Bernie Sanders presidential campaign staff votes to unionize. The move marks the first time a major political party presidential campaign in U.S. history unionized. The United Food and Commercial Workers Local 400 will represent staffers. Women’s groups and unions back…
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The voting rights lawsuit and cumulative voting
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Editor’s Note: Joyce Banks was lead plaintiff in a 1987 lawsuit against the city of Peoria, Peoria Public Schools and Peoria Park District to get fair representation for African Americans in elected government positions. Cumulative voting helps ensure this goal.…
Letter to the Editor | Medicare for All looking better every day
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I am a healthy person (knock on wood!), but the U.S. healthcare system is not working for me, or for most of us in the 99 percent. Let me give you a brief example. In August of 2018, after spending…
Letter to the Editor | The CAFO loophole
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A CAFO (concentrated animal feeding operation) is threatening the entire town of Princeville, and politicians are helpless to stop it. That’s because of a sneaky loophole in the law. Nearby county boards have recently approved resolutions opposing proposed CAFOs in…
Letter to the Editor | A constitutional republic: Tyranny of an entitled minority
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Is the U.S. the “greatest democracy in the world” as is often claimed? As any conservative will correctly remind you, the founders were wary of too much democracy and established the country not as a democracy but as a constitutional…
Letter to the Editor | Peoria Public Radio: What Will Happen?
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Will Bradley University’s vital NPR radio station, WCBU-FM, survive as it is, or is it ultimately doomed to morph into a second WGLT or worse? That’s the question, but there are no clear answers yet. WCBU, branded as Peoria Public…
Op-Ed | Good community journalism scrutinizes American slavery and its evolution to today
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BY DECKLE McLEAN Behind every great fortune lies a great crime, French early 19th century novelist Honore de Balzac advised. Less flamboyantly phrased, Balzac’s message was that some fortunes start with a crime or two. If America’s wealth can be…
Reflections From The Clergy | Race, Mutuality and the Vision of God
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In 1963, Martin Luther King Jr. wrote these words: “We are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied in a single garment of destiny. Whatever affects one directly, affects all indirectly.” They are from his now-famous Letter from a…
Labor Roundup | February 2019
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Both the number and the rate of job injuries that killed workers declined by 1 percent in 2017, compared to the year before, the Bureau of Labor Statistics reported. Some 5,147 workers died that year, a BLS survey calculated, or…
Letter to the Editor | Stop excessive taxation!
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It seems like the Peoria city leaders are always coming up with new ways to hit us with more and more taxes. First came the sewer tax, then the landlord tax plus another additional tax on every apartment in Peoria.…