Pitching Progress and Protests: Central Illinois in Focus

Sunshine Strategies Radio - YouTube

Hi, friends, and welcome back to Sunshine Strategies Radio. My name is Jen McMillin, and I am the founder of Sunshine Strategies and your host of the podcast. Welcome back. It's been a little bit since our last episode, so I do apologize. But I've been so busy.

I have a lot of updates to share with you today, so I hope to keep this episode as short as possible. My goal is always to stay under thirty minutes. Usually, fifteen to twenty is what I shoot for. So we're gonna go over today, but I promise it's for a good reason. So, since we last talked, so much has happened both in the news and with Sunshine Strategies itself.

So I think right now, we're gonna jump right into some family-friendly news and see what's been going on in the world that Illinois families need to know about. So, first of all, I think the biggest story that I have been paying attention to recently is that the Supreme Court, the highest court in our land, is debating birthright citizenship. This is because President Donald Trump had an executive order aimed at ending birthright citizenship in certain cases. It focuses on whether or not you were born here. And if you're born here right now, you're a citizen.

Donald Trump's order is looking at changing that. So I believe that if the mother is not a legal citizen, you're not automatically a US citizen. Please correct me if I'm wrong, but this is going to come down to a question of whether or not the courts, the judiciary, can issue national injunctions to put a stop to executive orders. So this is coming down to a battle between our executive branch, with the presidency,y and our judicial branch, with the Supreme Court and our federal court system. So that's something to pay attention to, and we'll we'll be watching that for updates.

I know that there's been a lot of hubbub in the health world, specifically because of the misinformation that we're getting from the health secretary, Robert f Kennedy Jr. I do wanted to remind everybody that even though it is warmer outside, there are still flu, COVID, all sorts of stomach bugs. Please wash your hands. Please stay home if you're sick, even if the COVID-19 recommendations change. So just be mindful of you and your family's health, regardless of what anyone else tells you.

Let's see. I wasn't aware until I looked at the news today for this episode, but there's been a lot of flooding in the Mid-Atlantic regions of the United States. It is affecting Maryland, Virginia, West Virginia, Pennsylvania, and even Washington, DC. So, I am, you know, know, thinking of all my friends who are over there. And I know here, we've gotten quite a bit of rain, but it was much needed for planting season.

I was interested to see an economic update for the podcast today. One of the governors, New York Governor Kathy Hochul, signed a budget introducing an inflation refund check of up to $400 for approximately 8,000,000 qualifying residents. This is an initiative from a progressive state that looks to reduce the impact of our higher living costs due to all of this uncertainty with the tariffs and the US global economy. So I thought that was kind of a neat approach to how to help people during this time. And another major update.

On May 6, a cease-fire between The US and Yemen's Houthi movement took effect. It ended a series of air and naval strikes. It aims to halt all Houthi attacks on vessels in the Red Sea, and this is an ongoing situation. I am hopeful that this will, will stay a quiet ceasefire. I hope that we can finally bring a resolution to this part of the world for them.

They need some peace over there. So I think that's gonna wrap it up for the big family-friendly news update. I'm gonna take a quick break. And when we come back, we're gonna talk about sunshine strategies and what we've been doing here locally. Thanks.

Alright. Now that we've gotten through the heavy stuff of the news, I wanna bring in some more local stuff and what we've been working on at Sunshine Strategies the last month or so. So if you've been following along on the substack or my social media or even on the podcast here, you know that Sunshine Strategies is a nonprofit rural community support organization. We look to empower local communities to improve themselves for families. So to do that, I needed to come up with a business model for what Sunshine Strategies was.

So my friends over at the University of Illinois Springfield, where I graduated, have a wonderful program called Innovate Springfield. It's a business incubator program, and I participated in their accelerator and incubator competition. And a couple of weeks ago, I finally pitched to a group in front of a whole room of people about sunshine strategies and what we hope to do. Unfortunately, I did not win the first-place prize, and I'm not too sad about it, though, because there wasn't a bad business in the bunch. Treadbase was a group of five University of Illinois Springfield students who ended up winning the seed funding, from what I understand.

And their EdTech startup is helping streamline tuition management for schools. So, you know, they were excellent, and I hope that every one of us who participated in the competition does well. If you were interested in participating in something like this, please let me know. I would love to hook you up with either Innovate Springfield. I've got friends at Millikin University as well as even in in Logan County.

We've got incubators and business innovators throughout the state which, if you've got a really good idea and some grit and you're willing to put it together, we can help you out. So with that, a couple of the projects that Sunshine Strategies has been working on are, of course, Lincoln College. You know, what do you do with the college when no one wants it anymore? middle-income level housing. You know, new construction for families that aren't rich.

You know, my family, we would not be able to purchase a piece of property and build a new house on it. So we're always gonna have to buy a house that's prebuilt in a neighborhood that's already established. I'm saying, you know, we've not done a lot of real estate development in small communities in a very long time. So my friend, Tony at Heartland Development Systems, and I at Sunshine, we are working on the first of its kind solar first neighborhood in Illinois. We're gonna be building at least 20 units of family housing that have solar panels, batteries, and energy-efficient appliances.

We're dropping into a whole neighborhood in Maroa, Illinois. So that has taken up a lot of my time, and I'm excited that we're getting some forward momentum on that. Fingers crossed. We can get a shovel in the ground in the next two to three weeks. Lincoln College is very similar.

We are, we've pitched that to another investment firm to purchase the college and turn it into a multisector business incubator program and tourism destination for Logan County. And that deal is just piddling along. We are trying to convince people that we're not crazy, that you can take three residence halls and transition them into really awesome two and four-bedroom apartments, and that can pay for the renovation and repurposement of Lincoln College. So, fingers crossed. I think that deal is an excellent pitch.

And if this group doesn't like it, we'll we'll have some other conversations to see if we can get it out and moving. And one of the things that I am most excited about from last night and the night before is that since we last spoke, Sunshine Strategies has made a few new friends. First, we have partnered with the, fix this real quick, Outrun Coalition. They are a progressive group that is working on how we can have down-ballot candidates outrun or outperform the top of the ticket. So this is electing progressive people at local levels, even if, you know, you don't live in a blue state like Illinois, or if your state rep and your counties are bright red, you know, how can we run the Democratic candidate even in that state rep race?

So we've partnered with Outrun, and yesterday, we held our first-ever training session with them. We had over, excuse me, 50 people registered for the call, and over 30 who participated during the entire session. We brought in progressive candidates who have been elected in no-name places like where I grew up in Southwestern Illinois, where a lot of people grew up, you know, in rural Kentucky, in Upstate New York, out in Nebraska. Outrun the Outrun Coalition has helped elect over 600 progressive candidates down ballot. So I'm recited to work with Palo and all of these people that are throughout the nation that are showing us that when you show up and you build a community that cares about what happens to itself, they'll elect you no matter who you are and what you look like.

Even if you're, you know, a middle-aged mom punk with rainbow earrings, people will still connect and support you when you run for office. So we hope to have another session, in the next few months, with Outrun and do something again. It was such a fun night and a great opportunity to learn from each other. So, thank you to everyone who participated, and we hope to do that again. And what was also an opportunity for us to announce that Sunshine Strategies is hosting a new Indivisible group for the Central Illinois region.

And because I'm a history nerd, we have named it Indivisible Lincoln's Circuit. This first round, I have added six counties that are in Lincoln's original eighth circuit that we have projects in, where I know people and that we can help build progressive support on the ground in. So those first six counties are, of course, Macon, where I live, Logan County, Christian, where I have projects in, and then DeWitt, Piatt, and Montgomery County, where we have progressive groups on the ground ready to go. After we get settled and figure out how best this functions, I hope to add the rest of the circuit, which includes, as I know Edgar is Edgar County is in there, and I wanna say Morgan. But, I hope to include the original eighth circuit, excluding, of course, you know, Springfield, Champaign, and Decatur.

We wanna focus on the rural areas. So if you wanna be involved with this new indivisible group in rural progressiv politics, let me know. Shoot me an email or follow us on social media. I'm pretty active on Blue Sky. Sunshine Strategies is on Facebook, and you can always follow us at SunshineStrategies.org.

Alright. I think that's gonna wrap it up for today. I hope that you guys are enjoying this beautiful weather, and I am going to be posting a bit more about each of our meetings later on my Substack. So if you are interested in what we're doing with our local Indivisible group or with recruiting progressive candidates in Illinois down ballot, I will be posting that later on. So make sure you follow, like, and subscribe.

And I don't wanna forget this. As a nonprofit, the work that I do is, you know, not funded by any corporate sponsors, yet, and we don't plan to be. I am working right now through consulting fees. So if you've got a project in Central Illinois that you think Sunshine Strategies can help with, we do organizing, executive assistance, grant writing, marketing, and more. I'm happy to help.

Or if you would like to just donate, we are in the process of finalizing our 501c3. But, I will put my Venmo into the description below if you'd like to support us and get us launched fully. Until next time, have a wonderful weekend, and I hope that you are out causing some good trouble. Thanks, guys!

~^~ Jen