In the book “Nature’s Metropolis,” a sparkling history of the 19th-century Midwest, William Cronon makes it crystal clear: Illinois and the Midwest would never have developed so abundantly absent what has become the global commercial center called Chicago, and vice versa. We need one another today as well.
More than ever right now, Chicago almost desperately needs downstate, the great region of our state outside the metropolis, from Rockford to Carbondale. Chicago risks destabilization by thousands of migrants from Central and South America who have been foisted upon the city unexpectedly by Southern states that feel similar pressures.
You and I, a downstater, didn’t ask for these migrants. And, probably along with you, I want a tighter border with Mexico and orderly immigration. Yet, these migrants are here. And Chicago is like the little old lady who lived in a shoe. She has so many children she doesn’t know what to do.
I propose a collaboration between city mice and country mice that will alleviate, if not solve, the migrant crisis. Downstate Illinois beyond the suburbs has more than 600 communities with more than 1,000 people. If every community accepted two families of migrants for resettlement in their towns, say 10 people, that would be 6,000; bigger towns might absorb 20 migrants. That could help Chicago mightily in relieving the pressure on its resources.
But I can hear the outcry from many of my downstate friends: “We don’t want those blankety-blank (this is a family publication) in our town.”
Such reactions result from the unfiltered brain at work in most all of us, especially in small-town folks, who tend to be rather provincial. We see people who are different from us as “thems” — and better to keep them at bay. That reaction is thanks to the brain’s development across the millions of years, when, for security’s sake, people we didn’t know were generally to be viewed with high suspicion.
The irony is that most downstate communities could use an infusion of new residents, as many are leaking population. Where I live in central Illinois, communities are desperate for workers. “We’re hiring!” signs dot the roadsides. And who better as workers than people who, like our forebears, risked life and limb to reach America, people who are willing to take any dirty job in order to claw a foothold into this land of opportunity.
I have a dairyman friend in a rural town in central Illinois. I asked him how he kept up with the relentless work of dairying — milk cows can’t wait, you know; they give every day! He responded bluntly: “The Mexicans, from Kewanee (a small city near his). They work their asses off, 365 days a year, which is what I have to have.”
As far as the “us versus them” mentality, it can recede, as a result of the “getting to know you” phenomenon.
When I was growing up in Toulon (population 1,300) post-World War II, there was one Black family in our town, the Joe and Dora Harrington family. Joe was on the highway crew that built Illinois Route 17 through Toulon in the 1920s, and he decided to stay. The Harringtons became pillars of the local Baptist church, and their four children were central to the high school’s fine music and sports programs. The high school held its first homecoming when I was still in grade school, about 1949. Who was the town’s first homecoming king? Don Harrington.
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Alas, brilliant as I think my idea is, indeed a win-win-win for downstate and Chicago and migrants with their dreams, I don’t see a strong social network downstate to make it happen, certainly not in short order. Maybe the Illinois Conference of Churches could pull off such a huge endeavor.
But, like the migrants, I can dream. Collaboration brings out the best in humans. If you have any positive ideas, see my email address in the credit line below. I’d like to work on this, as I love Chicago.
Downstate and Chicago need one another. Always have.
Jim Nowlan is a former Illinois legislator, state agency director and senior aide to three unindicted Illinois governors. He now lives in Princeton and can be reached at [email protected]. His 2023 book is “Politics — The Starter Kit: How to Succeed in Politics and Government.”
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