January’s
Shared Offering will help support The Public
i, the longest-lived alternative paper in Champaign-Urbana (C/U).
Affiliated with the Independent Media Center for all of its 12 years, the Public i is a 501(c)(3) non-profit. We
are all volunteers to “a collectively-run, community-oriented publication,” and
invite anyone from the community who wants to attend editorial committee
meetings and contribute a story. Providing a forum “for topics underreported
and voices underrepresented,” we are local authors writing about local,
national, and international issues, plus people originally from C/U who
continue to contribute or let us reprint their stuff (Mark Weisbrot, Robert
Naiman, Dave Roediger, Sarah Lazare). Every article promotes social justice by
valuing diversity, fighting injustice, and promoting equality. Pieces range
from “A Day at Stateville,” performed at UU church last May, and Pete Seeger's
1958 visit to UIUC, to the Northwestern Football Player Union, to Russia,
Ukraine, and Hungary, and from local healthcare and local prison and police
reform (not building a new jail, returning the MRAP, not employing tasers) to
the environment and environmental justice (Mahomet aquifer, Homer Bulldog
mine). For these and other stories, visit our website at http://publici.ucimc.org/.
We operate on a shoestring
budget. In addition to an online edition, we publish an eight page print
edition that works out to 10 issues/year. We distribute our ca. 3000 print run
in numerous cubbies located throughout C/U. The poor quality, old-timey
newsprint vs the better-looking online version means you have to wash the ink
off your hands when you're done reading.
Money from UUCUC Shared Offering
will go entirely towards publication costs, approximately $300/issue. The Public i does not run ads and all
labor (editing, distributing) is volunteer-donated.