Illinois reports more hate crimes than almost any state this series has covered — 347 documented incidents in 2023 alone. But scale isn't the only thing that sets this state apart. Religion is Illinois's second-largest bias category, far above what this series has documented anywhere else, and three specific federal cases explain why.

In 2017, a domestic terrorist militia called The White Rabbits drove from Illinois to Minnesota and bombed the Dar al-Farooq Islamic Center while worshipers gathered for morning prayer. In 2021, two white supremacist inmates at Illinois's Thomson Penitentiary beat a fellow inmate to death because he was Jewish — one was later sentenced to life. And on October 15th, 2023, in Plainfield Township, a six-year-old Palestinian American boy named Wadea Al-Fayoume was stabbed to death by his family's landlord; his mother was severely wounded protecting him. The Attorney General himself issued a public statement on the killing.

This episode goes through the full cumulative data — bias types, offense types, locations shaped by Chicago's transit system, and an offender-race breakdown more evenly split between White and Black offenders than any state this series has documented so far. It holds the grief of three different communities — Muslim, Jewish, and Palestinian American — without ranking one above another, because the mechanism connecting all three cases is the same one this series has named in every state: somebody deciding a life mattered less because of a category, not because of anything that person did.

00:00 - Disclaimer
01:01 - Introduction
02:34 - The Thesis
04:37 - Opening
07:22 - The Background
10:34 - The Data
16:17 - Personal Thoughts

20:23 - Closing

Afternoon Coffee Break with Darren Watts. Follow the show wherever you listen. Rate and review on Apple Podcasts — thirty seconds, it matters. Number 17 Cult All Time. Number 33 Business News All Time on Goodpods — because of you.