Coretta’s personal experiences both positive and negative as Martin’s wife and partner in the movement. Coretta met many of the important leaders of the time, like President John F Kennedy and Malcolm X. She was also afforded the opportunity to travel around the country and the world, including the 1964 trip to Norway for the Nobel Peace Prize ceremony. Coretta describes the joy she felt in sharing this experience with Martin:

“[W]hat a great privilege it had been, what a blessing, to live at the side of a man whose life would have so profound an impact on the world. It was the most important thing I could have done, and I had wanted to do it.”

Coretta reveals her important role as Martin’s support system, providing reassurance and comfort when her husband needed it most. When Martin experienced public and media backlash, he turned to Coretta for strength and encouragement. After the Kings’ home was bombed in 1955, Coretta stood by her husband’s decision to continue in the movement:

“Afterward Martin said to me, ‘Coretta, you’ve been a real soldier. I don’t know what I would have done if it had not been for you.’ […] I had always been a strong person, but I had not realized that Martin, so strong himself, did need me. I was very moved that he recognized this need.”

These personal anecdotes reveal the joys of being Mrs. Martin Luther King, Jr. She served as the leader’s confidante and partner while experiencing the Civil Rights Movement at the front lines. We also learn about Coretta and Martin’s deep love and respect for one another through the romantic anecdotes found in the narrative. It becomes evident that Coretta was very content and happy as Martin’s wife.

At the same time, Coretta reveals the trials and tribulations of being married to Martin. Specifically, the narrative provides important insight into the ways in which she sometimes felt marginalized and left in the background. For instance, Coretta wrestled with the decision to marry Martin, understanding the career sacrifices she would have to make:

“It was not until later in the fall that I finally decided that because I really loved Martin, I would go ahead and marry him and let the question of my career take care of itself. However, I was determined to go on and get my degree. I would finish that much, so I would have a sense of accomplishment, even though I would not have the kind of career I had planned.”

Coretta opens up about being marginalized as a wife and as an activist. It is no secret that women were relegated to background roles during the movement, and Coretta was no different. When detailing the momentous March on Washington, she describes how she felt when she was not allowed to join Martin at the front of the procession:

“I must confess… that I felt that the involvement in the Movement of some of the wives had been so extensive that they should have been granted the privilege of marching with their husbands and of completely sharing this experience together as they had shared the dangers and hardships.”

These quotes present some of Coretta’s contention in her duties as Martin’s wife. The tension between Coretta’s autonomy and gender expectations adds depth to the narrative. While she handled her role graciously, Coretta also dealt with many struggles and sacrifices. Coretta’s autobiography provides a glimpse into her marriage with Martin. She portrays a relationship built on love, faith, and friendship. At the same time, she highlights the difficulties of the marriage, although she never discusses Martin’s alleged infidelity. I imagine this deeply personal and painful topic did not fit into the positive tone of the memoir.

Nevertheless, Coretta’s personal story emerges, and readers learn about an important black female activist. As we celebrate Black History Month, let us  take time to remember Coretta as more than just the woman behind the man.

Posted in African Americans, Human Rights, Voices of Color | Leave a comment

Open Invitation to the Follow-up Meeting of the eBlack C-U Campus-Community Symposium

Posted on 01/27/2011 by Noah Lenstra

The eBlack CU Symposium was a great success, with over 180 people attending or all part of the event. The full record of the Symposium is available online for anyone to access at: http://eblackcu.net/portal/symposium. We need to do more to get community members and community organizations able and motivated to take advantage of technological tools to better our local community for all.
This follow-up meeting will be held January 8, 2011, from 9 a.m. to noon at the Champaign Public Library, in the main Robeson room on the first floor. We are organizing this follow-up meeting around the themes of technology, jobs and the future of our local economy. The title of this event is: “Community Technology and UC2B: Careers, Jobs and the Future of our Local Economy.” We need you and your organization to co-sponsor this event. As a cosponsor all we would ask of you is to help mobilize your organization’s membership and family and friends to come join in the conversation of how technology has already, and will continue to, change the skills needed to use technology both in the work-market and in community life.

ANTICIPATED AUDIENCES
• Youth and Unemployed individuals of all ages and backgrounds. Find out what jobs already exist in the technology sector, what jobs are being created, and what you need and can do to prepare yourself for employment in the high-tech sector;
• Parents/Grandparents/Mentors—Hear about the new skills your loved ones will need to stay competitive in a changing job market;
• Employers—Offer opinions about the technological skills you expect from employees;
• Educators—Hear the technology demands of the work-force and present the responses you already offer and may offer in the future;
• General Public—Continue the conversations on technology and the future of the Champaign-Urbana community begun at the November 5–6 Campus-Community Symposium.

We are still organizing the program and speakers for this event. Flyers will be made available in the very near future. If you or your organization would be willing to co-sponsor this event we would be happy to distribute flyers to you the week of December 27 for you to disseminate to your members and members’ family and friends in the lead-up to this event.

If you are interested in co-sponsoring, or desire more information, get in touch with us by e-mailing nlenstr2@illinois.edu

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Reflections on the GEO Strike a Year Later

Posted on 01/27/2011 by Kerry Pimblott

Students and workers are celebrating the first anniversary of the successful strike by the Graduate Employees’ Organization (GEO) and Local 6300 (AFT/IFT/AFL-CIO), the union that represents over 2,500 graduate assistants and teaching assistants at the University of Illinois at Urbana Champaign.
Last November, over one thousand graduate employees and their allies joined together in a fight to ensure that graduate education remains accessible to working-class students and people of color in Illinois. After months of unsuccessful negotiations with the university’s administration, GEO members voted overwhelmingly to strike in an effort to protect the tuition waivers that afford us a place in the learning and labor that takes place on this campus. For two rainy days, striking workers shut down buildings on the main quad, formed picket lines, and danced collectively to the beat of a different drum. By the end of the second day we were celebrating a momentous victory for workers on our campus and across the country that included securing unprecedented contractual protections for tuition waivers.
As the GEO’s lead negotiator and one of the strike planners, I learned a lot personally from the strike about both the university and the collective power of workers. However, in the year since the strike, three lessons stand out as offering key insights for current and future struggles.
First, strikes are not spontaneous; strikes are produced. While this may seem obvious to many of us today, the labor involved in mobilizing a strike cannot be understated. The process of building our strike potential took almost two years of concerted planning and labor by organizers. On one level, this labor was highly visible. It involved creating new activists, organizing in departments, planning events, and building up gradually to the levels of mass mobilization required to sustain an open-ended walkout. But, at a more fundamental level, the labor we performed was part of an unseen cognitive battle for the minds and hearts of our fellow workers.
While grievances are ever present, as workers we know that grievances do not inevitably lead to collective action, let alone strikes. Getting people that feel powerless to sacrifice their limited time and resources and, in some cases, take tremendous personal risks to secure a better quality of life for themselves and their peers is no easy task. Organizing at institutions of higher education is no different than in the corporate world, and prior to the GEO strike, the University of Illinois had only experienced two strikes in its 150-year history. Therefore, a key part of building our strike potential was talking with workers about their experiences, solidifying a sense of shared-identity, and empowering each other to believe that collectively we could make a difference.
Second, strikes are easy to fetishize but, ultimately, a strike is just a tactic. People can get very romantic about strikes and for me, at least, it is understandable. Strikes bring workers together and help us believe that collectively we have greater power than we had previously imagined. But sometimes we can imbue strikes with a kind of mythical power that abstracts them from the concrete political conditions in which they operate and, ultimately, succeed or fail. Today, as a loosely knit international movement to “defend” and/or “liberate” education is beginning to take shape, avoiding romanticization and dealing with the hardcore political realities of our own historical moment is particularly critical. In this context, tactics should be selected because of the pressure they can exert on our opponents and the leverage this offers us in terms of securing short-term concessions to the status quo. The GEO strike worked, in my mind, because it articulated a very clear demand (tuition waiver security), exhausted traditional institutional avenues (the bargaining process), and then mobilized workers to withhold their labor disrupting—the campus and bringing negative press attention to the administration. As we move forward, students and workers must grapple with a wide range of tactics looking for those most suitable for manipulating the inverted power relations on campus and beyond. Finally, strikes have unforeseen consequences.
In a very practical sense, the process of building for a strike ensured that the GEO was able to fight off regressive proposals like furloughs as well as secure important contractual gains including tuition waiver security. However, the impact of the strike transcended these basic, albeit invaluable, contract victories. Over the past year, I have had the tremendous privilege to visit with students and union workers from across the country who have been inspired by our strike to act.
In the past year, K-12 educators in Danville and Mahomet have gone out on strike in efforts to protect compensation, benefits, and working conditions. Sadly, these strikes-like the GEO strike-were necessary simply to preserve the status quo and are, thus, reflective of the unethical approaches of management in handling the financial crisis. However, these defensive strikes have transformed the culture of our schools, campuses, and communities and inspired workers in East Central Illinois to believe that we do have the right to fight back and, more importantly, we can win. In the end, the most invaluable lesson these strikes have taught me and other workers is to believe in each other, to work collectively, and to have faith against the odds that a different world is possible.

Posted in Education, Labor/Economics | Leave a comment

IMC Barnraising Space (de)Construction

Posted on 01/27/2011 by Chris RItzo

$15,000 GRANT AWARDED TO RENOVATE THE URBANA-CHAMPAIGN INDEPENDENT MEDIA CENTER

February 5, 2011 8:00AM – February 6, 2011 5:00PM
February 19, 2011 8:00AM – February 20, 2011 5:00PM

A slide from the presentation given by the faculty partners from the University of Illinois’ School of Architecture at the IMC’s Annual Membership meeting last November.

The UCIMC and faculty partners in the University of Illinois School of Architecture will be holding a barnraising event to construct a new staffing and work area in the main lobby of the building. The first of several first floor space renovation projects will re-envision our staffing area in the front lobby of the old post office. Our partners were recently awarded $15,000 from the University of Illinois Office of Public Engagement to fund the project. Join IMC members, volunteers, UI students and our faculty partners from the School of Architecture, at two Barnraising weekend events in February 2011. No prior expertise is required to volunteer, but if you do have construction, carpentry, or other experience, we welcome you!

If you can’t make it to either event, consider other ways you could be involved.
• Organize other volunteers!—Our project coordinator can help coordinate group or individual volunteers
• Loan tools to use on-site during the event. Hammers, screwdrivers, table saw, circular saw, etc.
• If you have leftover construction materials please contact us! You can make a tax-deductible donation based on the estimated value of the materials. Here are some of the things we’re looking for:
• 2x4s and other construction quality lumber of various sizes
• nails, screws, fasteners of various kinds, hinges, casters, etc.
• Plywood, OSB, pegboard, masonite, etc.

For more information, contact the Community Connections working group: community@lists.chambana.net

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Racial Disparities Reflect Laws and Policies

Posted on 01/27/2011 by David Green

In her recently published book, The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness, civil rights lawyer Michelle Alexander connects the legacies of slavery and Jim Crow to the mass incarceration of African-American males. “The American penal system has emerged as a system of social control unparalleled in world history Åc a formally race-neutral criminal justice system (manages) to round up and arrest an extraordinary number of black and brown men, when people of color are actually no  more likely to be guilty of drug crimes and many other offenses than whites.”
This important book documents an overwhelming body of research and a relentless logic of systematic social injustice that attributes massive increases in imprisoned African-Americans over the past decades not to their behavior, but to the biased nature of the law and its enforcement: by police, courts, prisons, and the punitive society to which the criminalized return.
An equally convincing body of research documents that in parallel fashion, in the era of so-called “zero tolerance,” school disciplinary, suspension, and expulsion policies have arbitrarily but systematically targeted African-American males as part of what has come to be called the “school-to-prison pipeline.”
At the most fundamental and ‘for most white people’ counterintuitive level, it is urgently important to recognize that the baseline behaviors of African-American children and youth are no better or worse than those of their white counterparts, in any setting. In some areas, including alcohol abuse, they are markedly better.
Social researchers have developed reliable methods for establishing accurate baseline data through self-report surveys; these have been administered and refined for decades, with standard sampling and analytical procedures. Neither in relation to school nor societal behavior have racial differences been documented that remotely explain the drastic disparities that have emerged in relation to school suspension, expulsion, arrest, and incarceration.
Thus, in June of this year, the “Morbidity and Mortality Weekly” of the Centers for Disease Control reported that between white and black male students, grades 9-12, whites are more likely to binge drink, take prescription drugs without a prescription, smoke cigarettes or use smokeless tobacco on school property; white males are also more likely than black males to use cocaine, inhalants, hallucinogenic drugs, ecstasy, and methamphetamines. Meanwhile, blacks are more likely than whites to use heroin, marijuana, and steroids without a prescription; they are also more likely to inject illegal drugs, and drink alcohol or use marijuana on school property.
Regarding school behavior, Russ Skiba of the University of Indiana’s Equity Project has examined school disciplinary referrals by race. Of 32 infractions examined, there were eight significant differences. White students were referred more for smoking, vandalism, leaving without permission, and obscene language. Black Students were referred more for disrespect, excessive noise, threat, and loitering.
Regardless of these baseline behavioral realities, the comparison regarding students who have ever been suspended from school by age 17, documented in the same OJJDP study: white, 28%, black 56%. As with incarceration, nothing in the “real world” of racial differences accounts for these disparities. Instead, they are explained by the racialized functioning of schools, police, and the courts, all facilitated by legislatures at various levels.
Paul J. Hirschfield of Rutgers writes: “A multilevel structural model of school criminalization is developed which posits that a troubled domestic economy, the mass unemployment and incarceration of disadvantaged minorities, and resulting fiscal crises in urban public education have shifted school disciplinary policies and practices and staff perceptions of poor students of color in a manner that promotes greater punishment and exclusion of students perceived to be on a criminal justice ‘track’.”
Individuals in authority are trained and conditioned to live in a culture of suspicion and fear that is created by this racist and often lethal system; this should be kept in mind as we look, for example, at the death of Kiwane Carrington. Similarly, those boys and men who endure the system are well aware of (white) society’s “expectations” regarding their behavior and potential. African-American males continue to struggle for their dignity, but there’s no reason for white people to think that they do so based on comforting fairy tales that white people tell themselves about colorblindness and equal opportunity.

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Disciplinary Actions Against Champaign Officers

Posted on 01/27/2011 by Brian Dolinar

Despite being public bodies serving a public good, most police departments operate as secret societies. The push for police accountability includes making their practices more transparent. I recently obtained all disciplinary actions taken against Champaign police officers. Contrary to what I expected, only a small percentage of the disciplinary actions were the result of citizen complaints. The most common reason was for damage to a squad car. Yet there were still several instances of misconduct that threatened both citizens and officers.
This investigation began with a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request for complaints against Champaign police officers. In a recent case of Gekas v. Williamson, an Illinois appeals court ruled that complaints against officers are public record. Yet my request to the Champaign Police Department was denied. However, when I spoke with city attorney, Tricia Crowley, I was told that in such cases where an officer has been disciplined, whether for a complaint or for any other reason, the records are publicly available. For example, when Officer Daniel Norbits was suspended for 30 days after the death of Kiwane Carrington, the disciplinary letter from City Manager Steve Carter was released to the public and the press. I then decided to file a FOIA request for all disciplinary actions taken against Champaign police officers since 2004. I received letters for 48 cases where an officer had been disciplined. They indicate some curious patterns.

“PROGRESSIVE ENFORCEMENT”
Of the 48 disciplinary actions, only three were the result of complaints filed by citizens. One case in 2007 involved Officer Kristina Benton who, when she responded to a domestic call, was “rude and discourteous” toward the individual who originally called the police. The unnamed person then filed a complaint. Officer Benton only received a letter of reprimand. A 2008 incident involved Officer Chris Young who was also, “discourteous” and failed to perform his duties in a “productive, effective, and efficient manner.”
The letter does not specify any further, but the citizen filed a complaint, and for his offence Young received a one-day suspension. In the third case, also from 2008, Officer Jamie Bowersock approached a car with a loud stereo. Despite departmental rules prohibiting abusive language, “concerning race, sex,” he told the driver of the car, a man named Marcell, to “stop whining like a girl.” After Marcell lodged a complaint, and the incident was investigated, Bowersock was given a letter of reprimand. Lieutenant Michael Paulus expressed his disappointment in the officer for allowing Marcell to “bait you” and for failing to uphold the department policy of “progressive enforcement.”
Disciplinary letters were also handed out to officers for things like failing to show up in court, being absent during training, or using profanity. As mentioned earlier, the most common reason for disciplining an officer was for damage to a squad car, or, as stated in departmental policy, failing to operate vehicles in a “careful, prudent manner.” Out of 48 disciplinary letters, 23 were for failing to properly operate a vehicle. Other disciplinary actions were for more egregious violations.
In 2009, Officer Eric Bloom was twice told to return an individual’s wallet. Failing to do so resulted in the owner’s mother becoming “extremely upset.” A letter of reprimand was given to Bloom. In a case from 2007, Officer Douglas Kimmie ran a criminal background check on a citizen “for reasons which were not entirely duty related.” Kimmie was only issued a letter of reprimand. Out of the total disciplinary actions, only four led to suspensions of one or more days. Three have been mentioned already: Young (one day), Bloom (two days), and Norbits (30 days). In 2007, Officer Elizabeth Mennenga was suspended for 12 days because she displayed “contact of an insulting or provoking nature.”

FIVE CASES IN MORE DETAIL
In most cases, there were no arrests and therefore no police reports describing the incident. There were five cases in which I was able to obtain further documentation. In one case from 2006, Officer Alison Ferguson was given a letter of reprimand for making an “inappropriate comment” to an African American woman she placed under arrest. Officer Daniel Ward received a letter of reprimand for car chase in 2009 because he failed to follow departmental policy in police pursuits. Ward unnecessarily engaged in a high speed pursuit without sounding his siren and not notifying others of the 90 mile per hour speeds. When Champaign police responded to a call about a suicidal man in September 2009, Officer Andre Davis was given a reprimand for accidentally firing his gun. This was just a month before Kiwane Carrington was, according to police account, killed when Norbits’ gun accidentally discharged.
Two other incidents, when juxtaposed, reveal the racist practices of the Champaign Police Department. In 2009, two black men named William and Calvin were walking at the intersection of Hedge Road and Hedge Court in Garden Hills when they were stopped by officers Jeremiah Christian and Rob Morris who were riding in their squad car. According to police reports, the two men were “improperly walking in the roadway” in violation of the vehicle code regulations. Yet there are no sidewalks on either side of the two streets. William had two small bags of weed and was put in the back of the squad car. Calvin took off running and Officer Morris chased him down in his car and put him in handcuffs.
As it turned out, Calvin was avoiding giving police his name because he had an outstanding warrant and he was charged with obstructing justice. The warrant was for driving on a suspended license. Calvin was arrested and taken to jail while William was let go and given a city ticket for possession of a narcotic. After the incident was reviewed, Officer Morris was given a letter of reprimand because he left William unsupervised in the back of the squad car while he went on a foot chase with Calvin. In contrast is a case from 2008 in which a 20-year-old white student named Michael was carrying an open can of beer when Officer Brian Ahsell drove by in his squad car.
As the officer pulled up, Michael dropped the can. Michael confessed he was underage, but told the officer he was not “causing trouble.” Officer Ahsell wrote him a ticket for underage drinking, explaining that he would not ticket him for the open container as long as he was cooperative. Michael became increasingly indignant. As Ahsell gave him the ticket and got into his car to leave, Michael stood in the middle of the street screaming at him for his name and number. Ahsell finally decided to arrest Michael and took him to the county jail.
While Michael was being booked, Ahsell changed his mind and decided to release him. In his report Ahsell wrote, “It should be noted that I based this decision on Michael being a U of I student with no known prior police contacts.” Ahsell returned Michael to campus and let him go. After review, Ahsell was given a letter of reprimand for failing to give his name and badge number, which, according to department policy, officers must willingly provide if asked. In the end, none of the 48 disciplinary actions addressed the racially disparate policing practices rampant in the Champaign Police Department, only infractions to police-defined guidelines.

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