Illinois prisoners should have the right to vote, a powerful lobbying group is arguing to the Illinois General Assembly. The effort nearly progressed in late January 2022, when the measure failed in the Illinois House by three votes.

If made law, SB 828 would make Illinois the third state to allow incarcerated citizens to vote while they’re in prison – after Maine and Vermont, and the District of Columbia.

Current Illinois voter law must be changed because it is racially unfair, the advocates say. Their proposed changes would add about 28,000 prisoners to Illinois’ voter rolls. Most importantly, nearly 55 percent, Illinois Department of Corrections’ records as of December 2021 show, are African-American:

Statewide population demographics would make Illinois the first state with a substantial percentage of black residents that allows felons the right to vote while they are serving their prison sentences.

It’s not a new movement. It’s just one that has been gaining steam in the past few years.

U.S. Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont wrote in a 2019 USA Today op ed that allowing prison voting would begin correcting America’s broken criminal justice system he deemed as “systemically racist,” which enables “mass incarceration” as a “tool of voter suppression.”

But how appropriate is it for criminals to maintain the right to vote while they are in prison?

“Nearly every state recognizes the wisdom of preventing prisoners from voting,” former Heritage Foundation legal analyst Jason Snead wrote in a 2019 Chicago Tribune opinion on the issue. “There is simply no reason that those who have shown they cannot follow the law ought to have a say in crafting it or electing those who will enforce it.”

Snead wrote that felons show through their actions that they do not deserve society’s implicit trust.

“They do deserve a second chance, but the burden is theirs to demonstrate that they have become law-abiding and upstanding citizens in other words, the very people we want to be voting,” he said.

Illinois’ Department of Corrections records indicate the top ten crimes current state prisoners have committed range from homicide to robbery:

How comfortable should Illinoisans be to welcome imprisoned murderers, rapists, violent attackers, thieves and drug violators as making the crucial votes to determine who serves in the Executive Branch, in the Illinois General Assembly and on the state’s judicial benches?

Currently, Illinois is one of 21 states that returns voting rights to prisoners once they’ve completed their sentences. That is a liberal stand compared to sixteen states that restore voting rights only after prison, parole and probation are completed and another nine states that permanently deny voting rights to convicted felons.

Illinois, a state politically-controlled in all three branches by Bernie Sanders’ sympathizers, is the perfect place to stoke the voting rights’ fire, Chicago Votes representatives said in a recent WBEZ radio interview.

Lawmakers in general are interested in voting rights’ restoration, the representatives said.  They are much more open to the movement in Illinois than other states.

It matters who casts votes in Illinois. The state’s election rolls are in dire need of being scoured of former residents and deceased voters. Adding criminals still serving their time would not make Illinois a better place for law-abiding citizens to live and raise their families.

Share your thoughts with your state lawmakers as they most certainly will face another vote on SB 828 during the ongoing legislative session.

Take ACTION: Click HERE to send a message to your State Senator and State Representative to ask them to vote NO to SB 828. The majority of voters in Illinois do not want violent prisoners casting ballots for candidates who are running for the legislative, judicial and executive branches of government.

If you don’t get involved on this issue, your voice and vote could be muffled by an imprisoned murderer.

Tax-funded propagandists in media and academia across Illinois are demonizing the historic 1776 Report report on the public’s dime, without offering any examples of errors or inaccuracies among the facts presented by President Donald J. Trump‘s 1776 Commission.

Trump’s commission was created partly as a response to the debunked 1619 Project by the New York Times, which used deliberate lies to paint the United States as evil yet is being taught in government schools across Illinois. In particular, the previous administration sought to provide a counterweight to the indoctrination taking place in public schools. The goal:

“enable a rising generation to understand the history and principles of the founding of the United States in 1776 and to strive to form a more perfect Union.”

Among the taxpayer-supported Illinois critics of the historical document was fringe “history” professor Lionel Kimble Jr. with Chicago State University. In his ramblings against the report, quoted by Chicago’s tax-funded NPR radio station WBEZ, Kimble did not challenge a single fact presented by the commission.

“I went between laughter to confusion to utter disdain,” Kimble told the tax-funded “news” station, as if ridicule were a substitute for facts, logic, and evidence. “I had this visceral reaction as I read it, and I just was shaking my head through most of it.” Calling it “ahistorical,” and with “no basis in historical fact,” the far-left professor said he “wasted my time reading it.”

In reality, the 40-page report was absolutely filled with historical facts, as anyone can verify by reading it. Indeed, much of the report is composed of direct quotes and excerpts from primary-source documents and historical statements by key figures in American history such as the Founding Fathers, Abraham Lincoln, Martin Luther King, Jr., and more.

Saying that the report has “no basis in historical fact” when it is packed with primary-source documents and quotes from key historical figures shows Kimble either never read the report, knows nothing about what constitutes history, or is deliberately trying to mislead the people of Chicago.

Kimble then proceeded to offer powerful evidence that he had never actually read the report that supposedly made him laugh between his disdain and confusion. Ironically, he blasted the Trump administration because it “put this document out to say that America was perfect” right before the Martin Luther King, Jr. holiday.

If Kimble had read the report, he would know that it dealt extensively with America’s failings. Indeed, the largest section in the report other than the appendix was about “challenges to America’s principles” including slavery (a scourge that has plagued virtually every human culture and civilization throughout history).

When asked by the Chicago NPR propagandist about its release before the MLK holiday, Kimble truly stepped in it. “I think that casts a long shadow on King’s assassination,” claimed the fringe “history” professor, whose book glorifying Big Government has not received a single review on Amazon in five years. “It tells people who believe in King and believe the things that he stood for that he died for nothing.”

But again, if Kimble had actually read the report, he would know that King was one of the most extensively quoted figures in the report. And ironically, considering his anti-American attitude, it appears that it is Kimble, not the 1776 Commission, who wants people to reject “the things that [King] stood for.”

Consider King’s own words quoted in the 1776 Report. “When the architects of our republic wrote the magnificent words of the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence, they were signing a promissory note to which every American was to fall heir,” King said, adding that the founding documents protected the unalienable rights of black and white Americans.

Kimble’s rambling interview continued by claiming America is a “historical wasteland” where Americans “don’t talk about things” because “it doesn’t make Americans feel good about the atrocities that we’ve done as a nation.” Then he suggested that America, like National Socialist (Nazi) Germany, must repent more.

Yes, seriously; Brought to you by the taxpayers of Illinois and the Unites States of America. Efforts to reach Kimble to explain his bizarre comments were unsuccessful. A phone number listed for him on Chicago State University’s website had been disconnected, and no alternate number was provided by the recording.

Kimble and Chicago’s NPR were not the only tax-funded extremists to demonize the report and America without actually citing a single example of something wrong with it. Tax-funded propagandists at NPR Illinois did the same thing, quoting a tax-funded academic blasting the 1776 Commission’s report without identifying a single error in the document.

Legitimate journalists would have at least provided balance. They could have done this by quoting or interviewing any of the scholars and experts behind the report — people like the highly respected Dr. Carol Swain, the co-chair of the 1776 Commission and a (black) former law professor at Vanderbilt Law School, for example.

Instead, tax-funded propaganda outlets in Illinois chose to interview tax-funded pseudo-“scholars” whose specialty appears to be the fact-free demonization of America. No wonder opposition to tax subsidies for NPR and other far-left propaganda is growing so quickly across America.

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WBEZ reporter Natalie Moore praised Illinois last month for what she saw as a strength. Illinois has become a go-to state for abortion:

Women travel from all over the country to have abortions in Illinois. As neighboring states restrict abortion access, Illinois is seen as a haven that protects access.

The number of “tourist” abortions carried out in Illinois nearly doubled from 2014 to 2018. She credits two groups of people for this development. First, while neighboring states have enacted laws related to such things as parental notification, counseling, waiting periods, or restrictions on public funding, Illinois politicians have been busy making law too. Even if Roe v Wade gets overturned, they have seen to it that Illinois’s abortion centers will remain open for business – with taxpayer funding for customers on Medicaid. Because of moves like these, says Chicago activist Megan Jeyifo, pregnant women pursuing abortion are choosing Illinois “because it’s quicker and less expensive.”

“Looking at Abortion More Expansively”

Moore also credits Illinois activists for having worked to change the narrative about abortion. I read her article carefully. Here is what is meant by “changing the narrative,” based on what she wrote in Abortion Access And Activism Remain Strong In Illinois:

• Abortion should be commonplace. In an earlier era, “keep abortion safe, legal and rare” was the operative slogan. No more. “Rare” must be dropped. Why? Because …

• Words are tools. “Political education means astute communication.” Messaging must serve the cause, and saying abortion should be “rare” doesn’t project the right message. How is the “right” message to be projected?

• Storytelling is a political tactic. Political education also means “storytelling” and “humanizing people.” Here’s what is meant by that. Since nearly 1 in 4 women will at some point have an abortion, everyone knows and loves someone who’s had one. Also, abortion experiences can be difficult. Therefore, stories designed to stir up feelings of love and compassion, especially those involving hardship, should be told.

The campaign to change the narrative, then, reduces to a political strategy by which stories are told to manipulate people into going along with an agenda they would not otherwise go along with. Emotions surrounding the universal values of love, compassion, and goodwill are stirred up and tied to a message that says, if you are loving and compassionate, you will join the “fight” for this cause. This is the very essence of propaganda.

Tack on the all-purpose rhetorical caboose “justice,” and voilà, you have organized a “reproductive justice” train. Moore lauds the fact that the idea of abortion as “reproductive justice” was conceived in Chicago. “The beauty of the reproductive justice framework,” said Toni Bond, one of the framers of the strategy, “is the way that it looks at things much more expansively.”

Looking at Abortion Activists More Expansively

I abhor abortion. I think it’s one of the most egregious human rights violations of our day. But abortion activists aren’t moved by my outrage. Or by yours. In the face of hardened abortioneers (social activists specifically pushing abortion), I think there’s a time and place for drawing them out.

Here are two ways to do that. Both involve looking at abortion – and the abortioneer – more expansively. (Never give an ounce of air to the emotional manipulation. Just call it out, and then proceed.) One approach is to make the case for human life based on facts and logical reasoning. If a conversation is to be had, center it on the nature of abortion. For more on how to make the case for life this way, I highly recommend the work of Scott Klusendorf, president of Life Training Institute (LTI) and author of The Case for Life. Click here or here for more on that.

“Why We Fight”

The other way to proceed is to do what the activists do – tell stories. Except that we tell stories that are true. Here’s a true story:

In 2001, HBO released the ten-part miniseries Band of Brothers. Based on the Stephen Ambrose book of the same name, it followed a group of WWII paratroopers, E Company (“Easy Company”), through basic training, D-Day, occupied France, and finally into Germany.

In Episode 9, “Why We Fight,” the soldiers encounter an altogether different kind of evil. It’s April 1945, the war in Europe is all but over, and they’re stationed in the German town of Landsberg awaiting orders. One day, a few of them venture out to explore the area. They come to the edge of a forest, and before them stands a high barbed wire fence with a locked gate. They venture closer and find behind it hundreds, perhaps thousands of dazed, emaciated and starving prisoners. They have seen fierce battle, but this is a horror on a whole new level, and they are speechless.

After they set about meeting the prisoners’ basic needs – food, water, medical attention – they marched the Landsberg townspeople out to the camp. They made them look, straight on, at the human atrocity that had been taking place in their own backyard, with their complicity. I think it’s safe to say that nobody would want to have been one of the Landsberg townspeople that day.

We can’t drag Illinois abortion defenders out to the POC rooms of Planned Parenthood’s sparkling new complexes in Fairview Heights (near St. Louis) or Flossmoor (near Indiana), or to the spa-like Carafem (near Wisconsin). But one day, all the things that have taken place behind those fences and walls will be exposed.

What we can do now is challenge the activists to look more expansively – straight on, as much as is possible – at exactly what it is that they are championing. Invite them to watch an actual abortion procedure with you. There are plenty online. Maybe even let them have the honor of choosing one to watch. Click here, here, or here for options. Afterward, invite them to explain what they just saw. Perhaps they might further explain how it merits the term “justice.” For the truly hardened, if you can manage to do all this in public, that’s all the better.

You may not change the moral orientation of a given abortioneer, but you can proceed with confidence, knowing that the real justice train only runs one way. In drawing the abortioneer out into the light, you will have invited someone championing evil to look at it from a very uncomfortable place. That’s what tends to happen when the light of truth is shone into the “haven” of darkness.

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