Corporatist State- Owned Whole Foods and Starbucks! Englewood is Kennilworth!

 

The Rahm Smoothies - a little ginger, a little honey and maybe more than a little Hal Baskin, maybe?

Whole Food shoppers you are subsidizing Englewood
Eggs are $1.99 in Englewood vs $3.099 in Lincoln Park
Milk is $1.99 vs $4.19 in Lincoln Park
Gallon of vanilla ice cream $3.99 vs $5.99 in Lincoln Park
When you shop at Whole Foods ask for the Englewood prices. Comment from Chicago Tribune Editorial

        

And if you go chasing rabbits

And you know you're going to fall

Tell 'em a hookah-smoking caterpillar

Has given you the call - Bruce Dold Editor Chicago Tribune

When Bruce Dold is told to get excited about something by the powers that be in this Rube Berg of a Banana Republic* he fairly micturates until he pounds out a mirthful tittering of gleeful Alice in Engelwheel hop about . . . whatever.

Today's cheer leading exercises is an especially hoydenish delight!

It's been said of Deerfield, Sauganash and countless other communities: This must be a nice place since it's got a Whole Foods and a Starbucks.
So what happens when you plunk down two of the country's most culturally powerful brands in impoverished Englewood? Do these stores become just a sideshow to the violent crime, or can they change perceptions about the quality of life in one of Chicago's most beaten-down neighborhoods?

Yes!!!!!! Number 2, Bruce !!!!!!!!!       Perceptions stop the trajectory of bullets!

I live in the 19th Ward, racially diverse but no Whole Foods. Would Dold et al opine a la Betty Davis from Beyond the Forest?



You bet!  This is Urbs in Horto, Dude!

 We got a Starbucks over by the 103rd Street Station and CVS, but more people go to Kareem's Dunkin Donuts on 104th & Western, even though it has not the culturally powerful brand-age cache of Starbucks, but then again at Double D's you don't need to pick Arabica coffee grounds out your gums after a few swallows.

Aside from my snide remarks, Whiskey Tango Foxtrot?

Is a neighborhood only a fit place to live because two of the country's most culturally powerful brands plump their rumps within its confines?

Or, is neighborhood a place where most, if not all of the people look out for one another, respect one another and behave like citizens.

Well, Whole Foods and Starbucks are political players and 63rd Street has been a Development mess for Chicago's Planning & Development Department for more than twenty years.  Elder Hal Baskin has his mitts wide open to all venture opportunists and get-out the vote - for a wad of cash surety at the Ward level of the 3, 6, 15, 16, 17 and 20 Wards.  Six, count 'em six Wards for one Neigh. . .  (sorry) Community - an impoverished, delapidated, dangerous and gang-infested Community.

Much like Hyde Park?  Could be?  Really,Bruce?

My 19th Ward encompasses Beverly, West Beverly, Morgan Park and Mount Greenwood. Huge difference.  Hal Baskin, a Democratic Party legitimized activist and Gangster Disciple Emeritus has 'reached out to touch' every community development project.

I have had the pleasure of waving bye-bye to a handcuffed Hal in the back of a 6th District Chicago Police squad car, when he and the Englewood Task Force tried to shake down Leo High School.

Lord knows the trouble I've seen!

Activist arrested at school protest
September 02, 2004 

Community activist and former gang member Hal Baskin was arrested for allegedly shoving a police officer Wednesday during a protest outside Leo High School on the South Side, authorities said.
Baskin, who has run for alderman several times and was once an associate of convicted Gangster Disciples kingpin Larry Hoover, was charged with misdemeanor battery, mob action and obstruction in the incident shortly before noon near the Catholic school at 7901 S. Sangamon St., police said. 

Two patrol officers confronted Baskin and several others after they saw a group of people with signs step off the sidewalk and obstruct traffic on 79th Street, Chicago police spokesman David Bayless said.

Baskin, released from custody at Gresham District police headquarters about 5:30 p.m. Wednesday, said the protest was a peaceful appeal to the school to hire two neighborhood men for a construction project. He denied shoving the officer and said the group was on the sidewalk but was forced onto the street at times by police.
"Common sense would tell you that I've been doing this for 25 years. I know not to lay hands on a police officer," he said. "Why would I do something idiotic like that?"
Police alleged that when the officers asked the group to get out of the street, Baskin responded by shoving an officer. Three others also were arrested. Attempts to reach school officials were unsuccessful.  Chicago Tribune

Not really, we said plenty and none of it printable, this a few years before Corporatist Mayor Daley and his boy Rahm pulled all of the teeth out CPD.  Imagine cops putting the bracelets on Elder Hal today?

Well, just because Hal Baskin tried to pry open construction wallets universal in Englewood for more than thirty years, does not necessarily mean that he still has his huge mitts dug deeply into the britches of two of the country's most culturally powerful brands.  We won't know that, because the newspapers will never tell.

Bruce Dold is now editor of Chicago Tribune and he takes orders from City Hall and the most culturally powerful brands (Disney, Starbucks, Whole Foods, Audi et al) and you, the consumer, pay the prices and the get to feel good in knowing that you have stopped the laws of physics (speeding bullets) and the thug impulses in Englewood - home to some great people and some really nasty thugs.

Our society buys into nonsense when nonsense is the only thing being offered.

Some do well in such a society ( an Oligarchy) and most try to survive.

Nice one, Bruce.

* Corporatism, also known as corporativism, is the sociopolitical organization of a society by major interest groups, or corporate groups, such as agricultural, business, ethnic, labour, military, patronage, or scientific affiliations, on the basis of common interests.

"Money Means Something" My April Column for Irish American News

                                  

 Kareem on the right inthe Virgin Mary Blue Polo is the hardest working guy I know

Naceda and Bidya on the right are the hardest working women in American!


                                                      Money Means Something

Work in the worldly life relies upon diligence. Therefore, man is required to work hard and actively, leaving behind laziness. The Quran and Sunnah direct us towards this understanding. Allah The Almighty Says (what means):

{And say, “Work, for Allah will see your deeds, and [so, will] His Messenger and the believers.”} [Quran 9:105]

                                                 

I was brought up to work hard.  My father worked three jobs and my mother was housewife in the care of three kids.  All of my uncles and a few of my aunts had more than one job outside of the home.   My family left Ireland in the early part of 20th Century, when Teddy Roosevelt was President – Grandpa Hickey, a big husky Kerry bogman, worked in the Chicago stockyards, then as a stockyard police man and then helped found the Stationary Engineers Union in Chicago. Granny Hickey from the islands off southern Kerry and then near Cahirciveen came to the States with little English and fewer pennies and worked for the swells in the magnificent homes on south Prairie and Calumet Avenues as a cook learning from a Mexican and an African American woman.

They met when they worked at the Metro pole Hotel on Cermak Road, Larry heaving coal into furnaces and Nora cooking for the swells. They married at Holy Family on Roosevelt Road and had fourteen children- seven boys and seven girls.  One little girl died of a fever, they were fortunate. Thirteen role models and American workers lived through the Depression, World War II and labor warfare.

I once walked past a penny on the sidewalk and my Dad barked, “pick that up!’  It’s only a penny. “ Your Grandfather, my brothers and me and hundreds of other working-stiffs walked hundreds of miles on picketlines, got a nightstick on the head, spit at, arrested and locked-out of jobs for that penny, smartass.  Now, pick it up and give it to your brother when we get home.”

Money means something.

I respected that for the balance of my life.  My Dad and uncles were easy with buck and always Duke’d us little guys with some “Walking Around, Folding Dough and Spending Loot.”  Uncles Bart, Donny, Sy, Mike, Bud and Jack knew the value of a dollar and knew how to part with it with liberal ease.  Money means something to little guys. It means comic books, Dixie Cups, Chuckles and Pop.

Money represents the values of hard work, sacrifice, loyalty and labor.

Granny Hickey always paid a ‘special visit’ to Monsignor Stephen J. McMahon of Little Flower Church. The Hickey’s were among the first settlers in that great parish and helped build its still magnificent campus, now used by Charter Schools and Father Pfleger.  The priest’s house is where the pastor of St. Sabina’s parks his cars.

The Irish immigrants from County Kerry helped  the Church and the founding of a grammar school and convent and eventually a co-educational Catholic high school, later closed by Cardinal Cody only to make the point to other pastors that he could.

Money means something.

I was reminded of that fact on Sunday March 15th just before the South Side Irish Parade conducted by a son of Little Flower Parish Tom McGourty from 77th & Wood Street.  I was going to Mass at a cousin’s home which is an annual family gathering and I needed to get out of the neighborhood before the parade step-off.  Streets are strategically blocked after 10 AM.  I needed to get to Oak Park by 11 and Mass was at 9:30, so I drove to 99th & Oakley – I usually walk over to my cousin’s house.  I found a good spot for easy parade egress and a clear path to the Dan Ryan and decided to grab a cup of coffee at Dunkin Donuts on 104th & Western Ave.

It was here that I recalled my peasant roots and immigrant values when I was greeted by my pal Kareem, the manager of Dunkin Donuts/

Kareem and his crew of Naceda, Larry and Bidya are my family.

Every morning, Monday through Friday, I am at Dunkin Donuts a little after 4 AM, where I am greeted with Kareem’s hale and happy, “ Leo Hickey! How’s Myles Turner( a Leo Man shot up by gangbangers and struggling to walk again); He’s at Chicago State, yes?”  I answer as best I can and say good morning to Naceda and Larry from India.  This happy couple live in Homer Glen.  Bidya always asks, “ How’s  Jimmy Sexton, I love that man!”  Mayor Jimmy Sexton, also a Little Flower man, of Evergreen Park helped Bidya recover more than $ 4,000 from a fraud of a window contractor.  Jimmy Sexton knows the value of a buck to hard-working people.  Cousin Sylvester “Sy” Hickey, Chief Engineer at Cook County’s Stroger Hospital arrives and fights me for the morning payment of the Zoom Juice.  I surrender easily, always have. Kareem does the color commentary.

Kareem is a native of Morocco, lived a while in France and is married to an American girl and together they have three lovely children .  They live on 99th Street on the border of Evergreen Park.  Kareem is at work every morning at 3AM and he is present every day.  He says, that he always takes Sunday off to clean the garage and do a Dad Commands Clean-up of the homestead, followed by a spoiling of the children outing.

I call Kareem and his crew the hardest working Americans always to their protestations – “ Painter Pat Maloney works much harder!”  He do?  I have only witnessed these role models move with speed, race and accuracy in making change and always with smiling grace. 

Kareem, Bidya, Naceda and Larry seem to be there every day. They do not own the franchise; they own non-stop flow of customers, greeted by name and always with genuine affection. America will be just fine.  A couple out of County Kerry did their kids proud and they, in turn, the same.

Money means something.

The Bible speaks of it and so does the Quran.  

From Irish American News for April (p.45)