Public i Contact

Carol Ammons says the Champaign County
Clerk’s office has rejected
hundreds of voter registrations
collected during a
drive by her group, C-U
Citizens for Peace and Justice,
and the reasons for
rejection seem hard to swallow. One local
man allegedly mailed in his registration form
with a note requesting a form for his “wife,”
but his form was returned because he had
failed to check “male” or “female.”
A large number of new registrants, some
with Ammons group and some not, also
reported that the Clerk’s office was rejecting
an “old form” that is supposedly no longer
valid. Ammons says she had personally
picked up about 30 of these blank forms
from the driver’s license bureau. “I specifically
asked the man there if he was sure
these were the right forms,” she said. “And
he said, yes, these are the forms we’ve been
using. But after we turned them in, they were
all rejected.”
Area librarians also report similar problems.
Local citizens who inquired about
voter registration forms at local libraries
reported that the forms available at local
libraries were the same forms that the
Clerk’s office told them were no longer
valid. But when librarians called to doublecheck,
the Clerk’s office said they had the
right forms.
Organizers of a recent “Rock the Vote”
musical event say the Clerk’s office also told
them they could not make voter registration
forms available because of the proximity of
alcohol. Although official rules forbid a registrar
from signing up voters where alcohol
is served, there is no such restriction on socalled
Motor Voter forms like those available
at driver’s license bureaus and libraries.
“The county clerk’s efforts to suppress
voting have been vigorous and persistent,”
said Urbana City Councilwoman Esther Patt.
“In 2000, two of my co-workers turned in
change of address of registration the first
week in September. The guy who lived in
Savoy got a new voter registration card three
days later. The woman who lived on Fifth &
Green didn’t get her new card until the day
before the election.”
“This year, [County Clerk Mark Shelden]
showed up at Quad Day around 11:00 a.m.
after more than 300 students had registered
to vote and decreed that the forms they used
were no good under a November 2003 law,”
Patt said. “He had been accepting those
forms for months, right up through August of
this year until his decision on Quad Day to
deem them invalid. All those people had to
re-register. On Election Day in 2000, polling
places in Mahomet had extra booths and in
the polling places on campus, people had to
wait in lines because there weren’t enough
booths. One polling place … ran out of ballots.
How does this happen?”
A call to the County Clerk’s office was
not immediately returned, but other community
activists, notably in the Green Party, say
they have had no problems with the County
Clerk. In fact, compared to other county
clerks in Illinois, they say, Mark Shelden’s
administration has been very conscientious.
Yet the question remains: if so many people
are having trouble registering and voting in
one small town, no matter who is specifically
to blame, isn’t there a problem? And it
isn’t just here.
In the US over the last four years, a quote
attributed to former Soviet dictator Josef
Stalin has become popular: “The people who
cast the votes decide nothing. The people
who count the votes decide everything.” Historians
and urban legend busters are pretty
much agreed that the quote is fake. But it
continues to appear on tee-shirts, bumper
stickers and elsewhere. It seems to resonate
with large number of people these days,
many of whom probably had never lent an
eyeball to stories of problems with voting
machines, long lines at the polls or inaccessibility
of voter registration forms – before
November 2000, that is.
But as we go to print, the specter of the
“Stolen Election” of 2000 hangs over the
current election cycle as if it happened yesterday.
And judging by how much has been
done to correct the problems that made Florida
a symbol of electoral debacle, you might
think it did happen yesterday.
Just weeks before
the elections, former
President Jimmy
Carter was in Florida
observing the elections
and wrote in the Washington
Post that “The
disturbing fact is that a
repetition of the problems
of 2000 now
seems likely, ”
(9/27/04). Carter says
the basic conditions for
a fair election do not at
present exist in Florida,
citing “basic international requirements
for a fair election” such as a nonpartisan
electoral commission or official organizing
and conducting the electoral process and uniformity
of voting procedures for all citizens
as “missing in Florida,” (AP 9 / 2 7 / 0 4 ) .
In fact, problems cropped up in Florida
within one hour after early voting began
there (AP 10/18/04). A sitting state legislator
claimed she was given an incomplete ballot.
Computers were not in working order in
Broward and Orange Counties. And more
problems seem likely to surface at the time
of this writing.
Nor have problems been limited to the
state where the President’s brother is Governor.
Carter could have cited similar problems
in a number of states. Aprivate contractor in
Colorado has failed to send out over 13,000
absentee ballots, according to the A P
(10/21/04). A group of international
observers from 15 countries said Georgia’s
electronic voting machines should produce
paper receipts and that poll workers needed
more training.
And BBC investigative journalist Greg
Palast has written extensively and disturbingly
on voter disenfranchisement during
the 2000 election and since. Palast broke
stories such as the debacle in Gadsden, Florida’s
“blackest” county, where optical scanning
machines rejected over 2,000 ballots
with even the tiniest stray marks, while in
neighboring “white” Tallahassee the same
machines returned the same “spoiled” ballots
to voters so they could try again. Gadsden
County alone more than accounted for
Gore’s loss of the state.
Among Palast’s recent revelations is the
story that DBT Online, now ChoicePoint, the
Republican-connected company infamously
responsible for the deletion of 94,000 Floridians
from voting registers in order to prevent
3,000 ex-felons from voting, has since
received contracts in states all across the
country to supply and operate new computerized
voting machines. These machines do
not automatically produce any paper records,
and local officials nationwide have demonstrated
reluctance to order such paper trails.
Moreover, with the proper access codes,
election results can be altered without leaving
any trace of evidence that it has been
done or of what the actual results had been.
“There is so much fraud by election officials
in these United States,” says researcher
Frances Fox Piven “And we always treat it –
political scientists, pundits and the public –
we always treat it as marginal. It certainly
w a s n ’t marginal in
2000. And I don’t think
it’s going to be marginal
in 2004, either. ”
R a t h e r, “rampant” is
the word she uses.
“But there are multiple
kinds of fraud,” says
Piven, “fraud through
tampering with
machines; fraud
through turning people
away for not having
filled out one or another
inconsequential,
nonsensical things; fraud when people come
to the wrong polling place or the failure to
give them a provisional ballot or to count
provisional ballots; the failure to count the
ballots of some mail-in voters and not other
mail-in voters. Military voters will get
counted. Overseas Americans who vote by
absentee ballot will find it more difficult to
get their votes counted, because they will be
Kerry supporters.”
In 1988 Piven and Richard A. Cloward
published their findings on the barriers to
voting in the US as Why Americans Don’t
Vote, which profoundly shocked many
Americans who had assumed such things
went out with Jim Crow, and later revised
and updated the research for Why Americans
Still Don’t Vote. Piven and Cloward were
largely responsible for the campaign that
eventually led to the Motor Voter law, making
voter registration forms more widely
available.
But Piven says the law was never fully
implemented. And there were “a lot of foulups,”
such as people not receiving a card
telling them where to vote.
“But another problem is that the law was
never really implemented in the other agencies,”
Piven says, “the agencies that serve
poorer people, that are specified in the law:
welfare, Medicaid, food stamps and disability
agencies – and in some states in other
agencies as well. In New York State, for
example, the big universities, SUNY and
CUNY, are supposed to offer to register students
to vote when they register for classes.
And they don’t do it. So the law was a step in
the right direction, but the implementation of
the law impeded its full effect. That’s part of
what happened.”
The other part of the story, according to
Piven and Cloward’s Why Americans Don’t
Vote, is that the barriers to full participation
in the United States are not solely procedural.
Full participation, Piven says, also
depends on parties that would mobilize those
who were procedurally eligible to vote.
“That couldn’t happen unless people were in
the voting pool. But if politicians ignore
them, ignore their issues, don’t work in their
neighborhoods, don’t speak in their language,
then they will be discouraged.”
“Now in this election, it’s really interesting.
There does seem to be a lot of interest
among the non-voters in turning out. There is
a surge among minority neighborhoods, in
poorer neighborhoods and among young people.
T h a t ’s very, very important. Of course it
could end up that we’ll get a surge of several
percentage points, Kerry will be elected, and
if he disappoints these people by his policies,
then the surge will recede and we’ll go back
to our fifty percent turnout rate.”
So Piven does make procedural suggestions:
full implementation of the Motor Voter law;
proportional representation in the Electoral
College (some states allow splitting their
assigned votes, but most don’t); voter-verified
paper trails with all computerized voting;
and other things. But for the most part,
she advocates mobilizing the electorate
around issues they care about, in effect making
it impossible to ignore them.
Yes, she says, we must be vigilant and
stamp out the kind of fraud that Greg Palast,
Carol Ammons, Esther Patt and others
report. Eligible voters must know that their
votes will be counted, but more than this
they must know that their participation will
count. The way we do this, Piven says, is
first we vote, then we “raise hell.”

In the pouring rain Saturday, October 23, spirited members of our community
marched for unity and weathered the storm. They met at two locations –
Douglass Park on the North side and Scott Park on the South side – to walk to the
police station in Champaign, where the two groups converged and marched on to
West Side Park for a rally. The 2004 Unity March represented a wide cross-section
of the community. The following comments reflect their shared desire for unity.

Catherine Hogue, Champaign County Board District 5:

I like to see this coming together of
our entire community—children, adults,
some of us older, some of us younger—
and we can get some of these things
accomplished, because we can make
changes by doing this. I’d like to see us
not so re-active. I’d like to see us be
more pro-active.

Jim Barrett:

There’s some specific issues like the
eavesdropping case and the pursuit of a
civilian review board for the police in
Champaign. I think the main thing is to
bring the different communities of the
town together around issues of social
justice. Because of the color- l i n e —
which is definitely there, the city is segregated—
you have to make a special
effort to bring the community together.
Its my police department, this is my
town. I support the police in general, but
I like to see them treating all citizens
fairly.

Anand Pillay:

I’m here to support the demonstration
in favor of a citizen review board, dropping
these eavesdropping charges, in
favor of a greater racial unity in the
Champaign-Urbana area, for all these
progressive issues, that’s why I’m here.
Racism concerns everybody. If there’s
police discrimination, it should concern
everybody. Therefore, you should be
concerned with fairness, with justice.

Peter Rohloff:

I’ve been in Champaign for six years
and I’ve never seen the North and the
South sides come together. Its just
amazing to see broad-based community
things happening and I’m excited to be a
part of it. One of the problems with
white liberal movements is that they
oftentimes don’t recognize the real
needs and concerns of minorities. I’m
here because minorities have problems,
they need to set the agenda, and then we
need to follow what they tell us.

David Kelly:

It started out to be a good deed for my
grandchildren, which are ten. I’ve
always been a person that believes in
unity and the United States and all that it
represents. This is the only way you’re
going to have unity. Everybody is on
one accord, striving to have the same
thing.
Being a born-again Christian, I’ve
learned of how God’s people are to act
and conduct themselves. They are to be
in unity for the good of each other.

Will Hill:

What unity means is, just like we did
today—it was withstanding the storm.
Holding your ground on what you
believe in. Unity to me is holding your
ground. Over the years, of what I’ve
learned about the history, is that the
campus and the town used to be a lot
more united. And over time the relationship
has been hurt. So I’m here to provide
some healing, to show some initiative,
and let people know I’m a student.
I also live here now, I’m a resident. I’m
voting on November 2nd as a Champaign
resident. Now it is critical. You
want to yell the loudest right when you
see people coming across the finish line.

On Friday, Oct. 15 through Sunday Oct.
17, you are invited to come over to our
house – 122 N. Franklin, Urbana for
House Theater! There will be 5 performances;
Friday at 8pm, Saturday at 5 and
9pm, and Sunday at 2 and 6pm. (To
attend, please make reservations as space
is limited: 384-0299, or
elizacorps@yahoo.com )
House Theater is a non-university, non-commercial
context for mixing experimental composition and political
satire in a lived in setting. AHouse Theater makes use
of the doors, windows, stairs, porch, kitchen, bathroom
of a rented house in Urbana to create a quasi cabaret
atmosphere with small cafe tables, flowers, candles, coffee-
can-clip-on lights hooked to the frames of windows
and doors, and with food and drinks served at the intermissions.
The atmosphere, program, and performance are
so designed that a person might find herself addressed by
experimental attempts in art or discussing politics with a
stranger at intermission.
If you find a home with space enough for 30 people to
sit; build 8 small tables for people to place their drinks
on; if already a few friends live in that home and pay
rent; if you design a program that “mixes neighborhoods”
by putting political satire next to experimental
composition and a rowdy poem next to a highbrow
dance; if, inside this semi-nightclub atmosphere you
serve wine and cider and good food during the intermission;
and if a weekend of five performances is followed
up a month later by another program – then, you have a
House Theater!
The upcoming house theater in October is the result of
an invitation sent out a few months ago, asking local and
not-so-local people to write political satire for these performances.
A satire is a form of writing that “exercises”
the logic of one’s opponents, we thought satire might
enable us to see that though Bush may be stupid, it doesn’t
follow that stupidity is powerless or ineffective. In
addition to satires by Joe Futrelle, Mark Enslin, Beth
Simpson, this house theater will also feature
singers/composers Rick Burkhardt and Andy Gricevich
of the Prince Myshkins, who will be presenting a range
of music and theater compositions.
The idea of House Theater grew out of discussions in
composer/activist Herbert Brun’s class, the Seminar in
Experimental Composition, offered at the UIUC Music
School (taught by Brun from 1967-2000).
There, in 1985-6, classmate Candace Walworth and I
analyzed Theaters and Concert Halls: as much as we
loved those places, they seemed to prejudice and limit
our imaginations. When people enter a typical performance
space, their expectations
become obedient, conditioned. A n d
this, not only for the audience – but
also for the creators of that event. If
you accept the stage and the imperative
to fill up the seats, then you can accept
a lot of other things, too: that the audience
needs to “like it”?, that a liked
piece is good for society, that a huge
audience is better than a small one. All
of these things come from commercial
criteria, not artistic! – but swallowed
hook, line, and stinker by most artists.
However, we mused, if we were to
invite people to our house? And then
present our theater and music there,
along with good food and home-made
wine, to the people we had invited?
Sounded good.
We decided to make House Theaters.
Since 1986, we’ve made 27 house theaters hosted at
homes of various friends in Urbana (in addition to house
theaters in Chicago, Sarasota Fla, Virginia Beach Va,
Germany). Past house theaters have presented the poetry
and comedies of poet Michael Holloway; theater and
mime works of Jeff Glassman and Lisa Fay; skits and
music linking pornography with commercial performance
standards written by students of the University of
Michigan; theater and music composed by students of
Uni High; a 1993 house theater portraying the “rise of the
free market in Eastern Europe” as Capitulate-ism; experimental
music by many composers.
House Theater is a context which allows for a large
range of risk-taking, where we can try things considered
inappropriate by commercial standards but which we feel
are needed by our society – with the knowledge we can
“fail” and nobody gets hurt!
But really, why do things in a house? Doesn’t that just
mean everyone sits cramped in a little space, trying to
look over someone’s head just to see an amateur goofing
o ff on stage? Good question. Here are a few answers: A
while ago, if something was home-made, it was considered
inferior to store-bought. Though home has lost its
reputation as a creative center (after all, who sews, or
cans, or makes wood-work anymore), store-bought has
met a worse fate, meaning CHAIN-store-bought. Nowadays,
there’s a kind of hope in, and respect for, something
made and presented at home. Home-made can mean more
v a r i e t y, or a different kind of variety, than what we find in
commercial venues. Who can resist home-made cookies?
Another answer: every home has all the makings of a
performance space so anyone can put on a house theater!
Your home (yes, I’m talking about your house or apartment)
already has chairs, tap water for dry throats, lights,
friendly relationships between you and your guests, and a
door for your guests to arrive in and to be told to leave
out of. That’s all you need – and, oh yes, something to
say or perform or discuss. But, take a look at our current
political scene; don’t you, indeed, have something to say
or perform or discuss?
The Internet activist organization, MOVE-ON, has
been encouraging people to hold salons or potluck dinners
in their houses, inviting the neighbors over to discuss
our society. The film, OUT-FOXED has been presented
in non-commercial venues, with the request to follow
the showing of the film with discussion.
Maybe “home space” could be added to the public
places where we invite strangers in, not keep them out.
Invite us to your house theater!
You’re invited. You walk up the stairs of an unfamiliar
home. A child with a top hat greets you: Welcome to
the House Theater! You see amidst the knick knacks of
a home, a small stage, some 30 chairs arranged around
small wooden tables. You take a seat. You face neighbors.
From the staircase, someone seems to be arguing
with someone upstairs. At first confused, you realize
the performance has begun. Then follows thirty minutes
of more performance. Political satire makes you
laugh, experimental music leaves you puzzled. Your
neighbor has the opposite reaction: laughs during the
music, is silent and blank during the satires. You make
a mental note to talk about it later. Intermission. You
hesitate, but when the “waiter” who brings you your
glass of wine turns out to be the musician who brought
you your piece of “experimental music”, you can’t
resist: a discussion with neighbor and musician keeps
you busy until the lights dim for “Set Two”?

Author’s Note: I wrote this on the day after my release from NYC jail, while sitting on a bench
in an airport in Denmark and waiting for the rest of the CU Wireless crew to fly in from Chicago.
We are attending a weeklong conference about international applications of community wireless
technology and implementing community wireless networks in the developing world.
On Tu e s d a y, August 31st and We d n e s d a y, September 1st, I spent an unexpected 23 hours in jail
without access to lawyers and limited access to a telephone; I rode on 2 prison buses, was transferred
between 9 different cells, put in handcuffs 4 times, and fed nothing but 3 stale white bread sandwiches
(2 with cheese and 1 with some foul green and purple splotchy bologna-like meat product).
The charges against us, parading without a permit and disorderly conduct (impeding the flow of
pedestrian and vehicular traffic), were ordinance violations, not crimes. The sorts of things that on
any regular day a cop would write you a ticket for and send you on your way. But in this case the
NYC police department decided to use these laws as a pretext for rounding up hundreds of protesters
and getting us off the street before some theoretical subset of us did some actual crimes. T h e
anticipated crimes were things like the 20 or so folks who planned to lay down in the street near
Madison Square Garden, staging a “die-in” to draw attention to the global deaths caused by the Bush
administration. The police marked possessions like bandannas to use as evidence that some protesters
were “anarchists”, which of course means they are more dangerous and probably should get
higher bail.
Everyone at the Pier that night would start cheering and singing and chanting as each group of
20, 50, or 100 protesters was brought in, growing louder as the population rose. It was pretty beautiful.
When we weren’t cheering we were having spirited political discussions about the pros and
cons of direct action and civil disobedience, how to adapt to the changing police tactics, and about
the differences and motivations for our different political orientations. This protest drew Deaniacs,
Naderites, Greens, Anarchists, and regular every day rank and file Kerry/Democratic Party supporters.
Most of those arrested were “non-radicals”. Most were in jail for their first time. Many had
no intention of engaging in civil disobedience.
I found this to be a great environment for education. These folks were all poised on the edge of
radicalism. They were all intrigued to learn that I was an anarchist. I don’t fit the profile. I hadn’t
been advocating for violence. How could I be a Green Politician, the picture of non-violent hippieness,
arrested for my first time, and call myself an anarchist? And where in these cells full of
priests and businesspeople and workers and hippies and bicyclists and journalists were all the
pink haired freaks? Where in the peaceful march along the sidewalk were the Molotov throwing,
paint-wielding, havoc wreaking anarchists? Oh, do you mean that they’ve been lying to us? T h a t
the police don’t always play by the rules? That anarchists do have legitimate political ideas? T h a t
hordes of pink haired bandanna masked youths weren’t coming to burn down the town? Oh, and
getting arrested isn’t an end in and of itself for these civilly disobedient rebels, that the civil lawsuits
afterwards are part of the strategy to deepen and enhance first amendment freedoms through
precedent? That the press exposure during and after our arrest is part of the strategy? Oh huh…and
I’d never really thought of the whole system as working in the interests of profit and the powerful
people who control it, or that Democrats have also done an awful lot of bad things on the world
stage. If hundreds of new radical activists were not born that night, at least I hope that I had a part
in spurring their thinking.
After 12 hours at the Pier, some of us were transferred to Central Booking, known to locals as
The Tombs.We saw nearly every one of the 25 or so floors of this building during our stay.We were
searched, put in cells, transferred to other cells, searched again, fingerprinted, digitally photographed,
handcuffed, interviewed by EMS workers about our medical state.We didn’t actually see
the doctors until we’d been in the tombs for about 8 hours, about 16 hours too late for the 60 year old
man who suffered from chronic pain and didn’t have enough meds, the heroin addictwho was going
through withdrawal and needed methadone, or countless others who were suffering without any
help from their captors). We had access to phones in some cells but not others—where the phones
were simply broken and we were not given the option of using working phones in other cells. We
had to pay to use the phones in all but one of the cells that we passed through. All calls were monitored
by nearby guards and on the free call the name and number of the person called was recorded.
We were interviewed by social workers from some unidentified government organization who
asked about where we lived, where we worked, how much money we made, and who could confirm
all of this. Supposedly, this information would be used to determine whether we could be
released with or without bail but in the end bail was irrelevant because most of us didn’t end up
with court dates. Supposedly, the fingerprints that were taken were an inquiry against the fingerprint
system and would not create a “record” for us. However upon further questioning of the officers
in charge, we learned that the fingerprinting would create an ID entry in the FBI’s fingerprint
database system. No criminal record would be attached to it but for now and forever our fingerprints
would be associated with our names, birthdays, and current addresses.
After a day or so of sleep deprivation it is pretty hard to remember what you want to ask your
lawyer and get it all said and figured out before you go before a judge a few minutes later. Luckily,
the National Lawyers Guild rocked the courthouse and most of us were released ACD (Adjourned
Contemplating Dismissal) which means that the case was set aside, and if we didn’t get arrested in
the next 6 months it would be as if the case never even existed. If we did get arrested again in the
next 6 months the case would simply come to trial and because we did nothing wrong we would
almost certainly be found not guilty anyway. So there is no need to return to NYC for a trial—they
certainly weren’t going to be able to try 1500 people that same day so if we hadn’t gotten ACD
we’d have gotten a notice to appear just so we could come back and win our innocence.
My stuff is still all in New York City. My digital video camera, my digital camera, my cell
phone, my MP3 recorder, my backpack, and numerous other small stuff. All told there’s probably
around $1000 worth of stuff in a plastic bag in a police trailer in Manhattan that belongs to me. I’ll
have to send a notarized letter to a friend in New York City in the next 120 days authorizing them
to pick up my stuff. If I wanted to get my stuff directly I’d have had to sit in line for three to four
hours and then I would have missed my plane to Denmark.

Sometime into my 43rd hour in the custody of the
New York Police Department, I started to cry. “I just
don’t see how we can stop this,” I pleaded with my
cellmates through my tears. “I feel this country and
myself just sinking and sinking. At what point does
this kind of repression stop being proto-fascist and
become just plain old fascism?” My cellmates gave
me toilet paper to wipe my tears and hugged me
until I stopped crying. They had no words of comfort
to offer. We all felt the same way.
An hour later, we were banging on the bars and
shaking the floor with our chant, “This is illegal! Let
us go!” Within minutes, several floors of demonstrators
joined in the chanting, and those on vigil below
sent their voices up to meet ours. After twenty minutes,
the guards promised we’d be next to get our
photos taken, another step on the excruciating
process of being arraigned and released. A f t e r
another hour, we were waiting still, seven women in
an eight by nine foot cell, taking turns sitting on the
bench and stepping over our comrades sleeping fitfully
on the cold, concrete floor.
After almost no one was processed or released on
Tuesday night, somewhere I knew the delay was
part of a deliberate strategy to keep the streets clear
of demonstrators until Bush could give an expertly
directed, perfectly choreographed acceptance
speech on Thursday. And, while that knowledge didn’t
prevent me from hanging onto every false estimate
of my release time given to me by my wardens
(which ranged from “I don’t know” to “six more
hours” to “we can keep you up to three days”), I
placed more stock in the combination of rumor and
information circulating among the cells about
habeas corpus and threats of contempt charges and
fines levied against the NYPD. I left the courtroom
at 6:45 pm on Thursday, a bit disoriented that I wore
no chain on my right wrist and that no one was
yelling at me to keep my shoulder to the wall. But I
knew Bush’s speech would start soon and I would
miss it because I needed a medical exam, legal
advice, and the first nutritious food I’d eaten since
breakfast two days before. The Republican plan, if I
might call it that without hard evidence, had worked
on me and hundreds of others. We were too busy
taking care of ourselves and each other to protest
what had hurt us. For some of us, it felt like a slap in
the face. We weren’t used to being immobilized like
this. We were going to miss the big event, and it was
going to go on with or without us.
There is an unacknowledged myth about radicalism
among white people that allows us to feel like
we’re supposed to be at the forefront of social
change movements. It goes something like this:
white, middle-class people are well-positioned to
become vanguard activists because our privilege
gives us the economic and social capital to use in
our work and shields us from the worst oppressions
of the state. At times there is an element of truth to
this myth, as there are to many. But if it sounds like
a variant on white guilt, or an apologia for why
white people can’t stay in the background, it probably
is. But it might help explain why even in New
York City and against the Republican Party, the
counter-convention events were still overwhelmingly
white. Our radical Valhalla is too full of white
people: my friends are more likely to argue about
the spirit of Paris in 1968 than Kinshasa in 1960.
I’m no exception—I needed to Google to find the
date for Kinshasa but not Paris.
As self-centeredly myopic as our unspoken vanguardism
has been, it has also never been so wrong.
The comfortable padding of privilege is being worn a
little thinner by the Bush administration, and the preemptive
arrests at the RNC are only the most recent
and visible examples. (The prosecution of artist and
professor Steve Kurz on counter-terrorism charges is
another). We could, of course, try to shore up our
racial and economic position (as Log Cabin Republicans
seemmasochistically desperate to do), or,worse
yet, claim our time in jail as an‘authentic’ e x p e r i e n c e
of oppression that is on par with the experiences of
others. But I don’t think that we will do that. In New
York, the bystanders swept up in the mass arrests
were as supportive of the protesters and outraged at
the guards as the demonstrators, and no one (least of
all the police) was keeping track of who ‘should’
have been arrested and who ‘shouldn’t ’ have been.
I’d like to see that happen on the outside, and I
believe it can. We, who find our white skin and middle-
class backgrounds not buying us as much as they
used to, must develop more complex forms of solidarity
and collaboration with those who have been
too busy taking care of themselves and each other to
come to ‘our’ p r o t e s t s .
I’ve returned again and again to that 43rd hour
crying spell and gotten angry at myself for having no
better inking about how to stop the spread of fascism
than I did then. I’ve cried about it all over again, and
then laughed at myself for the arrogance of wanting
to have all the answers. I’m still sorting through the
contradictory emotions, observations, and conversations
that came out of being in jail for two and a half
days. I’m vigilant not to allow the peculiar combination
of weariness and bravado that accompanies
being a political prisoner (for however short a term
and minor an offense) to obscure the fact that I still
know nothing about living in prison for years on end.
“Why does my story matter?” I ask myself as I tell it
to anyonewho will listen. There is no way to impose
artificial coherence on my experience because what
this story will matter has more to do with whatwe all
do now than with what has already happened. We
have a collective responsibility to gather the threads
of these experiences, observations, emotions, and
conversations and weave them into a new narrative.
We need to take charge of what stories are told about
us and what stories we tell ourselves. Being a reflective
activist, I can’t help but make this sound like a
consciousness-raising session where everyone sits
around in a room and talks. But it isn’t. It’s a collective
working out of error, experience, and coexistence
through action, and the action had better start
right now.

Zoe Ginsburg, a 16 year old Urbana resident and student at University
High School, was held for 37 hours before being released at 5:30 AM on
Thursday morning. When she asked an officer what she was being
charged with, the officer replied that she did not know. Zoe and other UCIMC
members Zach Miller of Urbana, Colleen Cook of Champaign, Arun
Bhalla of Champaign, and Sarah Kanouse of Chicago were never formally
informed of their arrest charges but were assured by their arresting officers
that they would be released before the next morning. None of the
group was set free before Wednesday afternoon, and Sarah Kanouse, the
last of the group to be released, left the New York Criminal Court at 6:45
pm on Thursday, after being in custody for over 50 hours.
On August 31, over 1000 people were swept up in massive arrests,
h a n d c u ffed, fingerprinted, photographed, and held in custody—overwhelming
a system that usually handles 200-300 arrests per day and triggering
a massive backlog that caused delays in the arraignment process.
The demonstrators were initially taken by the busload to Pier 57, a
makeshift holding pen in a warehouse quickly dubbed “Guantanamo on the
Hudson” by prisoners and the media alike. As many as 90 prisoners at a
time were held in 20 by 40 foot pens made with 15 foot chain-link fencing
capped with razor wire. The three benches in the pens were far too small to
seat all the prisoners, who were forced to sit or sleep on the bare floor. Tw o
port-a-potties serviced each cell, which filled quickly during the lengthy
holding period, which for many prisoners exceeded 18 hours. Most of the
penswere not supplied with trash disposal, and the cells filled quickly with
stale, half-eaten sandwiches, crushed paper cups and empty milk cartons.
When the media received word of the conditions at Pier 57 and
arranged a photo opportunity after the prisoners were transferred, the
police department attempted to conceal the conditions by thoroughly
mopping the floor and laying new carpet. While a few demonstrators
received plastic sheeting to lie down, the vast majority were offered nothing
and emerged from Pier 57 covered in fine, black grit. A large number
of arrestees received rashes and blisters, and still more reported severe
headaches, sore throats and hacking coughs in the hours and days following
their transfer. Medics who treated demonstrators upon their release
recommended that they first take cold showers to avoid absorbing the substances
from the Pier 57 floor and were taking clothing samples to analyze
the composition of the greasy grit.
Excruciating delays in arraignment not only wore down the prisoners’
health and energy but also kept many demonstrators off the street for more
than two days. Lawyers and protesters believe that the delays were
designed to prevent people from exercising their free speech rights during
the convention and voicing their opposition during Bush’s acceptance
speech on Thursday. Norman Siegel of the National Lawyer’s Guild,
which represented thousands of arrestees, alleged, “The city of New York
attempted to ‘lose’the people currently held in central booking until after
Bush gave his speech tonight, after which they would miraculously be
‘found.’” Donna Lieberman of the New York Civil Liberties Union issued
a statement regarding police tactics. “The pre-emptive arrests; preventive
detentions and dangerous conditions at Pier 57 and massive surveillance
of lawful protest activity undermined the right to dissent. The department’s
practices were inconsistent and its standards were unclear from
day-to-day. As a result, perfectly lawful actions could result in an arrest on
any given day and time. That stifles dissent and political debate.”
A common refrain of both the police and the New York media was that
if someone attends a demonstration, she or he should expect to get arrested.
One of the corrections officers who expressed sympathy with the protesters’
cause added, “Of course if you’re going to protest, you’ve got to
expect that this will happen.” But to the demonstrators, this seems like a
backwards way to look at the detention. If free speech and free assembly
are among our most important constitutionally guaranteed rights, people
should not be expected to spend two days behind bars as a price exacted
for voicing their conscience.

Zach Miller, Candidate for Champaign County Board District 9, Urbana:

You know, in my neighborhood we
d o n ’t really see the police that much. I
think that there may be some class issues
at work there…. [I]n an area that’s predominantly
populated by
professors and grad
students…, even if
we have a party or
something the
police don’t really
come by and hassle
us or anything like
that. But I hear stories
all the time from folks that live in
areas where folks are maybe a little more
p o o r, the property values may be a little
l o w e r, and there’s just police harrassment.
T h e r e ’s police pulling people over for stuff
[unnecessarily] and there’s just a lot of distrust
of the police.

David Sutton:

I think if they would welcome people
videotaping them – in fact if they were
videotaping themselves so that all of their
stops were [recorded] – especially if
something unexpected happens to them,
to record that the suspect drew a gun
which was completely
unexpected –
[that would help]. I
think they should
welcome that….
They should be
open about what
they do with people
and I think that
obviously the people who beat Rodney
King didn’t think they were being
watched and … if they had known that
there was this possibility [that it was
recorded] they might not have beat him
(they might have still beat him who
knows) but I think that people will behave
more genuinely toward the citizens of this
country – all of them – if they expect that
how they are treating people is always
being watched. And if they’re doing
things right, … then they shouldn’t worry.
They should welcome it because it protects
them from lawsuits and so forth
when somebody winds up with a broken
nose or limb and blames it on the police
and it really wasn’t their fault.

Alveta Henderson:

They racially profile everyone and I
am a white, 40-year-old woman that is
married to a black man and so therefore I
get pulled over just as much as a black
man or woman would…. Before I was
arrested in this town, I was pulled over for
the simple fact of having a black man in
the car. And once they realized that they
knew my husband,
then everytime that
they see me, they
think they have to
speak to me – ‘Hi
Mrs. Henderson.
How are you? How’s
your husband?’ and
always ‘What’re you
doing? Where’re you going?’ and it’s
none of their business. I’m not doing anything
illegal….Treat everybody fairly.
Whether you’re black, white, red, purple,
w h a t e v e r. I mean have consistency. . . .
Don’t just earmark anybody…. So as far
as the community I don’t have a clue right
now. All I know is that I’m angry, I’m
angry at the system and Champaign
County is very bad. … I’ve never lived in
Chicago but everybody that has that lives
down here now says Champaign police
department – Champaign County period –
is worse than Cook County.

Nancy Eleanor Laster, Champaign:

Well, maybe get out in the community
t h a t ’s the bad
neighborhood and
talk to them more.
See what they could
do to help some
people cause some
people may not be
as bad as [the
police] think they
are. Just because they’re hanging out on
the street or whatever doesn’t mean that
they’re bad people. Take some time.

Miranda O’Dell, Champaign:

The neighborhood [I lived in] before I
would say no, because it was mostly students
and everybody was always complaining
about parties
and the police
coming and giving
them a hard time.
Every person that
we’ve ever seen
pulled over it usually
happens to be
someone of a
minority status… . Not necessarily that I
see maybe a lot of blacks or anything, but
I do see a lot of people of Asian descent
pulled over.

Kruti Vyas, Champaign:

I don’t think there is a good relationship
at all with the
people in our comm
u n i t y. Just
because I mean,
one, you barely
even see cops
around unless it’s 2
AM in the morning
and they’re trying to
raid bars, but I personally think that the
Champaign police department kind of forgets
about the safety of campus and the
people on campus and are a little more
worried about just ticketing them for alcohol
and other problems.

Adam Yin:

A c t u a l l y, I just got pulled over a few
days ago and they seemed really nice.
Cause we made a wrong turn into a one
way street and we were a little tipsy but
they were like, ‘Oh
yeah, this is okay.
I t ’s okay, don’t
worry about it, it’s a
w a r n i n g , ’ you know.
And we were all
Asian, so… So far I
d i d n ’t have any
encounters, but I
w o u l d n ’t generalize that…. If the police
drive by don’t just be like ‘fuck the police’
or whatever. Cause they are here to help
you. … [T]hey don’t really like wanna just
catch anyone I guess. I don’t know, be
more cooperative, not you know, cause if
you’re nice to them I’m pretty sure they’re
gonna be nice to you.

Christopher Evans:

Depends on the neighborhood. In rural
areas, the sheriff’s department probably
have a good relationship. The business
community probably have a good relationship.
The police are often from rural areas
and the business community appreciates
protection from burglaries. In white neighborhoods,
they are accepted, with thewhite
youth probably liking them less because of
their type of carousing. The black community
can obviously speak for themselves. A
better measurement of how the relationship
is going with the police is to ask ourselves
a question: When a police squad car
appears in your area, do you feel like the
good guys are here, or do you feel scared
they will try to find out if they can arrest
you or write you some kind of ticket?

Acting upon their sincere concern for the community, Martell Miller and Patrick Thompson, founders of Visionaries
Educating Youth and Adults (VEYA), have courageously taken
the necessary steps toward change. Using a very popular piece
of technology, a video camcorder, these two dedicated gentlemen
began videotaping our law enforcement officials as they
engaged African-American youth on the streets of Champaign-
Urbana during routine traffic stops.
After accumulating hours of footage, the two men decided to
bring the public face-to-face with the reality that exists on our
streets. They made a 40-minute documentary, Citizen’s Watch,
with the intent of creating a dialogue between struggling youth
and frustrated police officers. Instead, it was misunderstood and
resulted in the two men being charged with a class one felony
for eavesdropping. The eavesdropping charges were brought
against the two men after they turned the videotape over to
UPTV (Urbana Public Television) for public access. At this
time, it is unclear exactly how the tape found its way into the
hands of the Urbana Police Department for use as evidence. The
only logical conclusion is that someone from UPTV allowed
the tape to be confiscated by law enforcement. According to an
ex-president of UPTV, the number one “no-no” in public televi –
sion is to give someone’s property away. It is the understanding
of the members of VEYA that if the tape was deemed inappropriate
by the staff of UPTV, then it was their responsibility to
either destroy the tape or return it to its rightful owner. Furthermore,
UPTV may have violated Martell’s and Patrick’s Fifth-
Amendment rights. The Bill of Rights clearly states that no
one’s belongings shall be searched, or seized, without due
process.
Martell Miller and Patrick Thompson are African-American
men from Champaign who spoke up against taser electroshock
stun guns when the police department wanted to purchase them
earlier this spring. Part of their argument in opposition to tasers
was the disparate treatment of African Americans by local
police departments. They did not want police to have another
weapon to use against black residents. Thanks to the collective
efforts of people like Martell and Patrick, the request for purchase
of tasers was defeated.
Soon thereafter, based upon the fact that police seemed
determined to purchase tasers at a later date, Martell and Patrick
informed the Champaign mayor and city manager that they
were going to start monitoring Champaign police stops of
“black folks.” They explained that this cop watch was a way to
document any further abuse of power. There was no response
from either city official.
On August 7, 2004, around midnight, Martell was on north
Bradley Street with his video camera. He filmed a police officer
pulling over a black man on a bicycle—simply for not having a
light on the front of his bike! From across the street, Martell
filmed this “traffic stop.” The police officer left the scene. The
biker then crossed the street and Martell asked him for an interview.
The man agreed and the interview began. The cop who
pulled the suspect over then returned while the interview was in
progress. As Martell was interviewing the biker, the officer
asked Martell if he was taping him (the officer). Martell’s primary objective was to record video and audio of the alleged
suspect, however, based upon the proximity of the officer as
he approached Martell, the officer’s voice was also picked
up by the built-in microphone. Consequently, Martell’s
response was, “No, you’re putting yourself on my tape.”
There was a brief exchange about citizen rights and Martell
asked to talk to a superior officer. The supervisor was called
and upon his arrival informed Martell that he had recorded
the cop without his permission. The officers “seized” the
camera and the tape, yet they did not arrest Martell.
Martell was later summoned to court and charged with
eavesdropping. Judge Heidi Ladd refused to allow the State
Attorney to arrest Martell over the charge and released him
on his own recognizance. Meanwhile, the News-Gazette
reported on the story, and also editorialized against State
Attorney John Piland bringing charges against Martell for a
“crime” that thousands of people commit daily.
The Illinois State law on eavesdropping has been interpreted
by many attorneys, supporters and critics, but no one
has been able to shed light on the subject. Champaign Police
Chief R.T. Finney explained the charges quite clearly and
agreed that the two men technically broke the law, however,
he added that such legal actions could have been prevented
by simply having a meeting with Mr. Thompson and Mr.
Miller. The confusion that ensued undermined the progress
that police and members of the community have made thus
far. Supporters said the law is the law, no matter how trivial
it is and the men should be prosecuted. Critics said if the law
is to be strictly interpreted, it would make felons of thousands
of American citizens. Considering the vagueness of
the law and the sensitive relationship between black citizens
of Champaign County and its police departments, other concerned
citizens asked the State Attorney to exercise some
discretion and oversee a meeting between the two parties in
attempt to resolve this matter in a manner beneficial to the
community.
Amidst intense pressure from organizations, such as C-U
Citizens for Peace and Justice, AWARE, NAACP, and hundreds
of concerned citizens, on September 23, the Champaign
Police Department publicly requested that the State
Attorney drop the eavesdropping charges. Under the microscope
of public scrutiny and a mounting political campaign
to remove him from office, State Attorney John Piland
called a press conference to explain that he had done as he
had been instructed. Mr. Piland revealed that he was asked
by officers on the Champaign police force to press charges
against the two men. Just days later, Mr. Piland dropped all
the charges against Mr. Miller. However, as of publication
date, the charges against Mr. Thompson still stand. Mr.
Piland certainly has the jurisdiction to dismiss the eavesdropping
charges against Mr. Thompson, especially since
the two men were charged for the exact same crime. Furthermore,
even with the dismissal of Mr. Miller’s charges,
neither the camcorder nor the tape seized by the officers has
been returned. These tactics are typical examples of the
abuse of power that the concerned citizens of Champaign
County are no longer going to tolerate.
Champaign County citizens of all political affiliations
are opposed to actions that disenfranchise viable segments
of our population. Everyone realizes that we are at our best
when the community functions as one united body. Henceforth,
it is imperative that the good people of our growing
cities sacrifice personal desires and humbly submit to the
greater good of all people. With the help of VEYA, the
entire community can be properly informed and bursting
with self-esteem. This “dream” can be realized by practicing
forgiveness, empathy and compassion for those in our
human family who show symptoms of pain and suffering,
while simultaneously holding each other accountable for
our words and actions. The integrity and respect that prevails
from such an understanding will allow us to serve the
health, rights, interests, and needs of all people.
This aforementioned information has lead to mass community
education in the form of classes, seminars, and
workshops to begin this mandatory process of dismantling
ignorance. Meanwhile, each of us must search our souls and
discipline ourselves to do what is right—forgive our fellow
man, yet resist the perpetuation of exploitation and ignorance
that is represented by some of our citizens and public
officials. To get involved in the many upcoming events that
have been sparked by Mr. Thompson and Mr. Miller, such as
the tremendous voter registration drive being held throughout
the community, or the Unity March that will take place
on October 23 from 9:00-10:30 a.m. beginning at Scott and
Douglass Parks and converging at the Champaign police
station, please contact C-U Citizens for Peace and Justice at
lifestratinst@sbcglobal.net. BE Peace, BE Just!

Ben Grosser’s article discusses the larger implications of introducing at-large seats in
Urbana’s city council elections. It raises
serious issues. However, there is also a subtext
to this story, the intriguing circumstances
leading to this proposal so ardently
supported by Tod Satterthwaite, the mayor
of Urbana. Until 2001, Satterthwaite virtually
controlled the council. He could usually
muster a majority vote for his own proposals
and veto the others that he didn’t like. Carolyn
Kearns was his strongest ally on the
council. He did not care much for the other
women on the council, namely Esther Patt,
Ruth Wyman, and Laura Huth. He has
referred to them as “ultra-liberals” in radio
interviews. However, there was a silver lining
for the mayor: Patt, Wyman, and Huth
could be outvoted on the seven-person council,
even when joined by the only African-
American alderman, Jim Hayes.
The status quo was upset in 2001.
Danielle Chynoweth successfully challenged
Kearns in the February Democratic primary.
What was the mayor to do? Satterthwaite
waxed strategic. If he had to endure
Chynoweth on the council, maybe he could
eliminate one of the other troublesome
women. Wyman and Patt were both strongly
entrenched in their wards, which were liberal
and had lots of students. He targeted Huth,
possibly hoping that she would bemore vulnerable
because she represented a ward in
East Urbana where most of the constituents
are not affiliated with the university. Howeve
r, there was one thing needed to get rid of
Huth, an opponent. Since the Republicans
w e r e n ’t running a candidate, the Democratic
mayor chose to recruit an independent,
Chuck McCaff r e y, to run against Democrat
Huth. As Satterthwaite’s good buddy, how
could McCaffrey refuse? And how could he
lose with the mayor on his side?
There was one thing that McCaffrey and
Satterthwaite didn’t anticipate. Huth’s constituents
were actually impressed by her
record. She’d stood up for them on many
occasions, including the fight against Illinois
Power’s abuse of our trees. Also, union
members appreciated her strong support for
the Urbana firefighters when the mayor was
giving them a rough time. Huth won, and
Satterthwaite then had to contend with
Chynoweth, Huth, Patt, and Wyman. Moreover,
he can never take Hayes for granted.
Satterthwaite still gets along very well with
Milton Otto, and doesn’t get much trouble
from the sole Republican on the council, Joe
Whelan. However, they are only two white
councilmen who are left to contend with the
four out-of-favor females and Jim Hayes
who is too close to them on too many votes.
Michael Moore notwithstanding, not all
white men, even white men in politics, are
stupid. Some are imaginative and when
pushed too far, can even display strokes of
genius. Satterthwaite’s last straw was the
redistricting map drawn up by the women on
the council. The mayor proposed his own
map, but the women would not accept his in
place of theirs. To veto their map, Satterthwaite
needed Jim Hayes’s vote. He thought
he had it, but when it was time to vote,
Hayes voted with the women. This made
their map veto proof.
Satterthwaite and Otto continued to exercise
their imaginations. If you cannot win
elections and policy changes according to the
rules, then simply change the rules. Change
the form of governance! Introduce at-larg e
seats so that the mayor can try to recruit likeminded
people to run in citywide elections
along with him. If the “ultra-liberals” think
that they can play with radical ideas, the
mayor will show them a thing or two about
revolutionary ideas and practices. Like
Charles de Gaulle introducing the Fifth
French Republic, he will “appeal to the people.”
With their support he will transform the
formof representative government inUrbana.
Voters of Urbana Arise! You have nothing to
lose but the door-to-door relationship with all
council candidates and affordable elections
for all council seats. What you have to gain is
a more powerful mayor, perhaps who will
once again be able to control the council. In
subsequent elections, maybe we could propose
a referendum to change the name of the
mayor to Lord Mayor.

On November 2, Urbana voters will face this question on the ballot: “Shall the City of
Urbana restrict the number of aldermen to a
total of nine,with one alderman representing
each of seven wards, plus an additional two
aldermen to be elected at-large?” Currently,
the Urbana City Council consists of 7 alderpersons,
each one representing a discrete
area of the city, called a “ward.” The proposal on the ballot is
asking whether two more representatives should be added to
the council. The “at-large” part means that those two representatives
would be elected by amajority vote of all voters within
the city boundaries (like themayor or city-clerk).
More is better, right? Wouldn’t two more representatives
give everybody more voice in local government? Perhaps
Urbana is behind the times, and needs to sign on with this hip
new form of choosing their elected officials?
Or perhaps not. If you look across the country, you’ll find
that over 250 cities across the United States have recently
removed at-large seats from their city councils. Removing
them has been so popular that “the second most commonly
considered change [in municipal government structures
nationwide] was to eliminate at-large seats on the council and
replace them with ward or district elections.” In fact, the
change being proposed in Urbana is so uncommon that the
standard sources used to track trends in local government
don’t even bother to report it. As a result, political and social
scientists who study the effects of at-large elections now tend
to focus their attention on school boards, as there just aren’t
enough city council examples left to support research.
But even school boards with at-large elections are getting
harder to find. Right here in the city of Urbana, the voters
overwhelmingly chose to eliminate at-large from the school
board in favor of district elections in 1998.
Those pushing to resurrect at-large as an improvement for
the council point to the fact that more voters turnout in some
areas of the city than others.Although this is a common occurrence
all over the United States, they feel that voters who live
in wards with higher turnout deserve a greater voice in government.
But imagine if we applied their reversal of constitutional
philosophy to the state legislature. The 100th Representative
District, which surrounds Springfield, had 48,000 voters
turnout in the last election—almost twice the number of people
who voted in our 103rd District! Does this mean Champaign-
Urbana voters deserve less representation than Springfield
does in the Illinois House of Representatives?
Not according to the U.S. Constitution (see Article I, Section
II, and the 14th amendment). The constitutional principle
of “one person, one vote” is that representation in government
must be based on population, not on voter turnout. In
other words, everyone has the same rights to equal representation,
whether they choose to vote or not.
A t – l a rge systems have long been supported by those who
think they deserve more representation than others. Used in
local governments for at least the last 100 years, it gained
renewed popularity around 1965, when congress passed one
of the most important pieces of civil rights legislation, the Vo ting
Rights Act. The Voting Rights Act enacted a number of
changes that were meant to empower minorities to vote and
gain equal representation. A common method used to negate
the minority vote in the wake of the Voting RightsAct (as well
as before it), was to use at-large seats for local government.
At-large seats are effective in diluting the minority vote
because they require candidates to run city-wide as opposed
to district-wide. Minority neighborhood districts are more
likely to elect minority candidates. But at-large seats, with
voters taken from anywhere in the city, typically elect majority
candidates. This has been proven time in study after study,
making it one of the most verified findings in the field of
political science.
As convincing as it is, one need not solely rely on empirical
evidence in the scientific literature for examples of how
at-large affects minority representation. Right here in central
Illinois we have plenty of examples:
In 1987, a group of African-Americans filed a minority
vote dilution lawsuit against the city of Springfield, seeking
the city’s compliance with the Voting Rights Act. As a result,
the city eliminated its at-large system in favor of a ward system—
like we have here in Urbana. The first African-American
was then elected to that body since 1911.
Also in 1987, a similar lawsuit was brought against the
city of Danville. At that time in the city’s history, every elected
council member since the city was founded in 1867 were
all white men. The city settled the lawsuit by eliminating atlarge
and adopting a ward system—again, like we have in
Urbana. And since they removed at-large? The city has elected
5 African-Americans, 8 women, a Latino, and a person of
Native-American descent. Danville, with an over 20%
African-American population, has since had two African-
Americans on the council at all times.
In 1998, the citizens of Urbana voted to eliminate at-large
seats from the school board in favor of district elections. Subsequently,
the first African-American was elected to that body
in 20 years.
While Springfield and Danville’s electoral systems were
fully at-large, the system being proposed in Urbana is
referred to as a “mixed” system—one made up of both districts
and at-large. Proponents of the proposed change suggest
this is an important distinction, one which makes all of the
scientific evidence “irrelevant.” But the leading scholars in
political science have studied mixed systems as well. Susan
Welch, a leading researcher on the effects of at-large elections
on minority representation, and Dean and Professor of Political
Science at Penn State University states it clearly: “While
blacks are equitably represented in the district portions of
mixed systems, they are abysmally underrepresented in the
at-large portions.”
Given the overwhelming national and local evidence, we
can easily predict some of the effects of adding at-large to
Urbana’s city council. Currently, the council is 1/7th African-
American, just as 1/7th of Urbana’s population is African-
American. Since at-large seats almost never elect minority
candidates, we can be assured that at-large would dilute
minority representation in Urbana’s city government, with
African-American representation immediately shifting to
1/9th of the council. This disparity would grow over time, as
African-Americans are on track to make up 1/5th of Urbana’s
population within the next 10 years.
One of the fundamental reasons at-large dilutes minority
representation is the high cost of running a city-wide campaign.
Minority candidates are less likely to receive the bigmoney
backing typically supplied by majority supporters. But
minorities aren’t the only ones discouraged by the at-large
system; the average majority citizen doesn’t have the funds to
compete with special interest funded candidates either.
While a candidate for a ward seat can knock on every door
in their ward, it would be impossible for an at-large candidate
to knock on every door in the city. This forces at-large candidates
to replace personal contact with media saturation. A s
such, they engage in one-way communication, broadcasting
their ideas out to the people, hoping voters find their sound
bites more appealing than the other candidates’ sound bites. In
contrast, a ward candidate continuously engages in two-way
communication with the voters. Every time they knock on a
door they hear the concerns of their neighbors, and it is in their
best interests as a candidate to remember and respond to those
concerns. The concept of local government is that local decisions
aremade by normal people that understand the concerns
of people like them. In comparison, at-large elections produce
council representatives that are out of touch with those they
represent, and obligated to special interests.
There has been extensive research into alternative electoral
systems. Various versions of a system called proportional
representation (such as that used in Peoria, IL) are often
cited in research on election reform. Unfortunately, those
pushing for at-large elections never researched the problems
inherent in this system that cities across the country have
been abandoning for years. Urbana needs effective city government—
it has serious problems and it needs serious
answers. But at-large is not the answer.
Ben Grosser is an Urbana resident, and is one of the lead –
ers of “Vote No At-Large,” a local grassroots organization
opposed to the addition of at-large seats in Urbana. Further
information, including a detailed review of the scientific liter –
ature on this topic, is available on the organization’s website,
at http://www.noatlarge.org .

The following is excerpted from John
G u e g u e n ’s full letter due to space con –
straints. The full letter may be view at
h t t p : / / w w w. u c i m c . o rg / n e w s w i r e / d i splay/
20660/index.php.
Hi, Wendy.
In reading [your article], several things
occurred to me, which I hope you don’t mind
my sharing with you. One is the tendency by
most writers to treat Opus Dei as an external
“thing,” a movement or organization (some
strange new hybrid hard to classify) rather
than as an internal reality in the lives of people
God has called. One reason it is so diff icult
to “pin down” what Opus Dei is in trying
to write an objective article (as you did) is that
in reality what Opus Dei “is” continues to
evolve and develop in the lives of each member
from day to day, in the struggle to put into
practice the impulses of grace (which comes
from the Holy Spirit, as it does to all Christians
to enable them to fulfill their calling).
This leads into my second observation:
The people you cite throughout the article
give the kind of skewed understanding of
Opus Dei that would occur in reporting on
any topic by confining the research to such an
infinitesimal number of “experts” on the subject.
You can imagine what a variety of
answers you would get to a question like
“how do you live Opus Dei day by day?” In
my case, for example, I’ve started more than
15,000 new days since I asked for admission
to Opus Dei inApril, 1959, and as I look back
on them I find that no two of them were ever
the same. I can tell you that the renewal each
morning of my dedication to practice the spirit
of Opus Dei has led to marvelous insights
into myself, into others, into the nature of my
teaching and writing responsibilities.
I suppose most people aren’t that much
aware of what “spirit” they are dedicated to.
In the best instances, it is a spirit of professional
service, or of serving one’s family,
one’s children and spouse, or for students, a
spirit of achievement. For so many Americans,
it is a spirit of maximizing one’s own
pleasure, or profit, or influence – the infamous
materialistic, hedonistic, individualistic,
consumeristic “spirit.” When I used to
teach, one of my aims was to help my students
realize and then come to terms with the
“spirit” that was driving or inspiring their
lives. The “great books” we read were meant
to help them do that. Many realized that their
“spirit” was not very admirable, and they set
about reforming their lives, lifting their
sights, etc. That’s why I love to teach those
great books; they are such powerful stimulations
to get young people in their 20s to
examine themselves and their society.
[In email to me, you noted]: “As I’ve gotten
older, many things have seemed less
black and white, and I have a certain distrust
of any organization that offers to make
things too simple. At this point, I’m just too
old to jump on anyone’s bandwagon. So I
guess my goal is to muddle through and do
the best I can. Not too inspiring, but I’m sort
of a realist.”
T h a t ’s not “realism” in my book, but I
lived on a different planet from the one you
and your contemporaries live on. I call it the
“post-revolutionary” planet (referring back to
the disaster of 1968-70, which cut loose from
all the moorings of reality as it truly is, and is
wandering all over the universe, outside any
orbit). Nevertheless, it is a fitting epitaph for
the age that is currently unraveling and sending
our civilization to its graveyard. It is precisely
that worldview which you have PERF
E C T LY expressed which motivates virtually
your entire generation and is responsible
for that generation’s inability to make a permanent
commitment of any kind, and why
virtually all “marriages” that take place today
are invalid and break up after a short time
(since by definition, marriage is the union of
a man and a woman until death do us part for
the purpose of bearing progeny and educating
them to be mature men and women). It is
why monasteries and convents have emptied.
It is why vocations to the priesthood keep
declining, and why so many have left and
keep leaving. It is why you can go around
campus and find almost NO genuine friendships,
because friendship too requires a permanent
commitment, a letting-go of oneself.
The dorms are jammed with people struggling
desperately not to compromise their
i n d i v i d u a l i t y, their precious ego. A t e r r i b l e
loneliness and isolation results, and with it
the unhappiness which if not successfully
drowned in weekly binges can lead to suicide
(note the increasing rate among young people
in the prime of life).
This isn’t meant to be a criticism and it
has not the least touch of irony about it. You
are interested in reporting “facts” and there
you have one of the most appalling facts of
recent American cultural history. It is best
enshrined in the kind of music young people
like to listen to and imitate today – very like
the brainwashing cults engage in.
Best wishes in your studies and writing!
You’re in our prayers.

After the attacks of 9/11, the Bush administration entered into a
“war on terrorism” that
seemed to have little
regard for the facts at
hand and consequently
little concern for justice.
Compendia of the “lies” that led to the
occupation of Iraq are now commonplace.
It is easy to cynically conclude that
American foreign policy is fully under
the control of war profiteers. The neocon
s erva tives see i t qu i te differen t ly,
however, and consider the administration
to be acting out of patriotic motives
and in the best interest of the United
States.The documentary“Hijacking Cata
s troph e : 9 / 1 1 , Fear & the Selling of
American Empire” explores neo-conserva
tive influ en ces on Am erican po l i c y.
The disintegra ti on of the Sovi et
Union was seen as a unique opportunity
by a small group of neo-conservatives
who are now a part of the Bush administration.
In 1992, a member of this group
named Paul Wolfowitz wrote that the
United States should take advantage of
its position as an unopposed superpower
to preemptively secure “access to vital
materials, particularly Persian Gulf oil.”
An opponent of the ideas in this internal
Department of Defense document leaked
it to the New York Times, sparking considerable
debate. The use of preemptive
military force, which is now known as
the Wolfowitz doctrine, was not acceptable
to most Americans at the time, and
the neo-conservatives knew that it would
take an event like Pearl Harbor to allow
them to attempt to justify such aggression.
The attacks of 9/11 provided exactly
such an event.
TheWo l fowitz doctrine was ef fectively
m ade policy by the Na ti onal Sec u ri ty
S tra tegy issu ed by
the Bush ad m i n i stra
ti on in 2002.
This doc u m en t
a r g u ed for preem
ptive war
a gainst Iraq based
on Ira q’s intent to
use we a pons of
mass de s tru cti on
a gainst the Un i ted
S t a te s . However, i t
is now evi den t
that Iraq repres
en ted no thre a t
to the sec u ri ty of
the Un i ted State s .
Th ere was no rel ia
ble evi den ce
before the invas
i on that we a pon s
of mass de s tru cti
on would be
fo u n d , and none were fo u n d .What is perhaps
not evi dent is that the neo – con s erva
tive agenda for Iraq is being carri ed out
to com p l eti on . It is this divers i on from
f i gh ting terrorism to prom o ting neo – cons
erva tive aims that is referred to as a
h ijack i n g.
The “ Hijacking Ca t a s troph e” DV D
contains a number of interviews in addition
to the documentary, including one
of Shadia Drury discussing Leo Strauss.
After fleeing Nazi Germany, Strauss spent
much time trying to understand why the
Weimar Republic was powerless to prevent
the rise of the
Nazis. He concluded
that ord i n a ry
people were not
adequately capable
of voting in their
own best interest,
and that democracy
itself caused the
rise of the Na z i s .
Over 200 years of
dem oc racy in the
Un i ted State s
argues otherwi s e ,
and Stra u s s’s su rprising
conclusion
would be of little
interest were it not
for the fact that the
n eo – con s erva tive s
in the Bush administration
are heavily
influ en ced by
Straussian ideas. Strauss was, in fact, one
of Paul Wolfowitz’s teachers at the University
of Chicago.
Borrowing from Plato, Strauss taught
that government policy was best determined
by the wisest members of society,
and that noble lies were sometimes necessary
in cases where ordinary people
could not understand their best interests.
Was the claim that Iraq threatened the
Un i ted States with we a pons of m a s s
destruction an honest mistake, or was it
seen as such a noble lie? Is the noble lie
acceptable in American democracy, or
does it destroy democracy? Is the control
of Persian Gulf oil by preemptive military
action really in the self-interest of
ordinary Americans? Although the United
States currently has a fairly free hand
in the use of military force, it is not free
to escape the consequences of doing the
wrong thing. This documentary makes
an important contribution to the ongoing
debate of these issues.
“Hijacking Catastrophe” is available
from the Media Education Foundation at
w w w. m ed i aed . or g. The 2002 Na ti on a l
Sec u ri ty Stra tegy is ava i l a ble at
w w w. wh i teh o u s e . gov / n s c / n s s . p d f ( or
nss.html). Shadia Drury is the author of
two books on Leo Strauss: “The Political
Ideas of Leo Strauss” and “Leo Strauss
and the Am erican Ri gh t”. Ad d i ti on a l
i n form a ti on on the neo – con s erva tive s
may be found in the July 2003 Vanity Fair
article “Bush’s Brain Trust.” In it, Wolfowitz
states that the linking of Strauss’s
ideas to American policy in Iraq is “a
product of fevered minds”. Drury makes
a strong case to the contrary, while being
careful to point out that there is much to
admire in Strauss’s work beyond the few
ideas of interest to the neo-conservatives.

“While our hand carries the good intent to
what seems to be its consummation, the fruit of
evil grows from the seeds of noble thought.”
— Hans Morgenthau
I had what I believed to be the worst job in the world. I’m not squeamish about work,
and am happy doing most any work, whether
manual or otherwise. But after I graduated
with a B.A. from Florida State University, I
found myself in a world personal chaos. The
year was 2000, and I was employed by the
Florida Democratic Party during the coordinated
campaign with the DNC to elect Al
Gore President of the United States. My job:
convi n ce young people to vo te for Gore .
Let me step back for aminute . I have alw ays
in my adult life ded i c a ted my pers onal and
profe s s i onal ef forts to wort hy social and po l i tical
causes. Causes for pe ace , for ju s ti ce , a n d
for equ a l i ty; causes for a progre s s ive worl d .
Grassroots movements thrive among the
networks of interconnected individuals with
many organizational associations. I was one
of those individuals in Tallahassee and Florida
at large. I was in countless organizations,
associating with countless friends with whom
work and play melded together as our tireless
efforts wore on. I loved these friends as much
as I did the good work we were doi n g.
Nearly all the organizations I was involved
with planned to hel p, ei t h er direct ly or
covertly,Ralph Nader garner votes in the election
in Florida. My job with the party was to
travel thro u gh o ut the state and convi n ce
these people they were wrong. To become, in
essence, the enemy to the people I loved.
I was a philosophy/political science double
major as an undergraduate (which is probably
why I had so much time to be active).
Requ i red co u rses for ph i l o s ophy majors
almost always included a course on ethics. Of
course, poli sci undergrads had to take a
course on electoral behavior and U.S. institutions.
These courses allowed me to work for
the Democratic Party in the 2000 election
wi t h o ut significant internal moral cri s e s .
The progressives I worked with that I now
had to rally to supporting a center candidate
were not stupid. They would not buy any
lines about Al Gore being for “economic justice”
or “individual liberty”. I had to be honest,
both with them and with myself, about
the stakes at hand.
In political science, one of the first things
you learn is that the two-party system in the
U.S. is a function of individuals not “wanting
to throw their votes away” by voting for anyone
else but one of the top two most likely
winners. Many of us don’t like this, since we
end up with two candidates at the top, fighting
for the support of the median voter in the
electorate (who, incidentally, is likely fairly
conservative). So what do we, as progressives,
do? We vote our “conscience”. We rail against
the system in the most democratic way possible:
our vote. But what does that mean? “Vote
your conscience?”
The biggest forum I attended for my job
was a community meeting with a Green and
Republican representative, and me. It was an
auditorium with a few hundred people. My
arguments were stark. “If I made the choice,
Ra l ph Nader would be my Pre s i den t .” I
opened with. That got everyone’s attention.
“But I don’t have that choice.” Hisses and
boos. It was clear there were lots of Greens in
the house. Good. That’s whom I was there to
speak to. The forum quickly broke down
because of poor facilitation, and there was
roughly an hour of exchanges between audience
members and myself. The Republican
representative left a half-hour in.
I could only repeat the same line of reasoning,
over and over, about the potential
large-scale electoral effects of a strong Green
showing in Florida. There was nothing else I
could say to these people, many of whom, I
thought, viewed me with greater disdain than
they did the Republican. I left more than a
few of the public forums I had participated in
with wet eyes because of my tre ach ery.
We knewfrom the po lling that it was goi n g
to be a close race . The nu m ber of u n dec i ded
vo ters was rel a tively low, and the Greens were
our best hope of e s t a blishing a safe margi n .
“This isn’t local govern m en t . This isn’t even
Con gress we’re talking abo ut ,” I ’d say.
I had, until Nader started polling well,
been volunteering for the Green Party to help
with local el ecti on s . Convers a ti ons I had
about the Presidential campaign made me
unwelcome by some. “Local elections are different,”
I tried convincing them. They didn’t
understand what I was so afraid of.
“This is to pick who controls the daily
operations of the federal government. Think
of the environmental destruction, death, and
suffering that will occur if this oil tycoon is
elected to the Presidency.” My words were
eerily prophetic, though I’d happily give a
limb for them to have been overs t a ted .
What is an “et h i c a l ” vo te? If you are a Progre
s s ive , is it ethical to vo te for a 3rd party cand
i d a te for the Pre s i den tial el ecti on in a swi n g
s t a te? One is also taught in civics co u rs e s
( a l t h o u gh it’s fairlyobvious) that ch a n ge in the
U. S . t h ro u gh federal govern m ent happens in
i n c rem ental step s . The U. S . govern m ent was
de s i gn ed by the fo u n ders to be slowen o u gh to
s tymie radical ch a n ge (wh i ch sounds bad now,
but rec a ll late 1920s Germ a ny ) .
As a functi on of this ch a racteri s tic of Am erican
govern m en t , a f ter 4 ye a rs of Bu s h , activi s t s
wi ll be spending dec ades undoing the damage ,
on all fron t s , f rom the co u rtrooms to the
s treet s . How long wi ll it take to get back to
wh ere we were in 2000? I won’t men ti on the
po s s i bi l i ty of 8 ye a rs of Bu s h . So the “progre ss
ive” acti on of vo ting for Nader in Florida in
2000 perhaps hel ped us take ‘ x ’s teps back , a n d
to the ri gh t .TheGreen hopewas theDem oc ratic
Pa rty would “ w a ke up” and retu rn to thei r
roo t s . We’ve seen some candidates in the prim
a ry that exem p l i f i ed this. But at what co s t ?
Kn owing what we know now, I won der,
h ow many of my old Florida Green fri en d s
would find their vo te ethical? Forsaking everything
el s e , this Pre s i dent has had a very direct
hand in the deaths of tens of thousands of
i n n ocent human bei n gs , and hu n d reds of
thousandsmore indirect ly thro u gh his po l i c i e s .
As a philosophy major, and a quasi-utilitarianist,
ethically, I tried making the case in
2000 that the potential for mass injustice—
should Bush be el ected — o ut wei gh ed the
Green’s ethical obligation to “vote their conscience”.
I was rebuffed time and time again:
the injustice will exist under either candidate,
so why not make a statement? I was nearly
swayed to quit my job about a half dozen
times. Now, of course, I am saturated with
guilt that I had not worked harder.
G ore and Bush weren’t stark ly differen t
en o u gh in the 2000 campaign for me to have
the ef fect I needed . But the Pre s i dency is an
of f i ce of con ti n gen c y. Som ething happen s , a n d
s/he must re act . Th ere is no way to campaign
on that. I tri ed making that case. “We don’t
k n ow what wi ll happen in the next 4 ye a rs .”
I thought my fri en d s’ repe a ted claims that
Bush and Gore were indisti n g u i s h a ble were
d i s i n genu o u s . At very least, the worlds they
would rule over wo u l d ’ve loo ked differen t . O n e
bet ter than the other. Not gre a t , but bet ter.
Th ey, in tu rn , s awme as I sawmys el f on occ as
i on : as a sell – o ut ; a cog in the partymach i n e s
that were warping Am erican dem oc rac y.
What if? What if I had gotten 600 more
Greens to change their minds? Demanded
more money from the Party for my activities?
I’d still be a sell-out, but I’d be so in a better
world, I think. Of course, Gore lost the election
and Bush stole it, but I did have a very
real opportunity to make a difference, and it
passed me by.
It wei gh ed heavi ly on my con s c i en ce every
m orningI got the news ofwhatBush had don e
the day before .What a terri ble job I had had .
So I decided to move to a non-swing state
until after the 2004 election. Don’t forget to
vote your conscience.