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THE JOURNEY MADE by Richard Wright
from son of a Mississippi sharecropper
to internationally-known writer is a classic
American success story. Born September
4, 1908, Wright would have
been 100 this month if he had lived this
long. Describing in vivid detail the
psychological terror waged on
African Americans, Wright’s stories
are still relevant for those working
for social justice and human rights.
Wright was born just outside
Natchez, Mississippi on a former
slave plantation. There was a centenary
celebration for Wright in
Natchez this last February which I
attended. In addition to meeting
Julia Wright, his daughter who travelled
all the way from Paris, France,
I got the chance to take a bus tour to
the old Rucker plantation. Just
across the road from where Wright’s
family members are buried, a new
private prison was being constructed—
today’s modern plantation.
The crow flew so fast
That he left his lonely caw
Behind in the fields.
Although his family moved out of the Mississippi Delta,
memories of the Deep South stayed with Wright for many
years. He used this material to write his first short stories
like “Down by the Riverside,” about the 1927 Mississippi
Flood, which includes scenes strikingly similar to Hurricane
Katrina. Wright told the complete story of his southern
upbringing in his autobiographical Black Boy, a book
which every youth today should read.
Native Son, his most famous novel, is set in Chicago, a
city that Wright knew well. The protagonist, Bigger
Thomas, is a typical black youth struggling to survive on
the streets of Chicago. In a harrowing series of events, he
accidentally kills a white woman, is accused of rape, and is
chased down by a police-led white mob. After a trial, Bigger
is sentenced to death. Ultimately, the novel is an exploration
of black oppression and an early call to end the
death penalty. Wright himself was a prison activist, appealing
to the New Jersey Governor in 1941 for the release of
black inmate Clinton Brewer.
Radicalized by the Great Depresssion, Wright had been
a member of the Communist Party in Chicago and was
nurtured by the John Reed Club, a communist writing
cell. Also a founding member of the South Side Writers’
Group, Wright was part of Chicago’s
Black Renaissance, along with other
important figures like Horace Cayton,
Margaret Walker, Katherine
Dunham, Arna Bontemps, and Fenton
Johnson.
Landmarks of Wright’s era still
exist on Chicago’s South Side. The
George Hall Branch Library, which
just celebrated its 75th birthday, is at
44th and Michigan. Wright did
research there while working on the
Federal Writers’ Project. The South
Side Community Arts Center, founded
in 1940 by Margaret Burroughs, is
just up the street at 3831 South
Michigan. Archives containing this
history are available to scholars, students,
and the public at the Vivian
Harsh Collection (named after the
head librarian of the original Hall
Branch) at the Carter G. Woodson
Regional Library at 95th and Halsted.
Wright left the United States in 1946 because of the
persistent racial barriers he faced and the repressive political
climate. Moving to France, he said famously that there
was, “more freedom in one square block of Paris than
there is in the entire United States of America!”
Whose town did you leave
O wild and drowning spring rain
And where do you go.
There was also a centenary celebration for Wright this
summer in Paris, where he lived the last years of his life
and is buried. It was attended by William Maxwell, professor
of African American literature at the University of Illinois,
who told me, “The Wright centenary conference in
Paris was both inspiring and sobering. Julia Wright welcomed
an international group of fans, critics, and organizers.
But she also emphasized that the American Embassy,
the elegant site of several conference events, was ironically
a location where Wright feared to tread. There he was regularly
quizzed about his political beliefs when reapplying
for his passport.”
I am nobody
A red sinking Autumn sun
Took my name away
Blacklisted during the McCarthy era, Wright’s books
received little attention in the 1950s. Although he was an
internationally known writer, he was shunned by his
home country. He wrote over one thousand Haiku poems
toward the end of his life that capture the emotional
estrangement he felt.
FB Eye Blues
Woke up this morning
FB eye under my bed
Said I woke up this morning
FB eye under my bed
Told me all I dreamed last night,
Every word I said.
The malaise many of his biographers have attributed to
these later years was partly due to his constantly being followed
in Paris by the FBI and CIA. Indeed, the FBI file on
Wright is 244 pages long. In 1960, Wright died of a sudden
heart attack. He was 52 years old. One of his best
friends, black cartoonist Ollie Harrington, questioned the
circumstances of what he called a “mysterious death.”
In the last years of his life, Wright had travelled to West
Africa as a guest of independence leader Kwame Nkrumah.
He reported on the 1955 Bandung Conference, an historic
meeting of oppressed nations in Indonesia. Although he
had denounced communism in the 1940s, a decade later
he worked to free black Communist Henry Winston whose
health had deteriorated while he was held in a federal
prison. Throughout his life, Wright was a politically-committed
artist who skillfully used his words as weapons.
In the falling snow
A laughing boy holds out his palms
Until they are white.

ELECTORAL LAWS AND SYSTEMS have political consequences.
Some encourage greater citizen participation than others.
Some complicate the voting task while others simplify it.
Some provide greater representation of racial, ethnic, and
gender groups than others. Some encourage greater
accountability of legislators to constituents than others.
Two different electoral systems can produce very different
legislative bodies and thus different policies. Some electoral
systems foster greater decisiveness in policymaking
than others.
Single-member district majority (plurality) voting is the
most familiar electoral system. Also known as “first-pastthe-
post,” SMDV is currently used to elect representatives
to the Illinois House and Senate. All of the candidates
appear on the general election ballot—the list is typically
winnowed to two, one from each major party—and each
voter votes for one of them. The winner is the candidate
who receives the most votes, whether or not that candidate’s
votes are a majority of the total.
SMDV places few demands on voters. Faced with
choosing a state legislator, they vote for one (or none) of
the two candidates, whose names are clearly displayed
on the ballot. SMDV also promotes close ties between
legislator and constituents, since the legislative districts
are relatively small. Critics quickly note, however, that
SMDV wastes all votes cast for the losing candidate(s). It
also discourages voting among constituents whose party
candidate stands no chance of winning, denies representation
to third parties, and encourages gerrymandering,
which in turn reduces political competition. Currently,
more than half of all state House and Senate incumbents
face no competition in either the primary or general
election.
A variation of SMDV is instant run-off voting (IRV).
Just as in plurality voting, all candidates are listed on the
ballot. Instead of voting for only one candidate, voters
rank the candidates in order of their preferences (“1” for
first choice, “2” for second, and so forth). The counting
also differs from SMDV. A computer tabulates the ballots.
First, all the “1” preferences are counted. If a candidate
receives over 50 percent of the first- choice preferences,
he or she is declared the winner. If no candidate receives
a majority of the first-place preferences, the candidate
with the fewest votes is eliminated. The ballots of supporters
of this candidate are then transferred to whichever
of the remaining candidates was marked as the “2”
preference. The vote is then recounted to see if any
remaining candidate now has a majority of the votes.
This process continues until one candidate receives a
majority of the votes.
Advocates of IRV point to two advantages over SMDV.
First, the winning candidate will have the meaningful
support of a majority of the voters, which increases his or
her legitimacy. Second, IRV ensures that an independent
or a third-party candidate will not play spoiler and throw
the election to one of the two major candidates who in
fact was not the electorate’s overall choice. On the other
hand, IRV is administratively complex. Summing the
continuing votes to identify a winning candidate can lead
to perverse outcomes when many voters do not identify
second and third choices. Finally, IRV encourages candidates
whose only purpose is to help another candidate
defeat the presumed winner.
Adoption of IRV has been a source of considerable
debate and controversy in Urbana. The controversy
nicely illustrates the close connection between politics
and choice of electoral system. A group of active
Greens, with the help of some non-Greens, attempted
to put a referendum on the November ballot regarding
changing from SMDV to IRV. The Greens believed,
probably correctly, that third parties would have a
greater chance to win council seats rather than just play
the spoiler role under IRV. The non-Greens who joined
them simply felt that the IRV counting system would do
better than SMDV at identifying the “true” winners in
council elections. When the binding referendum was
blocked, an effort was made to place an advisory referendum
on the ballot. Amid claims that the incumbent
city administration had packed the meeting with its
own people, the advisory referendum was blocked by a
vote of 43-98.
Cumulative voting has become a hot discussion
topic in the United States, especially with respect to
local elections. Illinois used CV to elect Illinois House
members until 1982. During the 1977-78 biennial
legislative session, lawmakers adopted pay raises for a
wide array of state officials, including a 40 percent
increase for themselves. Coming out of nowhere and
at a time when Alfred Kahn, then-president Carter’s
chairman of the Council on Wage and Price Stability,
had established a ceiling of seven percent on salary
increases, the increases incensed voters. Populist and
current Illinois Lieutenant Governor Patrick Quinn
led a drive that put a statewide referendum on the
1980 ballot reducing the size of the legislature and
eliminating CV. Only 44 percent of those going to the
polls voted on this so-called cutback amendment, but
69 percent of them approved it. The amendment went
into effect with the 1982 election cycle. Currently,
Illinois uses SMDV to elect both House and Senate
members.
CV retains the first-past-the-post part of SMDV, but
candidates run in multi-member districts. Voters have as
many votes as there are legislative seats from their districts.
Illinois voters, for example, had three votes
because three candidates were elected from each district.
They could cast all three votes for one candidate, split
their votes for two candidates, or cast one vote for each of
three candidates.
Proponents of CV see it as an especially effective
way to ensure minority party representation. In Illinois,
most districts elected at least one candidate from
each party. Many also believe that CV increases the
chances for racial and ethnic minorities to win representation,
and thus see it as preferable to race- and ethnic-
conscious districting. CV also makes gerrymandering
more difficult. On the other hand, districts are
much larger under CV than under SMDV, making it
more difficult for constituents to develop ties with their
representatives. If one defines electoral competition,
simply, as the existence of more candidates than available
seats in a district, then competition in general
elections was no greater under CV than it has been
under SMDV. However, there was more competition in
primary elections. The large number of candidates running
in a district, especially in primary elections, can
overwhelm citizens’ capacities to make rational choices.
Critics of cumulative voting as it existed in Illinois
argue that party control over candidates was much
tighter than met the eye.
Although most Americans might not know it, most
democratic countries have adopted one or another form of
proportional representation. PR operates on a simple principle:
the number of legislative seats a political party or
group secures should be proportional to the electoral support
it garners among voters. So, if a political party or
group wins 30 percent of the total vote, it should receive
about 30 percent of the seats.
Party-list voting is an especially popular form of PR.
Under PLV systems, legislators are elected in large,
multi-member districts. Each party puts up a list, or
slate, of candidates equal to the number of seats in the
district. Independents can also run, and are listed separately
on the ballot. On the ballot, voters indicate their
preferences for particular parties, and the parties then
receive seats in proportion to their shares of the vote. So,
for example, in a five-member district, if Party X’s candidates
win 40 percent of the vote, the party is allocated
two seats.
PLV itself comes in two basic forms: closed list and
open list. Under a closed-list system, the party fixes the
order in which the candidates are listed and elected, and
voters simply cast a vote for the party as a whole. That is,
winning candidates are elected in the order that parties put
them on the lists. Most European democracies now use the
open list form. This form allows voters to express their
preferences for specific candidates, who often are listed on
the ballot in random order. So, in the same five-member
district, if Party X candidates win 40 percent of the vote,
and Joe and Mary receive the most Party X votes, they are
elected.
PR and PLV tend to be friendlier than other systems to
minority parties and to racial and ethnic groups. They also
waste fewer votes than SMDV. The district elections tend
to be competitive, encouraging turnout. PR and PLV
reduce gerrymandering and appear to encourage greater
discussion of issues. On the other hand, PR and PLV usually
require several legislative parties to build governing
coalitions. These coalitions can be difficult to forge and
often are unstable. Some critics feel that these systems give
minority parties too much power and allow them to make
unjustifiable demands. Open lists often become highly
complicated and thus difficult for voters to understand.
Imagine, by way of conclusion, that Illinois suddenly
replaced SMDV with PLV to elect its state legislators. In
reality, of course, this is not a likely event. Too many political
actors hold vested interests in the current electoral
system. Nevertheless, what changes would most likely
occur over the long-haul?
One can only speculate, of course, but the number of
parties slating candidates for office would almost certainly
increase. Some parties presumably would be to
the left of the current Democratic Party, some to the
right of the current Republican Party. Often, no party
would win a majority of legislative seats, thus requiring
several parties to form governing coalitions. The racial,
ethnic, and gender diversity of the state legislature
would increase. Conceivably, some parties would
become closely associated with one or another social
group. Legislators from any particular party would
rarely deviate from their party’s policy positions.
Arguably most important, the legislature would pass
policies that differ from current policies—it is impossible
to predict precisely what those differences would
be—and the almost-total power that the four leaders of
the state legislature currently hold over its members
would end.
How cities, states, and nations elect their public officials
matters greatly, perhaps more than any other single
institution. Not surprisingly, therefore, rapid societal
changes and the accompanying changes in political stakes
have brought the discussion of electoral change to the fore.
It is a discussion that citizens should take seriously.

Tired of only listening to what the herd thinks is best? Every
3rd Wednesday of the month from 7PM to 10PM your local
Independent Media Center located at 202 S. Broadway Ave.,
Urbana, IL 61801 (the old downtown Post Office) will help
you break from the herd and invites you to bring a specially
burned CD or custom iPod mix (carefully chosen beforehand)
and either something outstanding to drink or something
rather delicious to eat. We will provide the outstanding
audiophile-grade speakers that, when played at high volume,
will shake the walls and rattle the windows and peel
back your skin without getting all distorted and annoying,
loud enough that the sound they produce will easily prevent
all discussion until the given song has ended and everyone
can breathe again and grab another drink and say, Wow,
what the hell was that? (This someone, obviously, also has
very understanding neighbors.)
It is called a listening party. It is a loosely directed but
passionately devised gathering held purely for the love and
discovery of music. New music. Old music. Loud music. It
is about quality. It is about range. It is, perhaps more than
anything else, about surprise. In other words, you do not
bring some common hit song to the listening party, some
standard tune that everyone’s heard a million times by an
artist that makes most people wince. In other words, you
bring something interesting, unexpected. It can be a mainstream
band, but the song should be sonically fascinating,
well recorded, and somehow unique.
The event moves in rounds. Everyone gets to play a single
track in each round. The fun part: You do not announce your
song. You do not let it be known whose tune is coming up
next. You let the music speak for itself. You let the surprise
happen. You get to test your musical knowledge, also how
well you know the other participants (”Dude, I knew that
Nina Simone techno remix was yours”). This is part of the
adventure. After each full round, a short break for more pizza,
drink refills, smoking, chat. Rounds progress. Themes
emerge. Moods shift and ebb and flow. Amazing synchronicities
and juxtapositions occur. You discover songs, new bands,
maybe entire genres you never knew existed. Your tastes
expand, your musical horizons broaden. This is much of the
point. It’s chaos theory with a soundtrack.
The event is free and open to all ages. We ask that you
give a donation when we pass the hat/jar/cup/whatever
around each night. Bring an open mind, bring music, and
if you are bringing children know they may get some exposure.
Drinks and food may or may not be present depending
on if we (that includes you) bring any. Be prepared to
socialize and network with people with a passion for
music, art, culture, and our local community.

May 1st marks International Workers’ Day, an official government holiday in most countries
around the world, with mass demonstrations, rallies and marches held to express
labor solidarity and celebrate workers’ rights. Here in the U.S., May Day is not a government-
sanctioned holiday, even though its commemoration began in this country.
Nevertheless, 50,000 marchers and activists filled the streets of Chicago to commemorate
May Day this year. The march represented a powerful, bringing together people
working on a variety of issues, including workers’ rights, human rights, opposition to the
Iraq war, and most resoundingly immigrants rights.
Immigrant rights activists held both U.S. and Mexican flags, along with banners and
signs demanding reform of the immigration law, to be passed this election year. The
marchers called for equal rights for the 12 million undocumented immigrants who pay
taxes and contribute to the U.S. economy yearly. Speakers at the protest demanded a
stop to the violence of ICE raids and deportations being carried out across the county.
The march, which started at Union Park, ended in downtown Chicago, where a platform
was placed for performers, activists and politicians to address participants. Among
those present were Tom Morrello from Rage Against the Machine, singing to the thousands
congregated there. Activists and workers representatives from the Teamsters Local
743 addressed the rights of the workers to the 8-hour-day, to medical insurance and the
right to form and be part of a union without retaliation from the companies.
Latino politicians supported the demands for legalization and better working conditions
for immigrants and expressed the importance of the Latino vote in upcoming elections.
Chicago’s Mayor Richard M. Daley told the crowd “immigrants are part of the fabric
of the American society…The City of Chicago was built by immigrants, and will continue
to be built by immigrants.” Daley affirmed that Chicago has declared itself a welcome
city for immigrants.
The marchers and activists were spirited in their demands. The incredible success of
the march this year was due to the participation of a wide range of organizations and people
who joined together. Of particular note was the presence of young people, white
activists, representatives of churches from different denominations, African American
groups and activists, activist for sexual rights, union workers, and political officials, who
recognize the need for unity in the struggle for a better world.
This cross-cultural and cross-issue approach is effectively galvanizing a movement,
which extends beyond unity for Latino immigrants or a fight of one racialized group, but
rather a larger struggle, which supports legalization for undocumented immigrants,
workers rights, and social justice for all people in this country.

Upcoming at the Abraham Lincoln
Presidential Library in June is
Something So Horrible: Springfield
Race Riot of 1908. Gathering photographs,
news accounts, oral histories,
artifacts and other materials, the library will present an exhibition exploring Springfield’s
most violent racial confrontation. In the one hundred years since the riot occurred,
the historical record has been clouded, reshaped, denied, or forgotten. The purpose of the
exhibition is to tell the story of the riot clearly so that the public will know what happened
and begin to understand why it happened.
Within hours of a reported rape of a White woman by a Black man, a mob of thousands
took control of Springfield. In the violence that held sway in the city for two days, two
Black men were lynched, four White men were killed, scores of people were injured, and
extensive property was damaged before 4000 state militiamen intervened.
Something So Horrible: Springfield Race Riot of 1908 will illustrate how racism and
political corruption undermined law and order and set the stage for mob rule. The exhibit
will also show how an event of one hundred years ago lives in both the historical record
of the past and the racial divisions that continue to confound us.

I discovered a dignified, ancient, elegant trade, one
where I could own what I do and never have to have a
boss again.
–U. Utah Phillips
Bruce Duncan Phillips, the man who went by U. Utah
Phillips and whom others dubbed “the Golden Voice of the
Great Southwest,” died at age 73. The folk singer, songwriter,
storyteller, and social activist blended music, politics and
history, inspiring the world with labor movement songs for
almost 40 years. He often jokingly said, “It’s nice to know
there are some things in early 21st-century post-industrial
culture that don’t change very fast. I am one of those.”
Phillips was the son of labor organizers and as an anarchist,
he joined the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW).
He worked as an archivist for the State of Utah, but after a
run for the United States Senate in 1968 on the Peace and
Freedom ticket, he lost his state job. So, he decided to try to
make a living as a folksinger. He wrote songs influenced by
Woody Guthrie and Pete Seeger. Coffeehouses, clubs, and
festivals would sustain him for nearly 40 years, as he
learned “how to make a living, not a killing.”
He recorded his first albums for the Philo label and
later recorded for Red House. Although he was always a
pretty forthright folk singer, in the album The Past Didn’t
Go Anywhere (Righteous Babe), Ani DiFranco contemporized
his songs and stories with electronic tracks more
akin to hip-hop. Fellow Workers, with DiFranco, was
nominated for a Grammy Award for best contemporary
folk album of 1999.
In the late 1980s, Phillips settled in Nevada City. He produced
a series, Loafer’s Glory, on public radio, which was
syndicated nationally and compiled the series on his own
label, No Guff. Phillips founded Hospitality House, a nonprofit
group that serves the homeless in collaboration with
churches and the Peace and Justice Center in Nevada City.
Health problems forced him to retire from touring in
2007. He died on May 23 of congestive heart failure. Anne
Feeney said of Utah Phillips, “It somehow seems appropriate
that Utah’s gigantic heart was his weakness. He had a
tremendous love for us all.” The life and songs of U. Utah
Phillips will remain ever present wherever

Common Ground Food Co-op has grown and thrived on these, the seven principles of
the international cooperative movement, for 33 years. Now, about to enter into its 34th
year, Common Ground is relocating for the first time in its history.
Common Ground was founded in the basement of the Illinois Disciples Foundation building
at the corner of Wright and Springfield in Champaign. From the modest beginnings of a
few tables scattered about a room with a few organic foods on offer, the co-op is about to more
than double its current space in a storefront, newly remodeled shop at Lincoln Square Mall.
The store will face Vine Street and will open directly onto a large parking lot area. Common
Ground’s new home is on schedule to open August 15th. Construction started on the
new store as of April and is being headed up by Restorations & Remedies, a local contracting
company owned by co-op member and former co-op board member Tim Gibbs.
The new co-op will be over twice the size of its current shop. Features will include over
48 feet of organic produce cases and shelves, making the co-op’s produce department the
largest exclusively organic and local produce department in Champaign County. A new deli
department is being added after receiving huge demand from current co-op owners and
community members. The deli will feature local ingredients whenever possible and will have
a cold salad bar, hot foods case, three fresh soups every day, a full grab and go case, as well as
fair trade organic coffees. Lincoln Square has generously donated the use of indoor seating
space exclusively for the use of co-op deli diners as well as an outdoor seating area just outside
the co-op’s front door, providing a space not only for dining but to build community.
The groundswell of public support has been amazing throughout the project. Common
Ground’s member-owners personally pledged over $250,000 in direct loans to the
co-op to make the new store a reality, more than any other co-op Common Ground’s size
has ever raised. New members have been pouring in, and investments in and support for
the project has come from numerous public and political figures in Champaign-Urbana.
The expanded store will not only allow Common Ground to bring in more local foods
and support more local farmers. Historically a member-only organization, Common
Ground will be opening its doors to members and non-members alike in August.
In addition to expanding the availability of local and organic foods, Common Ground
will be giving more and more attention to their mission of education at their new location.
The co-op has started an organic demonstration garden in Urbana this summer,
offered gardening workshops, and participated in panels and discussions on local food.
Classes on everything from cooking, to cold frame gardening, to how to build your own
rain barrel are in the works for late 2008.

Fuel prices are high, food prices are high,
and the costs of both continue to rise while
we look on, unable or unwilling to reconcile
a lifetime of relatively cheap food and
fuel with the current prices we’re seeing for
both. We might buy less. We might go
without some things we usually buy. A few
of us may find ourselves relying on external
sources—friends, family, food pantries—to make those food ends meet. Some of us
might start new vegetable gardens, or expand existing ones—a meaningful activity on
many levels—but it’s often framed as a temporary measure, a stopgap, something to do
until things get back to ‘normal.’ But this, the way things are, it’s the new normal.
The mainstream media, attempting to puzzle it all out by looking for easy solutions,
has hopped onto the latest in food “trends”—locally-sourced food. However, instead of
focusing on an array of reasons for buying local—the long-term environmental sustainability
of such food, its likely eventual necessity due to resource depletion, the benefits to
re-establishing the connection between people and their food that seems to have been
lost since the end of World War II, and its positive impact on local economies—the
emphasis appears to be purely on cost to consumers. “Why isn’t buying local cheaper?
Inquiring minds want to know.”
Last season, one local farmer spent over $24,000 in diesel fuel hauling his produce to
Urbana for its farmers’ market. That’s just fuel. Local farmers are paying significantly
more for seed, animal feed if they keep livestock, and other inputs to be able to bring
produce to local farmers’ markets. Most people would agree that our farmers should pay
their labor (and themselves) a living wage for farming these higher-quality, fresher, and
more varied foods, yet do not understand why the carrots or the tomatoes “cost so
much.” When you take government subsidies out of the picture and add an emphasis on
quality and freshness and ready access to everyone—the cost, quite simply, goes up.
Obviously, while the true cost of food to consumers is one issue that needs addressing
(though perhaps not in the way the mainstream media would like to address it), all these
ideas around sourcing food locally require considerable breaking down to provide real
context.
The Illinois Local and Organic Food and Farm Task Force, appointed by Governor
Blagojevich in late 2007 after the passage of the Illinois Food, Farm and Jobs Act, has
been charged with doing just that. On May 28, the Task Force convened a listening session
in downtown Urbana, one of several throughout the state, designed to find out what
local and regional eaters think about their food system – its successes, its failures, its realities,
and its possibilities. The Task Force will present their statewide findings to the General
Assembly this fall.
After remarks by Urbana Mayor Laurel Prussing and a series of brief presentations by
Task Force Chair (and U of I professor/goat farmer) Dr. Wesley Jarrell and Task Force
members Debbie Hillman of the Evanston Food Policy Council and Jim Braun of the Illinois
Farmer-Consumer Coalition, the proceedings were turned over to the audience of
about 50, which included area farmers, young people, advocates for improving
school/institutional food, advocates for better emergency food, advocates for better food
access and education about food issues, and other concerned eaters. The conversation
lasted for over two hours.
Issues residents would like to see further addressed by the Task Force include:
• More involvement in creating a better farm bill;
• More involvement by municipalities and counties, rather than just the state, in the
direction of food policy;
• Developing labeling guidelines for food grown in Illinois and the methods used to
do so;
• More involvement in farm-to-institution initiatives (bringing better food to schools,
prisons, hospitals, and other institutions);
• Incentives for young people to farm (finding young people willing to farm is
becoming increasingly difficult – farmer Diane Moore said, “The hours are killing
our boys. They can’t wait to run away”;
• Incentives for farmers to switch production from commodities to “real” food
(instead of feed corn and soybeans, e.g., what about sweet corn and shell beans,
potatoes, orchards?);
• The proposed National Animal Identification System and how, if passed, it will
injure smaller livestock producers;
• Development of localized food processing, storage, and distribution networks to
ensure a more local food supply in the off-season;
• Development of feasible agritourism initiatives;
• The role resource depletion will play in food production and distribution.
Despite its “farmy” reputation, Illinois imports over 90% of its food from other places.
Most of Illinois’ farmland is used in the production of animal feed, food for processing,
and, increasingly, biofuels, which means that the vast majority of acreage used for farming
in Illinois is not used to grow food that feeds people directly, but is used by agribusiness
to grow commodities for sale on the world market.
Illinois would be unable to feed itself if it had to. In fact, the current nationwide food
production/distribution model ensures that the United States is well on the path to a similar
fate. “We’re going to wake up one morning and be a food-insecure nation,” said Triple
S Farm owner Stan Schutte.
Support your local growers, if you can.
Get involved:
The Task Force meetings are open to any and all who wish to attend. Please go to their
website at http://www.agr.state.il.us/marketing/Mkt_ILOFFTaskForce.html .
Other links of interest:
National Animal Identification System in Illinois: http://nonais.org/?p=891
Urbana’s Market at the Square: http://www.city.urbana.il.us/market
Market at the Square’s blog: http://www.market-at-the-square.blogspot.com
The Greenhorns: http://www.thegreenhourns.wordpress.com
Community Food Security Coalition: http://www.foodsecurity.org

…garden programs serve to further a vision of
what should be in times when society is unclear about
where the future is heading.
—Laura J. Lawson, City Bountiful, A Century of
Community Gardening in America (2005)
As chronicled in City Bountiful, at least since 1890’s,
socially and politically constructed community gardening
has been employed to ameliorate the effects of wars, economic
depressions, and social unrest. As stop-gap measures,
most of these projects disappear when the immediate
crisis seems to be over. Today’s skyrocketing cost of
energy and food makes the idea of growing a portion of
one’s food appealing again, even in the Midwest with its
short planting and harvesting seasons. Another related
impulse for urban gardening seems to be a sense of helplessness
that most of us feel when it comes to big corporations
and governments deciding what we can and should
consume for the profit of a few. Similar to 1970’s and
1980’s waves of turning vacant lots into urban gardens,
community gardeners of today hope that their efforts
would create permanent open spaces to bring neighborhoods
together and give them a sense of empowerment
and well-being. Such pragmatic and idealistic goals coalesce
in a 2-acre plot of land in north Champaign—Randolph
Street Community Garden.
On any fair day, at the corner of Randolph Street and
Beardsley Avenue, there’s a good chance that you will see a
group of youngsters, several senior citizens, and a couple
of families working on small patches of vegetable and
flower gardens. There’s also a good chance that a smiling
Dawn Blackman would welcome you to take a look
around and help her with spreading mulch on a newlyraised
garden bed. A busy Charles Doty would tell you
about hundreds of heirloom seeds which he has been
nursing carefully in his Washington Square apartment.
This peaceful space provides those who live or work in the
neighborhood with the opportunity to share the joys and
toils of gardening together.
The origin of Randolph Street Community Garden
goes back to spring of 2004 when Master Gardeners of
the University of Illinois Extension Service initiated a
community gardening project north of the newly built
Stratton School. The Master Gardeners invited the
neighborhood residents to partake of this initiative and
allocated patches of garden beds to interested individuals.
Dawn Blackman of the Motherlands Culture Club
seized upon this opportunity to connect the children in
her program directly to agriculture. The children experience
the feasibility of growing food in an urban setting,
learn how to grow and harvest a variety of nutritious and
culturally diverse edibles, and try to improvise various
recipes using the available fresh and organic ingredients.
Here, you can see the food and environmental justice
movement in action—no textbook or lecturing required.
In 2006, the original gardeners left their plots unattended
due to draught, and the Master Gardeners’ program
too had to end its initiative. Blackman, however,
continued her gardening and, in time, the Champaign
School District offered to provide the garden with running
water. Charles Doty, an avid gardener without a garden,
drew some of the residents of Washington Square apartments
to the garden. As acknowledged by all, the interaction
between the older gardeners and the youngsters has
been most rewarding to both groups.
This spring, several volunteers from the Association
of Students of Landscape Architecture spent several
hours to prepare the garden for planting. Small monetary
and material donations by community members
and the persistent “treasure” hunting
by organizers yield small but
rewarding improvements to the garden—
one day a wheelbarrow, the
next day a birdbath. Blackman
would like to have a mini-market
once a week to sell the extra produce
and flower bouquets to defray some
of the cost of running the garden.
Several beds have been raised,
already. The organizers plan to build
a storage shed and a ramp for gardeners
in wheelchairs, install more
benches and picnic tables in the
shady areas, and turn the garden
into a pleasing open space for everyone
to enjoy.
As only less than one-half acre of
the two-acre land is currently being
utilized, the garden organizers invite
individuals and families to join in. Indeed, a critical mass
of committed gardeners needs to be reached before this garden becomes an integral and sustainable
part of North Champaign. In my opinion,
the most beneficial way to reach this goal is
to develop a partnership between the garden
and the area schools. Many individuals
are skeptical and point to the failing policy
of No Child Left Behind which has been
hanging over our educational system like a
Damocles sword and leaves no money,
energy, or time to be spent on gardening
and cooking with the harvested produce.
My visits to the garden, however, show
me something else. I see plenty of opportunities
for the students at Stratton and the
youth at alternative programs at Columbia
Center and I become optimistic. We can
demand from our Board of Education and
school administrators that they incorporate
innovative gardening projects into the
curricula of these two educational centers,
and that they put aside the fear of low
cumulative test scores. Existing models
show that such projects make learning
more enjoyable and effective, can bring
together ethnically and culturally diverse
students, and help connect schools and
families. Keep pressing on and, in the
meanwhile, get involved with the work of
Randolph Street Community Garden by
acquiring a patch of garden, volunteering
your time and talents, and donating
money and needed material.
Contact Information:
Dawn Blackman
C/O Champaign Church of the Brethren
1210 N. Neil Street
Champaign, Il 61820
217-398-2787
Motherlands@sbcglobal.net
Charles Doty
217-531-7568
fiftyplusandkids@yahoo.com

Food costs more. Fuel costs more. Metals and other raw
materials cost more as well. But this is no traditional inflation.
Labor doesn’t cost more; wage rates are not rising, at
least not in the US, in the rest of the traditional “developed
countries,” or in many impoverished countries either; and so
there is as yet no wage-price spiral. In a typical inflation,
higher prices lead to higher wages, which in turn lead to
even higher prices; and so on. But up to now, it is just prices
rising and wages staying the same. Wage earners are getting
poorer in many parts of the world. Why is this happening?
Here are some factors commonly mentioned:
1. Increased demand for food, especially in China and
India, where wages and profits are increasing. This
includes increased demand for basic foodstuffs such as
rice, corn, wheat, and soybeans; it also includes increased
demand for meat and dairy, as the new middle class there
develops taste and purchasing power for items higher on
the food chain. Meanwhile, low wage levels there still keep
down wages here, so no increases are expected to keep
pace with higher commodity prices.
2. Increased demand for fuel and nearly all other raw
materials in the same countries. Since these are used as
inputs to agriculture, it means that extra cash now coming
to farmers from harvest yields will partly or entirely be lost
again to higher production costs. How this will balance
out for small peasant operators and for large modern
industrial farms is not yet clear. Already clear, on the other
hand, is increased use of farm products for fuel. Agricultural
ethanol production should push up food prices even
further while restraining fuel prices. Higher food prices
lead to starvation and misery among the world’s two billion
poorest people, who depend on food relatively more
heavily than on fuel; yet the trade-off makes sense to most
people in the United States and other “developed” regions,
who are not so close to starvation, and for whom fuel is a
relatively more important issue. It appears to make sense
to entrepreneurs and policy-makers in China and India as
well, though some of their own people may be among
those currently suffering.
3. Speculators, having foreseen this, and wanting to get
their money out from the collapsing stock market bubble
in 2000 and 2001, and then from the collapsing real estate
bubble of the past two years, putting their money into
commodities and are perhaps now creating a commodity
bubble. In other words, prices are rising more and faster
than they would without speculator participation, and
might eventually come down again part of the way when
speculators sell to take their profits or, in the case of those
jumping in or out too late, their losses.
4. Money is losing value, partly due to efforts of banking
systems and governments to deal with the collapsing
real estate bubble. So speculators do not merely want to
get out of real estate; they want to get out of money. Prevailing
interest rates are now so low that even with the
moderate level of inflation expected, the actual rate of
return on many investments in the so-called “money market”
is expected to be negative. That is another reason now
to invest in real commodities instead.
5. Increased cooperation among members of OPEC, the
Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries, since
1998 giving them more monopoly power in oil and gas.
Around the same time, a wave of consolidations in the private
sector, creating the hyphenated giants such as Exxon-
Mobil and BP-Amoco, has given those corporations more
power too. Unlike OPEC, the private firms seem to have
little direct influence on the price of crude oil, but they
can and do control refining capacity and hence have their
finger on the price of gasoline, diesel and other refined
products.
6. Increasingly tense competition for control of
resources. While for most of us it doesn’t matter if we pay
$130 per barrel to a US or British, Russian, Iranian, Nigerian,
Mexican or Chinese oil extracting company, it does
matter to those people worried about earning that money,
and worried too about the “national security” associated
with control of access to vital resources. They are in struggle
already and prepared to escalate. The costs of that
struggle, including for example the Iraq occupation, are
part of the resource price story.
In brief, market forces currently favor raw commodities,
military and police services, and perhaps innovative
entrepreneurship, at the expense of ordinary labor. Perhaps
too much inequality in ownership of resources leads
to too many people depending solely on labor for their
income; and so there is too much labor on the market, and
too many people badly making nearly useless things.

The County Board passed in January a proposal
for spending $6.81 million dollars on
courthouse and tower renovations. Renovations
have begun on the clock tower, but
community concerns persist.
Area residents, such as Chris Evans, still
insist that “While we are writing checks for
the county clock tower, let’s look into what
is going on inside the building.” Instead,
Evans contends that increased funding
should be going for the Public Defender’s
Office, noting that a lack of public defenders
violates citizens’ constitutional rights to
adequate legal representation and due
process in Champaign County.
Belden Fields comments that “The
Courthouse is not a church—it does not
have to reach up to the heavens,” in
response to the millions that are being
spent for the renovation of the courthouse
building and Clock Tower. Instead, Fields
believes that some of that money should
have been used to set up a contingency
fund for the County nursing home.
Although a variety of worthy proposals
were presented by area residents to the
County Board prior to their decision, it
seems that again property—the Courthouse
and Clock Tower in this instance—
are the priority for community officials,
rather than the needs of disenfranchised
people in this community, who bare the
brunt of government neglect.

Nowhere is the “disconnect” of modern American life
more apparent than in our relationship with water. We all
know that water is necessary for life. We know that water
is a precious resource and that our future requires the
most careful and vigilant stewardship of our water supply.
And yet, walk in the kitchen, turn the faucet, water comes
out. It’s clean and safe: you can drink it! It’s the quintessential
American achievement.
We know that water pollution and water shortages exist;
they exist here in our country, in our state, and in our
county, but somehow this has no sustained impact on our
everyday reality. An occasional boil-order notwithstanding,
our experience encourages complacency. Illinois water-use
laws reflect this myopic view; based on ill-defined “reasonable
use” standards, the law offers little support for water
conservation or long-term protection of our water supply.
Turn the faucet! The water’s there waiting.
Would that it were true and true forever! Luckily,
Champaign-Urbana is currently in a very fortunate situation,
water-wise. Our water comes from the Mahomet
Aquifer and it is an abundant and nearly pristine source.
The aquifer, a 3700 square mile area of porous water-saturated
sand and gravel, held by bedrock on the bottom and
sides and topped by nearly watertight clay-rich glacial till,
spreads from north of Danville on the Illinois-Indiana border
to the southeastern corner of Tazewell County. Formed
by the retreat of Ice Age glaciers, it is currently serving up
drinking water that fell on earth between three and ten
thousand years ago.
An aquifer is a renewable resource. As part of the hydrologic
cycle, some water will return to the aquifer and
“recharge” it. However, we must think in geological time:
rain falling on Champaign County today will travel to the
aquifer at the rate of about one inch per year, completing its
recharge function in approximately three thousand years.
Remember, too, that human development affects this cycle:
converting prairie and forest to cropland and cities tends to
reduce the amount of water that makes it to the aquifer.
BEST OF THE BEST
Ours is prize-winning water. Illinois American Water has
brought home “Best of the best” honors for two years running
from the American Water Works national taste test
competition. Recently, concerns have been raised over naturally
occurring arsenic in the water, but this is a minor
issue, for now, as this level of arsenic is easily dealt with at
the water treatment plant. A deep aquifer like the
Mahomet is not immune to outside contamination, but it
is fairly well protected from it. Pure, pleasant-tasting, and
plentiful – what’s to worry?
The drought of 2005 captured people’s attention. In
January 2006, the governor of Illinois issued an executive
order calling for the development of a comprehensive
statewide water supply planning and management strategy.
The two areas of the state identified as most at risk for
water shortages and conflicts were the Northeastern Illinois
Deep Aquifer and the Mahomet Aquifer. In 2007, in
response to the executive order, a three-year data-gathering
program was begun for our aquifer, with the goal of
producing a regional water supply plan to include scenarios
through 2050.
What puts the Mahomet Aquifer at risk? In the words
of Derek Winstanley, chief of the Illinois State Water Survey:
“Groundwater is a renewable resource, but not an
infinite resource… we are talking about finite limits, for all
purposes and for all times.” Pumping lowers the water
table. Over-pumping is the single greatest threat to the
continued viability of the Mahomet Aquifer.
Furthermore, while the growth potential for aquifer
use as a whole remains quite large, the Champaign-
Urbana area may already be approaching local yield
capacity. In addition, continued growth in withdrawals
from the same part of the aquifer will eventually result in
“dewatering”, a serious situation which could dramatically
compromise the quality of water in the aquifer. ISWS
data gathered so far suggests that we can withdraw an
additional 16 or 17 million gallons per day before we
begin to dewater the aquifer.
WILL WE RUN OUT?
Is this enough? Population growth, climate change, continuing
urbanization, and the needs of agriculture and
manufacturing are among the factors that must be considered
when making water use decisions. Springfield,
Bloomington-Normal, Decatur and Danville currently rely
on surface water sources but are looking at the Mahomet
Aquifer as a possible alternative or back-up supply. Climate
change studies of Illinois suggest only that the future
is uncertain. More frequent or more severe droughts, with
a corresponding need for greater irrigation, are definitely
one possibility.
Water isn’t just necessary for life; it is a major component
in manufacturing. ITT (the telecommunications people)
recently reported that nearly 40% of their business is
now in “fluid technology,” supplying pumps and transport
systems to deliver water, primarily to factory floors. There
are 62,000 gallons in each ton of steel, 39,000 in the manufacture
of the average car, 3000 gallons in every single
semiconductor.
And, as we all have been learning locally, it takes 3 to 8
gallons of water for every gallon of ethanol, which translates
into 1.9 million gallons per day for an ethanol plant
such as the one being developed by The Andersons for
northwest Champaign. The Andersons are not alone.
Ethanol plants are also under development in Royal, Tuscola
and throughout the state.
Whether or not biofuels are the answer to our energy
problems is a question outside the scope of this article.
Regardless, The Andersons plant plans to withdraw 1.9
million gallons per day of pristine aquifer water to use for
evaporative cooling. This would not have an immediate
effect on the quality of water in the Mahomet Aquifer. But
as well-reported by the News-Gazette, it most certainly
would have an effect on the quality of water in the
Kaskaskia River, the ultimate discharge site for the water.
The fates of our rivers and our groundwater are intertwined:
ultimately what affects the one, affects the other.
More important, in a world of “finite limits for all purposes
and for all times” is this the use we want for water
from the Mahomet Aquifer? The price of gasoline right
now gives us a tiny glimpse of what it really means to live
in a world of skyrocketing demand and scarce resources.
But this is water. You can’t opt out of your need for it by
walking to work instead. We already know that we need to
think ecologically – we need to think in terms of interconnections
and we need to think in terms of seventy times
seven generations. We need to think “for all purposes and
for all times.”
But wait! We, the citizens of Central Illinois, don’t get to
decide. If the Illinois EPA grants The Andersons their pollution
permit for wastewater discharge, they may proceed.
This ethanol plant, which could, in fact, be located anywhere,
will bring perhaps 35 jobs to the county and save
transport cost for those local farmers who own their own
semis and want to jump on the ethanol bandwagon. That’s
not much of a return for 1.9 million gallons per day of
“best of the best” water.
At the moment, we do not have a water supply plan for
the future. Under current “reasonable use” standards,
water rights come with property rights, unless challenged
in court. The courts listen to the competing claims of current
users; the future user has no voice. Perhaps it is time
to change their perspective. What the Mahomet Aquifer
may really need is a group of outraged citizens and a good
lawyer.

Stories of those being exonerated are
becoming increasingly common, with
wrongly convicted men and women
being released from prisons in the United
States at a rate of approximately one each
month. Many of these exonerations have
come after the DNA testing has proven an
individual’s innocence. When Patrick Thompson was set
free on May 16, 2008, it was not by any scientific evidence—
indeed, there was no evidence in this case—it was
by sheer people power.
To understand this case, it is important to go back to
2004 and the copwatch videotaping Thompson was doing
with his colleague Martel Miller. That Spring they founded
VEYA (Visionaries Educating Youth and Adults) and sent a
letter to Champaign police notifying them of their plan to
tape routine traffic stops with the intention of exposing
racial profiling and overpolicing of the black community.
Indeed, Thompson and Miller’s video Citizen’s Watch
caught local police in many embarrassing moments.
Among other things was footage of Assistant State’s Attorney
Elizabeth Dobson videotaping Thompson and Miller
while they were videotaping police. Dobson was riding
around with Champaign police collecting evidence to
prosecute the two black activists.
On Monday, August 23, 2004, Miller was indicted on
two counts of felony eavesdropping, an outdated state law
that carried four to 15 years in prison. On August 24,
2004, the very next day, Thompson was charged with sexual
abuse and home invasion. A white woman who lived
next to Thompson alleged that he entered her apartment at
approximately 7 a.m. in the morning and attempted to
rape her.
The same Assistant
State’s Attorney Elizabeth
Dobson who was directly
involved in stopping
Thompson and Miller from
videotaping (and is currently
named in a civil lawsuit),
was the same person who
convinced a grand jury that
Thompson should be
indicted for sexual abuse
and home invasion.
After significant public
outcry, State’s Attorney John
Piland dropped the eavesdropping
charges against
Miller, but not against
Thompson who remained in
jail on an exorbitant
$250,000 bond. Challenger for State’s Attorney’s office,
Julia Rietz, ran her campaign using the eavesdropping case
as an example of Piland’s overcharging. She spoke at the
First Annual Unity March in West Side Park organized by
CU Citizens for Peace and Justice. Her election was won
with the help of Miller and others in the community outraged
over the eavesdropping case.
In November 2004, John Piland was voted out of office
and Dobson went with him. When Rietz stepped in, she
dropped the eavesdropping charges against Thompson,
reduced his bond, and after spending four months in the
Champaign County jail Thompson was released. While
this decision was made by the newly-elected State’s Attorney,
it was the result of people coming together for police
accountability and reform of the criminal justice system.
Claiming she had given Thompson legal advice in the
past, Rietz said she had a conflict
of interest and withdrew
herself, effectively washing her
hands of the Thompson case
and disassociating herself
from the people who had
helped put her into office. The
home invasion and sexual
abuse case was then given to a
Special Prosecutor from
Springfield, Michael Vujovich,
who has a reputation for overzealous
prosecution.
Although Thompson had no
formal legal training, he made
the bold decision to defend
himself in the first trial, which
ended in a hung jury. In the second
trial, Thompson hired local
African American attorney Harvey Welch, who called only
one witness for the defense, and the trial resulted in a guilty
verdict. At this point, attorneys Bob Kirchner and Ruth
Wyman stepped in, filed a post-trial motion, and called several
additional witnesses. In a rare court decision, Judge Harry
Clem reversed the guilty verdict on the basis that Thompson
had received ineffective assistance of counsel from Welch.
THIRD TRIAL
This brings us to the third trial, which began Monday, May
12, 2008. The trial started with the selection of an allwhite
jury. Urbana officer Michael Hediger testified that he
responded to the 911 call the morning of August 24,
2004. He interviewed the accuser and went to the Sunnycrest
Apartments that afternoon
to arrest Thompson.
Hediger admitted he did not
conduct any further investigation
to take fingerprints,
photograph the crime scene,
collect hairs, conduct interviews,
or check the accuser
for scratches and bruises. It
is protocol for police to conduct
a full investigation in a
serious crime such as this
one. Whether Hediger did
not investigate because this
alleged crime occurred in a
poor neighborhood, or
because he was part of a plot
to set up Thompson is
uncertain. As Thomson’s
attorney Ruth Wyman later told me, “We’ll never know,
because who would admit to that?”
The accuser took the stand and again gave her account
of how Thompson, shirtless, entered her apartment,
grabbed, and attacked her. In police reports, she told officer
Hediger that she was yelling and screaming, yet the
state failed to produce any neighbors who heard anything
that morning. When Vujovich began to inquire about her
tone during the alleged incident, she said, “I don’t know
how to explain it.” She then began crying and the jury had
to be escorted out of the courtroom.
After questioning by the state, the accuser was crossexamined
by Bob Kirchner who asked about several inconsistent
statements made in the four times she has testified—
July 2005, July 2006, September 2007, and the currently
in 2008. Before, she said that Thompson had
trapped her in the laundry room. Another time she said
she first saw him at the railing in front of his apartment.
One time she testified that she had her laundry in a basket.
Another time she said she was carrying it in her arms. Was
she yelling or not? When asked about these inconsistencies,
she repeatedly responded, “I don’t remember.”
After all the state’s witnesses appeared, Vujovich rested
his case. Kirchner then motioned for a directed verdict on
the two counts, arguing that the state had not proved its
case on the charges of home invasion or sexual abuse.
It looked like a long shot. But in a miraculous turn of
events, Judge Clem allowed one of Kirchner’s motions and
dismissed the charge of home invasion. Of all things, he
ruled that the state had not proven that Patrick Thompson
was not a police officer! This is one of the elements
required to prove a charge of home invasion and Vujovich
had forgotten to question his witnesses on this point.
Vujovich attempted to argue that he had not closed his
case, but an angry Judge Clem said that he would not
allow that kind of “gamesmanship.”
It was an emotional moment and Thompson broke
down crying. At the recess, he rushed to embrace his longtime
friend Martel Miller in the courtroom. Even though
the sexual abuse charge remained, the weight of the six to
30 year sentence that home invasion carried was lifted off
of Thompson’s shoulders.
The defense presented its witnesses, which included
Patrick and his wife Maria. When asked to state her name
for the record, Maria began crying and the jury had to be
escorted out of the courtroom. After collecting herself,
Maria gave her recollection of the morning of August 24,
2004. She said that from 6:10 a.m. when she woke up, until
7:30 a.m. when her husband left to buy books for his fall
semester at Parkland College, he was always in her sight.
Thompson then took the stand, confidently testifying
to his work with VEYA in 2004 and his memory of events
at the time of the alleged incident. On Sunday, August 22,
he was at the Independent Media Center, then a storefront
on Main Street in downtown Urbana, filming for a video
documentary he was producing. He explained how a
microphone stand fell, injuring his right index finger.
Monday morning, he and Maria went to Osco to buy a finger
splint that he wore to protect it. His accuser never
mentioned in any of her accounts that the assailant was
wearing a finger splint.
Kirchner asked Thompson directly, “Did you know the
accuser and did you ever enter her apartment?” Thompson
stated flatly, “No.”
EVOLVING STORY
In closing arguments, Vujovich said this case depended on
whether or not the jury believed the accuser or not. Seeming
to direct his remarks at Thompson and his supporters, a rotating
pool of dozens who sat through the trial, Vujovich said that
we can blame the police, “But don’t blame the Urbana Police
Department for what happened to [the accuser].”
Kirchner, in closing, highlighted the many inconsistencies
in the accuser’s testimony. His explanation was that
whether because she was late for work or for some other
reason, “the excuse offered that morning took on a life of
its own.” This “evolving story,” he said, was not enough to
convict Thompson.
After the jury deliberated for approximately one hour,
they returned with a verdict of not guilty. Thompson cried
tears of joy, hugged his wife and said, “it’s over… it’s over.”
Throughout this four-year ordeal, Patrick Thompson
has been the galvanizing force for criminal justice reform
in Champaign County. But it has been community mobilization
which narrowly saved Patrick from the clutches of
the prison industrial complex. Thousands of dollars were
raised for his defense, many hours were spent watching
trials, and numerous protests were held at the courthouse.
This is the story of a man exonerated before he served
years in the penitentiary. It was people power that set
Patrick free.
For a full report of the trial and interviews after the verdict
go to ucimc.org.

Upon the recommendation of Assistant State’s
Attorney Rob Scales, Judge John R. Kennedy
agreed to a sentence of 100 hours community
service for Brian Chesley. Chesley was convicted
by an all-white jury of obstructing and
resisting a peace officer. On March 30, 2007,
he was stopped by Champaign in Frederick
Douglass Park after leaving the gymnasium,
attacked by three officers, pepper sprayed,
and sent to the hospital.
At the hearing Friday morning, May 9,
2008, Chesley’s Attorneys Bob Kirchner and
Ruth Wyman submitted a post-trial motion
to overturn the guilty verdict. Among several
errors cited, they questioned the basis of
the stop, claiming that Champaign police
officer Andre Davis was not authorized to
stop Chesley, and that doing so was “selective
enforcement of the law.”
Prosecutor Scales said that Davis did
have a “reasonable and articulable suspicion”
to stop Chesley because the park was
closed at dusk. He said that by Defense
Attorney Wyman’s explanation, officers
could not stop anybody. He gave the example
that if police saw someone breaking a
car window, they could not question that
individual whether the car was theirs or not.
Scales also said there was no evidence
that Chesley was stopped solely because he
was African American. If the judge ruled that
it was, it would mean officers could never
stop individuals in African American neighborhoods
because it could be a result of race.
Of course, Chesley was not breaking
any car windows that night, but simply
walking his eight year-old friend home
after playing basketball. Most likely, he
would not have faced this situation if he
was a white youth walking in a white
neighborhood.
Judge Kennedy, who throughout the
trial proceedings had shot down almost all
of the defense’s challenges, denied the
post-trial motion.
During sentencing, Brian Chesley’s
mother testified to her son’s good character,
and Chesley himself gave a statement.
He was given 100 hours community service,
which has to be completed in ten
months, and has to pay court fines.
Attorney Kirchner says he plans to
appeal the case.
For a full account of the trial see “Three
Cops Versus An Entire Community” at:
http://www.ucimc.org/node/2743