West Cook News

AWAKE Illinois President Shannon Adcock thinks it’s time parents across the state put Gov. J.B. Pritzker in his place.

“The governor is not the king of IPSD 204,” Adcock said in a video recently posted to YouTube. “He has no legal authority over the return-to-school plan. Neither the governor's office nor any other state agency has answered questions from the citizenry regarding this government overreach.”

Adcock tells the story of a downstate couple recently forced to deal with their three young children being suspended on the first day of school for not wearing a face mask.

“Tomorrow they will walk their children to school and they will have a whole country of parents standing behind them,” she said. "Why? Because the masking mandate is not law.”

All across the state, residents and leaders like Orland Park Mayor Keith Pekau are rebelling against the governor’s latest masking mandates on all public and private school students. The order also extends to long-term care facilities and state employees in veterans' homes, corrections facilities and the Department of Human Services.

Pekau doesn’t see the logic.

"Any events that we have with children that the village is responsible for, we will not be requiring masks," he said.

Adcock said it’s completely understandable that more individuals and institutions are now openly taking a stand against the governor.

“They know the mask mandate is not enforceable,” he said. “The threats are empty. We can rise above the illegality of them because we the parents are awake. This war being waged on our children is the antithesis of what our veterans in the military have sacrificed to preserve liberty. Say it with me, liberty. Our kids have the right to free breathing and facial expressions.”

Local attorney Tom DeVore recently filed suit in district court on behalf of the father of a student in Breese School District 12 in Clinton County, alleging that the governor overstepped his authority in administering his latest order.

“While Pritzker will spill gallons on ink on the history of the COVID pandemic and how his administration has worked to keep people ‘safe,’ none of this obfuscation is relevant to the precise question of what is the extent of his delegated power by the legislature under the Illinois Emergency Management Agency Act,” he wrote as part of his formal complaint.

Adcock goes even further.

“It is not our children's job to manage people's COVID anxiety,” she said. “It is no one's right to force our children to wear a mask that has not proven effective against the one micron diameter COVID aerosol just because it makes people feel better to see it being worn by others. You can't expect our children to mitigate fear and feeling to those who are scared of COVID.”

The complaint points to a bill now being debated in Springfield that follows the Illinois Department of Public Health and Illinois State Board of Education guidelines during public health emergencies, while banning them from adopting policies contrary to those measures.

House Bill 2789 passed the Illinois House on party lines in April, but made it to the Senate floor before the session was adjourned. The complaint further alleges Pritzker’s new mask order is largely crafted along the same lines as that proposal.