“Yes, we may be speaking to the choir,” said Dr. Kelly Hurst, a leader of the Massey Commission, to the March 2 quarterly meeting of Kenniebrew-McNeese Community Forum. “But remember, the choir needs rehearsal.” The “choir” here was doctors, hospital workers, social service providers, city officials and staffers and other community members who care about […]
Fletcher Farrar
Fletcher Farrar is the editor of Illinois Times .
Posted inLetters to the Editor
Editors note 2/12/26
Once a month Springfield welcomes the world. At 7 p.m. Feb. 19, the World Affairs Council of Central Illinois hosts Reyna Torres Mendivil, consul general of Mexico in Chicago, for a free program open to the public at Illini Country Club. A big part of the job of a regional consul general is to be […]
Posted inEditor's Note
Editor’s Note
“A Forum on the City Garbage Ordinance,” the title of a recent Springfield public meeting, sounded like a recipe for complaints about disastrous public policy. Everybody knows, don’t we, that the city’s trash collection system, using multiple private haulers, leaves many households without regular pickups, an invitation for fly-dumping? Not so, says the Independent Coalition […]
Posted inEditor's Note
Editor’s Note
Ryan P. Burge was pastor of an American Baptist church in Mt. Vernon, Illinois, for 17 years before his church closed for good in 2024. Since then he has become an influential political scientist, teaching at Washington University, while writing books about what happened to his church and many others like it. He’s been on […]
Posted inEditor's Note
Editor’s note 1/15/26
Cairo, the small Illinois town (population 2,100) with a large legacy, is claiming its place at the confluence of rivers and history. It is a landmark on the state’s Freedom Trail, celebrating the “physical and spiritual pathways of freedom-seekers.” Don Patton, a lifelong resident of Cairo and president of the Cairo Historical Preservation Project, led […]
Posted inEditor's Note
Editor’s Note
The one good thing about radical politicians is that they tend to bring us in the center closer together. The days when politics used to divide between “conservatives” and “liberals” seem almost quaint today, when many of us would prefer a good old-fashioned conservative or even a God-and-country liberal any day over the wildfire coming […]
Posted inRemembering
Remembering 2025
Our annual REMEMBERING edition, the last issue of the year, reminds us small-town folks that people we thought we knew we didn’t know as well as we wish we had, and those we didn’t know, we wish we had known. It reminds us that many more have died this year than we could possibly write […]
Posted inEditor's Note
Editor’s note
It’s Christmas and the country is falling apart. A week ago South Carolina seceded from the union; a month ago he was elected president. Reporters and job-seekers have flocked to Springfield to see the president-elect, who remains cool, practicing what was called then “a masterly inactivity” as he awaits the trouble and responsibility ahead of […]
Posted inEditor's Note
Editor’s Note
In Springfield Monday Gov. JB Pritzker set the right tone for this season when he and other Jewish leaders assembled to light the state menorah. He first expressed his grief about the mass shooting in Australia which killed 15 at a Hanukkah celebration. Pritzker said he is angry “at those who stoke the embers of […]
Posted inReGen
REGEN – Grownups getting stronger
The articles presented in our special section beginning on page 14 constitute the winter edition of REGEN, for “Grownups getting stronger.” Published quarterly by Illinois Times since 2020 as a standalone magazine, REGEN has highlighted active and energetic seniors (who don’t like being called seniors). The first issue explained, “We reject the notion that older […]
Posted inEditor's Note
Editor’s Note
We who are “upsessed” about Washington must resist being distracted from Springfield and local affairs. It was here our Vachel Lindsay in 1914 preached “the new localism”: “The things most worthwhile are one’s own hearth and neighborhood. We should make our own home and neighborhood the most democratic, the most beautiful and the holiest in […]
Posted inEditor's Note
Editors note 11/27/25
“Accountability, without systemic transformation, is not justice,” the Massey Commission writes in its elegant “Response to the Grayson Verdict,” posted on the commission’s page on Sangamon County’s website (sangamonil.gov). The Oct. 29 verdict brings a “breath of hope” and a “whisper of justice,” the statement reads. “We are called now to listen to the pain […]
