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THIS MAY 1ST WILL MARK THE FOURTH large scale celebration
of May Day (International Workers’ Day) in the United
States. This holiday, which was born of events in Chicago
in 1886, was suppressed and became almost completely
lost to American workers until immigrant workers recovered
it for all of us with massive national demonstrations
on May 1st 2006. The irony of an American holiday being
rediscovered on American soil by immigrant workers is
just one of a long chain of ironies that have marked the
workers’ movement in the United States. So, in the interest
of a little remedial education, let me share a brief version
of the history of May Day.
The year was 1886. For over a year, many workers’
organizations, including the new American Federation of
Labor, had been calling for a national 8-hour day to be
granted by employers with no loss in pay, and to be
enforced by a federal law. The epicenter of this movement
was Chicago.
The slogan was:
Eight hours for work
Eight hours for sleep
Eight hours for what we will.
Chicago was the radical center of the labor movement
nationally and world-wide at that time, and the movement
there was led largely by political radicals, anarchists,
small-c communists, and socialists of a hundred different
stripes. This was, remember, long before the Russian Revolution.
The majority of the leaders of this movement were
immigrants, but that was not surprising since the majority
of the working class in Chicago was immigrants and their
children – largely from Germany, but also from a dozen
other countries, including Norway, Bohemia, Hungary, Ireland
and Finland. The most prominent native-born leaders
were Albert Parsons and his wife Lucy, who had come
to Chicago a few years before. They had left Texas to
escape the post-Reconstruction anti-miscegenation laws
which made the marriage of a white ex-Confederate printer
turned Radical Reconstructionist and a
black/Latina/Indian ex-slave, outside the pale of law.
The national movement had called for demonstrations
across the country, calling for 8 hours of work, and for
workers to walk off the job and demonstrate. In Chicago,
this demonstration drew 80,000—Chicago‘s largest up to
then—and was led down Michigan Avenue by Albert and
Lucy Parsons. As radicals and anarchists/socialists, they
saw the 8-hour movement and the freeing up of workers’
time that would result, as an important step toward building
a revolutionary movement. The movement was largely
successful and many workers in Chicago and nationally
did gain the 8-hour day.
However, at McCormick Reaper, the massive farm
machinery plant in Chicago, the striking workers were not
so lucky. They were attacked by police and two were killed
on May 3rd. Many workers were outraged and, to protest
these killings, a demonstration was planned for May 4th at
Haymarket Square in Chicago (at Randolph and Desplaines).
Like many emergency demonstrations since then, it was
not very well organized and most of
the expected speakers weren‘t even
there when the rally began with a
few thousand people. Eventually,
speakers arrived and spoke from a
wagon, sitting at the head of an alley
just at the edge of the square itself.
The only violence was the words of
the speakers who took pains to use
this occasion to demonstrate to their
audience the control that the capitalists
had over the law and the police
and the need to resist.
To the south, across Randolph
Street, police were massed, but so
was the popular pro-labor mayor,
Carter Harrison, who found no
fault with the rally. Harrison left
when it started to rain, just before
the rally ended, telling the police
commander John Bonfield that he
was going home, that there was
nothing happening, and that the
police should to the same. By this
time rain had begun and the rally was down to about 200.
Unfortunately, Bonfield, who had also been in charge of
the police who killed the workers at McCormick, only sent
part of his men home. With his remaining men, , he
formed up in dense formation and marched to the edge of
the demonstration. At that point, he called out to the
remaining demonstrators that this was an illegal assembly
and that they should disperse immediately. The final
speaker, Samuel Fielden, called out that they were peaceable,
but before he could finish his sentence, a bomb went
off in the middle of the massed police, killing some immediately.
The police opened fire, killing from their own and
many demonstrators, the number never to be known for
certain, since many of the dead and injured workers were
not taken to hospitals for fear of arrest.
These events caused the city government to start a
manhunt for all radical labor leaders, labeling them as
dangerous, terrorist cop-killers. Within a few days many
were arrested, except for Parsons who fled to Wisconsin,
but came back to join his comrades on the dock for the
trial. Most of those arrested were not
physically present at Haymarket,
so they were charged with conspiracy;
their real crime, as was freely
admitted at the time, was being
radicals and building a movement
among working people. No one
ever established who threw the
bomb.
After a trial, now universally recognized
by historians as being a
travesty of justice, all seven of the
defendants were convicted and
sentenced to hang. Two had their
sentences commuted to prison
terms and one, Louis Lingg, died
in his cell, the night before execution,
with a blasting cap. By the
time of the executions, a worldwide
movement had arisen
demanding, at least, clemency for
the accused. But that was not to be
in Chicago. As his final words,
August Spies shouted,“The time will
come when our silence will be more powerful than the
voices you strangle today!“And Albert Parsons’ final words
being,“Let the voice of the people be heard.“
The executions and political scare had
two important effects. One was to paint the
entire American labor movement with the
brush of dangerous, terroristic radicalism,
and to set back union organizing and activity
for a number of years. It ironically
played an important role in the decline of
the then dominant Knights of Labor,
whose national leadership had not
endorsed the May 1st demonstrations,
even though Parsons and some others were
proud members of a Chicago Knights
Assembly.
The other was to create martyrs of these
men, whose words and deeds came to be
felt all over the world, wherever workers
organized as workers, especially to
demand shorter hours. In 1889 the Second
(Socialist) International declared May 1st
to be an international workers’ holiday in
commemoration of the Martyrs of Chicago.
It is now an official legal holiday in most
nations of the world, but in the United
States, governments and conservative labor
leaders have gone out of their way to discourage
the observing of May 1, with
Richard Nixon declaring it“Law Day“in
1971.
Despite being labeled as a foreign, subversive,
and Communist holiday, May Day
had a resurgence in the 1930‘s and 1940‘s,
when the political left helped to revive the
labor movement. During post-WWII Cold
War, May Day celebrations receded under
the pressure of anti-Communist repression
and fear. It was only with the demonstrations
of 2006, led especially by immigrant
workers, which May Day returned to the
consciousness of the people who had given
it birth, the workers of Chicago. It has been
reborn fittingly on the shoulders of this
generation of immigrants, just as it was
born initially out of the struggles of immigrant
workers for a decent life in their new
country. On May 1, 2007, the largest
demonstration in Chicago history (estimated
as 300,000-500,000), along with
dozens more throughout the nation,
reminded us of the heritage of May Day
and its special role in the history of immigrant
workers in the US and Chicago. (see
http://www.archive.org/details/CLALB499
for a film of the Chicago demonstration
produced by Labor Beat in Chicago; for
more on Illinois labor history, see
http://www.illinoislaborhistory.org)
In Urbana-Champaign, May Day will be
commemorated on May 2nd with the holding
of the Central Illinois Social Forum to
bring together all of those groups and individuals
who are trying to assist the working
people to survive the challenges of the
economic collapse and who are trying to
organize to chart a way forward under the
slogan,“Another world is possible.“There is
no doubt that the Haymarket Martyrs
would approve.

ON APRIL 9, MEMBERS OF THE Campus Antiwar Network,
Iraq Veterans Against the War, and the International
Socialist Organization joined forces for a third annual
protest against the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA)
recruitment session at the University of Illinois at Urbana-
Champaign. However this year, students and activists were
stunned by their victory when the CIA canceled the session
at the last minute, shamed by our tactics which
exposed the Agency‘s dark history of assassinations, political
sabotage and torture.
Outside the session door, one activist donned a black
Grim Reaper cloak and stood with
arms extended on a milk crate to
greet potential recruits and remind
them of the brutal atrocities conducted
at Abu Ghraib with CIA
complicity. Another used a simple
pillowcase as a hood and kneeled
with arms clasped behind his back
to show the treatment by prisoners
common at Bagram Air Base and
Guantánamo. Others passed out
informational leaflets and challenged
attendees to consider the
lies to be presented by the CIA,
which claimed in their campus ad
to be “looking for a diversity of
people for the important job of
keeping America safe.“
Campus police showed up at the
request of the CIA operative in
attendance who, according to the
officers, requested to “have us
removed.” However, the policemen
checked our campus IDs and then
notified us that we could stay as
long as we did not impede traffic. Five minutes later after
our continued vigilance, we were thrilled when we heard
that the CIA would cancel the session, claiming that since
the student newspaper had shown up and taken pictures
for an article featuring our protest, “security had been
compromised.” We suspect their true motive for cancelling
was their embarrassment over our collective message: “Say
NO To The CIA Recruiting on our Campuses!“
According to the International Red Cross, the CIA frequently
used techniques against prisoners held in secret
overseas detention centers or “black sites” that “constituted
torture” in violation of the Geneva Conventions. Prisoners
received cruel and degrading treatment, including
beatings, sleep deprivation, extreme temperatures, strip
searches, starvation, scare tactics utilizing canines, and
waterboarding. Some detainees then
faced “rendition,” the transferring of
prisoners and outsourcing of torture
to other countries where the CIA
operates, especially those known for
committing human rights violations,
such as Egypt, Jordan, and Syria.
Many of these prisoners become
“ghosts,” detainees whom officials
refuse to give information about the
location or status of to either family
members or lawyers on the grounds
that their incarceration is needed for
long-term interrogation.
Such barbaric deeds are a gross
violation of international and U.S.
constitutional law and are crimes
against humanity on par with the
U.S.-run concentration camps of
Japanese American citizens during
World War II and the “gulags” of
Soviet Russia. Among the prisoners
are possibly hundreds of innocent
people, whose only crime is to be
Arab, Muslim, and a person of color.
Moreover, such tactics by no means keep “America safe”
but rather alienate local populations by its heavy-handed
nature, and provide a window of opportunity for terroristgroup
recruitment.
CIA Director Leon Panetta reiterated the Obama
administration‘s commitment to continue several Bush
administration policies in the so-called war on terror.
Panetta told reporters the US will continue controversial
CIA drone attacks in Pakistan that have killed hundreds of
civilians. He also said that while CIA interrogators will
have to abide by the Army Field Manual, President Obama
can still approve harsher techniques using wartime powers
and that the “CIA retains the authority to detain individuals
on a short-term basis.“
Activists and students should stand up to the CIA
whenever they attempt to recruit on college campuses or
in your community. With even a small number, you can
shut down their recruitment meetings and score an important
victory for peace and justice. As Campus Antiwar Network
member Eric Heim explained, “I was pretty shocked
when I found out that we managed to cancel the meeting.
To finally have a visible victory was a huge morale boost.
The CIA needs to be opposed when and wherever it
appears because it is nothing but an agent of empire that
destroys democracy and helps establish US hegemony
across the globe through force and brutality.“
ISO Resources:
• socialismconference.org
• internationalsocialist.org
• haymarketbooks.org
• socialistworker.org
• isreview.org
• ISO Champaign Meetings, Mondays, Greg
319@UIUC, 6PM. All are welcome
• Socialist Worker & Haymarket Books Tabling, Tuesdays,
Main Quad@UIUC, 2-4PM. (during inclement
weather, we will be inside the Student Union)
• Socialist Happy Hour! An evening of informal political
discussion, Fridays at 8:00PM: All are welcome,
Blind Pig (120 N. Walnut St.)

A PRESS CONFERENCE WAS HELD at the Independent
Media Center with the family of
Oluwatofunmi Kaiyewu, a 23 year-old
medical student who was killed by
police on April 6, 2009. This bizarre
series of events began in the former “sundown
town” of Villa Grove, 15 minutes
southeast of Urbana, led to a car chase, and ended on
Interstate 74 with five bullets fired by officers from three
departments University of Illinois Police, Champaign
County Sheriff‘s Department, and Vermilion County Sheriff‘
s Department.
The Kaiyewu family his mother Abby, father Victor,
and brothers Frank and Tobi drove from Texas on April
22 to hold a press conference and visit the site where
their son was gunned down. They were joined by Jan
Susler of the People‘s Law Office, a graduate of the University
of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, and known for
her defence of Puerto Rican political prisoners. They had
heard little from police about what happened and wanted
answers.
The incident occurred in Villa Grove, a small town
where blacks are rarely ever seen. As James Loewen documents
in his book Sundown Towns, Villa Grove was one of
hundreds of towns throughout Illinois where blacks were
not to be caught on the streets after sundown. In fact, the
‘get out of town’ siren that was sounded at the end of every
day is still on top of the tower in the center of town.
According to an initial press release, on Monday night,
April 6, a local police officer in Villa Grove saw a “suspicious”
vehicle a Toyota Camry given to Kaiyewu by his
parents with Texas plates at a convenience store along
Route 130. The officer witnessed a traffic violation and he
proceeded to stop the car.
Police say the driver got out of his car, refused to follow
orders, pushed the officer, got back in his car, and took off.
A chase ensued that involved at least a dozen squad cars
from several local agencies. When police finally blew out
his tires, they say Kaiyewu came at them brandishing a
machete and a handknife.
Police fired Tasers which Champaign County Sheriffs
are allowed to carry but say they failed to subdue Kaiyewu.
When he began swinging the two weapons, police say they
fired their “duty weapons” fatally shooting the suspect.
At the press conference, members of the family said
that Toto was a good Christian who was going to medical
school and planned in the future to do missionary work in
Africa. Although he was born in the United States, his parents
came here in 1980 from Nigeria.
Several others came to the press conference to show
local support for the Kaiyewu family, including individuals
from the Center for African Studies, Ministerial Alliance,
and Champaign-Urbana Citizens for Peace and Justice.
Letters of support have poured in from Toto‘s friends in
Texas and Carbondale, where he was studying at SIU. One
wrote on the website of the Independent Media Center,
“My condolence with Toto‘s family, he was a good friend of
mine in med. school, great guy I‘m gon’ miss him.“
Due to what was called “wild and totally inaccurate
speculation in the media,” police released their own prepared
statement just hours after the family‘s press conference.
Delivering the statement in front of his office, Champaign
County Sheriff Dan Walsh responded to some of the
questions raised by the family, information no one was
previously willing to give them. It took a trip to Urbana
and more than two weeks for them to get that much.
Walsh addressed the question of profiling, but failed to
mention racism. “It is non-sensicle,” he said, “to suggest
that police ‘profiled’ a seven year old Toyota vehicle and its
occupant.” Of course, at issue is not the make of his car. As
the family asked Would this have happened to a white student
driving a Toyota through Villa Grove?
A toxicology report is still pending and the Sheriff says
that when the investigation by the Illinois State Police is
finished, video may be released to the public.

PUBLIC ART EXHIBIT AT NATIVE AMERICAN
HOUSE VANDALIZED AGAIN
APRIL 7, 2009
Three signs that are part of the “Beyond the Chief”
exhibit outside Native American House and American
Indian Studies buildings were vandalized between Monday
evening and Tuesday afternoon.
The damaged signs include the ones naming Meskwaki,
Sac, and Potawatomi. The signs, located on the 1200
block of West Nevada Street on campus, are bent and permanently
damaged.
“I find it distressing that this art exhibit which is meant
to educate everyone on campus about the indigenous history
of Illinois has been repeatedly targeted in this destructive
way,” said Robert Warrior, director of Native American
House and American Indian Studies.
These signs are just the latest to be vandalized. On or
about March 15, the sign featuring the Peoria tribe was
similarly damaged.
The signs are valued at $10,000 each. To date, no
arrests or citations have been issued in connection with
the damage.
The signs are part of an exhibit by Hock E Aye Vi Edgar
Heap of Birds and was designed to “remind the campus
community whose land they occupy,” according to the
Native American House Web site. The signs represent 12
different indigenous peoples with homelands in Illinois.
ARTIST OF VANDALIZED EXHIBIT RETURNS TO
CAMPUS; OPEN FORUM ON BIAS
ANNOUNCED
APRIL 22, 2009
Native American House and American Indian Studies
at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign held an
open meeting called “Vandalism and Bias on Nevada
Street” in response to destruction of pieces from the art
installation titled Beyond the Chief.
Last month, at least three of the 12 outdoor sign plates
displayed at various locations on the 1200 block of West
Nevada Street on campus were vandalized and will have to
be replaced. The damaged signs include the ones naming
Meskwaki, Sac, and Potawatomi.
At the open meeting on Wednesday, April 29, at 4pm at
the Asian American Cultural Center, Edgar Heap of Birds,
the Cheyenne-Arapaho artist who conceived the exhibit,
was among the speakers. Vice Chancellor for Student
Affairs Renee Romano was part of the meeting. This meeting
provided an opportunity for people on campus to discuss
the significance of the recent vandalism and other
crimes directed towards American Indians and other people
of color in an open forum.
In his curator‘s statement about the exhibit, Warrior
said, “As the University values diversity and seeks to create
and support an environment that celebrates the cultural
histories and contributions of all groups and individuals,
Mr. Heap of Birds’ artistic intervention provides a unique
opportunity for the community to gain greater knowledge
about the local and national history of Native Americans.“
The following co-sponsors have participated in the
exhibit and are committed to seeing the damaged Beyond
the Chief signs restored and to raising community awareness
surrounding the issues of vandalism and bias: Bruce
D. Nesbitt African American Cultural Center, La Casa Cultural
Latina, Asian American Cultural Center, Department
of African American Studies, Asian American Studies.

IN THE UNIVERSITY OF ILLINOIS department
where I teach, the golf pencils
used in student evaluations of faculty at
semester‘s end have to be signed out
and dutifully returned to staff. Obsessive
re-collecting of the tiny pencils
always gets a laugh from students, who
know that it symbolizes the absurd hand-to-mouth existence
of a flagship state university. The few dozens of
“lost-pencil” dollars possibly saved cannot possibly
equal the amount of labor spent in bureaucratizing the
process, but within the logic of chronic shortfalls the
policy makes perfect sense.
The false economy of golf pencils gets written in larger
ways at the University of Illinois, especially as a real economic
crisis follows years of systematic underfunding during
the relatively good times. And yet, with all of the panic
going around, the most obvious source of new revenue—
increasing numbers of out-of-state students—seemingly
remains fully off the table.
In 2006, when Chancellor Richard Herman proposed
a modest increase in such students, he did so for very
good educational reasons: more diversity of experiences
and more excellence. When legislators balked, the retreat
of the administration was sad and total, but Herman‘s
initial arguments were not wrong. The educational costs
of running perhaps the most provincial major state university
in the nation are high and, as it turns out, so are
the financial ones.
To say as much is of course not to say that students
individually are narrow. Illinois is a very cosmopolitan
state and some of the University‘s students fully reflect
this. However, to bow to political pressure against admitting
out-of-state students and to fail to break through
towards greater class and race diversity of in-state students
has left the university homogenous in many ways.
Such factors also lead to the campus being more abandoned
on weekends than any peer institution with which
I am familiar.
Indeed in comparison to most of its peer institutions,
the most astonishing fact of life at Illinois is the provincialism—
the extreme and limiting inward-looking logic–of its
undergraduate student enrollment policy. According to
current statistics provided to Princeton Review‘s online college
guide, out-of-state U.S. students make up 7% of Illinois
undergraduates. This proportion is less than a fifth of
Iowa‘s and Purdue‘s undergraduate student bodies. It is
between a quarter and a fifth of Michigan‘s, Indiana‘s,
Penn State‘s, and Minnesota‘s. No matter how cosmopolitan,
or not, the image of the state and school involved, all
far outdistance Illinois.
Since some states cooperate to grant each other‘s residents
reciprocal in-state tuition, and since in- and out-ofstate
tuition vary from place to place, calculating the dollars
sacrificed to provincialism is complex. But a comparison
with University of Michigan gives us some sense of
the hit taken by the University of Illinois in order to
defend a status quo it has at times rightly regarded as educationally
undesirable.
Again from Princeton Review figures, Michigan has
about 9000 out-of-state students among its 26,000
undergraduates. Illinois has just under 2200 out-of-state
undergraduates from a total of 31,000. Since the gap
between in- and out-of-state tuition at Michigan is about
$20,000 per student per year, the out-of-state students
potentially add about $180 million to revenues. At Illinois,
the tuition difference is about $14,000 per year
between in- and out-of-state students. Thus those U.S.
students currently coming from beyond Illinois add
potentially a paltry $31 million.
Although complications abound—some out-of-state
students get financial aid for example—the huge gap in
out-of-state revenues goes a long way to explaining the
mystery of why, in a devastated state, University of Michigan
has been able to maintain a consistently higher ranking
than Illinois. It benefits from the cosmopolitanism
those out-of-state students bring and from their dollars.
Put positively, if Illinois were to double its proportion
of out-of-state students, it would add a further $31 million
annually to its budget. If it reached something like the proportions
at peer institutions mentioned above, it would
add about $125 million per year. It would take lots of hiring
freezes and Global Campus dreaming to reach anything
like such amounts.
It pains me, as someone believing in education as a
right and therefore against tuition altogether, to write
this piece. It goes without saying that revenue thus produced
ought to be used in significant measure to make
the university affordable to poor and working class students
and to stop the patterns that have led to a doubling
of in-state tuition over the past decade. A $30 million
increase in revenue, for example, could immediately
be used to renew hiring. It could recreate spaces for
nearly the numbers of in-state student slot lost in the
increasing of out-state students, while maintaining existing
faculty-student ratios. Such slots, and increased revenue,
should be used to diversify the faculty and the instate
student body.
However, if we continue to bow to the fiction that
provincial admission policies somehow make the campus
more accessible to “Illinoisians,” rather than to a very
selective slice of Illinoisians, we will not get to begin
these debates. Moreover, we will be trapped in talk of crisis,
of inevitable scarcity, and of vague talk about bold,
creative solutions while too little creativity and boldness
are on offer.

ON SATURDAY MARCH 21st,
an estimated 5,000 people
marched on the Pentagon
in Washington D.C. to
protest American imperialism
in the Middle East.
“From Iraq to Afghanistan
to Palestine, Occupation is
a Crime” was the slogan of the march, as it took up all three current targets of U.S.
direct and supported aggression. The demonstration was smaller than many previous
national antiwar rallies, reflecting the work that needs to be done to rebuild the antiwar
movement.
The date signified the six year anniversary of the war in Iraq, which was largely
ignored by the media due to the misconception that the war is over. The Obama administration
has made it clear that there will be a large residual force in Iraq, even after all of
the combat troops withdraw. Furthermore, many troops being pulled out of Iraq are
being shifted to Afghanistan. For a candidate who won much of his support on an antiwar
platform, this is not an antiwar presidency. And finally, the march took up the occupation
of Palestine, with the United States still funding 2.5 billion dollars a year in support
of Israel’s blatant human rights violations and war crimes.
Seventeen students from the University of Illinois traveled to D.C., including members
of the Campus Antiwar Network, Iraq Veterans Against the War (IVAW), and the International
Socialist Organization, to participate in the first national march against the Obama
administration. From the Pentagon to the corporate offices of Boeing, KBR and Lockheed
Martin, we marched to exercise our democratic rights and let the establishment know
that we refuse to support their imperial wars.
Various chants were significant for different groups. For IVAW, “You got bailed out, we
got sold out!” was especially powerful for people who fought in Iraq and became disillusioned
with the destruction and violence that took place.
Local activist Pete Rhomberg of the Campus Antiwar Network (CAN) addressed the
crowd and described Obama as a “president of first steps,” who closed Guantánamo, but
kept open the Bagram detention center in Afghanistan, and who is withdrawing some
troops from Iraq, but sending them to Afghanistan. Rhomberg argued that “it’s up to us”
to make sure these are just the first steps and not the last.
The A.N.S.W.E.R. coalition (Act Now to Stop War and End Racism) made fake coffins
draped with flags representing civilians and service members who died in these conflicts
and placed them in front of the buildings of corporations that have profited off of these
wars. With more than a million Iraqis and thousands of American troops dead since the
invasion, people cannot forget the human costs of the war.
While many view the war in Afghanistan as the “good war,” it is important to grasp
the failure of the stated U.S. military goals. The unfortunate pattern is that increased US
military activity has led to increased violence overall and to increased numbers of civilian
casualties. The Taliban is stronger today than it ever was, and since 9/11 terrorism
has increased.
The US strategy of bombing civilian areas where suspected “insurgents” are located,
has killed mostly women and children (who comprised 72 percent of the victims in the
first eight months of 2008) and is a clear violation of national and international law (Articles
48 and 50 of the Fourth Geneva Convention). Moreover, it ultimately fuels more violence
by strengthening support for insurgents among the Afghan population. 2008 was
also the deadliest year to date for US and NATO troops, with 294 killed.
Antiwar activism must be reenergized in every city and on every campus before it can
take on the enormous national character that movements in the past have taken.
The energy and enthusiasm from the crowd showed the potential for rebuilding a
much stronger movement – one that connects all three occupations and demands an end
to war, no matter who sits in the White House.

URBANA—2007 UNIVERSITY OF ILLINOIS
graduate in art education, visual artist
Roberta Bennett exhibits recent works on
paper at a new art venue in town, the
Urbana-Champaign Independent Media
Center. The IMC is located over at what
used to be the old downtown Urbana Post
Office next to Lincoln Square Mall. The
prolific 22 year-old Bennett has provided a
Boneyard Arts Festival/Artists Against
AIDS/Ebert Fest/Everybody’s Senior Show
Prequel being the first flower to bloom this
spring with a constellation of cluttered,
heart wrenching “poems” and odd collections
in a classic art school space. Folks at
the IMC have been sprucing up the large
space in recent weeks and the place is
beginning to look not-half-bad. Inheriting
a 1914 historic building, and the utility
bills that go with it, the IMC has managed
to flourish when neighboring stalwarts, the
Lincoln Hotel (Jumer’s) and the granddaddy
of taverns, The Embassy, are closing
shop in these “hard economic times”. The
IMC may be trafficking in the most important
commodity there is left: free expression.
It’s hard to imagine the first amendment
won’t be needed in the tough nearfuture
and the IMC is poised to meet a
growing need.
Certainly, the IMC’s glossy black floor is
an appropriate lake for Bennett’s dark, latenight-
kitchen-table musings to float over.
Bennett takes us through an automated,
psychedelic trip through a broken-hearted,
cynical mind. All the works average about
the size of a sheet of notebook paper, and all
are done in a haphazard, deceptively childish
craftsmanship. Like pages from a drunken
sketchbook, Bennett allows us to see
what she is thinking, and the subject matter
seems to be rooted in getting screwed.
Bennett grew up “Girl” in the post-femminist
late-20th century, and her sly wit
can’t help but notice that everybody is out
to screw her. If it’s not the corporations
ruining the environment so she can eat a
piece of meat, it’s an education system that
forces clichés on controlled minds. If it’s
not an industrial culture pumping out millions
of images per second making individual
artists almost unnecessary, it’s a lover
abandoning her just when she falls in love.
Bennett tries to make sense of it all after the
bars close. Using lipstick to draw with,
Bennett does not hold back and lets rip her
displeasure and pain over the untenable
contradictions and mythologies she is
forced to wrestle with.
The poverty of finances and thought
surrounding her, Bennett quickly throws
marks, pastes collages, and scrawls writings
onto the first piece of paper she finds.
While Bennett is a sensitive colorist and
possesses a delightfully lyrical drawing
touch, she will throw a tantrum when the
issue calls for it. Many of the works are
uncomfortable to look at, since Bennett
doesn’t mind cussing or using a lover’s
used condom to express the lonely outrage
of the cheated upon. Her craft is often a
wanton disregard for any sound rules of
engagement, and there is a constant theme
of rejection running through the pieces as
Bennett breaks one art-making rule after
another.
In a culture of waste, she steals images
and then defaces them to contextualize her
experience. Amid the debris of the rants,
Bennett puts forth a strong talent deserving
of larger work and durable materials. But
you’ll have to excuse her for now, there’s
more bad news coming in over the cellphone.
Titles and prices are available and
gallery hours are 10:00 a.m.- 5:00 p.m.
Mon- Sat.

THROUGHOUT THE EARLY YEARS of the
Depression, with private charity overwhelmed
and the government continuing
to follow a laissez faire course, the
millions of unemployed were forced to
rely on their own resources and selfactivity.
Little government welfare existed
before the summer of 1933 and the major public works
programs we associate with the New Deal only began to
take hold in the mid-thirties. In this situation, workers
without work found ways to sustain themselves through
collective efforts. Coal miners in the anthracite region,
thrown out of work and faced with a cold winter without
heat, set up“bootleg mining operations,” providing energy
for their families and friends and marketing the pilfered
coal on a small scale in Philadelphia and other cities.
Skilled workers bartered skills, with a carpenter doing
repairs in exchange for a haircut, or an electrician turning
the power back on in exchange for some garden vegetables.
Young people in particular
road the rails in their millions
in order to take the burden
off their families and to
find some companionship and
adventure on the road.
By far the most impressive
efforts were the unemployed
movements that burgeoned in
the early thirties. The earliest
and largest movement was
organized by the Communist
Party. The Communist International
declared March 6,
1930 Unemployed Day, calling
for huge demonstrations
throughout the world. On that
day millions marched in Paris,
London, and Berlin, but also in New York, Chicago, and in
smaller industrial communities throughout the United
States. In the wake of the demonstrations the Party established
the Unemployment Councils of the USA to provide a
structure and leadership for movements that were popping
up spontaneously in the neighborhoods of American cities.
The Unemployed Councils organized major marches
on state capitals and on DC to demand unemployment
insurance (a major factor in the eventual passage of the
1935 Social Security Act) and greater spending on welfare.
They also organized large demonstrations around the
country. Their most important achievements, however,
were likely much more modest actions in working-class
neighborhoods where they protested welfare cuts and
evictions, sometimes simply moving the displaced families
back into their homes. The neighborhood structure of the
councils made it easier for them to mobilize quickly and
some of the most effective councils were in the immigrant
and Black neighborhoods of Chicago where the movement
was so successful that Mayor Cermak was forced to declare
a moratorium on evictions in 1931. While the radicals
within the movement did raise broader political issues, the
main focus was on the everyday problems facing the
unemployed. The councils met regularly and were led by
unemployed people within the various neighborhoods.
Despite the importance of the Communist movement,
similar organizations derived from a variety of other political
organizations, religious communities, and spontaneous
groupings of all kinds. Priests, rabbis, and ministers
took part, as did small businessmen, housewives, and others
who saw the effects of unemployment within their
communities. In 1936 many of these groups came together
in the Workers’ Alliance, a broad front organization led
by an alliance of socialists and communists which protested
cuts in welfare and public works, lobbied on behalf of
the unemployed, and represented employees on WPA and
other public works projects. While there is no doubt that
the New Deal programs alleviated
much of the sufferings of
the unemployed and also provided
an environment in
which employed workers
were able to build powerful
unions, the continuing existence
of the unemployed
movement provided a basis
for protest and lobbying as a
more conservative Congress
cut social spending and rolled
back New Deal programs in
the late thirties. The election
of a relatively more progressive
government in late 1932
only increased the need for
independent organization on
the part of working people. Without the organized unemployed
movement and the powerful industrial unions created
in mid-thirties, the meager welfare state measures of
the depression might have been quickly dismantled in a
conservative reaction. Instead, these movements mobilized
their members in the streets and voting booths and
New Deal measures were preserved and modestly expanded
during and after World War Two, creating a safety net
for the unemployed and a modest redistribution of the
nation’s resources toward its working-class families. There
are many lessons for us in the history of the unemployed
movement but given our current situation, this notion of a
movement that can both press a responsive government
for greater attention to the unemployed and also protect
legislative and budget change when it finally comes, this
might be the most important lesson.

THREE YEARS AGO I DECIDED
to stop yelling at my
radio and do something
about it. Every day I’d
hear NPR’s Morning Edition
and All Things Considered
tell me that the US
was bringing democracy to Iraq, that Hugo
Chavez was a paranoid dictator in
Venezuela, and that the Bush administration
was working for peace in the Middle
East. There are great web sites such as FAIR
and Media Matters that keep tabs on the
rightward drift of the media in general.
There is News Hounds which regularly critiques
Fox News under their wry slogan
“We Listen So You Don’t Have To.” So I figured
there had to be a web site devoted to
keeping an eye on NPR and its slide toward
the right. As it turned out there was no
such website, so I started one: a blog I
named NPR Check.
Okay, I can hear some of you saying,
“NPR – slide to the right! Give me a break.
They may not be perfect, but they’re better
than any of the other general news outlets.
And if anything don’t they tilt a bit liberal?”
If you believe that NPR is a substantive
news source or that they slant liberal, I
challenge you to listen carefully to NPR
news for a week and then consider: How
often are their guests or sources active or
retired Pentagon, State Department, CIA,
or military spokespeople? How often are
guests affiliated with a government-sponsored
or right-wing think tank like the
American Enterprise Institute? Then ask
yourself how often a guest dissents from
supporting overall US military or economic
policy, or how often someone is from a
progressive think tank. Actually, you can
listen to NPR news for years and never hear
a peace activist, a critic of predatory globalization,
or anti-imperial intellectuals such
as Chalmers Johnson, Naomi Klein, or
Noam Chomsky.
To be honest, it’s been a difficult three
years. I’ve thought many times of giving
up the blog; it’s a lot of work. When I dispute
NPR reports, I try to create short,
engaging and sometimes humorous posts
embedded with links that document the
inaccuracies of the original stories; it’s a
time consuming challenge. However, one
aspect of blogging has been a lot of fun –
creating graphics to accompany many of
my posts. Photoshop and images from
the Internet have allowed me to offer
visual commentary and poke fun at NPR’s
pretensions. Another joy of the blog has
been the interaction with readers. A lively
little community of regular readers has
developed, and they frequently post comments
and insights. Additionally, by
checking referrals to my blog, I find that
staffers at NPR’s Washington DC office
read my blog regularly—oh to be a fly on
that office wall.
Where from here? If it were a perfect
world, I’d love to see NPR news completely
overhauled so that all their news would fulfill
the basic function of journalism in a
democracy—challenging power and holding
it accountable. In the meantime I hope
that my blog will encourage more and more
people to listen to NPR news with a sharper
critical ear, and to contact NPR with complaints.
I also encourage people who are
members of NPR stations such as our local
WILL to request that their donations not be
used to fund the NPR News shows—they’re
a huge drain on local resources. Finally, my
hope is that you too will drop by
http://nprcheck.blogspot.com, see what
you think, maybe leave a comment, or
email me if you’d rather

The surgeon hoisted Heart
from the dead donor’s chest;
Heart thought it was being born,
fresh from a C-section.
Still warm and slick with blood,
it flexed its firm ventricles
with a vigorous pump, slipped
from the surgeon’s grip, plopped
on the floor, and skidded
past the rubber-gloved grab
of the surgeon’s assistant.
It thumped open the door and beat
a little two-step down the hall:
da-dum, da-dum, da-dum.
It was a strong little booger,
had been working out for years.
A nurse called out, “Get back here,
we’re not done with you yet.”
The clerk at the front desk yelled,
“What’s your name? Where
should I send the bill?” Heart
ignored them, raced for the wide,
sliding glass doors, for the other side:
the outside where the sun was
shining, people were hurrying,
cars were whizzing by, and dogs
were sniffing around for something
to chase, something bloody good to eat.