Palestinians Aren’t Safe Anywhere, Not Even in their Classrooms
In the past month, Palestinians have witnessed yet another escalation of Zionist violence inflicted onto our homeland without reservation. Israeli warplanes murdered over 250 Palestinians and displaced...
View ArticleSlightly Out of Focus: A Review of One Night in Miami and Judas and the Black...
For more than 70 years and over a century, respectively, television and cinema have presented demeaning images of Black people. And for equally as long, African Americans have responded with boycotts,...
View ArticleMoving to End Anti-AAPI Hate
Despite May having been the month to celebrate Asian American and Pacific Islander (AAPI) Heritage, the preceding year saw the increase of violence and hate towards Asians and Asian Americans that...
View ArticleThe Nest Postpartum Support
Five years ago, my world turned upside down after the birth of our first son. What should have been the happiest day of our lives turned into one crisis after another, a transfer to a hospital two...
View ArticleHow the Campus Becomes the Border
In August, 2020, the University of Illinois at Urbana Champaign (UIUC) opted for a hybrid in-person/online semester. The decision to partially reopen was made possible by the innovative SHIELD: Target,...
View ArticleA Conversation with Urbana Poet Laureate Ashanti Files
The Public i recently talked to Urbana Poet Laureate Ashanti Files Please tell our readers a little about yourself. “I am a wife, mother, and registered nurse. I currently work in mental health and...
View ArticleTexas isn’t the Only Place where a Woman’s Right to a Safe and Legal Abortion...
Right here in in Illinois, women’s lives and safety are being sacrificed for the election-minded politicians of the Land of Lincoln. In Illinois, young women and girls’ safety is at risk under the...
View ArticleUbuntu Project Statement on Automated License Plate Readers
The Ubuntu Project Urbana-Champaign is disappointed to learn that the Champaign City Council is considering voting to purchase license plate readers. Considering the well-documented controversial...
View ArticleThe Congolese Community of Champaign County
We are the Congolese Community of Champaign County. The estimated number of Congolese living in Champaign County is more than 6,000 persons. Our mission is to support each other and help our children...
View ArticleWhat’s Understood Need Not Be Explained
I’m curious to know, as a reading eye and listening ear, what are you expecting to hear from me? That the feds were somehow wrong, and Shamar was right? Or that he was justified in putting out some...
View ArticleEnding Gun Violence Requires Long-Term Investments in People and Communities
Quansay L. Markham (17 years old), Jonathon McPherson (17), Jadeen Moore (19), Acarrie Ingram-Triner (19), and Jordan Atwater-Lewis (17) are among the people who were shot and killed in...
View ArticleSB 148 and the Assault On Teaching Black History
Florida’s SB 148 represents the surging wave of white supremacist fascism sweeping across the country. Entitled “An Act Relating to Individual Freedom,” it symbolizes the deceptive, authoritarian, and...
View ArticleTwo Stories from Statesville Prison
Saving Your Mind: Mental Health in the Age of Corona “This is some next-level shit. I thought I’d seen it all in my 20 years in prison,” said Murder (no real names used), my Quarantine Sanitation...
View ArticleReckless Law, Shameless Order: Behind the Scenes
One afternoon in April of 2021 Faranak Miraftab called me to ask if I was interested in holding an art workshop with formerly incarcerated artists in continuation of the “IDENSCITY,” a conceptual art...
View ArticleJuneteenth 2022 at Randolph Street Garden
Seitu Ken Jones, a multidisciplinary artist who believes in the power of public art to link the past and present, spent 2020–21 as a visiting artist at the UIUC Center for Advanced Study. He returned...
View ArticleJuneteenth Freedom Day
Juneteenth is the oldest nationally celebrated commemoration of the ending of slavery in the United States. Dating back to 1865, it was on June 19 that the Union soldiers, led by Major General Gordon...
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 ArticleDonald Trump v. Shamar Betts
I, Shamar Betts, incited a riot through a Facebook post encouraging my people to join alongside the rest of the world in an attempt to express our feelings on the tragic death of George Floyd in May of...
View ArticleLinks
The Public i is partnering with the Education Justice Project (EJP) to share writing completed by incarcerated students at the Danville Correctional Center. The EJP is a comprehensive college-in-prison...
View ArticleDrag Shows in Champaign-Urbana: Interview with Amy Myers
“Drag is an art. It is a culture.” As a cis, straight woman, I did not fully understand the cultural importance of drag shows until 2019, when I was managing a community center that has a wonderful...
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