Illinois Is Forcing Ideology on Its Employees — and Calling It ‘Training’ – Wirepoints

By: Mark Glennon*

Parts of America’s political left have awoken in their own way. They’ve seen the backlash against DEI (diversity, equity, inclusion) extremism and backed off, at least a little. One liberal think tank, for example, recently published a memo advising the left to drop much of the DEI language it spawned. The language makes the left “sound like the extreme, divisive, elitist, and obfuscatory, enforcers of wokeness,” says the memo.

But the State of Illinois didn’t get that memo. In fact, it’s much worse: The state’s mandatory, annual training for its workers demands obedience to the worst of DEI catechism not just on language, but on thoughts and conduct. All state employees are now subject to DEI social engineering that’s as dogmatic and extreme as ever. Disobey and you can be fired. That’s not just tyrannical, it likely would make for a constitutional challenge based on the First Amendment.

This Orwellian employee training was partly exposed last week through a social media post that went viral about the training document used by Illinois State Police. Libs of TikTok published parts of that document, which garnered over 300,000 views on X alone.

But the training is statewide. The document used for the State Police is from the template for every agency, called “LGBTQIA+ Equity and Inclusion 2025,” published by the Office of Equity, which is part of Gov. JB Pritzker’s office. During his first term, Pritzker issued an executive order creating that office, saying that all state employees “shall participate in annual trainings focused on diversity, equity, and inclusion as directed by the Chief Equity Officer.” Today, the office is headed by Dr. Atiera Coleman, a career “equity” champion.

Skim through the document and you will quickly see that it’s not about routine professional training and compliance with nondiscrimination law. It dictates a political agenda of speech and conduct adhering to politics of the most extreme voices on “systemic oppression,” the horrors of capitalism, LGBTQIA+ theory, “intersecting identities” and the like. It’s ideological dogma that includes a required, signed certification by the employee that they understand that failure to comply with such policies and procedures “may result in disciplinary action up to and including termination of State employment/appointment.”

Race, the training says, “is a human-invented,” and “socially constructed idea” invented “to justify the capitalist system of forced labor, especially the enslavement of African peoples … The concept of race is artificial or ‘something made.’ For hundreds of years, race has been defined by an individual, by the law, scientists, and by the government.”

If, like me, you’re not sure what it even means to say that race is just made up, we might be forgiven, because that may only indicate that we are “neurodiverse.” In a recent agency training,” the document says, “some employees with a neurodiverse identity mention that the materials and sessions were overwhelming and difficult to follow.” That would be because we may be neurodiverse, which the training explains:

Neurodiverse refer to a range of neurological differences that affect how people think, learn, and interact with the world. Neurodiverse can impact cognitive functions such as attention, memory, perception, and social interaction…. Neurodiverse are not disorders or illnesses, rather variations in brain functions, an individual with neurodiverse lead fulfilling and successful lives.

In other words, if we don’t understand what they are saying it’s probably because we have a some special neurological challenge. Remember microagressions? That’s one of the words the liberal think tank memo said to drop, and indeed we haven’t often heard the term lately. But the Illinois training curriculum has a whole section on them, adding categories I haven’t seen — “micro-assaults,” “micro-insults” and “micro-invalidations.” That calls for for “micro-interventions,” says the training, along with strategies for that.

Microagressions, according to the training, including saying things like “When I look at you, I don’t see color, “There is only one race, the human race,” “America is a melting pot,” “I don’t believe in race” and “denying the experiences of individuals by questioning the credibility / validity of their stories.”

The primary framework of the training is built on the concepts of power, privilege and oppression.

Power can be economic, educational, legal or political, we are told. As you’d expect, the environment had to fit in somehow, so power also includes “ability to access and control physical spaces like office buildings, homes, retail spaces, and natural ecosystems.”

Next, power means privilege, the document says. “The core of privilege is power.”

And privilege means oppression – systemic oppression. The training discusses that sequence broadly, not really tying it to race. In that sense, the training asserts something well beyond the notions of systemic racial oppression that we’ve heard often before. Its implication is that anybody who has acquired power and privilege is part of systemic oppression. If you’ve acquired that by, say, getting an education, earning and saving money and mastering politics or the law, you’re part of the oppression.

The training document ends with what can only be described as gall – a section on “Courageous Conversation.” It says:

Conversations about inequity may be difficult. It is important for each of us to identify what gets in the way of having conversations and disrupting discriminatory, harmful, and oppressive practices. Acknowledge that courageous conversations are the starting point of interrupting forms of oppression.

Yea, right. Then comes the certification to be signed by the employee saying they know they can be disciplined or fired if they don’t comply with document’s policies and procedures.  So much for “courageous conversation.”

Therein lies the constitutional issue. Viewpoint suppression is the obvious purpose training. And just a few days ago, constitutional scholar Jonathan Turley wrote about “the growing trend on the left toward compelled speech — the forcing of citizens to repeat approved views and values. It is an all-too-familiar pattern. Once a faction assumes power, it will often first seek to censor opposing views and then compel the endorsement of approved views.” Illinois is among the guilty, as he wrote.

On the right facts, an employee who indeed chooses to have a courageous conversation that challenged or ignored the training document will have a claim. Short of that, state employees in the Land of Lincoln must eat the dogma.

*Mark Glennon is founder of Wirepoints.

This column was updated to reword the section on neurodiversity.