Jen McMillin

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Know Better, Do Better Is Actually Really Hard

So, join a community to help.
Jen McMillin's avatar
Jen McMillin
Jul 17, 2026

☀ SUNSHINE STRATEGIES RADIO ☀

Weekly News Recap — Week of July 17, 2026
Macon · Piatt · DeWitt · Logan · McLean · Christian Counties

COLD OPEN / HOOK

It is hot out there, y’all. And I don’t just mean the weather — though if you haven’t checked on your elderly neighbors this week, now’s a good time. I mean it’s a heavy news week, and I’ve got some thoughts about why so much of it keeps repeating itself. So stick with me — we’ve got a story about a Chicago lawyer, a tailor, and a room nobody remembers the address of anymore, and it’s going to explain more about your county board meeting than you’d expect.

Know Better, Do Better is Pretty Hard Actually

There are many reasons for me to be frustrated with our current civic “predicament.” And I could list SO MANY today, but the one I’m stuck on this week is our collective failure to take to heart: “When you know better, you do better.”

A phrase often attributed to Maya Angelou, talking to Oprah — and I commend her for putting words to a complex lesson for every American, really every good human.

For instance — my favorite Illinois statesman, Abe Lincoln. Thanks to his endless writing and continued study, we can see how Mr. Lincoln’s views and actions changed over time. Today we still debate if he really was an abolitionist and meant to emancipate people of color. I argue he simply came to know better — and tried his best to do better given the circumstances.

And in the past few weeks, I keep seeing where we could all have used that lesson.

From failing to hold anyone accountable for the failures around the Epstein files, to Congress not challenging the administration’s war with Iran — this week gave us a fresh example of exactly that. Senate Democrats blocked the annual defense policy bill, the NDAA, a bill that almost always passes with big bipartisan support. Senator Richard Blumenthal said the quiet part out loud: he sees continuing to fund the bill as backing the war, and said there’s been no accountability from this administration for it. Whatever side of that war debate you’re on, that’s the thesis in miniature — people who should know better, still not doing better.

Each time, so many people should have known better — so why aren’t they doing better?

Here’s what I keep coming back to: knowing better isn’t the hard part. Most of us, most of the time, already know better. What’s missing isn’t insight. It’s infrastructure.

Take Paul Harris. (I know, a new person in history instead of Abe!) Chicago attorney, 1905. He didn’t grow up in a big city — he grew up in Wallingford, Vermont, the kind of small town where the shopkeeper knows your name. When he moved to Chicago to practice law, he felt that something was missing. He knew better — he knew what he was missing, he knew community mattered. But knowing didn’t fix a single thing. He was lonely for years.

What changed it wasn’t a resolution. It was a room. Room 711, the Unity Building, on February 23, 1905 — Harris and three other men, a mining engineer, a coal dealer, and a tailor, sat down together. That’s it. That’s the whole invention. Not a better Paul Harris. A structure that made “doing better” possible — and repeatable, for the next man, and the next, until it was Rotary clubs on every continent.

That’s the piece missing from every one of my examples above. Nobody built the room. There’s no Room 711 for Epstein-files accountability. No standing structure that makes “do better” happen automatically once “know better” arrives. Congress investigated MKULTRA fifty years ago and promised the same thing it’s promising this year — and in between, nothing changed, because promising isn’t a structure. It’s just knowing, again, out loud.

So if you’re waiting to feel bad enough, or informed enough, to finally do better — stop waiting on yourself. Look for the room instead. Or build one.

I’ll leave you with this one, because it’s ours. Tomorrow, July 18, they’re cutting the ribbon on the Sangamon River Bluff Trail. Years of talk, years of meetings, a little bit of funding fought for at a time — and tomorrow, an actual trail. Somebody built a room for that too. It just took the shape of a trail commission instead of a tailor’s office.

When you know better, you do better — but only if you’ve got people to do it with.

THIS WEEK’S NEWS — ACROSS OUR SIX COUNTIES

Speaking of building rooms — here’s who’s building them, and who isn’t, across our six counties this week.

THIS WEEK’S NEWS — ACROSS OUR SIX COUNTIES

Alright, let’s take a lap around the six counties. Macon, Piatt, DeWitt, Logan, McLean, and Christian — here’s what happened in the last two weeks that you should actually know about.

MACON COUNTY

We’ll start at home. Decatur police are still investigating a shooting that killed a 16-year-old — that case remains open, and I’ll bring you updates as they come.

On a more hopeful note: if you live in Macon County, there’s a decent chance the state is holding money that belongs to you. State Treasurer Michael Frerichs’ office says there are an estimated 169,400 unclaimed properties, worth roughly $32.4 million, belonging to Macon County residents and businesses. His team is setting up shop at the Mt. Zion District Library on July 24th, from 10 a.m. to 12:30 p.m., to help you check and claim what’s yours. Bring an ID. It costs you nothing to look.

PIATT COUNTY

Over in Monticello, there’s a story that’s been simmering for a while and just got a state response. Residents have been raising questions for months about what felt like a cluster of glioblastoma cases in their community — enough that one resident, whose father-in-law was diagnosed in 2021, started tracking cases herself after a Freedom of Information Act request.

This week, the Illinois Department of Public Health said its review of cancer registry data found no evidence of an increase in Piatt County — the rate they’re seeing is in line with rural Illinois and the state overall. But here’s the catch worth sitting with: the state’s numbers are calculated at the county level, not neighborhood by neighborhood, because smaller areas raise privacy and reliability issues. So the state’s “nothing unusual here” and the residents’ “something feels off in my neighborhood” aren’t actually answering the same question. I imagine this isn’t the last we hear of it.

DEWITT COUNTY

Some real hometown pride here — Clinton Junior High’s SkillsUSA team won the national championship down in Atlanta, and came home to an actual celebration motorcade. That’s the kind of thing worth honking your horn for.

On the civic side: the DeWitt County Board’s land use committee got back a survey on rural broadband access — a gap that’s been a known issue for the county for a while now, and this is at least a step toward measuring it properly instead of guessing at it.

And one I want to flag for you specifically, because it’s basically Rotary doing exactly what Rotary’s supposed to do: the Clinton Rotary Club has offered to help fix up the “Welcome to Clinton” signs on the roads into town — mostly lighting and electrical work that the city’s been meaning to get to. Mayor Helen Michelassi thanked them publicly at the council meeting. Small thing. But it’s a community noticing a gap and just... doing the work. No task force required.

LOGAN COUNTY

This is the big one out of Logan County, and it matters for Lincoln’s whole economy. The state is planning to rebuild its aging prison capacity — but instead of rebuilding at Logan Correctional Center, Illinois wants to put two new facilities at Crest Hill, leaving Lincoln out entirely.

Local leaders aren’t taking it quietly. Logan County Board Chair James Glenn, Lincoln Mayor Tracy Welch, and state representative Bill Hauter put out a joint statement warning that moving the facility does nothing to improve outcomes for people incarcerated there, and would devastate the local community — forcing staff to choose between uprooting their families or losing their jobs. The Department of Corrections says it’ll keep Logan open as long as possible during the transition, but there’s no firm timeline yet, and design proposals are just getting started. This is one to watch closely over the next year — it’s a jobs story as much as a corrections story.

MCLEAN COUNTY

Two very different stories here. First: a McLean County social service agency, the Immigration Project, says 15 families in the Bloomington-Normal area were affected by an ICE enforcement action that ran July 1st through 3rd — part of a larger sweep reported nationwide that same week. The agency is providing legal and social service support to the families affected, and says it’s an incredibly distressing time for the people involved. I’ll keep you posted as more local reporting comes out on this.

On a lighter note — Bloomington, Normal, and McLean County jointly put on the area’s first-ever drone show July 2nd, kicking off the America 250 celebration. Three levels of local government and a stack of local business sponsors, all pitching in on one show. Genuinely nice example of everybody rowing the same direction for once.

CHRISTIAN COUNTY

Lighter week here on the news side — the Christian County Ag Fair runs July 21st through 25th in Taylorville, its 102nd year. If you’ve never been, it’s worth the trip — livestock shows, a demolition derby, and a senior citizens’ luncheon, which honestly might be my favorite item on that list.

And here’s one that fits today’s theme better than I could’ve planned: the Lincoln Prairie Trail is getting improvements and extensions in the coming weeks and months. Another example of the slow, unglamorous work of a community actually building the room — or in this case, the trail — instead of just agreeing it should exist.

And that’s your six-county lap for this week. As always — if something’s happening in your corner of central Illinois that you think folks should hear about, you know where to find me.

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Macon County

Piatt County

DeWitt County

https://theclintonjournal.com/

Logan County

McLean County

Christian County

https://taylorvilledailynews.com/

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