Champaign’s Attempt to Criminalize Homelessness Fails after Swift Public Outcry
This is an edited version of an article originally published in Smile Politely on January 26, 2026. On December 2, 2025, after two and a half hours of public comment from some 40 community members,...
View ArticleThe Hungarian Elections: A Blow to European Right-Wing Populism?*
Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán has been name-dropped by practically everyone on the American Right lately, from Donald Trump to Steve Bannon and Tucker Carlson, as a trailblazer and model for...
View ArticleDon’t Ask Me to Mourn Kirk: White Grief, Black Truth
Charlie Kirk is dead. For some, that sentence alone stirs discomfort, because you’ve already been trained to mourn. But not all deaths are tragic. Sometimes people live in such a way that when they...
View ArticleMamdani’s Masterclass: The Winning Path for Democrats
New York did it. Its people elected Zohran Mamdani as mayor of America’s largest city. The 34-year-old democratic socialist, immigrant from Uganda, and two-term state assemblyman not only put the...
View ArticleIn Celebration of My Political Advisor-Turned-Surrogate Father: Belden Fields
In 2025, in my eleventh year serving Champaign-Urbana as state representative, the world seems to be coming apart at the seams. We have a madman in the White House, who is shredding the last remnants...
View ArticleBelden’s French Connection
I met Belden in 1963. We both were residents at the Cité Universitaire Internationale and attended the same seminar on the 1930s at the Paris Institute of Political Studies (Sciences Po). It was the...
View ArticleIndivisible Illinois Empowers Progressive Advocates
Indivisible began at the national level after the 2016 election. A few Democratic congressional staffers decided that there needed to be a grassroots movement on the left similar to the Tea Party...
View ArticleIsrael Anti-Boycott Act a Threat to Free Speech
As part of our continuing republication of past articles written by our late cofounder, editorial collective member, and longtime social activist Belden Fields, we chose the article below, from our...
View ArticleThe Democrats’ Debacle: The Path Forward for the Left
Buckle up—it’s happening again. Donald Trump will be president of the United States on January 20, 2025. The next four years will be a constant struggle, as we fight to retain the meager rights and...
View ArticleThe Poor People’s Campaign Continues
The Poor People’s Campaign is a grassroots movement that began in the 1960s and continues to this day, aiming to address issues of poverty, inequality, and social justice in the United States. The...
View ArticleThe Making of a Social Justice Priest
Compiled by Janice Jayes from interviews she recorded between 2018 and 2023, in which Father Tom reflected on the many experiences that expanded his vision of moral responsibilities in the decades...
View ArticleUkrainian Refugees and National(ist) Politics in Eastern Europe
In an article in our last issue (November-December Public i), I used the case of Hungary—its positive reception of Ukrainian refugees, alongside its negative role in hindering EU political and material...
View ArticleUkraine, Hungarian Refugee Politics, and the Future of Migrants in the EU
The February 24, 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine unleashed, in addition to death, destruction, and hardship on the Ukrainian people as a whole, a wave of refugees not seen in Europe since World War...
View ArticleShould Ukrainians Surrender for World Peace?
The February 24 one-year anniversary of the Russian invasion of Ukraine saw no respite for either the volunteer and professional Ukrainian troops or the civilian population. The Russian-occupied...
View ArticleWho’s Your Family?
Having just survived the winter holidays, the stressors and supports brought about by family could not be more present in our minds. However, for some of us in the American workforce, even the...
View ArticleThe Move toward Socialism in the United States
People on the Left are understandably preoccupied with the growing strength of fascism, white supremacist and antisemitic rhetoric and violence, and the growth of extreme right-wing groups. There is no...
View ArticleA Time of Monsters: The New Nadir and the Crisis of the Black Worker
We currently reside in what Italian Marxist Antonio Gramsci called “A Time of Monsters.” Exacerbated by the catastrophic COVID-19 pandemic, the Black working classes continue to struggle under what...
View ArticleChampaign Can End its Housing Discrimination
As previously reported in the Public i, housing discrimination in Champaign is a chronic issue. Following on the “tough on crime era,” since 1994 Champaign has allowed landlords to reject tenant lease...
View ArticleProgressive Dilemmas on Ukraine
The Left has tangled itself in knots over how to respond to the Russian invasion of Ukraine. Early statements, such as by CodePink and Black Alliance for Peace, while putatively opposing war, laid...
View ArticleThe Great De-Centering: The World after Ukraine
The Ukraine war is a turning point in history, but not the one you might be expecting. It won’t revive the Cold War. It won’t determine the survival of the Liberal World Order (whatever that is). And...
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