March 15, 2018
(Arlington Heights) Daily Herald
Student protests rise to level that deserves attention
So, maybe this is how you really do it. If you were alive and cogent in the ’60s and ’70s you don’t have to think hard to remember the protests that washed over the nation — night after night of unadulterated fury from college campuses and cities across America, coming to you through your black and white TV.
Those protests were loud, often crass, fueled by anthems. They were rage personified, rage over the escalating body counts in Vietnam, the violence that erupted over civil rights and the abject denial of women’s rights.
And while they were undeniably effective in helping eventually turn the tide of public opinion against the war, they also created a polarization among Americans that lasted for more than a decade.
The students at Parkland and at high schools in the suburbs and around the country are angry, too. Though not to the level of Vietnam, they too have unacceptable body counts. They too are up against an entrenched bureaucracy where people have too much to lose to get behind the idea of change.
So why is it so different this time?
For one, they haven’t caused the polarization that has gripped the nation. They have inherited it. And to a large degree they are going to have to work within it. They seem to understand that progress comes in many small victories, and that in winning the day against assault rifles perhaps millions of people who disagree with them don’t have to go home as losers.
And that includes the many smart, committed teens who look at the problem of kids as targets differently and either didn’t join the protests or demonstrated for alternative solutions.
And there’s something else at work here. Watching these calm, collected kids organize protests and refuse to be cowed by the powerful forces against them is, well, humbling and not a little awe-inspiring. On Wednesday, we saw more of that on a much larger stage — teens who walked out of school for 17 minutes, expressing themselves in a focused, well-organized way and, in many cases, accepting the consequences for their acts of civil disobedience.
Are they passionate? Are they angry? Yes and yes. Are they also clear and concise and able to think past today’s protest toward the bigger prize down the road? Yes, they are.
Maybe the biggest legacy these kids will leave us is in changing the rules of engagement — where dissent is something higher than the frantic, profane bullying that takes place on Facebook and other social media.
Maybe the times really are changing, again, and for the better.
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March 18, 2018
The (Champaign) News-Gazette
Open doors wide
Saturday was a notable day for the newspaper industry as well as the public at large. It’s the last day of what’s become known as Sunshine Week (March 11-17), the week in the year when the newspaper industry makes it a point to emphasize the importance of openness by government at all levels.
A joint undertaking by the American Society of Newspaper Editors and the Reporters Committee for the Freedom of the Press, Sunshine Week is about driving home how important it is for the people to know what’s their government is up to, why and the cost.
It’s a rare public official who will take exception, at least in theory, with that premise.
It’s also a rare public official who is comfortable with the idea of ordinary people looking over his shoulders and possibly second-guessing decisions.
That’s why there is - and always will be - an inherent tension between those who work in government and those who want to know what those in government are up to.
Too many government officials figure that what the public doesn’t know won’t hurt them. That’s why they prefer to control the flow of information, disclosing what they wish and withholding what could be problematic.
Here are some examples.
In recent weeks, Champaign school administrators and board members seemed to go far out of their way to avoid publicly discussing the details of a $3.4 million building purchase that comes on top of their ongoing $208.4 million school building and reconstruction plan.
It’s hard to think of an innocent explanation for why an expenditure of that magnitude would go virtually unmentioned by the school administration and school board members. It would appear they just preferred, for reasons of self-interest, that the public not know about it.
Over at the University of Illinois, top employees offered conflicting descriptions and withheld explanations about the employment status of a former domestic terrorist with a lengthy criminal record. The deceit extended to misleading a member of the Legislature about the matter.
Meanwhile, over in Springfield, the General Assembly for years operated under a legislative inspector general whose reports into misconduct by individual legislators are, by law, forbidden to be disclosed to the public.
Short of being indicted for a criminal offense and put on trial, legislators who engage in confirmed misconduct that falls short of a criminal conduct are protected by official secrecy.
But even that superficial scrutiny was too much for legislative leaders. They neglected for several years to fill a vacant inspector general’s post, finally taking action to bring someone aboard when a sexual-harassment controversy broke out.
The exception to that secrecy rule came in the recent release of a report on alleged sexual harassment by Ira Silverstein, a member of the Illinois Senate. Let’s hope that exception becomes the rule.
Here’s one more example that demonstrates just how committed our public officials are to transparency.
Illinois has the Freedom of Information Act that allows individuals and news organization to make official inquiries from public bodies and requires those entities to respond in good faith with the appropriate documents.
Well, some do, and some don’t. The law allows considerable foot-dragging by entities that do not wish to comply, delays that are encouraged by the fact that there are no penalties for not complying.
Like so much else in Illinois - from campaign disclosure to conflict-of-interest rules - it’s no accident the FOIA law was written in a way to make what is cast as mandatory in effect discretionary.
Such elasticity is just one more hurdle for individuals and media outlets must overcome in pursuit of the story behind the story - in other words, the real story.
That requires commitment - not just by those seeking the information, but in the form of pressure by ordinary citizens who believe government must respond in a forthright way.
In other words, Illinois needs a law that make it easier for information-seekers to get that to which they are legally entitled and harder for insiders to withhold what the public is entitled to see.
An informed public is an essential ingredient to a thriving democratic process, and sunshine, as U.S. Supreme Court Justice Louis Brandeis once said, is “the best of disinfectants.” So as another Sunshine Week passes, let’s all remember the importance of letting the sun shine in on the dark recesses of government institutions, of all types, at all levels.
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March 16, 2018
The (Carbondale) Southern Illinoisan
Military-grade weapons aren’t for sport or hunting
Southern Illinois is gun country.
Our kids grow up hunting turkey, waterfowl, deer and many other critters. In some communities, the first day of deer season remains a school holiday.
Southern Illinois is home to the World Shooting and Recreational Complex. Every year, thousands or marksmen from around the world gather in Sparta for The Grand American, the largest trapshooting event in the world. The shooting sports are in our DNA.
Despite Southern Illinois’ visceral attachment to hunting and the shooting sports, who could help but be moved by the recent tragedy at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida? A lone gunman, a 19-year-old former student, entered the school with an AR-15. By the time he left just a few short minutes later, 17 people had been fatally wounded.
Predictably, the shooting ignited another round of debate about gun laws in the United States. We’ve seen and heard it before - after Columbine, after Sandy Hook, after Charleston, after Sutherland Springs, after Las Vegas.
But, something feels different this time.
That something is the voice of survivors. Americans are seeing and hearing videos recorded during the course of the assault. For the first time, Americans are hearing hundreds of survivors, many articulate beyond their years, asking the government to protect them and their peers from future attacks.
This is where this horrid tale becomes predictable again.
Despite the horror and carnage of Parkland, many Americans, including the state legislators representing Southern Illinois, are taking stands for the inviolability of the Second Amendment.
We are staunch supporters of the Second Amendment. We believe Americans have the right to own rifles and shotguns for hunting and sporting purposes. We believe Americans have the right to own handguns for self-defense and sporting purposes.
However, we also believe the Second Amendment is not absolute.
There are limits on First Amendment freedoms - the famous example being “You can’t yell ’FIRE’ in a crowded theater.” There are libel and slander laws that prevent citizens from untruthful attacks by the written and spoken words.
And, in the past, some limitations, limitations that have been determined to be legal, have been placed on firearms. It is illegal for a private citizen to own a fully-automatic rifle.
We aren’t alone in this belief. We can cite conservative icons like Ronald Reagan and Antonin Scalia.
“I do not believe in taking away the right of the citizen for sporting, for hunting and so forth, or for home defense,” Reagan said in a 1989 speech. “But I do believe that an AK-47, a machine gun, is not a sporting weapon or needed for defense of a home.”
In his opinion in The District of Columbia v. Heller, Scalia wrote, “like most rights, the right secured by the Second Amendment is not unlimited.” It is “not a right to keep and carry any weapon whatsoever in any manner whatsoever and for whatever purpose.”
As a matter of full disclosure, in his 1989 speech Reagan was speaking about a specific school shooting. The weapon used during that shooting was not a “machine gun,” it was a legally purchased semi-automatic version of an AK-47.
We agree with President Reagan and Justice Scalia. Not all weapons are appropriate for civilian use. We also understand that banning specific classes of rifles, large capacity magazines and accessories that can make a semi-automatic fire as quickly as an automatic will not end murders or even mass shootings.
No laws stop all violations. If that were the case there would be no need for courts, police or prisons.
Banning military-grade weapons, including the AR-15, will not negatively impact the deer, turkey and waterfowl hunters of Southern Illinois. It won’t affect the trap shooters that flock to Sparta every August. It won’t affect your ability to protect yourself or your family.
However, making this kind of firepower unavailable to the person capable of doing the unthinkable, might save the life of your child, your grandchild, or the little boy and girl who lives down the street.
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