Champaign City Council Updates

Local elections have already begun for 2025. Early voting has started for the consolidated February 25th primary, election, with one contested race for the City Council and township supervisor here. VoteChampaign and the League of Women Voters have a non-partisan candidate guide out for local candidates in the primary race. 

Early voting for the April 1st consolidated general election will begin soon after the primary. There will be another referendum on a property tax increase to fund the low barrier Strides shelter, after the previous referendum failed in November.

City Council Updates:

Recent City Council meetings have spent a lot of time on the fallout from Council member Davion Williams antisemitic comments in December and swastika post on social media in January. More details on that and the response below. The full  2/11 City Council meeting is available here: agenda, video. 

There was a progress report on Council Goals for 2023-2025. It mostly covered outreach on community organizing, gun violence, and a lot of updates on local affordable housing issues. A brief overview of the Council Goals is available on the City website here. The full staff report on the Council Goals Progress Report is available here.

2/4 City of Champaign Township and City Council Meeting

The Township meeting was only a few minutes long. They mayor asked the Township supervisor to address a need by City staff for documentation related to a flex spending account after many failed requests. He agreed to get that documentation to them.

There was a great deal of public comment (jump to video link) related to Council member Davion Williams previous antisemitic statements in December of 2024 and his more recent decision to change his social media profile picture to a swastika and highlighted the religious and cultural use of the symbol prior to that of Nazi Germany.

The News-Gazette highlighted a notable exception to those public comments were the proud parents of recent hire of Valena Greene as "the management analyst for the city’s public works department" announced earlier in the meeting.

Council comments included calls for Davion Williams to resign, echoing many in the public comments. Council member Kathy Shannon noted that the swastika on his social media wasn't just part of a post discussing the history, but that he had made it his profile picture. Every comment that he was making to her and others concerned about his actions was posted with a swastika by it.

The News-Gazette had a series of articles on the fallout after Davion Williams attempted to start a conversation about the cultural history of the swastika symbol, in part by changing his social media profile picture itself into a swastika:

• 2/23: Champaign mayor condemns remarks by council member, public commenter
• 2/24: Champaign council member apologizes for comments at meeting
• 1/31: Champaign council member will not resign, says swastika post was not meant as hate
• 2/4: Williams apologizes for swastika post on his latest statement of apology
• 2/4: Williams apologizes but staying put with coverage on his later statement and his intention not to resign.

The post and his profile picture change has since been deleted, but screenshots taken that morning were shared widely online: 

Davion Williams Post / Profile Change on 1/31/2025

His comments in defense of this post and his previous comments that day were all posted as a swastika:

Davion Williams Comment on 1/31/2025

Many people who aren't Jewish and don't study extremism and antisemitism may be unfamiliar with a lot of antisemitic tropes brought up in his December remarks, but the idea that Jews are secretly controlling our governments and media are certainly the most notorious ones. These were front and center with antisemitic conspiracies like the "Protocols" Hoax, the 1920s Klan, and some of Nazi Germany's most heinous propaganda.

Attempts to normalize the use of the swastika by antisemites will also be familiar to people who face and research antisemitism. This is often explained as doing so on behalf of cultures or religions that are not their own and not done in collaboration with those communities or actual education outreach by them.

It's worth pointing out that the fight against segregation, racism, and bigotry locally has long been a collaboration with many from the local Black community and Jewish community, from the early beginnings of the NAACP branch here through the Civil Rights Movement itself and to this day. Unfortunately, one can find anti-Black racism among some Jewish people and antisemitism among some Black people to this day.

Council Member Davion Williams had a community meeting for District 1 last night (video), but organizers made it clear in the ground rules that no comments about the past would be tolerated, only those looking towards the future and solving problems in District 1. 

The meeting included many updates on local programs available, updates from Champaign Police Chief Tyler, and the City. It focused almost entirely on building collaborations and better communication between those attempting to organize and provide services in the historic Black communities of Champaign's North End within District 1. Many area pastors and local officials attended, including the State's Attorney.

General Housekeeping Update:

Due to illness, I haven't been able to keep the Cheat Sheet up to date as I would have liked over the past few months. But I'm catching up as I can. There should be a flurry of updates on the way through the rest of February as that happens.

The City Website has the meeting minutes and full videos of the meetings that I missed during our downtime. One highlight that we missed at the time was the latest update and staff report on the Community Gun Violence Reduction Blueprint (jump to video link).