Anyone who has visited Fiesta Cafe, Emerald City, or C-street over the last twenty years has probably met Amy Ramirez. She can be seen constantly on the move, serving food and drinks while chatting up old and new visitors alike. Amy, who herself came from the small midwestern town of Canton, Illinois, has a history in Champaign-Urbana (C-U) of creating safe entertainment spaces for LGBTQ people from C-U and the surrounding area. 

Public I: How do you feel safe spaces for the LGBTQ community have changed in the past twenty years?

Amy R: It is completely different. Things have  progressed, now gay people can go any place, it used to be (in my opinion) that people were coming to gay bars and nightclubs mainly to hook up, so if you wanted to meet people like yourself, that was all you had because there were no other options. There wasn’t the internet and other things like that. Now we have the technology where people can hook-up … so bars and restaurants are just to be social and go out. If you create a fun, creative event, people will come to it. People are trying to find their own group of friends: their own little family.

Public I: Do you feel that C-U has something unique to offer in the area of safe spaces for LGBTQ people?

Amy R: Definitely. I moved here with my best friend right after high school because we liked the diversity that the University brought to C-U. Back home we used to get beer cans thrown at us when we walked into bars … I still wouldn’t be comfortable going into a bar in Bement, for instance, with my wife. C-U is the closest we’ve got to Chicago or St. Louis, there are a lot of very welcoming places here. A lot of people in smaller towns feel like they have no other place to go, but they can come here and find unity and make friends.

Public I: You had an interesting experience of acquiring a marriage license in one of the smaller surrounding towns, tell us a little bit about that experience.

Amy R: My wife and I had a very unpleasant experience in Mahoment at our venue. So I looked up Allerton Park in Monticello, they were supper supportive and helpful, the ladies were awesome, they watched our wedding and said it was one of the most beautiful weddings they had ever been to. We had to get our marriage license in Piatt County. The ladies in the office were really nice. There was one woman who seemed stand-off-ish, and she probably wasn’t gay-friendly, but she stood over in the corner and did her own thing, while the rest of us were laughing and having a good time.

Public I: Even as same-sex couples gain broader acceptance, transgender people are still experiencing a lot of hate. How do you feel about your role in creating safe spaces for transgender people, specifically:

Amy R: I am definitely trans-friendly. I have always felt that everybody is welcome. I create spaces where people can come together and have a good time, and not by putting a label on people. As the bartender, whenever I see a transgender person there for the first time, and it looked like they might feel a little out of their element, or even people who were new, or straight women looking around, I always went up to them and would go the extra mile to let them know that if they needed anything or any resources, I was there to help. You never know what people are going through, talking to them for ten minutes might make a big difference in their life.

The new thing I learned is that lesbians are not always supportive of transgender people, and I don’t know what the big deal is. I’ve been asking questions and reading and researching. I’m lucky enough to say that right now I am currently friends with over 20 local transgender people. I know a lot of them are having problems at home or with other people in their lives judging them. I’ll sit down and talk to them confidentially and do anything to help. I’m trying my best to embrace each person with my life.

What do you think, A.J.? [Amy turns to A.J., who has recently started to transition]

A.J.: It’s the highlight of my week! It’s something that is refreshing for people to have.  And [Gay Nights at Fiesta Cafe] being on wednesdays, it gives me something to do in the middle of the week. I can meet new people and feel supported. A lot of people have to work through the week and may not have support, so if you have to wait for the weekend, it can be hard. It just feels really great, I’m thankful for it.

Public I: In general, your events are body-positive, for cisgender and transgender people, you set an example by bar tending in a pair of daisy-dukes and a half-top.

Amy R: I remember that night! I had my stomach sticking out, it made everybody laugh and it made me laugh and so many people took their pictures with me. I’m down for everyone having a good time. No one should feel bad about their weight, and if they do, I want to help them change that. I just feel like I love myself and I value myself, of course I wish I were 50 lbs skinnier! That would be great, but I’m happy with who I am. You’ve got to find happiness in who you are.

Amy currently hosts “Gay Night” on Wednesdays at Fiesta Cafe in Champaign and brings in a mistress of ceremonies for Ru Paul’s Drag Race event on Mondays which features games such as bingo and `pin the wig on the drag queen’. A recent event was hosted by local queen, Honey Dijon, who came dressed in elaborate drag that looked like a taco.

Lindsey Renee Bever (A.A. Parkland College in Psychology, B.S. UIUC in Psychology, M.A. Suffolk University in Women’s Health) lives in Los Angeles where she works with LGBTQ youth and spends time with her partner and friends that are family.

If you would have told  me as a child growing up in Champaign-Urbana, that one day  I’d be living in Los Angeles, with my Master’s degree, working with LGBT youth, I definitely would have believed you. I have wanted this for a really long time. A journal entry from me at 16 says “I can’t wait to have a master’s degree and be working at a youth center.” 12 years later, here I am.

Almost 3 years ago, I started working with homeless LGBTQ youth in Los Angeles. My role within the organization I work for  has changed and  shifted  but my number one goal has  stayed the same – to create and maintain a space that is holistically safe for LGBTQ youth. I believe that my passion for this work  began many years ago  when I, a queer youth, felt as if I had nowhere to go and be myself. Now, every day, I have  the opportunity to make eye contact with the youth and offer them genuine compassion and that is truly the driving factor in my passion for this work.

My name is Ryan Michelle Cannon-Scott and I come by my entrepreneurial spirit quite honestly. My grandfather and uncles ran a successful neighborhood store on the South Side of Peoria, IL, long before I was born. As a teen I worked for the family business, my step-father’s pediatric and adult medical center. The list goes on. I’ve always had great role models. Today I’m involved in several business endeavors. One of my businesses, MAD Marketing, is a one-stop small business consulting boutique.

It is my passion to help more people, specifically women begin a path of entrepreneurialship. I have put together workshops to educate and empower women of color to turn their passions and talents into sustainable business models. I believe that with a little help and encouragement, more women and people in poverty can find their way to financial security and stable lives for their families by working for themselves. But most people are afraid. And in all honesty, it is not an easy path, often littered with traps and mines for the small business owner. But it is possible and so very worth it.

My partner Daphne Scott-Henderson also has been bitten by the family bug. Her family founded the oldest continuously published black newspaper, The Atlanta Daily World. Her mother has ran her own ethnic accessory business for years. Today, in addition to being a rehab nurse, Daphne runs her own personal training business, Body By Daphne. Together, we have started a new publication, Trail Living. Our publication, which goes to print this summer, serves the Trails at Abbey Fields, Trails at Brittany, Trails at Chestnut Grove, and Trails Edge subdivisions and provides homeowners and communities with a superior publication that is informative and useful, while providing businesses with an exceptional way of promoting their products and services.

Often the thing that many people struggle with is where to start. You have an idea or you identify a need in the market, but where do you go from there? Thankfully most resources you need are just a click away. From business plan writing, to marketing strategies, to how to raise start-up funds, the answers to most questions can be found on reputable internet sites. I would encourage anyone who feels they have something to share with the world to cultivate as many relationships and seek out as many resources as possible. Associate yourself with people who believe in you and who will champion you throughout your journey. And of course, companies like my own, MAD Marketing, are there to help.

Whatever you do, I would encourage you to step outside your comfort zone, take a leap of faith, and dare to dream BIG. Success is not necessarily about profits or bottom lines. Your biggest successes as a small business owner are the great insights you can garner and a chance to prove to yourself that you can do it.

Ryan Michelle Cannon-Scott

Find MAD Marketing and Trail Living @ http://mymadmarketing.com/index.html

Daphne Scott-Henderson

Find Body By Daphne @ https://www.facebook.com/BodyByDaphne

By Mark Weisbrot, first appeared in the The Guardian, February 18, 2014.

When is it considered legitimate to try and overthrow a democratically-elected government? In Washington, the answer has always been simple: when the US government says it is. Not surprisingly, that’s not the way Latin American governments generally see it.

On Sunday, the Mercosur governments (Brazil, Argentina, Uruguay, Paraguay, and Venezuela) released a statement on the past week’s demonstrations in Venezuela. They described “the recent violent acts” in Venezuela as “attempts to destabilize the democratic order”. They made it abundantly clear where they stood.

The governments stated:

their firm commitment to the full observance of democratic institutions and, in this context, [they] reject the criminal actions of violent groups that want to spread intolerance and hatred in the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela as a political tool.

We may recall that when much larger demonstrations rocked Brazil last year, there were no statements from Mercosur or neighboring governments. That’s not because they didn’t love President Dilma Rousseff; it’s because these demonstrations did not seek to topple Brazil’s democratically-elected government.

The Obama administration was a bit more subtle, but also made it clear where it stood. When Secretary of State John Kerry states that “We are particularly alarmed by reports that the Venezuelan government has arrested or detained scores of anti-government protestors,” he is taking a political position. Because there were many protestors who committed crimes: they attacked and injured police with chunks of concrete and Molotov cocktails; they burned cars, trashed and sometimes set fire to government buildings; and committed other acts of violence and vandalism.

An anonymous State Department spokesman was even clearer last week, when he responded to the protests by expressing concern about the government’s “weakening of democratic institutions in Venezuela”, and said that there was an obligation for “government institutions [to] respond effectively to the legitimate economic and social needs of its citizens”. He was joining the opposition’s efforts to de-legitimize the government, a vital part of any “regime change” strategy.

Of course we all know who the US government supports in Venezuela. They don’t really try to hide it: there’s $5m in the 2014 US federal budget for funding opposition activities inside Venezuela, and this is almost certainly the tip of the iceberg – adding to the hundreds of millions of dollars of overt support over the past 15 years.

But what makes these current US statements important, and angers governments in the region, is that they are telling the Venezuelan opposition that Washington is once again backing regime change. Kerrydid the same thing in April of last year when Maduro was elected president and opposition presidential candidate Henrique Capriles claimed that the election was stolen. Kerry refused to recognize the election results. Kerry’s aggressive, anti-democratic posture brought such a strong rebuke from South American governments that he was forced to reverse course and tacitly recognize the Maduro government. (For those who did not follow these events, there was no doubt about the election results.)

Kerry’s recognition of the election results put an end to the opposition’s attempt to de-legitimize the elected government. After Maduro’s party won municipal elections by a wide margin in December, the opposition was pretty well defeated. Inflation was running at 56% and there were widespread shortages of consumer goods, yet a solid majority had still voted for the government. Their choice could not be attributed to the personal charisma of Hugo Chávez, who died nearly a year ago; nor was it irrational. Although the past year or so has been rough, the past 11 years – since the government got control over the oil industry – have brought large gains in living standards to the majority of Venezuelans who were previously marginalized and excluded.

There were plenty of complaints about the government and the economy, but the rich, right-wing politicians who led the opposition did not reflect their values nor inspire their trust.

Opposition leader Leopoldo López – competing with Capriles for leadership –has portrayed the current demonstrations as something that could force Maduro from office. It was obvious that there was, and remains, no peaceful way that this could happen. As University of Georgia professor David Smilde has argued, the government has everything to lose from violence in the demonstrations, and the opposition has something to gain.

By the past weekend Capriles, who was initially wary of a potentially violent “regime change” strategy – was apparently down with program. According to Bloomberg News, he accused the government of “infiltrating the peaceful protests “to convert them into centers of violence and suppression”.

Meanwhile, López is taunting Maduro on Twitter after the government made the mistake of threatening to arrest him: “Don’t you have the guts to arrest me?” he tweeted on 14 February.

Hopefully the government will not take the bait. US support for regime change undoubtedly inflames the situation, since Washington has so much influence within the opposition and, of course, in the hemispheric media.

It took a long time for the opposition to accept the results of democratic elections in Venezuela. They tried a military coup, backed by the US in 2002; when that failed they tried to topple the government with an oil strike. They lost an attempt to recall the president in 2004 and cried foul; then they boycotted National Assembly elections for no reason the following year. The failed attempt to de-legitimize last April’s presidential election was a return to this dark but not-so-distant past. It remains to be seen how far they will go this time to win by other means what they have not been able to win at the ballot box, and how long they will have Washington’s support for regime change in Venezuela.

Grand Auditorium at Tsinghua University

Foellinger Auditorium

The picture on the top is not Foellinger Auditorium at the University of Illinois – Urbana Champaign, but the Grand Auditorium at Tsinghua University, one of the top universities in Beijing, China. It was said that the Grand Auditorium was built as a replica of Foellinger Auditorium. In 2006, when the President of Tsinghua University Gu Binglin paid a visit to the campus, ex-Chancellor Richard Herman greeted her and told her, “The Tsinghua campus was designed by T. Chuang, a 1914 graduate of Urbana’s renowned School of Architecture, who modeled his design on our Quadrangle.” Who is T. Chuang? Why would a Chinese student come to study Architectural Engineering in U of I?

In fulfilling the Boxer Protocol which was settled after the Disturbances of 1900, after China’s defeat in the intervention to put down the Boxer Rebellion, the Qing Government in China had to pay an indemnity of 450 million taels of silver (approximately equal to $6 billion today) over 39 years to the eight countries that had provided military forces (Austria-Hungary, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, Russia, the United Kingdom and the United States) plus Belgium, Spain and Netherlands. About 7.32% of this was paid to the United States. In 1908, the U.S., in a “seemingly magnanimous but also politically expedient gesture” (Henry K. Murphy, an American architect in China, 1914-1935. Cody, Jeffery William, Ph.D.), remitted the rest unpaid remainder of the indemnity and decided to set up a fund for Chinese students to study abroad with the money. In October 1909, 47 of 630 applicants were sent abroad, including Chuang. They were the first group of Chinese international students in the States and Chuang was the first Chinese student in U of I.

Tsin Chuang was one of the only 24 students graduated from Agricultural Engineering in 1914. After his graduation, he worked in the office of Mr. J. W. Royer, the famous architect who was responsible for several buildings, including the Urbana Free Library. His job on this side of the ocean didn’t last long. Part of the indemnity was assigned to the construction of Tsinghua University, but there weren’t any Chinese modern architects on the mainland of China. The authorities sought students overseas and Chuang was a great choice at that time. It is intriguing that his studies and career were both deeply associated with the fund the U.S. set up.

He returned to China in 1914, and worked as a consulting architect at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and a resident architect in Tsinghua University. When Henry Murphy, the famous American architect who had designed many Western architectures in China for Chiang Kai-shek, was invited to design Tsinghua University in Beijing for the first time, Chuang helped design the campus as an assistant superintendent.

The question of style remained an issue in designing the campus. They intended to utilize the existing Tsinghua Garden, which was “reminiscent of traditional Chinese gardens”. However there were also several non-Chinese style buildings on campus, and more importantly, Murphy suggested, “The Chinese style, if at all well carried out, impose many restrictions and limitations, from the utilitarian point of view, on the design of buildings intended for classroom and dormitory purposes.” In trying to “compromise the merits of Chinese and Western architectures”, the architects wound up building a purely Chinese style entrance gate and several Western buildings, including the Grand Auditorium. “Western architecture” is Jeffersonian architecture, a typical style of American villa of the time influenced by the European, especially Italian, architecture. Jeffersonian architecture was created by Thomas Jefferson, American president and a self-taught architect who also designed the Rotunda, the symbol of University of Virginia. The Grand Auditorium at Tsinghua University has some of the same characteristics as the Rotunda.

Lane and Chuang

Still, many similarities between the auditorium at U of I and the one in Tsinghua might be partially influenced by Chuang’s thoughts of alma mater. During the construction from September 1917 to March 1920, Chuang and Charles Lane, the superintendent of the construction, “tendered bids from foreign and Chinese contracting companies, shopped for supplies of foreign hardware, bargained for building materials, and oversaw the simultaneous construction of four buildings on the site.” When Murphy turned back to China in May 1918, he described the work as “thrillingly satisfactory”.

In 1923, Chuang was sent to Columbia University by Tsinghua University, leading a hundred or so Chinese students. After he returned to China, he quitted his job at Tsinghua University and started his own architecture office in Shanghai in 1924. He continued his career as an architect and was still admired and respected in his 90s. Tsin Chuang passed away on April 25^th, 1990. As a U of I alum, he should be remembered since he brought modern architecture to China.

This photo from a recent protest on the quad, “Being Black At Illinois,” which also has a blog and Twitter following.