NOW: Best and worst of 2018

The National Organization for Women has led the fight for equal rights for decades. The organization released this list for the worst offenders and top victories in 2018: Worst offenders of women’s rights Betsy DeVos, Secretary of Education, for her…

Science Brief | “Genetically Modified Children”

In this horrifying documentary, writer and director Juliette Igier travels around Argentina meeting families in agricultural communities whose lives have been upended by a sudden surge in birth defects and cancers among the children. Tobacco farmers face an impossible choice…

Labor Roundup | January 2019

Senators to Verizon, subcontractor: End pregnancy discrimination. Nine U.S. Senators, led by Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts and Richard Blumenthal of Connecticut, have demanded that Verizon and the subcontractor running its Memphis warehouse, XPO Logistics, answer published details about unusually high…

Reconcile history or repeat injustice

Sherry plaque

Montgomery is a city of contradictions. It is known as the Cradle of the Confederacy as well as the birthplace of the Civil Rights Movement that was born from the Montgomery Bus Boycott. The city has markers throughout the town…

Change the future by confronting the past

family chains

BY PAM ADAMS The average cost of an enslaved Black man in the 1800s was about $750. At $15,000 in today’s dollars, that’s not that much less than the average annual cost per inmate at many Illinois prisons. It’s a…

Lynching victims in Central Illinois

BY PAM ADAMS The Equal Justice Initiative documented 56 racial terror lynchings in Illinois, the third highest number among states outside the South. Listed here are some of the lynchings in Central Illinois. Andrew Richards, 9/11/1877, Winchester, Scott County Nelson…

“You all are my therapists.” People who care.

Pam Adams

BY PAM ADAMS “At the site where you are standing, enslaved people were imprisoned with livestock, horses, pigs and cattle.” This is the Legacy Museum: From Enslavement to Mass Incarceration. The museum site shares a trendy, brick-paved alleyway of bars…

Criminal justice reform

ankle monitor

Michelle Alexander has called some uses of electronic ankle monitors the newest Jim Crow and “e-carceration.” The cost of some monitors can be $300 a month, and people ordered to wear a monitor can easily fall into arrears and face…

Toxins in our neighborhood

toxins

Five years ago, a fire at a fertilizer plant in West, Texas, resulted in an explosion that created a 93-foot crater; destroyed more than 150 buildings, including an apartment building and school; killed 15 people; and injured 160 others. In…

Bill Knight | Dissent and protest in America

A 36-year-old history professor at Del Mar College in Corpus Christi, Texas, Dawson Barrett is a 2000 graduate of Illinois Valley Central High School in Chillicothe. He has a new book about recent history and an appreciation for his interest…

Straight Talk | Post election thoughts

The elections are over … for most. After voters were submitted to countless ads in the media and way too many political interviews, the dust has settled. The winners are enjoying the fruits of their labors and the losers are…

Editorial | Ah … he’s adopted

S.A. Shepler (c) 2018 Community Word

Diversity training helps expand understanding. Journalism is foundational to democracy, but the craft is still evolving based on our levels of assessment and training in issues related to diversity. It used to seem OK to repeat a police description of…