Kankakee Times

Bob Forsyth has lived in Manteno for the past 30 years.

He is one of many community members upset by the prospect of a Chinese Communist party-affiliated lithium-ion car battery plant opening at the site of the old KMart located at 1902 Selma Road in Manteno.

Forsyth said he is opposed to the plant for many reasons, the first being safety.

“When you talk to firefighters and I did that, I asked them, I said if you guys had to respond to a fire at that point. And it’s a big if. I said, how would you put it out? They told me they sit back and watch it burn because there’s nothing they can do,” he told the Kankakee Times.

He also questioned why Mayor Tim Nugent and Manteno Village Board Members are unable or unwilling to discuss the project with residents in public

“The other question that I have is why would you want to put that so close to residents and why don’t you answer any questions if there’s a disclosure and something and you can’t talk about it’s not good for the community,” he said.

“There’s no way. It’s good for the community. If you have to sign a disclosure, you can’t answer questions. So does it bother me? Yeah it does. It bothers me that politicians who are supposed to represent us don’t do it at all? Got it. I mean, there’s a lot of questions here and we can’t get any answers now. One has to go in front of a planning board, and the planning board is appointed by who the mayor and the mayor sits in, which sits up in front of us and doesn’t answer a question. I have a real problem with that. And or you can go through his village administrator on a one-on-one basis. But I want to I’d like him to address us as a group.”

“There’s a public hearing coming up the 24th about the widening of the road and section line road open to public opinion. Open the public hearing. You’ll be going to widen the road and you’re going to get a battery plant. And that’s not open for public opinion? J.B. Pritzker and Tim Nugent sits down and they think this is good for the community?”

Forsyth added Nugent only received only a very small fraction of possible votes in the last election despite Manteno having over 8,000 residents.

“Tim Nugent got voted in with 159 votes in 2021. He doesn’t represent Manteno. He represents 159 people. That has to be one of the worst turnouts ever. I don’t understand how people can go in that vote,” he said.

Forsyth said the project being pushed on the community overnight and without community input has been an eye-opener to many.

He noted the lack of transparency, especially when dealing with a company opposed to the American way of life, is very concerning.

“When you do get the chance to talk to them, you get 3 minutes and they ring the bell. I mean, that’s not representing the people when you can’t ask questions,” he said.

“And then if you read the bylaws, of Gotion, it states right in there that they are committed to the Chinese Communist Party. And if you read the Constitution, you’re not supposed to be doing that. And when you the other part of the bylaws states write in it that you pledge allegiance to the Chinese Communist Party and what goes on in that plant. You’re not to question it. Isn’t that upsetting to anybody? China is not our friend. I just don’t understand why this goes on.”

Forsyth and others will gather on Monday, Oct. 9 at Steam Hollow Brewing 450 S. Spruce Street Unit C in Manteno to discuss a lawsuit brought by residents to stop the plant.

“This is just down the street from the purposed Gotion Plant which will be about 4 times the size of the present K-Mart site. Our Eckland & Blando attorney will be speaking by phone,” Outrage of Kankakee County said on Facebook.

Other proposed Gotion plants planned for rural communities in North Dakota and Michigan are receiving similar lash back from local residents, according to the New York Times.

The planned Manteno Gotion plant was recently noted in a letter written by U.S. Senator Marco Rubio and U.S. Representative John Moolenaar calling for a Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States (CFIUS) review of Gotion, Inc. due to its CCP ties and potential access to green-energy tax breaks.

They expressed concerns about the extent of Chinese Communist Party (CCP) control over Gotion and its impact on critical infrastructure decisions in the U.S., particularly within the state of Illinois.

“The extent of the CCP’s control over Guoxuan (Gotion) is explicitly mentioned in the company’s corporate by-laws, which require the company ‘to carry out Party activities in accordance with the Constitution of the [Chinese Communist Party],’” the letter reads.

“In 2021, Guoxuan High-Tech hosted several company retreats where employees were mandated to recite a pledge of loyalty to the Party, including to ‘fight for communism.’ This is concerning, no less because the Biden Administration itself has described the PRC in its 2022 National Security Strategy as the “only competitor with both the intent to reshape the international order and, increasingly, the economic, diplomatic, military, and technological power to do it,” and that ‘Beijing frequently uses its economic power to coerce countries.’ The CCP’s control over Guoxuan High-Tech is no exception to the Party’s strategy to exert its influence in the United States.”