archive.ucimc.org · Antonia Darder Glynn Davis Brian Dolinar davep Shara Esbenshade Belden Fields Bob Illyes Paul Mueth Niloofar Shamayati Marcia Zumbahlen THE PUBLIC I Urbana-Champaign

The

Publ

ic i,

a pr

ojec

t of

the

Urb

ana-

Cha

m-

paig

n In

depe

nden

t Med

ia C

ente

r, is

an in

de-

pend

ent,

colle

ctiv

ely-

run,

com

mun

ity-o

rient

-ed

pub

licat

ion

that

pro

vide

s a fo

rum

for t

opic

sun

derr

epor

ted

and

voic

es u

nder

repr

esen

ted

inth

e do

min

ant

med

ia.

All

cont

ribut

ors

to t

hepa

per a

re v

olun

teer

s. Ev

eryo

ne is

welc

ome

and

enco

urag

ed to

sub

mit

artic

les o

r sto

ry id

eas

toth

e ed

itoria

l co

llect

ive.

We

pref

er,

but

do n

otne

cess

arily

restr

ict o

urse

lves

to, a

rticle

s on

issue

sof

loca

l im

pact

writ

ten

by au

thor

s with

loca

l ties

.Th

e op

inio

ns a

re th

ose

of th

e au

thor

s an

ddo

not

refle

ct th

e vie

ws o

f the

IMC

as a

who

le.

EDIT

OR

S/FA

CIL

ITA

TOR

S:A

nton

ia D

arde

rG

lynn

Dav

isBr

ian

Dol

inar

dave

pSh

ara

Esb

ensh

ade

Beld

en F

ield

sBo

b Il

lyes

Paul

Mue

thN

iloof

ar S

ham

ayat

iM

arci

a Z

umba

hlen

THE

PUB

LIC

IU

rban

a-C

ham

paig

n IM

C20

2 So

uth

Broa

dway

Urb

ana,

IL,

618

0121

7-34

4-88

20w

ww

.uci

mc.

org

Sup

po

rt U

C-I

MC

wh

en y

ou

sho

p a

t Je

rry’

s IG

A

Whe

n yo

u sh

op a

t an

IG

A,

requ

est

ach

arita

ble

enro

llmen

t for

m fr

om a

cas

hier

or m

anag

er,

and

desi

gnat

e th

e U

C-I

MC

(#05

5187

) as

you

r pr

efer

red

char

ity.

Ape

rcen

tage

of

your

pur

chas

e w

ill t

hen

goto

the

UC

-IM

C.

Get

Invo

lved

wit

h t

he

Pub

lic i

You

don’

t ne

ed a

deg

ree

in j

ourn

alis

mto

be

a ci

tizen

jou

rnal

ist.

We

are

all

expe

rts

in s

omet

hing

, and

we

have

the

abili

ty t

o sh

are

our

info

rmat

ion

and

know

ledg

e w

ith o

ther

s. T

he P

ublic

iis

alw

ays

look

ing

for

wri

ters

and

sto

ryid

eas.

We

invi

te y

ou t

o su

bmit

idea

s or

prop

osal

s du

ring

our

wee

kly

mee

tings

(Thu

rsda

ys a

t 5:

30pm

at

the

UC

IMC

),or

to

cont

act

one

of t

he e

dito

rs.

If yo

u or

you

r org

aniz

atio

n wo

uld

like

to b

ecom

e a

sust

aini

ng c

ontr

ibut

or to

the

Publ

ic i,

or w

ould

lik

e m

ore

info

rmat

ion,

ple

ase

call

344-

7265

, or

em

ail

imc-

prin

t@uc

imc.

org.

SU

STA

ININ

G C

ON

TRIB

UTO

RS

The

Publ

ic i

wish

es to

exp

ress

its

deep

app

reci

atio

n to

the

follo

win

g su

stai

ning

con

trib

-ut

ors

for t

heir

finan

cial

and

mat

eria

l sup

port

:

Soci

alis

tFor

um: A

n Op

en D

iscu

ssio

n an

dAc

tion

Grou

p,M

eets

3rd

Sat

urda

ys o

f the

mon

th, 3

-5 p

m, a

t IM

C, B

road

way

& El

m. (

U)

Wor

ld H

arve

st In

tern

atio

nal

and

Gour

met

Foo

ds51

9 E.

Uni

vers

ity, C

ham

paig

n

Unio

n of

Pro

fess

iona

l Em

ploy

ees

(UPE

)

The

Natu

ral G

ourm

et22

25 S

, Nei

l, Ch

ampa

ign;

355

-636

5

Prog

ress

ive

Asse

t Man

agem

ent,

Fina

ncia

l Wes

t Gro

upSo

cial

ly R

espo

nsib

le I

nves

ting

Jeru

sale

m C

afe

601

S. W

right

St,

Cham

paig

n; 3

98-9

022

The

AFL-

CIO

of C

ham

paig

n Co

unty

That

’s Re

nter

tain

men

t51

6 E.

Joh

n, C

ham

paig

n; 3

84-0

977

Nati

onal

Fis

h Th

erap

euti

c M

assa

ge11

3 N.

Rac

e, U

rban

a, 2

39-3

400

AWAR

E, th

e An

ti-W

ar, A

nti-R

acis

m E

ffor

tM

eetin

gs e

very

Sun

day

at 5

pm a

t the

IM

C

Trib

al L

ife,

Inc.

217-

766-

6531

,ht

tp:/

/tri

balli

fe.n

et/

Milo

’s Re

saur

ant

1560

Lin

coln

Squ

are,

Urb

ana;

344

-894

6

Aug

./Se

pt.

2008

V8,

#7

For E

cono

mic

Dem

ocra

cyBe

lden

Fie

lds

Page

3

The

Elec

tora

l Co

llege

Bria

n G

aine

sPa

ge 5

Elec

tron

ic V

otin

gA

nd

rew

O’B

aoill

Page

6

Targ

etin

g th

eIn

noce

ntCo

dy B

ralt

sPa

ge 1

0

Yep!

!‘d

emo’

-Kr

azy

Aug./Sept. 2008 V8, #7

The Effects Of Different Electoral SystemsBy James Kuklinski

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, andgender groups than others. Some encourage greateraccountability of legislators to constituents than others.Two different electoral systems can produce very differentlegislative bodies and thus different policies. Some elec-toral systems foster greater decisiveness in policymakingthan others.

Single-member district majority (plurality) voting is themost familiar electoral system. Also known as “first-past-the-post,” SMDV is currently used to elect representativesto the Illinois House and Senate. All of the candidatesappear on the general election ballot—the list is typicallywinnowed to two, one from each major party—and eachvoter votes for one of them. The winner is the candidatewho receives the most votes, whether or not that candi-date’s votes are a majority of the total.

SMDV places few demands on voters. Faced withchoosing a state legislator, they vote for one (or none) ofthe two candidates, whose names are clearly displayedon the ballot. SMDV also promotes close ties betweenlegislator and constituents, since the legislative districtsare relatively small. Critics quickly note, however, thatSMDV wastes all votes cast for the losing candidate(s). Italso discourages voting among constituents whose partycandidate stands no chance of winning, denies represen-tation to third parties, and encourages gerrymandering,which in turn reduces political competition. Currently,more than half of all state House and Senate incumbentsface no competition in either the primary or generalelection.

A variation of SMDV is instant run-off voting (IRV).Just as in plurality voting, all candidates are listed on theballot. Instead of voting for only one candidate, votersrank the candidates in order of their preferences ("1” forfirst choice, “2” for second, and so forth). The countingalso differs from SMDV. A computer tabulates the ballots.First, all the “1” preferences are counted. If a candidatereceives over 50 percent of the first- choice preferences,he or she is declared the winner. If no candidate receivesa majority of the first-place preferences, the candidatewith the fewest votes is eliminated. The ballots of sup-porters of this candidate are then transferred to whichev-er of the remaining candidates was marked as the “2”preference. The vote is then recounted to see if anyremaining candidate now has a majority of the votes.This process continues until one candidate receives amajority of the votes.

Advocates of IRV point to two advantages over SMDV.First, the winning candidate will have the meaningfulsupport of a majority of the voters, which increases his orher legitimacy. Second, IRV ensures that an independentor a third-party candidate will not play spoiler and throwthe election to one of the two major candidates who infact was not the electorate’s overall choice. On the otherhand, IRV is administratively complex. Summing thecontinuing votes to identify a winning candidate can leadto perverse outcomes when many voters do not identifysecond and third choices. Finally, IRV encourages candi-dates whose only purpose is to help another candidatedefeat the presumed winner.

Adoption of IRV has been a source of considerabledebate and controversy in Urbana. The controversynicely illustrates the close connection between politicsand choice of electoral system. A group of activeGreens, with the help of some non-Greens, attemptedto put a referendum on the November ballot regardingchanging from SMDV to IRV. The Greens believed,probably correctly, that third parties would have agreater chance to win council seats rather than just playthe spoiler role under IRV. The non-Greens who joinedthem simply felt that the IRV counting system would dobetter than SMDV at identifying the “true” winners incouncil elections. When the binding referendum wasblocked, an effort was made to place an advisory refer-endum on the ballot. Amid claims that the incumbentcity administration had packed the meeting with itsown people, the advisory referendum was blocked by avote of 43-98.

Cumulative voting has become a hot discussiontopic in the United States, especially with respect tolocal elections. Illinois used CV to elect Illinois Housemembers until 1982. During the 1977-78 bienniallegislative session, lawmakers adopted pay raises for awide array of state officials, including a 40 percentincrease for themselves. Coming out of nowhere andat a time when Alfred Kahn, then-president Carter’schairman of the Council on Wage and Price Stability,had established a ceiling of seven percent on salaryincreases, the increases incensed voters. Populist andcurrent Illinois Lieutenant Governor Patrick Quinnled a drive that put a statewide referendum on the1980 ballot reducing the size of the legislature andeliminating CV. Only 44 percent of those going to thepolls voted on this so-called cutback amendment, but69 percent of them approved it. The amendment wentinto effect with the 1982 election cycle. Currently,Illinois uses SMDV to elect both House and Senatemembers.

CV retains the first-past-the-post part of SMDV, butcandidates run in multi-member districts. Voters have asmany votes as there are legislative seats from their dis-tricts. Illinois voters, for example, had three votesbecause three candidates were elected from each district.They could cast all three votes for one candidate, splittheir votes for two candidates, or cast one vote for each ofthree candidates.

Proponents of CV see it as an especially effectiveway to ensure minority party representation. In Illi-nois, most districts elected at least one candidate fromeach party. Many also believe that CV increases thechances for racial and ethnic minorities to win repre-sentation, and thus see it as preferable to race- and eth-nic-conscious districting. CV also makes gerrymander-ing more difficult. On the other hand, districts aremuch larger under CV than under SMDV, making itmore difficult for constituents to develop ties with theirrepresentatives. If one defines electoral competition,simply, as the existence of more candidates than avail-able seats in a district, then competition in generalelections was no greater under CV than it has beenunder SMDV. However, there was more competition inprimary elections. The large number of candidates run-ning in a district, especially in primary elections, canoverwhelm citizens’ capacities to make rational choic-es. Critics of cumulative voting as it existed in Illinoisargue that party control over candidates was muchtighter than met the eye.

Although most Americans might not know it, mostdemocratic countries have adopted one or another form ofproportional representation. PR operates on a simple prin-ciple: the number of legislative seats a political party orgroup secures should be proportional to the electoral sup-port it garners among voters. So, if a political party orgroup wins 30 percent of the total vote, it should receiveabout 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, orslate, of candidates equal to the number of seats in thedistrict. Independents can also run, and are listed sepa-rately on the ballot. On the ballot, voters indicate theirpreferences for particular parties, and the parties thenreceive seats in proportion to their shares of the vote. So,for example, in a five-member district, if Party X’s candi-dates win 40 percent of the vote, the party is allocatedtwo seats.

PLV itself comes in two basic forms: closed list andopen list. Under a closed-list system, the party fixes theorder in which the candidates are listed and elected, andvoters simply cast a vote for the party as a whole. That is,winning candidates are elected in the order that parties putthem on the lists. Most European democracies now use theopen list form. This form allows voters to express theirpreferences for specific candidates, who often are listed onthe ballot in random order. So, in the same five-memberdistrict, if Party X candidates win 40 percent of the vote,and Joe and Mary receive the most Party X votes, they areelected.

PR and PLV tend to be friendlier than other systems tominority parties and to racial and ethnic groups. They alsowaste fewer votes than SMDV. The district elections tendto be competitive, encouraging turnout. PR and PLVreduce gerrymandering and appear to encourage greaterdiscussion of issues. On the other hand, PR and PLV usu-ally require several legislative parties to build governingcoalitions. These coalitions can be difficult to forge andoften are unstable. Some critics feel that these systems giveminority parties too much power and allow them to makeunjustifiable demands. Open lists often become highlycomplicated and thus difficult for voters to understand.

Continued on page 9

James Kuklinski is Matthew T. McClure Professor ofPolitical Science at the University of Illinois.

Courthouse consdtruction has begun…Whoopie!!

2 • the Public i August/September 2008www.ucimc.org / www.publici.ucimc.org

THE JOURNEY MADE by Richard Wrightfrom son of a Mississippi sharecropperto internationally-known writer is a clas-sic American success story. Born Sep-tember 4, 1908, Wright would havebeen 100 this month if he had lived this

long. Describing in vivid detail thepsychological terror waged onAfrican Americans, Wright’s storiesare still relevant for those workingfor social justice and human rights.

Wright was born just outsideNatchez, Mississippi on a formerslave plantation. There was a cente-nary celebration for Wright inNatchez this last February which Iattended. In addition to meetingJulia Wright, his daughter who trav-elled all the way from Paris, France,I got the chance to take a bus tour tothe old Rucker plantation. Justacross the road from where Wright’sfamily members are buried, a newprivate prison was being construct-ed—today’s modern plantation.

The crow flew so fast That he left his lonely cawBehind in the fields.

Although his family moved out of the Mississippi Delta,memories of the Deep South stayed with Wright for manyyears. He used this material to write his first short storieslike “Down by the Riverside,” about the 1927 MississippiFlood, which includes scenes strikingly similar to Hurri-cane Katrina. Wright told the complete story of his south-ern upbringing in his autobiographical Black Boy, a bookwhich every youth today should read.

Native Son, his most famous novel, is set in Chicago, acity that Wright knew well. The protagonist, BiggerThomas, is a typical black youth struggling to survive onthe streets of Chicago. In a harrowing series of events, heaccidentally kills a white woman, is accused of rape, and ischased down by a police-led white mob. After a trial, Big-ger is sentenced to death. Ultimately, the novel is an explo-ration of black oppression and an early call to end thedeath penalty. Wright himself was a prison activist, appeal-

ing to the New Jersey Governor in 1941 for the release ofblack inmate Clinton Brewer.

Radicalized by the Great Depresssion, Wright had beena member of the Communist Party in Chicago and wasnurtured by the John Reed Club, a communist writingcell. Also a founding member of the South Side Writers’

Group, Wright was part of Chicago’sBlack Renaissance, along with otherimportant figures like Horace Cay-ton, Margaret Walker, KatherineDunham, Arna Bontemps, and Fen-ton Johnson.

Landmarks of Wright’s era stillexist on Chicago’s South Side. TheGeorge Hall Branch Library, whichjust celebrated its 75th birthday, is at44th and Michigan. Wright didresearch there while working on theFederal Writers’ Project. The SouthSide Community Arts Center, found-ed in 1940 by Margaret Burroughs, isjust up the street at 3831 SouthMichigan. Archives containing thishistory are available to scholars, stu-dents, and the public at the VivianHarsh Collection (named after thehead librarian of the original HallBranch) 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 politi-cal climate. Moving to France, he said famously that therewas, “more freedom in one square block of Paris thanthere is in the entire United States of America!”

Whose town did you leaveO wild and drowning spring rainAnd where do you go.

There was also a centenary celebration for Wright thissummer in Paris, where he lived the last years of his lifeand is buried. It was attended by William Maxwell, profes-sor of African American literature at the University of Illi-nois, who told me, “The Wright centenary conference inParis was both inspiring and sobering. Julia Wright wel-comed an international group of fans, critics, and organiz-ers. But she also emphasized that the American Embassy,

the elegant site of several conference events, was ironicallya location where Wright feared to tread. There he was reg-ularly quizzed about his political beliefs when reapplyingfor his passport."

I am nobodyA red sinking Autumn sunTook my name away

Blacklisted during the McCarthy era, Wright’s booksreceived little attention in the 1950s. Although he was aninternationally known writer, he was shunned by hishome country. He wrote over one thousand Haiku poemstoward the end of his life that capture the emotionalestrangement he felt.

FB Eye Blues

Woke up this morning FB eye under my bedSaid I woke up this morningFB eye under my bedTold me all I dreamed last night, Every word I said.

The malaise many of his biographers have attributed tothese later years was partly due to his constantly being fol-lowed in Paris by the FBI and CIA. Indeed, the FBI file onWright is 244 pages long. In 1960, Wright died of a sud-den heart attack. He was 52 years old. One of his bestfriends, black cartoonist Ollie Harrington, questioned thecircumstances of what he called a “mysterious death.”

In the last years of his life, Wright had travelled to WestAfrica as a guest of independence leader Kwame Nkrumah.He reported on the 1955 Bandung Conference, an historicmeeting of oppressed nations in Indonesia. Although hehad denounced communism in the 1940s, a decade laterhe worked to free black Communist Henry Winston whosehealth had deteriorated while he was held in a federalprison. Throughout his life, Wright was a politically-com-mitted artist who skillfully used his words as weapons.

In the falling snowA laughing boy holds out his palms Until they are white.

Illinois Native Son Richard Wright Turns 100By Brian Dolinar

IF WE READ THE NEWSPAPERS and watch TV in the UnitedStates, we are told that President Hugo Chavez ofVenezuela is a “dictator,” “authoritarian,” “a threat todemocracy” in his own country and the region, and “anti-U.S.” But leaders who try to empower poor people aregenerally vilified in the media and hated by those inpower. Martin Luther King, Jr. now has a national holidaynamed after him, but when he was leading marches in theChicago suburbs or denouncing the Vietnam War, thepress treated him about as badly as they treat Chavez. AndKing was seriously harassed, threatened, and blackmailedby the FBI.

The idea that Venezuela under Chavez is authoritarianor dictatorial is absurd, as anyone who has seen thecountry in the last nine years can affirm. Most of thepress there opposes the government, more so than in therest of the hemisphere – including the United States.Chavez and his allies have won ten elections, the mostimportant of which were all http://www.opinionjour-nal.com/extra/?id=110005518 certified by internationalobservers. Several months ago, Chavez lost a referendumwhich would have abolished term limits on the presiden-cy and ratified a move toward “21st century socialism.” Itshould be remembered that this is a “socialism” thatrespects private property and the private sector – whichis a larger share of the economy than it was beforeChavez took office.

Nonetheless, after losing by a razor-thin margin,Chavez not only immediately accepted the results but lastSunday announced a shift of policy in line with the elec-torate’s wants. He said that the government would slow itsefforts at political change and concentrate on solving someof the voters’ top-priority problems, such as crime andpublic services.

Chavez’s relations with the Bush Administration andthe rest of the hemisphere are also commonly misrep-resented. The standard media description of the U.S.role in the military coup that temporarily overthrewChavez in 2002 is that the Bush Administration gave it“tacit support.” But “tacit support” is what the Admin-istration gave to the opposition oil strike in 2002-2003, which devastated the economy in anotherattempt to overthrow the Venezuelan government. Inthe April 2002 coup, the Administration actually fund-ed opposition leaders involved in the coup,http://www.cepr.net/content/view/649/45/ according tothe U.S. State Department. White House and StateDepartment officials also http://www.cepr.net/con-tent/view/649/45/ lied to the public during the coup, inan attempt to convince people that the change of gov-ernment was legitimate.

Rather than apologizing for supporting these attemptsto overthrow and destabilize Venezuela’s democratic gov-ernment, the Bush Administration went on to fund further

opposition efforts, and continues to do so today – includ-ing http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/arti-cle/2007/12/01/AR2007120101636.html funding of therecent student movement in Venezuela, according to U.S.government documents. Is it any wonder that Chavez does

Democracy or Dictatorship in VenezuelaBy Mark Weisbrot

Richard Wright 1908–1960

August/September 2008 the Public i • 3www.ucimc.org / www.publici.ucimc.org

ONE OF THE GREAT FALLACIES in the Unit-ed States is the separation of the eco-nomic from the political and the beliefthat democracy applies only to the“political.” This is both an ahistoricalview and one that ignores some underly-ing values of democracy and their neces-

sary applicability to the economic domain, which is reallya domain that both classical economists and socialists usedto call “political-economy."

THE HISTORICAL PERSPECTIVEThe word “democracy,” comes from the Greek word“demos,” meaning the people. It actually referred to thepeople who were not slaves. The males among these peo-ple worked “freely” in the sense that they were not slavesand were not subject to hierarchical structures like latermedieval serfdom or the contemporary corporation. Dur-ing the period of Athenian democracy they also exercisedconsiderable political power and actively engaged in polit-ical deliberation.

Aristotle, who like Plato opposed democracy and saw itas a perverse form, saw democracy as specifically a classform of governance. It was a form in which the poor, whoalso happened to constitute the majority, ruled. WhileAristotle’s ideal preference for a political system was amonarchy ruled by the wisest, his more practical side toldhim that the best one could hope for in real life would be abalance between the wealthier citizens and the poorerones manifested in a middle class. This he called a “polity.”Many conservatives, harkening back to the Federalists inour national history, view the United States in such terms.They thus refer to the United States as a republic ratherthan a democracy. And, in their minds, it is a republic thathas expanded the power of the poor by giving them thevote. So now, as opposed to our early period as a nation,we have realized equality as citizens and free choices asinvestors who can vote on corporate officers and somecorporate decisions if we have the money to invest, as wellas free consumers who can vote with their dollars con-strained only by how many dollars we have to spend. Isn’tthis grand and as democratic, if not fully so, as anyonecould reasonably expect? Additionally, many Westerndevelopment theorists and practitioners from the 1960son, saw this as the ideal for countries in the South. Whilethe developmentalists’ austerity strategies inflicted greatpain (see Naomi Klein’s The Shock Doctrine) on the poorin the short-term, it was argued that they would build upthe middle class in the long-term and have an economictrickle-down effect on the poor. This was what an interna-tional economic order called “Free Trade” with its interna-tional institutions like the World Bank (originally createdto help European Development after World War II, theIMF, and subsequently, the World Trade Organization weresupposed to do—i.e., lead the world toward Aritstotle’spolity and away from populist movements and leaders

who were too dangerously democratic.

UNDERLYING VALUESLet us take a closer look at some of the underlying valuesof democracy and reflect on how they apply to the specifi-cally economic side of political economy.

1. Power and Empowerment

One rationale for democracy is that it gives people at leasta potentially effective say in how their lives are to be gov-erned. This is what I have called in my book on humanrights “co-and self-determination.” In other words, anunderlying value of democracy is that people have a rightto participate in the determination of what kinds of insti-tutions and processes are going to be ruling their lives.This is nothing other than the right to participate in theexertion of power. This is the supposed basis of universalsuffrage. But universal suffrage masks collective interests.It leads us to think only of the perceived interest of theindividual. But power in society is collective. Aristotle rec-ognized this by classifying political systems according toeconomic classes. And many modern political scientistshave accepted “the authoritative allocation of resources” asthe very definition of politics, making the separation ofeconomic and class interests from it completely arbitrary.

Once a political system becomes dominated by thosewho control a disproportionate share of the wealth andresources, which is what capitalism produces, it can nolonger be accurately called a democracy. Nor can it accu-rately be called a balanced republic in which the middle-class is dominant. It becomes a plutocracy, or in Aristotle’swords an oligarchy, in which those who dominate the eco-nomic side also come to dominate the political side ofpolitical-economy. The only way to redress this is todemocratize the economic side by introducing collectiveownership and self-governance among people who actual-ly do the work of the society, using this as a base fromwhich to end the present domination that corporationsand wealth-holders have over the political side. Withoutthis democratic use of power, we are condemned toremain within a power structure that will frustrate ourdemocratic aspirations.

2. Freedom

In a democracy, all should be free to pursue their self-actu-alization to the degree that their aspirations, talents, andgood fortune permit. While the actual system of political-economy in the United States does not afford workers thekind of freedom in the work place that we are advocatingas necessary for a real democracy to arise, I am not advo-cating that one class or one segment of the society monop-olize all power. The Bill of Rights and subsequent amend-ments to the constitution are extremely important docu-ments, the freedoms, due process, and equal protectionguarantees of which are crucial to the underlying values ofdemocracy. But they have been distorted by the interests of

wealth in this society as manifested by actions of allbranches of our government, even the Supreme Court thatis supposed to interpret the Constitution. Thus we havesituations in which the corporation is treated as a legalperson with the same rights as individuals, while mostother collective collective and social human rights aredenied, and attempts to limit the amount of political con-tributions are treated as violations of the right to freedomof expression giving further political advantage to wealth.Increasingly, the Supreme Court sides with corporate overworker rights and interests, thus rendering workers lessand less free to even litigate abuses within an alreadyextremely constraining work context.

3. Equality

Capitalism is inherently inegalitarian because it leaveseverything to the market.

It is based upon self-interest and greed, and indeed anumber of capitalist writers make the argument that greedis good. Since goods are always scarce when comparedwith desire, there is bound to be an inquality. And thatinesquality is legitimate because there is no other socialvalue, such as social solidarity, that can challenge marketor exchange outcomes.

We are now seeing the results with remarkable clarity.The freedoms accorded to corporations and financial insti-tutions have resulted in the disastrous situations of highunemployment, wages below a living level, homelessness,massive home foreclosures, inaccessibility to health careand insurance, scarcity of food, and environmental degra-dation that limit the freedom of most of us while thoseresponsible for this in both political and corporate struc-tures are doing just fine thank you. They escape account-ability with bail-outs ("too big to fail") and huge salaries,bonuses, and severance packages while millions of peopleare hurting. This undercuts the claim that this corporate-financial-free trading structure is the most efficient systempossible and that there is no alternative possible.

The other alternative is a truly self-governing societythat recognizes that democracy applies to both the eco-nomic and the political sides of the same system of politi-cal-economy, that we cannot have democracy in the politi-cal system without democracy in the workplace. There isnot enough space in a newspaper article to discuss specif-ic structural proposals for redressing this. For some specif-ic alternatives in both theory and practice see MichaelAlbert and Robin Hahnel’s, Looking Forward, Robin Hah-nel’s. Economic Justice and Democracy, Robert A. Dahl’s APreface to Economic Democracy, Alasdair Clayre’s, ThePolitical Economy of Co-operation and Participation,Edward Greenberg’s Worklpace Democracy: The PoliticalEffects of Participation, William Whyte’s Making Mon-dragon: the Growth and Dynamics of the Worker Cooper-ative Complex, and my own Rethinking Human Rights inthe New Millennium, Ch. 5.

For Economic DemocracyBy Belden Fields

The Devil’s Highway: A True Story

A book talk by Luis Alberto Urrea

September 12, noon talk at the University YMCA,1001 South Wright Street. 5pm reading and book-signing at Pages For All Ages in Savoy

The Devil’s Highway tells the 2001 story of 26 men whoattempted to cross the Mexican border into the desert ofsouthern Arizona, through the deadliest region of thecontinent. Only 12 men emerged. It was the single largesttragedy in the growing exodus of Mexican immigrants intothe United States. This book tells the story from manydifferent perspectives and with compassion for allinvolved: the survivors, the coyotes (those who get paidto lead people across the border), and the border patrol.

To join a book club that is reading the book contactRev. Mike Mulberry mailto: m.mulberryatcomcast.net

not have kind words to say about Bush?Chavez is not the Bush Administration’s only target in

the region. Just this week Evo Morales, Bolivia’s firstindigenous president and another anti-poverty crusader,repeated his denunciation of Washington’s support forright-wing opposition forces in Bolivia. Most of SouthAmerica – including Brazil, Argentina, Ecuador, Bolivia,and Uruguay – has left-of-center governments who under-stand that the Bush Administration’s hostility towardVenezuela is really about the U.S. losing illegitimate powerover sovereign governments, in a region that Washingtonconsiders its “back yard.” They have – includinghttp://www.reuters.com/article/worldNews/idUSN2536376520071125 President Lula da Silva of Brazil – consistent-ly defended Venezuela.

In Venezuela, the economy (real GDP) has grown by

87 percent since the government got control over itsnational oil industry in early 2003; poverty has been cutby half, most of the country has access to free healthcare, and educational enrollment has risen sharply.Venezuelans have repeatedly elected Chavez for the samereasons that Americans are voting for Barack Obama –they see him as representing hope, and change, in aregion that needs both.

http://www.cepr.net/index.php/mark-weisbrot/ MarkWeisbrot is co-director of the Center for Economic andPolicy Research, in Washington, D.C. (www.cepr.net).http://www.cepr.net/index2.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=1426&pop=1&page=0&Itemid=45#

Democracy in VenezuelaContinued from previous page


IN SPRING 2007, A GROUP OF URBANA CITIZENS decided toexamine the vitality of our local electoral system. The healthof a democracy can be measured by the number of candi-dates who run for office, the number of candidates whochallenge incumbent office holders, the number of partiesthat run candidates in elections, the diversity of perspectiveson issues expressed during campaigns, and the extent ofvoter participation in elections. On all of these frontsUrbana has experienced significant declines during the lastfour election cycles 1993- 2005. During this period only18% of primary races and 55.5 % of general election raceswere contested; no third party candidates ran for office;20.7 % of register voters turned out for the 2005 mayoralprimary race; and voter participation in general city elec-tions steadily declined from 34.4% (1993) to 21.4% (1997)to 18.8% (2001) to 12.5% in 2005.

The group learned that instant runoff voting (IRV) hasinvigorated local democracy in Takoma Park, Md; Hender-son, NC; and Burlington, Vt. Exit polls showed that a veryhigh percentage of first time IRV election participants under-stood the system “well or very well” and preferred IRV to thecity’s prior system. IRV also tended to encourage more candi-dates to run for office, reduced the number of uncontestedraces, resulted in more parties submitting candidates forelection, broadened the number of perspectives expressedon campaign issues, and increased voter participation in theelectoral process. “This is just what Urbana needs,” they con-cluded, and formed a grassroots organization called UrbanaCitizens for Instant Runoff Voting.

UC-IRV created a brochure and web site (www.IRVforUr-bana.net). Delegates met with the Mayor and City Councilindividually to express concerns about the single pluralityvoting system used in Urbana municipal elections and thedesire to replace it with IRV. They did not ask the civic bodyto initiate this change but instead opted to circulate a com-munity-wide petition calling for a “binding” referendum onIRV to be placed on Urbana’s upcoming general election bal-lot. The group would have an opportunity to educate citi-zens about IRV as they circulated petitions.

Members of UC-IRV met with Champaign County ClerkMark Sheldon who provided them with petitioning processguidelines. He conveyed that the IRV system is easy tounderstand and use and that his office could prepare the bal-lot-counting software at no expense to the city. Unfortunate-ly, Sheldon misinterpreted the state election code and under-estimated the number of signatures required to place a bind-ing referendum on the ballot. He told UI-IRV that 766 signa-tures were required when the true number was just over2000. 766 was the number of signatures required for a non-binding or advisory referendum.

Over the following three months IRV advocates repre-senting a variety of local political parties collected signa-tures door-to-door and at a variety of community venues.They obtained over 1,000 signatures and filed the peti-tions in the City Clerk’s office as was required.

One day before the petition “challenge period” ended,Al Klein, Vice-President of the local Democratic Party,challenged the petitions on three separate grounds: aninadequate number of signatures were collected; the lan-guage of the petition was vague and confusing; and a fun-damental change in the election system could not be madethrough a citizen petitioning process. An Electoral Boardwas constituted to review these challenges; its memberswere the Mayor (chair), the City Clerk, and a City Councilmember—all Democrats. The Board ruled in favor of Kleinsolely on the basis that inadequate signatures had beencollected. Refusing to rule on the other challenges, theBoard left it unclear whether future petitions could bechallenged on one or both of those grounds. Later thesame day, Klein told a representative from UC-IRV that hewould use “every legal means available” to block such areferendum in the future, raising the specter of expensivelegal battles if UC-IRV persisted.

At this point, UC-IRV proposed that the Mayor and/orCity Council appoint a task force of key city and countyofficials as well as citizens to identify the legal and techni-

cal requirements necessary to place a binding IRV referen-dum before the voters. This proposal was rejected by theMayor and several City Council members. They arguedthat all the work should be done by UC-IRV itself. UC-IRVworried that without participation by key city and countyofficials, a petition would be vulnerable once again to legaland/or technical challenges.

It was only after the above initiatives had been rebuffedthat UC-IRV decided to use the Annual Township meeting toplace an “advisory” referendum before the voters. The deci-sion was based, in part, on the success that other local grass-roots groups had experienced with this process during thepast two years. This included local anti-war activists placingadvisory referenda before the voters in 2006 that resulted instrong votes to “bring the troops home from Iraq immediate-ly” and to “impeach Bush and Cheney.” Publicity given thereferenda in the press helped generate the community’sresponse. While a binding referendum was preferable, UC-IRV reasoned that an advisory referendum would at least getIRV and the broader issue of electoral reform into the spot-light for community review and discussion.

Learning of these plans, local Democrats rounded up agroup of party loyalists to attend the Annual Townshipmeeting and block any advisory referenda from beingplaced on the ballot by controlling the meeting’s agenda.Not expecting opposition to a “non-binding” referendum,UC-IRV had not made a similar effort to gather supportersand was narrowly defeated at the meeting.

Frustrated but not dissuaded, UC-IRV discovered thatany group of citizens can call a Special Township Meetingto deal with an issue of concern to citizens of the Town-ship. Furthermore, the agenda for such a meeting can notbe altered once the meeting is scheduled. The request forthe meeting was filed appropriately and a meeting to con-sider placing an advisory IRV referendum on the fall ballotwas scheduled for June 30, 2008.

This action by UC-IRV led the Mayor to undertake retal-iatory action. Knowing that no more than three advisory ref-erenda could be placed on the upcoming fall ballot, she con-vened a meeting of the Township Board on June 16 and pro-posed three advisory referenda of her own. Uncomfortablewith placing three referenda on the ballot that evening andthereby denying UC-IRV the opportunity to make its case atthe upcoming Special Township Meeting, members of theTown Board approved placing only one referendum on theballot leaving space for two more.

After the Mayor’s failed attempt to sabotage the SpecialTownship Meeting ahead of time, local Democrats, spear-headed by the Mayor herself, once again cranked up theirpolitical machine and rounded up approximately 100party loyalists and other sympathizers to attend the meet-ing. At the meeting, they voted, first, to limit debate, andsecond, to defeat the placing of an IRV advisory referen-dum before Urbana voters at large.

This action by a small but organized group of party fol-lowers disenfranchised Urbana citizens as a whole by deny-ing them an opportunity to vote on electoral reform in thefall. By preventing the referendum from being on the ballot,the action also undermined the efforts of UC-IRV to generatewide community discussion of electoral reform before theelection some four months away. Finally, it denied the CityCouncil an opportunity to get a reading on how the commu-nity at large feels about the need for electoral reform.

These last points cannot be emphasized too strongly. Bybringing issues affecting the welfare of the public to theforefront of community attention, referenda, binding oradvisory, provide a strong spur to public education. Votersbecome motivated to learn more about the issues becausethey will have a chance to vote on them. Without anopportunity to vote, they have less incentive to invest thetime and energy required to develop positions on theissues. Unfortunately, the press, too, typically has lessincentive to cover the issues. This makes the job of raisingpublic consciousness more difficult for advocates ofchange. Those in positions of power who resist changeknow this and thus often oppose referenda where the peo-

ple themselves have an opportunity to express their willdirectly. Is it because local Democrats worry that IRV orsome other electoral reform will threaten their influenceand power that they have opposed public referenda onIRV? This is something the reader should consider.

In an editorial published in the News Gazette on July 4,the editors stated that “it’s time to bring the curtain down onspecial meetings of Cunningham Township” and “packingaudiences to produce desired results…” Later, the editorssuggested that if advocates of IRV are serious about this idea,“they’ll start a petition drive and drop this game-playing withtownship law.” It is clear that the editors did not know thefull history of UC-IRV’s efforts to achieve a referendum. UC-IRV had already conducted a petition drive, had the initiativeblocked, and been threatened with expensive legal chal-lenges if they tried to do the same again!

The last step, to date, in this saga occurred on July 7when the Mayor of Urbana initiated action to formallyeliminate any chance for a citizen’s group to introduceadvisory referenda on the general election ballot inNovember. She did this by again calling a meeting of theTownship Board and recommending that two advisory ref-erenda be placed in the remaining slots on the ballot. Onedealt with national health care policy and the other withthe system of elections used in Cunningham Township(i.e., Urbana). The latter asks voters, “Do you supportkeeping the current system for local elections so that eachvoter casts one vote for the candidate they prefer and thecandidate who gets the most votes wins?”

When presented with the mayor’s recommendation,Township Board members did not insist on community-wide discussion and debate of the issues addressed beforeplacing the referenda on the ballot as they had with UC-IRV; neither did they make any provision for schedulingsuch discussions and debates to educate the public afterthe referenda were placed on the ballot—during theupcoming 2-3 months. Instead, they simply voted unani-mously to support her request, and the referenda wereplaced on the ballot.

UC-IRV plans to continue its efforts to encourage thepublic to learn more about the current electoral systemand how local democracy might be enhanced by replacingthis system with instant runoff voting. Readers who areinterested in becoming involved should contact the com-mittee at [email protected]. To learn more about IRVitself see www.fairvote.org . Please consider joining UC-IRV or attending events it sponsors in the coming months.

A Brief History of Instant Runoff Voting inUrbana Municipal ElectionsGary Storm, Member, Urbana Citizens for Instant Runoff Voting

On November 8th 2007 United Nations declared15th of September International Day of Democracy“to focus attention on the promotion and consolida-tion of democracy at all levels.” This date was sug-gested to the General Assembly by the Inter-parlia-mentary Union to honor the Universal Declarationon Democracy which was drafted on September 15,1998. Many groups have been organizing activitieson or around this date to expand and deepen thediscourse on the concept and practice of democracy.

As several articles in this issue of the Public i sug-gest, developing and maintaining truly democratic andpluralistic governing institutions require the activeinvolvement of a well-informed citizenry in politics.This in turn can happen only if grass-root organiza-tions and independent media persist in their work toscrutinize all branches of government and educate andmobilize the public.

International Day ofDemocracy


IS THE ELECTORAL COLLEGE (EC) democ-ratic? Yes, insofar as it is a means bywhich the declared preferences of thevoting public are translated into selec-tion of an elected representative. If thecrux of democracy is that policies orrepresentatives who make policies arechosen by a broad electorate in free

elections, the EC clears the bar.The E.C. is nonetheless a target of much criticism, and

there are at least four prongs to the attack that it is insuffi-ciently democratic. First, the public’s role is indirect: we,the people, do not actually choose presidents, but onlyslates of anonymous ciphers to whom the actual job ofchoosing a president falls. Second, the complex designwherein the presidency is won in a vote by 538 electors,themselves chosen in 51 elections (in 50 states plus DC)confers unequal voting power on American citizens.Third, the EC system is not guaranteed to be decisive, andtie-breaking procedures are even more indirect, takingplace in the US House (for President) and US Senate (forVice President). Fourth, the 2000 election reminded usthat our current system allows a candidate who won fewervotes than a rival to secure the presidency.

The first point is true, but its importance is unclear.People almost universally talk as though they are votingdirectly for presidential candidates. Only pedants say, “I’mvoting for the slate of electors pledge to choose Obama(McCain).” Commentators, pollsters, pundits, academics,and probably even electors talk about candidates winningvote and states. Shouldn’t we be bothered, nonetheless, bythese anachronistic middlemen? The gravest danger, fromthe democrat’s point of view, is “faithless” electors, individ-uals pledged to back a given candidate who surprise thenation by voting otherwise. There have been 158 faithlesselectors, but only 9 (out of 8,048) in the last 60 years. Inthe hyper-close 2000 race, Bush beat Gore by 5, ratherthan 4, electoral votes because a Democrat from DCabstained, a symbolic protest she would surely have fore-gone had the electoral vote been tied or had Gore won byone. In 2004, one Democratic Minnesota elector voted forJohn Edwards for president, apparently by mistake.

Optimists note that those chosen to be electors are gen-erally party loyalists, and that the very rare divergencesfrom pledged votes have not mattered in modern contests.No one seriously argues that today’s electors should beaccorded discretion to vote as they like, without regard totheir state’s popular vote tallies. Pessimists fume thatcabals and bungles are possible as long as electors arehuman, and that the very existence of the electors is anaffront. On balance, though, they seem more a curiositythan a threat. Some states constrain them to vote as direct-ed with legislation, and a more radical reform would be toautomate the College so that electors are tabulationdevices, not humans (such a change probably could notpass constitutional muster absent an amendment).

On the second point, the appeal for votes to “countequally” is mostly illusory. True, there are substantial dis-crepancies in number-of voters-per-elector across states: in2004, values ranged from about 75,000 in DC to nearly300,000 in Wisconsin. Such variation arises from multiplesources, including: large turnout differences; a bias favor-

ing small states in the EC, due to every state being appor-tioned one elector per Senator; apportionment of Houseseats (and, thus, electors) never matching populationshares exactly, since the House is fixed at 435 memberswhose districts cannot cross states lines; and the fact thatapportionments are adjusted only once per decade, eventhough populations shift constantly. But electoral rules thataccommodate some malapportionment of this sort arecommon elsewhere, and were typical in the US beforeReynolds v. Sims and related cases of the mid-1960s. More-over, computing “power” for individual voters is morecomplicated still. Realistically, it depends on the size of thestate voting electorate, the closeness of the state contest,and tricky permutations involved in constructing all possi-ble winning coalitions (combinations of states). DC is themost over-represented presidential-election unit in the sim-ple count above, but it is also lopsidedly Democratic, andDC voters are the least powerful by some calculations.

In any case, in large-scale elections, all votes are exceed-ingly unlikely to matter, in the sense of making or break-ing a tie. A rational cost-benefit-oriented voter expectingeven a few thousand others to turnout would never botherto cast a ballot. Voting is largely an expressive activity: wevote from a sense of duty, because we were asked to do soand would feel guilty about not following through, orbecause we enjoy the sensation of being part of a move-ment. A voter who thinks her ballot will be decisive is kid-ding herself, even if she lives in a small, evenly split statelike New Mexico or New Hampshire.

The third complaint is more worrisome. It has been184 years since the House chose a president, but foes ofthe EC like to highlight the near-misses, elections in whichthe EC could have failed to pick a winner had a few thou-sand voters chosen differently. There is little doubt thatmost Americans would be aghast to see a presidential elec-tion resolved by the US House; but it is hard to know justhow alarming are these counterfactual histories.

The elite-level tie-breaking procedure of the EC is unat-tractive, but non-resolution is possible even in a nationalplurality election. An exact tie in popular vote is not neces-sary for deadlock: if a result is close enough for a recount, abattle distinct from the initial contest ensues, over how todeal with the inherent messiness in large-scale elections thatis usually safely out-of-sight. Democrats will recall Floridain 2000 with rage, and the US Supreme Court’s role in theresolution. But recounts almost always turn up messes. In2004, for example, Republicans in Washington saw a seriesof recounts marred by irregularities (e.g. the late appearanceof new ballots, somehow overlooked in earlier tabulations)turn a win by their gubernatorial candidate into a loss.

It is thus well to remember that the Electoral College isnot uniquely prone to chaos. In a national direct election,if the margin were sufficiently close, there would be nolimit to the domain of the conflict: we could see Florida-style recounts and court fights in 50 states (3,000 coun-ties). Granted, we’ve had few presidential elections withextremely close national vote totals, and simple mathemat-ics ensures that very, very close totals are much more like-ly in individual states than in the national sums. Still, the“recounts everywhere” scenario, though quite unlikely, is aserious worry on par with those counterfactuals wherein

the House might have had to choose the winner if a fewstates had voted differently.

"But Gore won more votes!” It is arbitrary, rather thannon-democratic, to employ an electoral system that doesnot necessarily select the candidate who won the mostvotes. When both candidates know in advance how theelection will be determined, there is nothing undemocrat-ic about not being majoritarian. Gore wasn’t even the onlymodern VP to be foiled by the EC: Nixon outpolledKennedy in popular votes while losing the presidency in1960 (a point obscured by most textbooks, which assignto Kennedy votes cast for electors who openly opposedhim and cast their ballots for Harry Flood Byrd).

Ultimately, there is no such thing as a perfect, error-freeelectoral system. Specialists have proven complicated the-orems establishing that all voting rules are prone to somemanner of manipulation. The Electoral College is quirky,creaky, and can fail. But that’s also true of democracy, alas.

Giving Democracy the Old College TryBy Brian J. Gaines

The Beauty of the Compact?One ingenious scheme would establish national plu-rality elections for the presidency without passing aconstitutional amendment. States might be able topass legislation dictating that electors be awarded towhichever candidate secures the most votes nation-wide, contingent on other states doing the same.States are, of course, perfectly free not to award theirelectors on a winner-take-all basis. Maine and Nebras-ka are presently the only anomalies, but other statescould choose to award electors in some other way.Colorado had a ballot initiative to award electors pro-portionally in 2004, controversial both because it wasto be retroactive (i.e. to apply to the 2004 vote) andbecause the Constitution empowers the “legislature”to determine how electors are appointed. The mea-sure was, in any event, soundly defeated. It is diffi-cult for any state to move unilaterally away fromwinner-take-all, since proportional allocation makesa state less likely to garner attention from presiden-tial candidates. Contingent legislation cleverly solvesthat problem. It does not, of course, resolve the diffi-culties of computing a national-vote sum. Already,Maryland, New Jersey, Hawaii, and Illinois havepassed such laws. Legal experts are divided onwhether The “Compact Clause” of the Constitution(Art. I, §10, clause 3), which specifies that “No stateshall, without the consent of Congress…enter intoany agreement or compact with another state…",means Congress would ultimately have to approvesuch a deal. But the movement steams ahead. RobertBennett’s Taming the Electoral College (Stanford Uni-versity Press) provides a thorough discussion of thisand other possible EC reforms.

Two Video DocumentariesAbout Abortion Rights:

At the Independent Media Center, 202 S. BroadwayFriday, September 19, 7 pm

The Coat Hanger Project, by Washington DC-basedAngie Young focuses on the current state of the USpro-choice/reproductive justice movement 35 yearsafter Roe v. Wade and specifically targets the post-1973 generation. And, Abortion Democracy:Poland/South Africa by Berlin-based Sarah Diehl com-pares and contrasts abortion policy in the two coun-tries and argues for a liberalization of abortion laws.


NOT SO LONG AGO, mainstream media pro-vided a valuable and reasonable source ofnews and information. News organizationslarge and small supported independentjournalism and held the public trust toempower citizens with knowledge andprotect against government corruption andabuse of power. Over time, rich and pow-erful corporations partnered with politi-cians to gain increasing legal and economicinfluence. Large corporations began togobble up independent news organizationsat an alarming rate, eventually creating thegiant, multi-headed media beast that nowdominates broadcast and print media. Cor-porate media controls much of the flow ofinformation, filtering and distorting thenews to suit its own purposes, frequentlyoffering mindless infotainment in the placeof substantive content, and subverting therole of media watchdog that is essential toa free society.

Distinguished journalist Bill Moyers hassaid, “Democracy without honest informa-tion creates the illusion of popular consentwhile enhancing the power of the state andthe privileged interests protected by it.Democracy without accountability createsthe illusion of popular control while offer-ing ordinary Americans cheap tickets tothe balcony, too far away to see that the

public stage is just a reality TV set. Thisleaves you (the public) with a heavy bur-den—it’s up to you to fight for the freedomthat makes all other freedoms possible.”

This summer, 3500 media activists andconcerned citizens demonstrated theirwillingness to take up that burden whenthey converged on Minneapolis in earlyJune for the 2008 National Conference forMedia Reform. People came with a passionfor the cause. From the opening plenary tothe conference close, a sense of missionand community charged the environment.Well-known activists, writers, and mediapersonalities filled the roster of presenters,along with many not-so-well-known pro-gressive leaders, all dedicated to preservinga free and democratic society through freeand independent media.

In the opening plenary session, Prof.Lawrence Lessig, founder of the StanfordLaw School’s Center for Internet and Soci-ety, inspired a packed auditorium with anexposé on the Constitutional foundationsof a free press and a free and open Internet.Following a day full of workshops and pre-sentations, attendees had the opportunityto view and discuss Body of War, apoignant documentary produced anddirected by Phil Donahue and Ellen Spiro.It tells the story of twenty-five year-old

Thomas Young who was inspired to jointhe military after watching George W. Bushspeak amid the rubble of 9/11. Thomaswent to Iraq. In less than one week, he wasshot and paralyzed. The documentarychronicles Thomas’ return home and thestruggles he faces as a paralyzed vet andoutspoken critic of the war.

Bill Moyers opened day two of the con-ference with a grand Keynote presentationaddressing the critical nature of the grass-roots media reform movement and its his-torical and social significance. Workshopsof the day covered issues such as the warsin Iraq and Afghanistan, Internet freedom,Hip Hop culture, feminist media activism,and many practical workshops on topicssuch as lobbying and effective communica-tion. The day closed with a fast-paced galaof multi-media presentations, music,dance and moving speeches by visionariesand leaders such as Naomi Klein, SenatorByron Dorgan, Arianna Huffington, andFCC Commissioner Michael Copps—aprincipled public servant who continues tostand courageously against the swell ofcorporate influence on federal communi-cations policy.

By the opening of the final day, every-one was exhausted, exhilarated, informed,and inspired, but there was still more to

come. After morning breakout sessions,the conference closed with messages fromAmy Goodman, FCC CommissionerJonathan Adelstein, and a forceful presen-tation by visionary and social activist VanJones, who called upon attendees to carrythe passion and the message of the move-ment into their own communities, leadingthe charge for media reform and positivesocial change.

Who else will fight for the freedom that,as Moyers said, makes all other freedomspossible? Who else will dare to tame thebeast? There is no one but us, the people—citizens who must protect and preserve thepublic interest and our right to a free andindependent press. If you find your localnews station is not accurately reporting thenews, file a complaint with the station orwith the FCC at esupport.fcc.gov/com-plaints.htm. Corporate influence led to achange in FCC license regulations fromreasonably rigorous reviews once everythree years to a “rubberstamp” review onceevery eight years; so, lobby your represen-tatives for changes in FCC regulations thatwould increase media accountability. Edu-cate yourself on the issues. Freepress.netoffers a wealth of information to get youstarted.

Media Reform: Taming Corporate MediaBy Ann Hettinger and Patricia DeWalt

THE IMAGES ARE FAMILIAR: election-workersslowly, methodically, holding ballotpapers up to the light, squinting,announcing their considered judgment —this one “Bush", that one “Gore” — withparty lawyers sitting by ready to debate‘pregnant’ chads, while the world lookedon, somewhat bemused that the electionto the United States’ highest office, onewith access to almost unlimited techno-logical resources, should come to this.The spectacle was presumed to representa failure of American democracy: in previ-ous (presumed successful) elections, thevarious television networks had been ableto ‘call’ the election some time late in theevening, making the actual counting ofvotes, as far as many were concerned,merely a side issue, a matter of crossingthe t’s and dotting the i’s. Yet here werevotes on which the fate of the entirenation hung, and the intent of many vot-ers was both unclear, and taking an(unacceptably) long length of time todetermine.

In the end the Supreme Court steppedin, stopping the recounts. The publicbegan to accept the ‘compassionate conser-vative’ from Texas as the 43rd President.And Congress passed the ‘Help AmericaVote Act’ (HAVA), which promised fundingto election officials for the purchase of newequipment, as well as creating nationalelection standards in a number of areas.

There were other problems with thevoting system that could have been target-ed: the partisan processes that govern Con-gressional districting, or the electoral col-lege itself, which muzzles and distorts thepopular vote. It was the spectacle of theslow, tedious, recount in Florida, however,which drew most attention from politi-cians, stung by the barbs of late-nightcomedians.

Many Americans still don’t know that afull recount in 2001 – paid for and over-seen by a consortium of major media out-lets, such as the New York Times – dis-closed that Al Gore would have won Flori-da, and consequently the electoral college,had the count been allowed to continue.An increasing number, however, are awak-ening to the fact that the electronic systemsthat many districts have since introducedwould prevent such an independent auditfrom being performed today. And manynow realize that the tedious process farfrom being a sign of failure is an exampleof the core elements of democracy inaction: a bureaucracy, open to inspectionby all, attempting to implement the will ofthe people.

It is this – transparent implementationof the public will – that ensures the legiti-macy of democratic institutions. Electronic

voting systems – in which voters entertheir choices directly into electronic com-puters, through keypads, screens, or otherinterfaces – are resistant to independentpublic oversight for a number of reasons:auditing of the code used to control com-puter activity is a difficult and specializedtask; intellectual property law is often usedto stifle and prevent any independent over-sight of systems; and some jurisdictionsplace legal barriers on audits or recounts.This last is particularly insidious – the fear,sometimes stated explicitly – is that anaudit will show flaws or stolen elections,which authorities fear would damage faithin the electoral system. Worse, perhaps, isthat whole-scale election theft can be muchsimpler, and more difficult to detect, thanin analogue systems.

There are some advantages to electronicsystems. They can provide improved accessfor certain voters, such as the blind,through alternative interfaces. User inter-faces can provide on-the-fly checks forunder- and over-voting. There are, howev-er, other ways to provide these benefits, andincreased usability is of little benefit if it isaccompanied by a decline in confidencethat one’s voting intentions are reflected inthe vote that is eventually counted. It isnow widely accepted by activists that theonly way to provide trustworthy electronicvoting is through regular recounts andVoter Verified Physical Audit Trails(VVPAT), where the electronic record issupplemented by a paper copy, producedby the machine and approved by the voter,with the paper copy trumping the electron-ic record in any subsequent recount.

For many people, one of the most dis-

turbing aspects of electronic voting hasbeen the close links between votingmachine manufacturers and the Republi-can party. Among the most prominentexamples are ES&S and Ohio-basedDiebold. Senator Chuck Hegal (R, NE) waschairman and CEO of ES&S (a fact herepeatedly omitted from FEC disclosureforms) until shortly before his unexpectedelection in 1996 – an election conductedmainly on machines provided by ES&S. In2003 the Ohio-based CEO of Diebold, oneof the leading providers of electronic vot-ing machines, circulated a letter to poten-tial Republican donors, promising that hewas “committed to helping Ohio deliver itselectoral votes to the president next year.”Ohio subsequently became a key state inBush’s 2004 victory.

Several groups have published guideson actions individuals can take to ensure afairer election this year:

2008 Pocket Guide to Election Protec-tion by Bev Harris, available online:http://www.blackboxvoting.org/toolkit.pdf"

Count my Vote: A Citizen’s Guide toVoting by Steven Rosenfeld, from AlternetBooks.

Electronic VotingBy Andrew O’Baoill

Andrew Ó Baoill is agraduate student in theInstitute of Communica-tions Research at theUniversity of Illinois. Hehas published on thetopic of electronic voting,

and in 2004 led a group, At What Cost?,that was part of a successful grassrootseffort to oppose the introduction of electron-ic voting in Ireland. He is also station man-ager of WRFU, the community radio stationoperated out of UC-IMC.


IMAGINE IF THE UNIVERSITY OF ILLINOIS sponsored a frankand contentious discussion about race, education, war,and the responsibility of globally-minded activists towardinjustices in their own backyard. Imagine if among theparticipants were local citizens, and not only academicworkers or students. Now imagine such an event broad-cast on national television, during prime time, for ninetyminutes. This all happened, forty years ago.

On February 18, 1968, a short-lived experimental tele-vision program called the Public Broadcasting Laboratorycame to Urbana-Champaign. The producers chose theSouth Lounge of the Illini Union to host a nationallybroadcasted discussion about “campus unrest.” The eventcame on the heels of a controversial campus recruitingtour by the Dow Corporation, producers of Napalm. Atthe University of Wisconsin, protests against Dow led tobloodshed. At Illinois, a peaceful student sit-in blockedaccess for job-seeking students, sparking controversy andeventually several disciplinary suspensions.

Perhaps it was Illinois’ comparatively peaceful record ofprotest that led PBL to choose this campus as a site toassemble a panel of experts from around the nation. Gath-ered in the South Lounge that night were the presidents ofAntioch College and San Francisco State University, stu-dent leaders from Berkeley and Tougaloo State, some Illi-nois administrators, at least 70 students from campus anda scattering of Illinois faculty.

Significantly, also in attendance was community activistJohn Lee Johnson. Thanks to him, the event didn’t go quiteas planned. As a result the nation witnessed an audiencewrestle with some very tough questions. The young John-son, just 27 at the time, waited about ten minutes throughinitial discussions about Vietnam, student activism, andeducation, then shouted his first question, “What about allthe psychological napalm whites drop on blacks every day?"

The show’s transcript then reveals a lively and confus-ing attempt to deal with the University’s dependence ona race divide in order to function as a space, and as aneconomy. Project 500, the school’s first attempt at inte-gration, wouldn’t happen for several months, yet onewas likely to only find faces of color in service positionsacross the campus.

For even the most active anti-war protesters on cam-pus, involvement in a climate of racism, even dependenceon racism, was unavoidable — if invisible, until Johnsonturned on the light. Without Johnson’s intervention, theevening’s conversation might have stuck to traditionalarguments about the effectiveness of certain protest tactics,or about whether the rights of potential Dow employeeswere violated by the sit-in. Such arguments quicklyresolve into clear sides for debate, positions easily identi-fied, credited, discredited. Universities and television net-works easily incorporate such conversations into program-ming. Each side simply gets their ten minutes, and thenthe topic is considered covered.

But the conversation that night in the Union readsinstead as refreshingly confused. Positions slide andmorph, people argue and miss each other, emotions ranhigh. After an hour or more, even Johnson and the smallgroup of black students rose and left, Johnson parting withthe explanation, “We can’t make any sense of this."

National television viewers witnessed the complexity ofa community grappling to understand its own racism, notas a taint to be identified and removed through correctedspeech, not as a guilt to be absolved, but as an inextricablepart of everyday reality: something to be worked againston multiple levels, alone and in groups, informally andformally, as teachers and students and administrators.Racism so deep that it takes time to even see, and longerthan a lifetime to change.

Rare as such an event is even off-camera, for it to happenin front of cameras is still unheard of. Since I wasn’t evenborn in 1968, let alone present for the changes taking placein this city, I can hardly speculate as to the broad impact ofthat evening’s conversation. I find it instructive, however, tolook at the subsequent paths of those in attendance.

John Lee Johnson, hopefully known already to thispaper’s readers, went on to a lifetime of service to Cham-paign-Urbana. As Champaign’s first black Councilman, hefought for better public housing and more equitable ele-mentary education. He worked through government,media, churches, whatever platform he needed. Johnsonseemed to never stop working to improve the lives of peopleof color in Champaign-Urbana in palpable ways. That nightin the Union probably registered barely a blip for Johnsonover a lifetime of encounters with sympathetic allies in theUniversity who were oblivious to their own racism.

One of the few professors in attendance that night was arelatively new researcher: an Austrian named Heinz vonFoerster. After Johnson made his exit, von Foerster found the

microphone and analyzed the evening’s fraught conversationin terms of his own area of expertise — cognition, conscious-ness, and information. Von Foerster was a leader in the newfield of Cybernetics, a way of looking at the world in terms ofsystems, information flow, and feedback loops. For von Foer-ster, the failure to see or understand racism would almost cer-tainly be understood as a problem in information flow. Heinzkept extensive notes on that evening’s discussion. He savedevery newspaper article on it he could find, and sent copies tothe leaders involved. He corresponded with the show’s pro-ducers, thanking them for the event.

Later that spring, Heinz began to plan the first of manyexperimental courses in “Heuristics,” or the science ofidentifying and solving problems. These free form andlargely student-run classes grew to be a popular and con-troversial staple of campus counterculture. As shelters fordebate and discussion of the most pressing political con-cerns, von Foerster’s courses remained admittedly safewithin the walls of academic speculation. But they cat-alyzed the campus through the publication of hand-madezines and catalogs, the organization of disinformationcampaigns within official campus administrative routines,and sponsorship of radicalized visiting speakers.

Though there’s no record of such curricular experimenta-tion for Heinz before that spring, we can’t say for certain thatJohnson’s intervention directly sparked such a path. Butwhen disparate worlds touch as they did that night on Pub-lic Broadcasting Laboratory, opposite Bonanza on channel 15and Smothers Brothers on channel 3, we would do well toexamine how different forms of political action reflect notonly differing ways of looking at a problem, but distinctpositions of privilege, different audiences, opportunities, andaccess points. When does one act from where one IS, andwhen does one strive to act from somewhere else, fromanother person’s location and information? Which tasksdemand which actions from which persons within a particu-lar knot of institutionalized racism and inequality?

I have a proposition, a project in mind. New York’sWNET still holds a recording of that night’s conversationin the Union, locked away under expired broadcastingrights. What if we found a way to rebroadcast that pro-gram, forty years later, then held a broadcast conversationin response? How different would the world today lookfrom that evening’s picture? If you’re interested, let meknow—maybe you were even there? Let’s get complicatedagain, confront the messy facts of our complicities in racistspaces. Let’s find a conversation that’s hard for any news-paper to sum up.

Local Racism, Global Politics, and a NationalAudienceBy Kevin Hamilton

THERE’S THE LEGISLATURE OVER there sayingthey want to give University Employees a3% raise and actually making that a lineitem. There’s Joe White in the UniversityPresidents office over there saying, “Heyhay we’ve only got 1.5 % to spare for civilservice employees. Oh by the way, we needfaculty so 2% should be their share.” I amnot a mathematician, but I can see some-thing is missing here, depending on whoyou are, either 1% or 1.5%. So where is the

rest of the money going? Let’s guess.It could be diverted to some pet project

like the Global Campus, but wouldn’t that bewrong since the money has supposedly beenearmarked by the legislature for salaries.?

Could it be devoted to the huge energycosts of the university? But… again,wouldn’t that be wrong since the moneywas supposedly earmarked for salaries?

Best bet: it’s being used to plump upthe salaries of administrators.

University employees wrote to the legis-lature, contacted their representatives, andlobbied the legislature amazingly, the legis-lature seemed to be listening. What hap-pened when we reached the campus? Moreof the same. Those who have more get moreand the front line employee suffers. It’s thecorporate structure university style.

The campus unions have united over thelast few years to question the increasingcorporatization of the university and helpeach other in the difficult fight for raisesthat approach inflation. An actual inflation-matching raise hasn’t happened for yearsfor most groups of front line employees.

We all know times are tough. But I wantto remind campus administrators that it istheir job, not that of front line workers, toget adequate funding for the university. Ifanyone needs to suck it up and take a cut,it should be them. To expect employeesfacing a 25% increase in their home heat-ing/cooling bills this winter to accept aninsulting 1.5% non-raise without a fightindicates how out of touch with the rest ofus they really are.

Continued on page 8

"Something Is Happening Here, What It Is Ain’tExactly Clear” by Margaret Lewis

Kevin Hamilton has lived in Urbana since 2002. He teachesfor and chairs the New Media Program for the School of Artand Design at University of Illinois. Kevin’s artwork includeswork in video, sound, photography and performance.

Margaret Lewis has worked for the Uni-versity of Illinois for 15 years. She is cur-rently the Vice-President of AFSCMELocal 698, a campus union representing adiverse group of about 375 universityemployees.


Everyone knows that higher education and higherincomes go together—that is, the longer you stay inschool, the more money you’re likely to make. But theactual numbers, especially when it comes to poverty, aresurprising. In 2003, according to a study by the U.S. Cen-sus Bureau, of people who had gone to college for at leastone year, only 1 in 20 was living below the poverty level.In contrast, for people who had never gone to college,about 1 in 3 was living in poverty.

In other words, the conventional wisdom is astonish-ingly correct. Although it is no guarantee, and less of onethan it used to be, the surest route to staying out of pover-ty is to go to college.

Perhaps that is as it should be, but one problem is thatcollege enrollment and completion are not equal acrossclasses. If you divide the United States population into fivegroups based on family income, in 2003, only 49 percentof high school graduates from the bottom two income lev-els enrolled immediately in college. In contrast, 80 percentof high school graduates from the top fifth of familyincomes did so. And when one considers that poor stu-dents graduate from high school less frequently than non-poor students, the disparities between family income andcollege enrollment grow even larger. These differences donot owe entirely to ability, either. As the Spellings Com-mission on the Future of Education reported earlier thisyear, “low-income high school graduates in the top quar-tile on standardized tests attend college at the same rate ashigh-income high school graduates in the bottom quartileon the same tests.”

In sum, without a college degree, there is a fair chancethat you will live in poverty. Worse still, the poorer yourfamily is, the less of a chance you have of going to college.In general, these mutually reinforcing trends are a recipefor the poor to stay poor and the well off to stay well off.As former Harvard University President Lawrence Sum-mers put it, “I am worried that we will become a stratifiedeconomy, like many in Latin America where the prosper-ous and the advantaged stay prosperous, and the poor anddisadvantaged stay poor."

One local program, The Odyssey Project, which I start-ed in 2005 and continue to direct, is trying to do some-thing about these dispiriting statistics and this potentiallystratified economy. The Odyssey Project is a free, college-accredited course in the humanities offered to low-incomeadults in the Champaign-Urbana community. Adults 18and older who live at 150% of the poverty level or lowercan enroll in an intensive introduction to the humanities,including courses in literature, art history, philosophy,U.S. history, and critical thinking and writing. Classesbegin in late August, end in early May, and meet in theevenings twice per week at the Douglass Branch Library inChampaign. The courses are taught by faculty from theUniversity of Illinois, which, along with the IllinoisHumanities Council, sponsors the program. Because ofthis support, The Odyssey Project charges students no

tuition and is able to provide books, childcare, and evenbus tokens, free of charge. Best of all, students who com-plete the course receive six college credits, which they canthen transfer to other colleges or universities, includingParkland College or the University of Illinois.

The goal, beyond introducing students to the livelyworld of the humanities, is to build a bridge to higher edu-cation for those who have never gone to college or who, forone reason or another, have had to drop out. Since theinaugural class of 2006-2007, several Odyssey Projectgraduates—although not nearly enough—have gone on tocontinue their education. I hope the course is helping low-income adults to make good on the intelligence and abilitythey have but haven’t yet had a chance to realize fully.

As I am reminded every day, though, The Odyssey Pro-ject is not a cure-all. Even after taking our class, the barri-ers to higher education for students remain high, especial-ly for low-income adults who have jobs and children andespecially as tuition at two- and four-year colleges contin-ues to rise. When I went to college, I was 18 years old andthought very little of taking out thousands or tens of thou-sands of dollars in student loans. And not only did I nothave a family to take care of—I had a family taking care ofme. Odyssey Project students do not have those luxuries.

And despite much talk along those lines, education isnot a sufficient, not even a practical solution to poverty.The economy does not need very many more workers withuniversity degrees than it already has. As Jared Bernstein, asenior economist at the Economic Policy Institute, has said,“Education is a supply-side policy; it improves the qualityof workers, not the quality or the quantity of jobs. A dangerof overreliance on education in the poverty debate is thatskilled workers end up all dressed up with nowhere nice togo.” Indeed, most of the jobs—over half— that our econo-my will create over the next decade will not require a col-lege degree. What will keep those low-wage service andmanufacturing workers out of poverty is not education butbetter economic policies: full employment, a more gener-ous earned income tax credit, a solution to crippling healthcare costs, to name but a few. At best, The Odyssey Projectcan help to correct some of the disparities involved in whogets a chance to go to college and who ultimately gets thejobs that require a college degree.

Less practically, perhaps, but equally important for thishumanist, The Odyssey Project gives students a chance tolearn about themselves, their world, and their country’shistory. For most students, a college degree is a long wayaway. In the meantime, in terms of the everyday, TheOdyssey Project invites students to engage what writersand artists and philosophers have thought and said aboutwhat it means to be human, to be mortal, to be in or out oflove, to be the object or agent of racism, to live an ethical orexcellent life, to work for a living, to be poor—our studentsrarely need to be told much about the last two, but still—and to test those ideas against their own. In general, thecurriculum mixes the “great works” of Western Civilizationwith more contemporary readings. In the literature course,for example, students might begin by studying the sonnetsof Shakespeare and then move on to the more politicallycharged uses of the mode that twentieth century poets likeEdna St. Vincent Millay and Claude McKay have made. Inthe U.S. History course, which usually emphasizes history

told from the bottom up, as the saying goes, students alsoget to learn where the people of the United States havebeen, how we got to where we are now, and perhaps wherewe are going or could go as a result.

One place I hope we are going is to a more just society,where the class one comes from plays far less of a deter-mining role in one’s life than it does now. In its admittedlyvery small way, I believe The Odyssey Project is helping tobring about that better world.

For information on The Odyssey Project, call the Illi-nois Program for Research in the Humanities at 244-3344,write mailto:jemarshatillinois.edu, jemarshatillinois.edu,or visit the IPRH web site

Class in SessionBy John Marsh

John Marsh is Assistant Professor of English at the Univer-sity of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, Coordinator of TheOdyssey Project, and editor of You Work Tomorrow: AnAnthology of American Labor Poetry, 1929-1941.

Since most of us have already dis-covered that the university speakswith two faces, we are going to start byhelping people to start asking thequestions we all need to ask(haveanswered?). Where is the rest of thismoney going and why isn’t it going

into the pockets of front line workers?A rally is planned for August 21st at

noon on College Court, the streetbetween the dorms Florida AvenueResidence Hall (FAR) and Pennsylva-nia Avenue Residence Hall (PAR).

Come on out if you care about

these issues. If you don’t yet carecome on out and find out why youshould care. Cause “Something ishappening here.”

"Something Is Happening Here,What It Is Ain’t Exactly Clear” Continued from page 7

Get Involved with thePublic i

You don’t need a degree in journalism to be a citizenjournalist. We are all experts in something, and wehave the ability to share our information and knowl-edge with others. The Public i is always looking forwriters and story ideas. We invite you to submitideas or proposals during our weekly meetings(Thursdays at 5:30pm at the UCIMC), or to contactone of the editors.


This summer was special because I was given the opportu-nity to travel to China. I went with my martial arts school,Huang Lin Bao Jian precious sword martial arts Academy,to visit the famous Shaolin Temple. Demetri Daniels, theowner and teacher of the school, takes an annual trip toChina and this year he allowed me and one other studentto go with him.

I left on June 3rd from Chicago O’Hare and flew toCanada. We spent a couple of hours in the airport beforewe boarded our plane to China. We got on the plane veryhappy and charged up! Although the flight was 17 hourslong with bad food and crowded seats there were a coupleof good things about it. During the flight we pulled backthe shade once and saw the ice caps of Greenland andanother time we saw a sea of clouds that reminded me of agiant fluffy bed. When we got off the plane in Shanghai Iwas really happy to see Chinese people and the baggageclaim because I realized that we had made it. As we head-ed to the Maglev train, which happens to be the fastesttrain in the world (431 km per hour), Demtri and Owen(the other student) were doing handstands on the movingwalk way. Once we were settled into our hotel we headedto a famous restaurant called Hai Di Lao Hou Gou (pro-nounced “hi di laow hwa gwa”). It was really good butextremely spicy.

The next day we went to the Shanghai Bay. There wewere met by people trying to sell us things because theyknew we were tourists. The peddlers were extremely per-sistent. They followed us and even began calling my nameafter they heard one of my friends tell me to keep movingwith the group. After escaping the mob of peddlers wewent down the street and I was given the chance to tryChinese McDonald’s, which did not taste much differentthan America’s McDonald’s. In the historic part of Shang-hai, buildings looked more like the ones you would see onTV. As we walked, we decided to enter a tea shop where wetalked to the owners Jack and Jackie, who were so nice thatthey gave me 300 Chinese Yuan worth of rock tea (teaknown for its healing properties) as a gift. Soon after, wewent out for dinner at a restaurant that President Bill Clin-

ton and Hilary Clinton ate at. Xi’an, the original capital of China, was our next desti-

nation. The following day we went to the Muslim streetwhere we were able to shop and eat. The Muslim streethad many shops and vendors where I was able to buy handmade scrolls for a great price. The food there was reallygood and very flavorful. The people that lived in the Mus-lim community had the Quran translated into Chinese fortheir religious sermons. After eating and shopping it start-ed to rain so we headed home to sleep.

The next and last day in Xi’an, we went to see the TerraCotta warriors. If you do not know about the Terra Cottawarriors, they were warriors for the Emperor. An artistlater created statues to represent the warriors and theywere put under the ground for over 2,000 years. I thinkthe Terra Cotta warriors were fascinating because they arehand-made human sizestatues that were made over2,000 years ago and remainintact after all of thoseyears.

When we left the TerraCotta warriors we went tothe station for our train toZhang Zhou. The train ridewas eight hours long. Whenwe got off, we got a ride toDeng Feng. Deng Feng(pronounced “dung fung”)is the home of the ShaolinTemple. Jet Li made amovie entitled, ShaolinTemple, that made it very famous. When we reached DengFeng we were taken to the school where we would be stay-ing and train. The name of the school is Song Shan ShaolinShi de Cheng Guan (pronounced “song sh-an shaow-linshi de ch-eng gwan”). It is owned by Shi De Cheng who isa 31st generation shaolin monk. I lived and trained inDeng Feng for a week. On the 8th day of my trip I wokeup around 7:00 am to get ready for our eight o’clock class.Unlike my training here at home I had to run for 15 min-utes before each class. Before we went running I wouldlook up and stare at the mountain in front of the schoolwhich was the Song Shan Mountains. At the school wetrained two times a day. It was difficult at the beginning,

but just as it became easier, we had to train with the skilledChinese students. They were really good! Right after train-ing we ate and then were able to visit other places in thecity. We would sometimes go see a monk, a famous place,or go to a Shaolin martial arts store where I bought a mar-tial arts outfit and gifts for other people. Then we would goback to the school for our next class and do the same thingagain.

The following day after our 8:00 o’clock class we wentto the Shaolin Temple. There we saw Ta gou’s school thathas over 10,000 students. Ta gou is a martial artist who has2 schools: one by the Shaolin temple and one more inDeng Feng. He is a very famous martial artist and has oneof the largest schools in the world. At the Shaolin Templewe saw a performance by some of the monks. They didShaolin forms and iron body. Iron body is a combination of

techniques that makes theremuscles and bonesstronger and skin tougher,to the point that the monkscan break bricks with onehand or even his headwithout it hurting extreme-ly bad. The rest of my trip was fullof fun, fights and longflights. My trip to Chinahelped me accept who Iam. I had a good timebeing myself and not whatpeople wanted me to be.

This experience opened myeyes to a different way of life and a different way of lookingat things. I am glad this trip helped me be a better me.

I really want to thank every one who has been in my lifethat helped me get to China. Thank you to my family andfriends that also helped me make this journey. I really hada good time and would like to study Shaolin more inChina in the near future. This trip to me is like childrenwho enjoy going to Six Flags and want to go back yearafter year.

Journey to the EastBy Jelani Saadiq

Jelani will be entering th 8th grade this fall at Urbana Mid-dle School. He has been studying martial arts for two yearsnow.

Fresh organic fruit

Different Electoral SystemsContinued from page 1

Imagine, by way of conclusion, that Illinois suddenlyreplaced SMDV with PLV to elect its state legislators. Inreality, of course, this is not a likely event. Too many polit-ical actors hold vested interests in the current electoralsystem. Nevertheless, what changes would most likelyoccur over the long-haul?

One can only speculate, of course, but the number ofparties slating candidates for office would almost cer-tainly increase. Some parties presumably would be tothe left of the current Democratic Party, some to theright of the current Republican Party. Often, no partywould win a majority of legislative seats, thus requiringseveral parties to form governing coalitions. The racial,ethnic, and gender diversity of the state legislaturewould increase. Conceivably, some parties wouldbecome closely associated with one or another socialgroup. Legislators from any particular party wouldrarely deviate from their party’s policy positions.Arguably most important, the legislature would passpolicies that differ from current policies—it is impossi-ble to predict precisely what those differences wouldbe—and the almost-total power that the four leaders ofthe state legislature currently hold over its memberswould end.

How cities, states, and nations elect their public offi-cials matters greatly, perhaps more than any other singleinstitution. Not surprisingly, therefore, rapid societal

changes and the accompanying changes in political stakeshave brought the discussion of electoral change to the fore.It is a discussion that citizens should take seriously.

Amerika Has A New Contender In The Celebrity Run-Off To Become The Next Master Of The Free World…

And, She’s Hawt!

C’ya at the debates bitches!


HIGH-SCHOOLS OFTEN ARE TEEMING withyoung people who, when done withhigh-school, want to “achieve somethingbig in their lives.” To many, that meansjoining the armed services. But when

should the line be drawn for recruiters who enter our pub-lic educational facilities? Reports of recruiters targetingpeople as young as 14 and 15 years-old at Urbana HighSchool have raised speculation if the military is targetingyounger people because they are facing record lows insignups. Military recruiters being given blatant and unre-stricted access to students, without notification to parentsand without counter-recruitment material available to stu-dents, has become the norm at UHS. In the guidance officeat UHS, booklets proclaiming the benefits of joining thearmed services are seen throughout the office, yet theguidance office still lacks basic counter-recruitment litera-ture, something that should be necessary to create a bal-anced opinion at the school.

One must ask the question if Urbana High School isdeliberately ignoring counter recruitment material offeredby anti-war groups, such as the Anti-War Anti-RacismEffort (AWARE), or is the administration simply lackingthe basic principle of giving students the adequateresources to make their own decisions? This past schoolyear, students eating in the lunchrooms at UHS wereexposed to recruiters giving out free prizes and otherincentives to interest freshman and sophomores. GlynnDavis remembers last year when they were in the lunch-room: “The way the men went about engaging the stu-dents was to host push-up contests. The winner receivinga prize of cups and gift cards.”

When I was a freshman myself, the recruiters had triedthe controversial tactics on my friends and myself. Afterseeing this, I notified local activist and former schooladministrator Durl Kruse about the predicament occurrngin the lunchroom. Kruse then talked with Dr. Laura Taylor,principal of UHS, about the issue. Dr. Taylor told him thatshe had no idea it was ever occurring and would put an

end to it. But, stories by students of aggressive recruitingfurther lay out the issue of accountability. The schoolboard has failed to recognize the questionable misconductthat has taken place at UHS.

It is becoming increasingly known that militaryrecruiters use outlandish statements to entice students intojoining. Using a free ride through college as leverage to getyoung people to join, and the promise of getting a jobthereafter, are the biggest talking points used by recruiters.But the growing homeless rate of veterans has only contra-dicted that promise. The legality of the wars in Iraq andAfghanistan also brings up the issue of whether recruitersare forthcoming about the premise of going to war in thefirst place. Another major issue is stop-loss, which hasrecently become widely known as the “backdoor draft.”Stop-loss allows the military to involuntary keep a soldierin service longer than they originally signed up for. Alongwith the threat of PTSD (Post Traumatic Stress Disorder),and other mental problems that have become common asthe wars in Afghanistan and Iraq progress, the militaryfails to let young and often innocent students know aboutthese significant issues. Due to the No Child Left BehindAct, the government, and subsequently the military, aregiven contact information for every student attendingpublic high school.

The premise of the public educational system is to pro-vide an unbiased haven where young people can go tolearn techers and from each other. The presence of militaryrecruiters only debunks that idea. As a 16-year-old, I notonly find it appalling, but saddening that the military isresorting to targeting young minors, who, like me, oftenlack the judgment and the experience to make life chang-ing and, to be frank, extremely dangerous decisions. Stu-dents should be allowed to find their path on their ownterms while in school, to find where their passions lie, andnot be preyed upon by United States Military.

Targeting the InnocentBy Cody Bralts

IT IS OFTEN SAID that Urbana Middle School,as well as Urbana High School, are bothquite similar to what some people wouldcall “prison,” because of the tight securitymeasures enforced upon the students. Forexample, facilitators walk through the hallswith large walkie-talkies, various “securitystations” are placed in each hallway tocheck roaming students for passes, and inthe middle school, a new addition hasbeen added this year: surveillance cameras.

Students are taking opposing views on thematter. “I believe security cameras areessential in schools, and, possibly, we don’thave them in enough locations,” says RitaHaber, a sophomore at Urbana HighSchool. “For example, I’ve noticed that thesecond floor hallway at Urbana HighSchool is the hallway with the most fight-ing and bullying, as well as where thehighest level of public display of affection(PDA) occurs. It doesn’t have security cam-

eras or hall monitors so much of this goesby unnoticed.” Another student, KatieHeinricher, says, “I don’t think that cam-eras in school do that much. No one whoreally wants to skip school is going to stopand look for a camera before leaving. Also,when fights break out, no one is watchingfor a camera. It is usually pretty obvioushow fights start and camera footage seemsunnecessary. With other things such asPDA, what’s the point? The staff isn’t going

to go up to a girl and say, ‘We saw you kiss-ing in the hallway on our security camera.’Cameras are good in theory, but in reality,they don’t help that much.” We must askourselves: Do these cameras actually influ-ence a student’s decision, or are they sim-ply a waste of money for the school?

Youth and SurveillanceBy Glynn Davis


THIS YEAR’S 4TH OF JULY PARADE was not what I expected. Iremember that in the past the parade was for kids. It wasmostly about marching bands, community groups, guysin the little cars throwing out candy and stuff like that.This year’s parade seemed more like a recruitment tool forthe military. There were at least 200 or 300 soldiersmarching in uniform. Most of the floats were promotingwar in some way, and the crowd helped make the paradeeven more militaristic by standing and cheering each timea soldier came by.

My dad and I were the only people on the Michigan toPennsylvania block that stood up when the Iraq VeteransAgainst the War came by, and a lot of people gave us meanlooks when we did. At least there was an anti-war float,even if it was the only one. However, t there were at least20 pro-war floats. Many of the kids were age 6 or younger,and at that age they are very impressionable. So, the mes-sage the parade was giving them is that ‘war was good.’ In12 years these kids will be old enough to make decisions,and if they are surrounded by the message that ‘war isgood’ then they will promote war too, when they are older.

Many of the floats were really ridiculous, and scary.There was an anti-abortion float. It compared how manyAmerican babies weren’t born because of abortions to thecasualties of every war from World War II to the currentGulf War. They left out the Central American wars of the80s, and they also left out how many foreign people diedin each war. For example, in the Vietnam War, they saidthat around 80,000 people died. In reality, more than amillion people died, if you include the Vietnamese.

When the “Guns Save Lives” float came by with theStatue of Liberty holding an illegal assault rifle, I was real-ly mad. The Statue of Liberty is a welcoming symbol offreedom, and normally people don’t welcome each otherwith a deadly weapon. In front of it was a mountedmachine gun on an army Jeep™ that they shot blanks offof over and over again.

This year’s parade was mostly celebrating the mili-tary, war, guns, and nationalism. It seemed to me likethe military was showing off its stupid gun collection,and trying to impress and brainwash young childrenlike Adolph Hitler did. I’m not saying the army is usingHitler’s plan, but it had that same feeling. They alsoshot off every other gun like crazy. Overall, it seems likethe army went to an all time low by showing off theirguns to little kids, and basically trying to start recruit-ing them now, to get them to join up when they turn18. This “parade” wasn’t like a celebration, it was morelike propaganda.

4th of July Parade, or Army™ RecruitmentSeminarBy dezyp

Dezyp was a fifth-grader at Leal Ele-mentary School in Urbana and will beentering Urbana Middle School in thefall. He plays cello, and would like tobe an aerospace engineer when hegrows up.

PTSD: Our Troops, OurCommunity

Sunday, Sept. 7, 2:00-4:00pm at the Urbana FreeLibrary auditorium.

What is post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), andhow does it affect soldiers and veterans, their familiesand our community? How widespread is it? How can itbe treated, and what services are available? How doveterans with post-traumatic stress re-integrate intoour community?

Please come hear our panel address questions likethese and questions you bring.

archive.ucimc.org · Antonia Darder Glynn Davis Brian Dolinar davep Shara Esbenshade Belden Fields Bob Illyes Paul Mueth Niloofar Shamayati Marcia Zumbahlen THE PUBLIC I Urbana-Champaign

Documents