Peoria should bring Preston Jackson’s whale sculpture, “Shirley Armstrong,” to the Peoria Riverfront in the green space to the east of Peoria Riverfront Museum.

The whale is a beautiful and haunting reminder of the interconnection between the sometimes careless actions of humans and the damage done to the natural world.

Children can be told not to litter, but when they are able to look at a magnificent, nearly 40-foot long whale slowly dying because of the tossed plastic water bottles it has ingested, the message becomes embodied into a child’s view of the world and sense of responsibility to the world. The value of this sculpture in this location would enhance the beauty of the Peoria riverfront and change our vision of responsible stewardship of our community and our world.

It has been written that Frederick Douglass made himself the most photographed American of the 19th century, not for reasons of vanity but to change the way Black people are viewed. Rather than the image of a slave or poor sharecropper, the Douglass portraits were of a scholar and a refined man. In the same way, “Shirley Armstrong” can change our understanding of the world and make our responsibilities more acutely felt.

One quality of a masterpiece is that viewers can return to it over and over and see new qualities, new interpretations and new levels of understanding. When viewers walk away with new levels of understanding, that work of art has changed their view of the world.

Ending the pandemic in the next 20 months

Dr. Rajiv Shah is president of the Rockefeller Foundation and an articulate spokesman for the foundation’s mission: to promote the well-being of humanity. In the past, that was primarily through food and agriculture programs. But now threats to the well-being of mankind include B.1.1.7, the variant of COVID-19 currently sweeping across the globe.

Amnesty International has criticized the wealthiest countries in the world for monopolizing COVID-19 vaccines. Dr. Shah spoke on NPR recently in support of a plan to end the pandemic by the end of 2022 by a massive investment of billions of dollars to vaccinate all the world’s citizens.

He said, “If we leave ourselves vulnerable anywhere on the planet, we are all vulnerable everywhere on the planet. The reason Ebola was not a tremendously prevalent disease in the United States was because we mobilized a global effort, put U.S. troops, U.S. medical personnel, nonprofit organizations from around the planet in West Africa to beat Ebola where it was. And we want to make sure we have a similar mindset about all being in this together.”

Scott Simon of NPR asked him specifically about the criticism leveled by Amnesty International.

“It is true that right now, the wealthier nations have, in fact, consumed about 86%, 87% of the total number of vaccines that have been distributed. If we leave billions of people out of the immunization drive right now because they live in countries that are lower income and they live in communities that are poorer, we will all be at risk of new variants of COVID coming back and invalidating the tremendous gains we’re making as we vaccinate more Americans.”

Simon asked how the Rockefeller plan will work.

Shah said, “The reality is we need to get to 70% vaccination rates in order to achieve herd immunity and prevent this threat from being a threat to all of us. And so the Rockefeller Foundation worked with our partners around the world. And we’ve identified together with the International Monetary Fund a way to expand the use of a relatively technical tool called special drawing rights, sort of a reserve asset that the IMF is able to allocate to nations and then repurpose some of those additional special drawing rights so that we can start investing about $45 billion in the next two years, 20 months, to achieve 70% vaccination rates for COVID-19 everywhere on the planet. We think that kind of a big push is necessary. We think, with this specific proposal, it is affordable. And frankly, we think if we don’t make this investment right now, we will be back in an environment where we’re looking, again, at spending hundreds of billions, even trillions of dollars, as we have, to deal with the consequences of not thinking ahead and making smart investments that protect all of us.”

Peoria would benefit from Biden infrastructure plan

President Joe Biden’s $2 trillion infrastructure plan (the American Jobs Plan) specifically addresses two significant major problems Peoria is currently grappling with: lead water pipes and stormwater runoff.

Here is a statement Sen. Dick Durbin gave Community Word about the plan: “Infrastructure is not just roads and bridges. It’s about the quality of our drinking water, our sewer systems, broadband, public housing, and more. Illinois is home to the most lead service lines in the country. Replacing those service lines would improve public health. There is a similar challenge with stormwater management due to the unsanitary conditions created by chronic wastewater flooding issues. I support the investments in infrastructure proposed by President Biden in his American Jobs Plan to help Peoria and other communities throughout Illinois address these problems.”

Here is a statement Peoria City Manager Patrick Urich released to Community Word: “The proposed American Jobs Plan would provide a significant investment in our nation’s infrastructure: roads, transit, rail, electric vehicles, airports, ports, expanded broadband, our nation’s power network, and safe drinking water, sewers and stormwater. With an 18-year Consent Decree that will require $130 million of investment in our combined sewer system in Peoria, an expanded Federal grant and loan program that could make compliance with the Clean Water Act less expensive for Peoria taxpayers would be significant. It is our hope that Congress will pass the American Jobs Plan and make these infrastructure investments more affordable for Peoria taxpayers.”