One Illinois is 2

Now more than ever we all need to pull together as one state with a single purpose

The Illinois team pulls itself to victory in the 2018 Great River Tug at Port Byron across from Le Claire, Iowa. Now more than ever, all of Illinois needs to similarly pull together as one. (One Illinois/Ted Cox)

By Ted Cox

Well, after all, there’s a reason they call them the terrible twos.

One Illinois turns 2 years old Thursday. It’s been a wild and exhilarating ride, but there’s no denying the state finds itself in terrible straits unlike anything most of us have experienced in our lifetimes.

We remain undeterred, however, in our belief that Illinois and its people are a state worth celebrating. We were all in for Illinois before the coronavirus pandemic and Gov. Pritzker called for us all to be All in for Illinois.

But just when we most need to pull together, the forces of divisiveness rise again to try to separate Illinoisans politically, economically, and socially when we are really one state and one people. The pandemic has cast our statewide differences in relief, but it has also demonstrated why we need to be united.

COVID-19 has altered lives around the world; that’s the nature of a pandemic. We’ve all rediscovered that there are reasons we need to be concerned with our fellow humans in China, in Italy, Spain, and England, in Washington state, California, New York City, and New Orleans.

As the acerbic comedian George Carlin once pointed out, having a no-smoking section in a restaurant is like having a no-peeing section in a pool. The same goes for a pandemic: if it’s in one place, it’s sure to get around to everywhere else eventually. But if single approach to stemming the coronavirus is unwieldy across a nation like the United States — ignoring for the moment whether President Trump would even consider suggesting such unity — a state is something more manageable and inherently more of a single piece, like a restaurant we all enjoy or a pool we all delight in.

So we have a united purpose in a coherent response to the pandemic, even if it’s not necessarily one approach fits all from Cairo to Chicago. We have to do everything possible to halt the spread of the disease wherever it is. And, as the governor has repeatedly pointed out, portions of the state that might seem to be distant from the concentration of COVID-19 cases can suddenly find themselves stricken, like Jasper County outside Effingham, which has the highest coronavirus mortality rate in the state per capita.

Chicago is a major global population center and a center of infection, it’s true, and the outbreak has spread readily into northwest Indiana, with its large number of people commuting into the city. But Chicago has done almost all it can to stem the spread of the disease, all Illinoisans can admit, while all Illinoisans now also have to work together to cool off hot spots in Rock Island County and the Quad Cities, which has seen a rise in infections stemming from Iowa, and in the Metro East area across from St. Louis and Missouri, as both those states have been less restrictive on social distancing and staying home than Illinois has been.

There is a single key to this, and it’s one of the essential foundations of our nation: we are one state among 50, separate but connected, and if we don’t see ourselves as one state, as all being proud Illinoisans, well, we are doomed to relive the experience that a house divided against itself cannot stand, in the words of the man who gave our state its nickname.

That’s been the essential mission of One Illinois, to convey that sense of unity and shared purpose, and it’s been the source of our best and most enjoyable stories: the gay man from Chicago who moved with his partner to Savanna on the Mississippi River and became mayor; the woman from Anna who took it on herself to do all she can to make sure remote areas of the state aren’t exploited for their natural resources while no one else seems to be looking; the legislator from Bunker Hill who set out to make sure that all the state’s children have equal access to a quality education; the University of Chicago neonatologist who presciently reminded us as a songwriter that “Life Ain’t That Long”; and the Galesburg single mom who survived tough times during a divorce to recover, remarry, and return to those less fortunate by opening a diaper bank.

Let that be an inspiration to us all as we try to weather this storm and resume something resembling what we remember as a normal life. We need to help one another get through this, and then additionally help those who didn’t come through it as well as we did.

The statewide stay-at-home order has us all feeling cabin fever, but that’s better than the fever resulting from COVID-19 infection. At One Illinois, we’re eager to tell the stories we haven’t yet got to in just our first two years, such as the Lovejoy Homestead in Princeton and the Underground Railroad, the Illinois & Michigan Canal, the rehabilitation of Lorado Taft’s “Eternal Indian,” coal ash in the Vermillion River, high-speed rail, drive-ins, haunted Alton, farming across the state, fishing the Kankakee River, and overcrowding at Starved Rock.

Those were the days, weren’t they?

And they will return. We have to not only believe that, but feel it as a certainty.

Things in general are terrible right now, there’s no use denying that. But they can easily get worse. There’s still time for Illinois to suffer the way Italy or New York City has suffered in the pandemic if we don’t observe the social distancing and other mitigation efforts that have thus far successfully limited the spread of COVID-19 and its impact.

We won’t let that happen, not if we look out for our neighbors across the state, whether they reside in Chicago or Quincy, in Moline or Metropolis.

We are One Illinois, and we won’t let anyone forget that. So stay home, save lives, and be All in for Illinois. We’ll be seeing you in good time, and until then we’ll be covering, as best we can, what goes on across our state.