At Harrisburg District Library Friday author Jeff Biggers said he was thrilled with his visit to speak to a Harrisburg High School class earlier in the day.
Biggers, of Iowa, whose grandparents lived at Eagle Creek, asked several of history teacher Robyn Williams’ students about their career dreams and was excited to hear their responses.
“They are people who wanted to do anything but be left behind in a boom bust economy,” Biggers said.
The Southern Illinois economy is not booming and opportunities for high paying careers in Saline County are limited, but the students are optimistic.
“What do you want to be in a town where 70 percent of the kids get free lunch?” Biggers asked the library crowd.
The students are anything but apathetic.
“After speaking at over 100 universities, from Yale to Stanford to the University of Chicago, I was most moved and impressed by the motivation and words of the kids at Harrisburg High, which shaped my mom and dad and gave them a chance to pursue their dreams,” Biggers said following the library event. “I’ll never forget the young student who told me she planned to become a pediatrician because her brother struggled with MS; or, the young man who wanted to become a writer; and the many who spoke confidently about their plans to become engineers, doctors, architects, and a golf coach!
“The kids gave me reasons to believe in Southern Illinois and its bright shining future. The challenge is now back in the hands of our town.”
Biggers believes for too long the region has staked its future on promises by out-of-area fossil fuel extraction companies and a sustainable energy future can be key in keeping Southern Illinois’ economy viable. Other states like Kentucky and Iowa have done this. He said manufacture of parts for wind turbines in rural Iowa has been a success and employing eastern Kentucky residents in energy efficiency campaigns has boosted employment there. The reason those programs have worked is the state recognized a need for jobs and invested money into growing industries.
Biggers said in the Ruhr Valley in Germany investments in renewable energy spurred by the Fukashima disaster have become so successful no family has to pay college tuition for their kids.
He believes Southern Illinois deserves its fair share of taxes to replicate those success stories and provide good paying jobs to the kids of Saline County.
What distressed him about his school visit was the absence of Southern Illinois’ history from the history textbooks. He believes Southern Illinois deserves credit for galvanizing the workers’ union movement when striking coal miners in Verdin held the line against the coal company even though seven miners lost their lives in a shootout with guards. That incident led to the national eight-hour work day, a 30 percent increase in wages and a new holiday called Coal Miner’s Day that appears forgotten today.
He believes Southern Illinois residents like filmmaker Oscar Micheaux of Metropolis, orator and politician William Jennings Bryant of Salem, orator and Southern Illinois attorney Robert Ingersoll and Agnes Burns Wieck who led 10,000 miners’ wives to protest coal mine conditions in Springfield all deserve recognition in the nation’s history books.
The theme to Biggers’ library talk was “holding the line.” As the Virden miners held the line in their deadly mining strike, he believes it is time for Southern Illinoisans to hold the line again and resist practices that exploit the region and ultimately leave it worse off. He believes it is time for Southern Illinois to demand its share of a sustainable economy that other region’s enjoy and to create a coalfield regeneration fund that empowers innovators.
At the end of his talk Biggers gave his platform over to Annette McMichael who invited the crowd to sign up as a supporter of Illinois South Solutions. The Carbondale group has a goal of attaining capital to put toward clean energy jobs in Southern Illinois. She said there are such manufacturers in the state and there is money available, but no such industries exist south of Interstate 64.
“This fall I’d like to bring those jobs to Harrisburg,” McMichael said.
