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UPCOMING EVENTS A GOOD TIME FOR A GOOD CAUSE The Public i,a project of the Urbana-Cham- Dance Party with the Noisy Gators paign Independent Media Center, is an (cajun/zydeco dance band with Tom Turino) independent, collectively-run, community- With winter pressing in there’s no better time for a Dance Party with great food and oriented publication that provides a forum friends. On Saturday, December 13th AWARE will host the Noisy Gators (one of C-U’s for topics underreported and voices under- best local dance bands). There will be lots of space to dance, food, drinks, and friends. And represented in the dominant media. All best of all, the proceeds from the Benefit will all be donated to help those who’ve been hurt contributors to the paper are volunteers. by war - both here at home and in Iraq. Hope to see you there! Everyone is welcome and encouraged to sub- Where: The Offices of On the Job Consulting (OJC), 115 West Main, 2F in downtown mit articles or story ideas to the editorial col- Urbana (across from Cinema Gallery) lective. We prefer, but do not necessarily When: Saturday, December 13th, 8-11pm restrict ourselves to, articles on issues of local Sliding Scale donation: $5 - $20+ Dec-Jan 2003-4 • V3 #10 impact written by authors with local ties. All Proceeds benefit Oxfam Iraq (humanitarian aid to Iraqis) and the Red Cross Armed Forces FREE! EDITORS/FACILITATORS: Emergency Services Fund (help for veterans and military families). Xian Barrett Sponsored by AWARE (Anti-War Anti-Racism Effort) Lisa Chason Darrin Drda EDUCATION OR INCARCERATION? ZINE SLAM WITH IMPROV MUSIC Jeremy Engels SCHOOLS AND PRISONS IN A Linda Evans PUNISHING DEMOCRACY Belden Fields Saturday, December 13 6:30 PM Meghan Krausch An Interdisciplinary Conference hosted by at the IMC, 218 W. Main St. Urbana Paul Mueth the University of Illinois Center on Laura Stengrim Democracy in a Multiracial Society The IMC Librarians are hosting a zine Thursday, Jan. 22-Saturday, Jan. 24, 2004 reading featuring local and Chicago area Maggie Quirk All activities are at the Levis Faculty Cen- do-it-yourself publishers. The reading Bijan Warner ter and are free and open to the public. will be accompanied by improvisational For questions or to volunteer your time, music featuring local musician Jason THE PUBLIC I please contact Stephen Hartnett at 217- Finkelman. For more information con- Urbana-Champaign IMC 333-1593 or [email protected] tact [email protected] 218 West Main St.,Urbana, IL, 61801 217-344-8820 email: [email protected] Sustaining Contributors Websites: The Public i wishes to express its deep appreciation to the following sustaining contributors http://publici.ucimc.org for their financial and material support: www.ucimc.org SocialistForum: An Open Discussion and The Social Equity Group, Financial West Action Group, Meets 3rd Saturdays of the Socially Responsible Investing month, 3-5 pm, at IMC, 218 W. Main St. (U) Caffe Paradiso Get Involved with the Public i World Harvest International and 801 S. Lincoln, Urbana; 384-6066 You don't need a degree in journalism to Gourmet Foods be a citizen journalist. We are all experts 519 E. University, Champaign Staff of OJC Technologies in something, and we have the ability to www.ojctech.com share our information and knowledge The AFL-CIO of Champaign County 278-3933 115 W. Main, Urbana with others. The Public i is always looking for writers and story ideas. We invite you The Union of Professional Employees (UPE) National Fish Therapeutic Massage to submit ideas or proposals during our 113 N. Race, Urbana, 239-3400 weekly meetings (Thursdays at 5:30pm at The Natural Gourmet the UCIMC), to post a story to the web 2225 S, Neil, Champaign; 355-6365 That’s Rentertainment site (http://www.ucimc.org), or to con- 516 E. John, Champaign; 384-0977 tact one of the editors. United Car Center: Quality Cars, • Become a citizen journalist; write a news Wholesale Prices The Public i would also like to extend thanks story or opinion piece. 606 E. University, Champaign; 352-7870 to the following individual sustainers: • Make a tax-deductible contribution. Making a Bloody Freedom of Speech Media Reform FTAA Protests • Help distribute the public i around the David Green and Harriet Bursztyn Statement at the U of I Takes Center Stage and Miami Cops Champaign-Urbana area. Laura Stengrim Walter Feinberg Ben Scott & Sascha Meinrath Meghan Krausch • Help with fund-raisers. If you or your organization would like to become a sustaining contributor to the Public i, • Join the editorial board. or would like more information , please call 344-7265, or email [email protected]. Page 1 Page 2 Page 5 Page 7 When Civil Disobedience Becomes Bloody Dec-Jan 2003-4 • V3 #10 by Laura Stengrim Laura Stengrim is a graduate student at has taken vows of poverty, chastity, and obedience and has Lee Sargent, a former long-time (37 years) Champaign- the U of I. The motivation for this arti- been a member of the religious order for 38 years, who spends Urbana resident, teacher, and activist who was arrested in July cle started while she was a college stu- most of her time knitting and writing in silence, Carol is of 1982 for pouring blood at the state capital in Springfield dent in Minnesota and took several intimidated by guards “every chance they get.” On September upon Illinois’ refusal to pass the Equal Rights Amendment trips to Washington, D.C. There, she 19, 2003, she wrote, “ I was told my attitude needs to be moni- (ERA). Sargent and her comrades, unlike the sisters and Berri- met members of the Jonah House, tored by the guards and they want programmed leisure time.” gan, used pigs’ blood rather than their own. Part of a Cham- Dorothy Day House, and Catholic So she was programmed with a schedule of classes like “Anger paign-Urbana area group of radical feminists called the Worker Movement, many of whom par- Management.” Each of these so-called programs brings rev- Grassroots Group of Second Class Citizens, Sargent and oth- ticipate in regular acts of civil disobedience as well as the enue to the private companies administering them. Both ers practiced a number of acts of civil disobedience against high-stakes protests described here. Carol’s and Ardeth’s letters are overwhelmingly positive, mak- the state of Illinois that spring, including chain-ins, street the- ing jokes about the prison wardrobe and profound statements ater, and taking over the floor of the House of Representatives. Carol Gilbert, Jackie Hudson, and about the surrounding mountains, crisp fall air, and anony- The most extreme action took place as the ERA was voted Ardeth Platte are each currently serving time in prison for mous women to whom they minister. Knowing fully the con- down in the Senate. Right after the votes were counted, the protesting the buildup to the United States’ War on Iraq. Mary sequences of plowshares actions and having been convicted of nine women who participated wrote the names of the Gover- Lee Sargent only recently left Champaign-Urbana after a long numerous protest actions in the past, the women accept with nor and anti-ERA legislators on the marble floor outside sen- career of feminist and gay and lesbian advocacy and has also humility whatever position from which they feel they can ate chambers using pig blood. Blood, according to Sargent, served time. What these four women have in common, enact social change. Even from a prison cell. was used “to symbolize the death of ERA and the blood of besides their time behind bars, is a blood sisterhood of sorts, a women who suffer without legal equality.” history of political commitment so guttural that it includes Women Rising in Resistance was a continuation of the using human and animal blood to protest institutions such as Grassroots Group founded in the early 1980s that served as a the deadly U.S. military and stubborn state of Illinois which network for radical feminist activists. Lasting until the early has yet to support equal rights for women. This article details 1990s, it promoted high-profile direct action and encouraged the nuns’ case and Sargent’s actions in order to question the women to question their reluctance to take risks, because use of blood as a dramatic means of symbolic protest. women have been socialized into passivity and have “lost their On October 6, 2002, the Sisters performed a Plowshares sense of adventure.” The action in 1982 in Springfield, which action at a Minuteman III missile site in Colorado. This style gathered nation-wide media attention, communicated of direct protest is based on Isaiah’s prophecy that to “beat women’s pain and symbolized back-alley coat-hanger abor- swords into plowshares” is to demand peace at the source of tions. “We wanted something really dramatic to happen,” violence, to create a disarmed world. Since 1980, there have explained Sargent in a recent phone conversation. The act of been approximately 75 plowshares actions at U.S. and world- “blood writing,” she explains, was a nonviolent but nonethe- wide military sites such as NATO weapons centers. In Col- less direct action against institutional oppression against orado, the sisters tapped on the missile silo with household Above: A Plowshares action at the Minuteman III missile site women that served to grab attention, even frighten, men. hammers and marked the shape of a cross with their own in Colorado. Below: ERA advocates pouring blood on the floor Men, she claims, are not as used to blood because they don’t blood.