Pray, Live and Act Solid and Solidarity Happens

Many Americans are fired up in a bad way about Trump getting elected, and the Revolutionary Communist Party, aka RevCom, founded in 1975 by UC Berkeley grad and party chairman Bob Avakian, are particularly vocal about it. A stroll by Revolution Books, in the alleyway just west of Telegraph, between Durant Avenue and Channing Way, will tell you as much. Outside the store sits a signboard with a large poster of Trump in a KKK cap, complete with Hitler-stache—an image made all the more sinister by the gloom of the dark, rainy skies that have been drowning the Bay in the wake of the election. “MEIN TRUMPF,” it reads below his scowling pumpkin-colored face, “A Thoroughly American Fascist Pig.” Below that, a flyer states: “WE REFUSE TO ACCEPT A FACIST AMERICA.” Cal Alumni Association

The Revolutionary Communist Party are the printers for the Solidarity crowd. Instead of the old Union Printers Bug One is more likely to see this at the bottom of every Solidarity march in the rainbow.

In November such signs were brought into my neighborhood to provoke and stir up outrage after a an idiot was shot and killed for pulling a loaded gun on people on 111th Street at three in the afternoon.

The Chicago Media (especially DNAinfo Chicago) never cited the Revolutionary Communists. They never will. The oligarchs need the divisive to rule the complacent.  It works swell in Chicago.

As to the November provocations, cool heads prevailed, in spite of a daily dose bad, incomplete and false information from the Chicago media, a street hustling priest, and Chicago's Episco-politician prelate.

The calls for Solidarity by agents of change are more like cattle calls for unoriginal thinkers, casting calls for self-absorbed people and opportunities to vent frustrations by most people who march, chant, moon and go home to HBO, than heroic phalanxes of determined patriots facing tanks, coiled Spetsnaz killers and fifty years of totalitarian rule.  Andy Thayer and Ja'mal Green ain't Lech Walensa.

I am teaching Social Justice to juniors at a Chicago single gender (make) Catholic High School.  The textbook for the class is very skewed toward PC Socialism, rather than Catholic Social Justice - Leo XIII, Rerum Novarum, Bishop Bernard Shiel, Francis Cabrini, or Bishop Dagger John Hughes.

Rather, it is propaganda for street activists and big dominant and wildly highlighted  word is Solidarity.  The book insists that Wealth is an evil as opposed to a pile of cash, much in the same way that the Left has made an anthropomorphic villain of a firearm.  Guns kill People!  Yes, in the same manner that pencils fail exams.

Thomas Aquinas would have the strap out for the editors.

I point out the more glaring falsities and less than subtle propaganda. High school students believe a text is true because it is 'on the test.'  My aunt believed Liberace was a catch for some nice girl. The USCCB approved the text as, -OK!

The book is bad and I'll leave it at that.  I voiced my opinion to the gents and they seem to agree.

Jesus was not a community organizer.  Jesus liked people.  Jesus did not like phonies and thieves. Jesus chided zealots.

In fact, St. Simon called the Zealot, is a confusing character to most scholars. Blockheads who saw and absorbed Jesus Christ Superstar insist that Simon influenced Jesus go all Che Guevara on the Romans.

Jesus said exactly what He and His Pa expect of us - said so this past Sunday:

"You have heard that it was said,
You shall love your neighbor and hate your enemy.
But I say to you, love your enemies
and pray for those who persecute you,
that you may be children of your heavenly Father,
for he makes his sun rise on the bad and the good,
and causes rain to fall on the just and the unjust.
For if you love those who love you, what recompense will you have?
Do not the tax collectors do the same?
And if you greet your brothers only,
what is unusual about that?
Do not the pagans do the same?
So be perfect, just as your heavenly Father is perfect." MT 5:38-48

Fr. Thomas Jackson, O.P. gave a delightful and poignant homily on this core text of Catholic Social Justice.  Father Jackson, an African American fullback of a man, begged us to pray for him.  Pray that he and all of us might turn down Bill O'Reilly, or Bill Maher and get real with our lives.  He mentioned that he still has trouble 'turning the other cheek' when confronted with real evil.  He said our grandfathers fought real evil and their sons and grandsons continue to do so in Iraq and on the streets of ChiRaq.  We all must confront real evil - not pretend evil - but there are those of us , like Knights Templar of old, who must and should wield the sword.  We who do confront evil as soldiers and police officers, should work for peace.  No salary, just do the right thing and treat people with respect.  Paid Peacemakers tend to be creeps who take the easy and the low road that never seems to be thick with consequences.

Professional Peacemakers never seem go to North Korea, or chant 'Hey, Hey, Ho, Ho,/Boko Haram must let the girls go!' - now, why is that?  Well, because Kim would use them for mortar practice and Boko Haram would rape and butcher them.  Peace advocates never call for Solidarity against ISIS(l).  No they spit at, abuse, threaten and advocate the killing of police officers, Trump voters, or Milo.

It is tough to love everyone.  That is why sainthood is not for cupcakes. I am as yellow as a duck's foot and as crabby as Charlie Sheen after a long weekend.   Like Father Jackson, I need prayer.  I need courage. I need grace. The only source of those comes from Christ.


I will not obtain the grace to love my fellow man, even the creeps on AARP commercials, by marching in Solidarity with cherry-picked identity victims.

Solidarity requires that one hate the haters.  Someone else picks the haters. Standing in Solidarity places you against of your neighbors.   Pretty soon, rounding them up seems like a great idea.

Pray, live and act like a solid person.  You will find yourself in great company.

 

The Reds Want Black Friday - You Might Just Shop on Amazon

Note the sign in the middle of this Sun Times photo by Ashlee Rezin, the one that says GET ORGANIZED FOR AN ACTUAL REVOLUTION www.revcom.us.  Note that it is professionally printed, but I do not see the stand Union bug.  I never the see the old union bug on the palm cards of Progressive Democrats. Look at Forrest Claypool's, or Toni Preckwinkle's.  Reds never worked with labor. 

That is because revcom.us is the website of the Revolutionary Communists.

Working with Cook County Board President Toni Preckwinkle?  Rainbow Push and Jesse Jackson?
Black Lives Matter? International Workers of the World (IWW)?  Subcribers of public television and viewers like you?

Yep.  The article, by Sam Charles,  accompanying the dramatic photo of diverse peoples crying and pleading for Justice for Laquan McDonald and ACTUAL REVOLUTION never once ( yet again) mentions the active role of Revolutionary Communists in every bit of race-baiting street theatre in the country.

We had the REVCOMS in my neighborhood for the past month and only once were they mentioned by Howard Ludwig of DNAinfo Chicago and only in passing.

Today, in the Tribune Birkenstock Partisan and professional lefty, Ron Grossman worries that Trump's election might, just might, mind you, signal an age of 'air-brushed' history.  You know, American history without  gnawing racial, gender and class guilt. Ron likes the scab yanking yarns of the fatuous John Hope Franklin and the mythopoeic Howard Zinn.  Ron has been napping for the last eight years.  His trade has been doing the work of ten Dmitri Shepilovs keeping the truth out of the way of the news on a daily basis. Eight years of 'white-out history.'  It continues in Cook County, with every edition of every paper and every blab from the yap of Carol Marin.

This Black Friday, please think of the Reds.  They deserve some credit - after all every Cook County slated candidate won on Trump Tuesday and that is something.

Chicago - Untouched by Change: Media, Politics and Bad Activists Doing Just Fine

I live in the only city and county completely unaffected by the election of Donald Trump to the Presidency.  I live in Chicago, Cook County of Illinois.

Every incumbent and sanctioned candidate held onto or won public office. Same old, same old. In fact, a clerk who pretended to be a judge was elected to be a judge.  What could possibly go wrong there?

The tide, turned in by the votes and the Electoral College, missed the shores of Lake Michigan entirely.

On election day, my Ward, the 19th, which includes a neighborhood known as Mount Greenwood and home to a great many Chicago police officers and firefighters, became a racial flash point.

On the Saturday afternoon(Nov. 5th) before the election, at about 3PM members of a family that had buried a young man at Mount Hope Cemetery in this Ward travelled west on 111th Street, a two lane shopping district with barbershops, restaurants, boxing gyms, banks, dentist offices, a Walgreen's and other local concerns.  This is a two lane street with parking available on both side.  At Troy Street is a Chicago Firehouse. People in a hurry attempt to make a new right lane and cause accidents, traffic jams and on this Saturday a fatality.

Beal and others had just left a funeral in several cars and were driving to their next destination when the incident occurred, Beal’s relatives said. According to Guglielmi*, they were stopped in traffic near a firehouse when an off-duty Chicago firefighter saw one of the vehicles and notified the driver that it was illegally blocking the fire lane and causing delays. 

The firefighter then began arguing with three people who got out of their cars, said Guglielmi. While this was going on, a woman inside a nearby business saw the argument, called police and then became involved in the fight, the police spokesman said.

At this point, an off-duty Chicago police officer in a barbershop nearby also spotted the fight, approached the scene, identified himself as an officer and became involved in the brawl, Guglielmi said.

A sergeant in full uniform who was driving to work at the Morgan Park Police District then stopped when he saw the melee, the spokesman said.

“There’s a sergeant on his way to work. He now sees a man with a gun in his hand. He gets out, announces his office in full uniform,’’ Guglielmi said.

The sergeant displayed his weapon, Guglielmi said. As the incident escalated and the man with the gun did not drop his weapon, shots were fired, and the man was hit multiple times, the police spokesman said. Chicago Tribune

The man, Joshua Beal died.  He pulled a gun, waved it, pressed the trigger and was shot multiple times.

Immediately the story became a narrative - one that erased the culpability of Mr.Beal and his family altogether. One of the most egregious narratives was written by a man named Davis Steiber and printed in the dubious Huffington Post. 

Joshua Beal, who was in Chicago for a funeral, was killed Saturday by a Chicago police sergeant. The reason an off-duty police officer felt the need to start waving his gun around and pointing it at a lot of different people is baffling. To see the video, click here.

I, however, don’t want to focus on the killing itself ― I want to focus on the reaction of white people. Specifically in Mount Greenwood, where the incident occurred. Last night, hours after his death, while people gathered to support Josh’s family, some residents of Mount Greenwood came out of their homes with Blue Lives Matter flags to apparently show that Black people are not welcome in Mount Greenwood. Instead of letting people grieve the loss of a life, these white residents thought it appropriate to call them names and tell them to leave “their” neighborhood. To see this video click here.

As is the case in most police related shootings, the media twist the facts, invent the facts and turn the attendant hate on people who have done nothing to warrant a raised eyebrow let alone anger.

A local media news site, DNAinfo Chicago, which had up until this shooting in Mount Greenwood been dependable with reporting and has three very fine writers in Mark Schipper, Ed Komenda and Pulitzer Prize winning Mark Konkol, took up group thought and malicious slandering of people in order to whip up a controversy.

Three writers have crafted the Mount Greenwood Narrative.

Immediately after the shooting members of REVCOM Chicago - the Revolutionary Communist Party - sent teams of activists to the neighborhood.

DNAinfo Chicago's three reporters (Evan Moore, Joe Ward and Howard Ludwig)  have yet to mention this fact and have all but erased the crimes of Saturday the 5th by Beal and family in a sad attempt to make the 'manufactured outrage' appear spontaneous, genuine and heartfelt.  Outrage is directed against the neighborhood of Mount Greenwood, Marist Hig School and a few teenage girls unaware that texting matters.  REVCOM, along with Moveon.org has been identified by law enforcement as forces behind protests and riots around the nation.  REVCOM boasts to its retainers.

When we heard about this outrage, the Revolution Club went to the scene, arriving in the early evening. We found members of Joshua’s family sitting in a Mt. Greenwood Burger King—unable to leave because police had surrounded their cars as part of the “crime scene.” A Club member explained to the family members who we were, and we began talking with them. Already grieving for the loss of one loved one who had been buried that day, this family was now dealing with the murder of another—shot down in front of their eyes by Chicago police.

The family members told us stories of being taunted by racists in Mt. Greenwood. They had been called “n****rs” and “monkeys” and were told to “go back to the ‘hood” by white people shouting from their cars as they drove by. 

The Revolution Club brought a Stolen Lives banner into the BK and unfurled it. Many family members gasped, as they looked at the faces of so many others murdered by police. At this point, the Burger King manager announced that the family would have to leave the restaurant. This callous racism was called out by the grieving family members and people from the Club. “This is not Mississippi in 1960. This is 2016.” “They are afraid of too many Black people in this place.” Everyone stood firm, saying, “We paid for food and we aren’t leaving.”

The manager called in the police. The police arrived in force, further crowding the Burger King. They ordered everyone to leave, announcing that the BK was closing its doors early. People were forced outside into the dark and the cold without coats or sweaters.

DNAinf Chicago has printed photos of REVCOM as well as Black Lives Matter, activists Ja'Mal Beal, Jedidiah Brown and the egregious Pastor Michael Pfleger.  However there is no mention of the Communists who sparked riots and violence in Milwaukee only this past summer.

More troubling, DNAinfo Chicago managed to get a high school girl's Twitter tweet that was racially offensive and managed to get the girl and five other of her friends from a Catholic High School after Archbishop Blase Cupich was contacted for comments in keeping with this divisive and inflammatory narrative.

The narrative has erased the story of Joshua Beal's bad behavior, illegal use of a hand gun, threatening the lives of Chicago Police Officers and bystanders and morphed into the very reasons why Donald Trump appealed to voters.

I live in Chicago, Cook County, Illinois - the land untouched by change.  The message sent to the American elites is lost here.  The people get it.  The elites do not.

Same old, same old.


* Chicago police spokesman Anthony Guglielmi