Fletcher Farrar

It doesn’t detract from our Thanksgiving gratitude to include a prayer that life could get better for others. The 2021 Sangamon County Citizen Survey, conducted by University of Illinois Springfield, tells us 56% of respondents had at least one bad mental health day in the last month. Those of us grateful to be in the […]

On a “civil rights” tour of Alabama, many of the speakers resist making connections to the present, preferring to discuss the desegregation and voting rights struggles of the 1950s and 60s as a closed book, the way we explain Lincoln. Others see Birmingham, Montgomery and Selma as an important chapter in the continuing antiracism struggle. […]

One of this state’s wicked problems is that health in Illinois isn’t equal or equitable. The George Floyd protests in the midst of a pandemic were a stark reminder that Black Lives don’t last as long as others, and that racial and low-income health disparities have been neglected. Dr. Ngozi Ezike, director of the Illinois […]

When Brian McFadden starts talking about the county’s “campus,” you know he’s on a roll. After the Sangamon County administrator announced in April a $16.7 million makeover of the existing county building, the county last week bought the State Journal-Register building next door because, McFadden said, “It fits naturally into our campus and we’re happy […]

The best part of refurbishing the Old State Capitol is the plan to renovate the interpretation of the building as a monument to freedom and equality. Abraham Lincoln wasn’t pure on issues of race, but he steadily progressed as an antiracist, and in the building in June 1858 he said the nation, divided over slavery, […]

Why can’t Republicans get on board with raising the debt limit? Why can’t Israelis support Palestinians, and vice versa? Why can’t those who oppose abortion also support a woman’s right to choose? Some people refuse to get vaccinated because they take care of their health and immune systems. Some are quick to take medicines because […]

Social media put out word Monday that there was a “heavy police presence in Harvard Park,” but it was a joke. Turns out a half dozen cops showed up to serve hot dogs at the Harvard Park Neighborhood Association meeting, which drew 30 or so residents. City council members Kristin DiCenso and Shawn Gregory share […]

We have two new staff writers reporting for Illinois Times. Scott Reeder and Kenneth Lowe have been contributing articles occasionally; now their work will appear weekly in these pages. Reeder, a resident of Sherman, is a veteran Statehouse reporter, having worked for several news organizations, including the Small Newspaper Group and Illinois News Network. His […]

Having ended the war in Afghanistan, President Joe Biden is now trying to explain to a skeptical world his plans for building a peace. Biden pledged not to retreat to the kind of America First isolationism of his predecessor, but instead to continue to speak out for the basic rights of the Afghan people, especially […]

In Springfield this week little children put on their masks, held tight to somebody’s hand, and headed off to in-person school, an act of bravery repeated millions of times all over the country and around the world. If parents were given the remote option, many of them would have kept their children home; if masks […]

Wars are easy to get into and hard to get out of. I remember the Sunday morning, Oct. 7, 2001, when President George W. Bush launched an intense bombing attack on Afghanistan’s major cities. It was inexplicable except as a retaliation for the Sept. 11 attacks, though no case had been made that the attackers […]

Our writer’s lead paragraph in the article on this page sent me fact-checking. Springfield’s racial income disparity is the worst in the nation? That’s what Governing magazine concluded in its 2019 series that analyzed 2017 census data, and apparently nobody has challenged the accuracy of the analysis since. This newspaper published an article from that […]