Illinois Making Big Mistake Belittling Rural Secession and Ignoring the Issues - #NationalDivorce
Growing downstate Illinois secessionist movement deserves more than smirks from Chicagoland
Growing downstate Illinois secessionist movement deserves more than smirks from Chicagoland
(Springfield and Chicago ignore the people who feed them at their own peril! - DD)
(Chicago Tribune) - Can a divorce ever truly be amicable?
Illinois secessionists, who liken their dynamic with their home state as being in an “unhappy couple,” think so. And they want out.
“We’d like to be friendly next-door neighbors,” the organizers of the “New Illinois” movement say.
Over the past several years, voters in a total of 33 Illinois counties have approved nonbinding refenda supporting secession from Illinois. In November, voters in seven more Illinois counties will consider similar advisory questions.
Counties that have approved or are considering nonbinding separation referenda are generally rural or small-town communities across western, central and southern Illinois. Among those that have approved such a referendum, Iroquois County, along the Indiana border, is the closest to Cook County, roughly 100 miles south of downtown Chicago. Its population is about 26,000.
These generally are very lightly populated parts of the state, but assuming the November votes go the same way the others have, people in 40 of Illinois’ 102 counties — nearly 40% — will have voted to leave a state that’s been in existence for 208 years.
It’s simply becoming harder to dismiss the effort as an ephemeral political curiosity. This looks more like the living, breathing representation of the lingering sentiment among plenty of…
And it’s getting bigger faster and better soon there’s no holding back the flood that’s coming