Connor Towne O'Neill

speaker

230 appearances 1 recordings 1 series first heard Jul 2026 last heard 5 Jul

Connor Towne O'Neill’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.

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Recordings per month over the last 12 months — 1 in all, peaking in Jul 2026 with 1.

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Larry Mulch is an elected official.

He's a township supervisor.

And the former sheriff of Hancock County is in the group.

And that's how they were able to use the courthouse in the first place.

And Mulch explained to me that's why they're organizing on this grassroots, county-by-county basis.

You build a base of support among your neighbors, your township supervisors, your sheriff.

Then you start to lobby the county board, the state senators.

And they're speaking from a place that is so resonant to so many of their neighbors.

Lots of people I've spoken with talk about downstate Illinois as fundamentally different from Chicago.

To a person, everyone I spoke with referenced the history of downstate Illinois, settled in the 19th century...

largely by Kentucky and Tennessee farmers.

Well, early on, Chicago had more of a connection to shipping, the Great Lakes, and then, of course, became this big metropolis.

As they see it, the state is cleaved together.

Two places with two pasts, two presents, two ways of life.

And so when you feel so connected to a place, but you don't see your priorities, your values, your worldview reflected in how that place is run...

There's a distress, but also a motivation.

So Aisha, I talked to an expert on secession movements, Dr. Kenneth Owen.

He's a history professor at the University of Illinois Springfield.

He's been following New Illinois for years.

So Owens says there are two hallmarks of these movements.

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