The ribbon cutting for a new community garden in southeast Urbana took place on a sunny Saturday afternoon, September 8, 2012. Created by the Lierman Neighborhood Action Committee, it is part of the “Let’s Move” campaign launched by First Lady Michelle Obama to create community gardens in cities across the country.

Located at Washington and Lierman, the garden is at the center of a neighborhood which has been in the local mainstream media for its stories of robberies, shootings, and drug dealing. The garden is a sign that some members of the community are beginning to take control of their own destiny.

After months of stalling, the city of Champaign has finally released documents about the incident on June 5, 2011 when a 20 year-old African American man, Brandon Ward, was choked in the back of a squad car by white officer Patrick Simons. While five officers have been disciplined, not one has been suspended for a single day. Nevertheless, it is a sign of the shake-up taking place in the Champaign Police Department.

The Ward case created a storm of controversy in November 2011 when Champaign city officials announced that they had seen video of a black youth being abused by police. It occurred around 2:30 a.m. at 4th and Green streets after the bars had closed. Video of the incident was anonymously leaked at the Independent Media Center website, ucimc.org, and has received nearly 15,000 hits to date.

The national Grassroots Radio Conference is taking place this year at the Urbana-Champaign Independent Media Center. The conference comes on the heels of recent legislation opening up markets for low power radio stations across the United States. On Friday, July 27, a day of panels took place about how people could set up community radio stations. 

There were panels of information sharing with people telling stories of how they had successfully produced community radio in their own home towns.

There was also a poetry workshop held by local poet and host of SPEAK Cafe Aaron Ammons.

The keynote address was given by Joe Torres, co-author with Juan Gonzalez, of News for All the People: The Epic Story of Race and the American Media.

It was 96° in the shade, but a large crowd came out on July 19, 2012 for a showing of union solidarity. The Campus Labor Coalition―including AFSCME, SEIU, GEO, AAP, and CFA―held a rally at the Alma Mater on the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, and then marched across the quad.

The rally was partly to show support for workers in the local AFSCME union who have repeatedly been stalled by university negotiators and are still waiting for a fair contract. The university sites the state budget crisis, while top administrators go on getting paid inflated six-figure salaries. Despite several recent scandals that have forced campus leaders to resign in shame, they have been given golden parachutes by their colleagues. Those at the rally held signs that read “The U of I Isn't Broke, It's Broken!”

Last night, May 11th, Champaign-Urbana Citizens for Peace and Justice (CUCPJ) held a public forum on the jail issue. The event was a response to the County Board's current consideration of a plan to spend $20 plus million on a new jail. CUCPJ organized the event because the Jail Planning Team of the County Board has refused requests to take the issue to the public. The overflow crowd at Urbana City Council chambers listened to a series of speakers question the wisdom of spending such a huge amount of money when the county has so many other urgent needs.

On Tuesday, May 1, the International Workers' Day, the Illinois Legislature's Commission on Government Forecasting and Accountability will vote on whether or not to close Tamms, the supermax prison in southern Illinois. Our local Senator Michael Frerichs who will have a vote in that session has yet to declare himself on the issue.

Report back from County Board meeting on March 22, 2012

Since the proposed plans for the $20 million jail construction project landed on the Champaign County Board agenda earlier this year, the driving force behind this process has been an all-white grouping known as the Jail Space Improvement Planning Team. The team has functioned somewhat like a secret society within the board. While all subcommittees and advisory bodies of the board are supposed to be under the Open Meetings Act (and therefore open to the public and obliged to keep records/minutes of their proceedings), the  leading light of the Planning Team, Board member Tom Betz, has repeatedly claimed that the team falls outside the regulations of Open Meetings. When pressed for minutes of their meetings, County Board Administrator Deb Busey claimed that the group never met and therefore had no minutes.

The Public= “Lunatic Fringe”

Clearly the word is getting out that the County Board intends to spend $20 million dollars on unneeded jail cells. At each Board meeting, opposition mounts. This week, Tuesday, March 17, at the justice committee meeting of the County Board, three issues rose to the fore. First came the fallout from State’s Attorney Julia Reitz’ comment the previous week that there was no need to include a “token” minority on an all-white jail space improvement team which has the major decision-making power over any construction project. Both Aaron Ammons and Martel Miller called for Reitz to step down from that committee. They also called for further investigation into the reasons why African-Americans make up more than 50% of the county jail population.

Our Cash-Starved Social Services

It took the County Board until almost midnight on Tuesday to pass the RFP for a needs assessment concerning the county jail. This is a first step in their grand plans to spend $20 million (likely more) on building new cells at the satellite jail. The five and a half hour meeting kicked off with an hour of public participation during which a parade of individuals stood at the podium urging the Board to re-think its approach to addressing "public safety" by building more jail beds. Three themes recurred during these inputs: 1) the overwhelmingly disproportionate presence of African Americans in the jails (more than 60% in a county that is 12% Black) 2) the lack of public voice in the decision-making process, particularly on the Board's all-white Jail Space Improvement Planning team which wields the bulk of authority on the jail issue 3) that there are many, many better ways to spend $20 million dollars in Champaign County than to build new jail facilities.

Save the date!

Attached is the 2011 jail inspection of the Champaign County jails by criminal justice specialist Brad Bresson of the Illinois Department of Corrections. Despite claims by Sheriff Dan Walsh that the downtown jail is uninhabitable, it passed state inspection.

On Feb. 21-May 15 I will be co-teaching a series of classes for caregivers of individuals with mental illness. I took this class 2 years ago and it really helped me with dealing with the brother with Asperger Syndrome.

The classes are for the CAREGIVER, not the person with mental illness. There are other classes for them.

I encourage you to send this with the poster attachment to anyone who you think might benefit from such classes. We ask for a 13 week commitment. There is a lot of material including Post Traumatic Stress Disorder and the latest info on treatments for all kinds of disorders.

Please feel free to email me at nancycarter93@sbcglobal.net or call 356-1925 if you have any questions.

We have room for a few more people in the class.

Thanks for caring about those who are caregivers,

Nancy Carter