“Anti-Refugeeism without Refugees” in Eastern Europe
Analysts of post-World War II, post-Holocaust Eastern Europe coined the term “Anti-Semitism without Jews” to characterize the uncanny persistence of prejudice in countries mostly cleansed of any actual...
View ArticleFeminist Reflections on the 2016 Presidential Election
By Nancy Dietrich and Julie Laut Nancy Dietrich lives in Urbana and is active in the C-U community. She is a founding funder of the UCIMC. Julie Laut lives in Urbana and serves on the board of the...
View ArticleKeep Loving, Keep Fighting: Meditations from the Days after Trump Presidency...
I’d wager that for all of you November 9, 2016 was a day of shock, revulsion, horror, disbelief, tears, confusion and a huge amount of fury. Like most of you, I had a very hard time focusing on...
View ArticleLetter to My French Friends
How could this have happened in the U.S.? The reasons are complex, some peculiar to the U.S. and some that are common to both the U.S. and Europe. The most significant one, that applies as well to...
View ArticlePolice Terror To Increase Under Trump
In less than two months since the election of Donald Trump there has been a surge in violent islamophobic and xenophobic attacks in this country. While the rhetoric, actions and entire campaign of...
View ArticleTrump and the Resurgence of Antisemitism
I composed the following reflections-in-progress in the first week after the election in order to address the sudden prominence of antisemitism in mainstream American politics. Unfortunately, nothing...
View ArticleTRUMP EMBRACES 19th CENTURY ENERGY PLAN WHILE THE REST OF THE WORLD LOOKS AHEAD
On June 1, 2017, President Trump made it official: the United States would be withdrawing from the Paris Climate Accord. The 2015 Accord is an agreement among 195 countries to strengthen the global...
View ArticleUnderstanding the Rise of the Right in Poland
First of two parts On November 11, Poland’s Independence Day, some 60,000 people converged in a Warsaw demonstration organized by Polish extreme-right nationalist groups; large banners proclaimed...
View ArticleCongress must end American support for Saudi war in Yemen
By Mark Weisbrot The New York Times editorial board recently took an unusual position of denouncing what it called “war crimes” by a U.S. ally, in a war in which the United States is actively...
View ArticleJanus v. AFSCME Council 31
By Dan Gilbert Dan Gilbert teaches in the School of Labor and Employment Relations at the University of Illinois. In a matter of weeks the U.S. Supreme Court is expected to rule in Janus v. American...
View ArticleGetting Money out of Politics and Beyond: A Call for a We the People Amendment
The midterm elections are over. Candidates have been elected and unelected. Ballot issues have been passed and rejected. What hasn’t changed one iota, however, are the catastrophic harms to people,...
View ArticleMayor Harold Washington: Champion of Race and Reform in Chicago
If you’ve read Robert Caro’s biographies of Lyndon Johnson, you know what it’s like to be kidnapped by a historian who’s also a great story teller. The reading lamp burns late. I’ve just finished a new...
View ArticleIlliberal America: A Report Card
I never thought I would live to see the U.S. turn into the illiberal, authoritarian, populist, white-nationalist country it has already increasingly become in early 2019. Illiberalism Turns Liberal...
View ArticleUnacceptable Levels—Our Body Burden, Our Planet Burden
Our planet is drowning in synthetic chemicals. Our bodies have become synthetic chemical processing plants. A 2005 Environmental Working Group study of umbilical cord blood revealed that babies are...
View ArticleNeed for System Change
The time is long past due for American citizens to realize that our political and economic systems are untenable. Trump is awful, no question there. And for those who continue to support the Democratic...
View ArticleBolton is Out! But Imperialist Aggression Against Iran is Still In
On September 10, National Security Advisor John Bolton was fired from his post at the White House. With one of the staunchest advocates for US imperialism now out of the Trump administration, some were...
View ArticleDecatur Demagoguery: Part 1—City Council
On February 3, 2020, six of the seven Decatur City Council members (Councilman Rodney Walker was absent) gathered to consider a proposal to restrict public comment regarding city annexation of...
View ArticlePro-Business Bias and Conservative Extremism at the Supreme Court
As recent books and law review articles have confirmed, the Supreme Court has been moving to the right since the Nixon Administration. Abetted by Republican politicians, anti-abortion advocates and...
View ArticleIf You Could Save a Million Lives, Would You Do It?
This article was first published in The Hill on October 1, 2020. Reprinted with permission. If you had the opportunity to save a million people from preventable death, would you do it? These are people...
View ArticleTurn Off the Spigot: Money vs. Med4All
The COVID pandemic has exposed the flaws in the US health care system as never before, reinforcing longstanding arguments for creating an expanded Medicare for All system in the country. The Public i...
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