Editorial Page

Editorial | Colin Kaepernick: Amnesty International Award Winner

Amnesty International gave Colin Kaepernick its 2018 Ambassador of Conscience Award for his nonviolent protest against police violence against black people. The N.F.L. quarterback did not stand for the National Anthem but knelt to protest racial inequality and police brutality.…

Op-Ed | Are We Losing Our Right to Peaceful Protest?

BY Eliida Lakota It is amazing to me the extent government officials will go to deny innocent people their constitutional rights –– people who are protecting their land and water. I attended the protest at Standing Rock and saw law…

Editorial : Gutting science from public policy

Make America Lobotomized Again

“Fact-based,” “research-based,” “evidence-based” –– all terms that used to be the gold standard for evaluating the world and formulating public policy. No longer, at least not in Washington, D.C. Now these terms are banned by the Trump administration. We now…

Letters to the Editor | May 2018

Should mayor and city councilwoman recuse themselves from water company vote? Illinois-American Water Co. is spending hundreds of thousands of dollars to influence the City Council and the citizens of Peoria. A check of various public records reveals that IAWC…

Op-Ed | Bangladesh, Our Global Canary?

BY JACKIE CORLETT The writer is founder and director of Motif Ltd., a fair trade company that operates a workshop in Dhaka, Bangladesh. She divides her time between Bangladesh and Illinois. Motif products are sold at Global Village, a Fair…

Editorial | Safe injection sites: sound public policy

by S.A. Shepler

“Data takes the emotion out.” The Rev. Marvin Hightower, president of the Peoria Chapter of the NAACP, said that in an article in the March issue of Community Word about clean syringe exchange programs. Research shows clean syringe exchange programs…

Op-Ed | High crimes & misdemeanors & impeachment & such

Is Andrew Johnson’s Past Trump’s Future? “I would impeach the President because he is such an infernal liar!” This remark was uttered not by a contemporary critic of Donald Trump, but by General Ulysses S. Grant of President Andrew Johnson…

Letters to the Editor | April 2018

Editor’s Note: Following the shooting rampage at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Fla., people across the country are staging protests about gun violence. By some estimates, hundreds of thousands of students walked out of school March 14 in…

Editorial: Trump bullies and coerces women; attacks basic human right to reproductive freedom

S.A. Shepler

Donald Trump, his administration and his judicial appointments are waging an all-out assault on legal access to abortion and contraception. Consider this case: A 17-year-old woman detained in a refugee center in Texas has been denied access to an abortion…