One Gangster Banked There and Now Ja'Mal Green, His Majostee, Owns It: Standard Bank a Chicago Story

Ja'mal Green - His Majostee!

J 
Old Standard Bank

Spike O'Donnell - king of 79th Street


From the end of World War One until the 1980's the Art Deco building at 7919 S. Ashland Avenue in the Highlands of Gresham - 60620 -was the safest bank in the Midwest.  Standard State Bank was where Edward J. "Spike" O'Donnell kept his loot.  Today, a young anti-police Democratic activist, who  States Attorney Kim Foxx allowed  Ja'Mal Green to plead down nine felony charges to a single misdemeanor charge, is also being gifted with this ediface.

Spike O'Donnell was the only racketeer from the Capone Beer Wars to die in his sick bed without handcuffs, or beefy guards doing the death watch.

Unlike too many of his brothers ( Steve, Charlie, Walter were all killed and a younger brother blinded)  who were taken for the long short-ride, or gunned down in the lobbies their apartments, Spike quit the beer rackets, lived life and enjoyed decades of notoriety and 79th Street celebrity operating asphalt, heating oil and paving operations from his suit above the old Highland Theater one block north of Standard Bank.




He was not too legit to quit. Spike was too smart to become more of a bullet magnet.

Spike O'Donnell owned several large bungalows west of Ashland Avenue in the 1930's.  He lived  at 8145 S Honore. He and his family suffered the gangster life.  In April 1932, Spike's brother Charles was gunned down in the lobby of his apartment near 91st & Ashland and later died of gangrene in Little Company of Mary Hospital.

That same month two men, one Walter Zwolinski who had been kicked out of the O'Donnell mob, for shooting Charlie O'Donnell's pet goat, broke into Spike's home at 8145 S. Honore. " in  hopes of killing Spike, but find only his wife Elizabeth at home. Frustrated in their efforts, they throw her down the basement stairs, but she sustains only minor injuries. Speculation suggests that one of the men was former O'Donnell gang member Walter Zwolinski, who is now a member of the McGeoghegan-Quinlan Gang. Since his expulsion from the South Side O'Donnell Gang for killing Steve O'Donnell's pet goat in a fit of rage, increasingly unstable Zwolinski is suspected in separate attacks on Steve and Spike as well as the fatal wounding of Charles O'Donnell."

In May, Walter Zwolinski was found slumped over the wheel of his car with six bullets in his head.

Spike O'Donnell put the gains of crime into accounts at Standard Bank 7919 S. Ashland.

There is a tale on the south side that might be apocryphal - at the start of the Depression there was a run on the bank and Spike O'Donnell showed up in the lobby with several suitcases stuffed with cash and also tucked under his arm was a violin case, also loaded with the long green difference.

The 6'4" O'Donnell announced to the throng of worried depositors, " I am putting dough in Standard and also the cash from Father Steve McMahon's Little Flower Church, rectory and school. This dough is going no where."

Little Flower, St. Sabina, St. Killians, St. Etheldreda and Leo High School held accounts with Standard Bank. It was the safest bank around.

And the dough remained.  Standard Bank has many branches in southwest city and suburbs.

The branch on Ashland closed in the 1980's.

The building is in the possession of young Ja'Mal Green, who has become as prominent as Chance the Rapper, thanks to Democrats like former Governor Pat Quinn, Cook County Board President Toni Preckwinkle and her creature Cook County States Attorney Kim Foxx.

Spike O'Donnell once robbed the  Stockmen's Trust and Savings Bank at 5425 S Halsted and did a stretch in Joliet, until he was pardoned by Governor Len Small.  Spike was never given a bank.

Green said he now hopes to focus on the youth center he's trying to establish in Auburn Gresham. Green and his supporters bought a 12,500-square-foot building at 7919 S. Ashland Ave. last week.
Green, who has protested violence and police brutality, has spent months raising money for the Majostee Allstars Youth Center. He hopes the center can become a spot where locals learn about opening businesses, drop their kids off for day care or express themselves at concerts and open mic nights.
The center will also offer mental health services and mentoring opportunities.
"That's what Majostee Allstars is all about, is telling our young people in these communities you may have ... a lack of investment in your community, but no matter where you're from you can still be something and you can still have hope," Green said. 

Ja'Mal Green wants to make this gift an opportunity for more young men like himself.  Donation are funneled through Pastor Pfleger Industries:

How to Help the Youth Center
• Donate on GoFundMe
• Send PayPal donation to MajosteeAllstars@gmail.com
• Mail check to St. Sabina, 1210 W. 78th place. Make it out to "Majostee Allstars."
• Buy a Majostee or Transform the 9 T-shirt online

There hasn't been this much bullshit on Chicago's streets since the Stockyards closed.

Spike O'Donnell had friends in high places and so does Ja'Mal.

Is this a great city, or what?

Shame on DNAinfo Chicago: All Signs Point to REVCOM Stirring the Hate in Mount Greenwood After Shooting

 

From the Revolution Club, Chicago:
Joshua Beal

November 5—Twenty-five-year-old Joshua Beal

was in town from Indianapolis to serve as a pallbearer at his cousin’s funeral. Joshua was brutally murdered by a Chicago police officer while in a funeral procession. His aunt described him to us: “He [Joshua] just graduated from college, Ivy Tech College in Indianapolis. He was so happy in the graduation. And he was a father of two. Two young boys. He was a dedicated father.”
The funeral procession was driving through the overwhelmingly white Mt. Greenwood neighborhood on the far southwest side of Chicago around 3 pm on a sunny afternoon. This area is a notoriously racist enclave, home to many cops and firefighters. According to witnesses, an off-duty cop in plainclothes tried to force the car Joshua Beal was riding in off the road. Other members of the funeral procession got out of their cars out of concern about the situation. The off-duty cop threatened Joshua's 17-year-old cousin with a gun in her face. A bystander video shows this off-duty cop in street clothes wildly threatening people with a gun, including women dressed for a funeral.

Is that the official media narrative?  No, it has been tweaked a bit. Chicago Police Superintendent decided to call this a "Road Rage" incident which is almost as far from the truth.

Actually, it was just another in a long line pf celebratory gang funerals that plague the 19th Ward.  The right lane-me-first idiocies and blocking the exit of a firehouse sparked the incident and subsequent shooting of an armed idiot.

But we can not allow the facts get in the way of politics and social justice play acting.

The Chicago Tribune and the Chicago Sun Times use the City Hall narrative and the go-to rhetoric of the city sanctioned and Cook County approved lungs of Ja'mal D. Green, who is being groomed by Rahm Emanuel and Toni Preckwinkle for some slot in the Cook County Democratic ticket. Ja'mal undid Bernie Sanders and is out on $ 300,000 bond for assaulting a cop.

Ja'mal has skills.

However, Ja'mal can't do Revolution.  For that he goes to the Pros - Bob Avakian;s REVCOM. The Reds make the signs, bring the bullhorns and stooge goofs to provoke.

The Chicago media completely ignore the influence of REVCOM  - that's Revolutionary Communist Party and Club.  The Revolutionary Club is provided the diversity to a protest - white revolutionaries. ( see photo above - that is the Revolutionary Club of REVCOM)

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.
Outside the BK, protestors from the Black Lives Matter movement began to arrive to support the family. Significantly, two white youth from Mt. Greenwood also joined the group in solidarity with the family. These white youth described the hard-core racism of the neighborhood.
As we were gathering outside, an angry white youth walked up to the Burger King wearing an American flag bandana and a “Blue Lives Matter” t-shirt and carrying a baseball bat. He was led away by police but apparently not arrested, even though he was clearly looking to commit a racist assault. This was in sharp contrast to the fact that some family members in the funeral procession had been arrested by the police. As of early the morning after, Joshua's brother was still in custody, charged with aggravated assault on a cop—AFTER HIS BROTHER WAS MURDERED DURING A FUNERAL PROCESSION!!!
Video taken by a bystander shows off-duty cop waving a gun, shortly before Joshua Beal was killed by another Chicago cop.
Across the street from the BK, a racist mob began to gather. White people with baseball bats out their windows drove by. “N*****rs,” a white man shouted. A group of white people gathered on the same side of the street as the family. Thinking they might be press, someone from the Revolution Club went over. They turned out to be off duty-cops and their friends. They began shouting and chanting, “CPD! CPD!” Drivers going by shouted out, “Trump, Trump, Trump.”
One of Joshua's family members, stunned to see this, talked about how her mother had told her of scenes like this but that in her four decades in Chicago, she had never confronted a racist mob like this. One Club member commented, “This is what the day after the election could look like.” It was really ugly.
The Revolution Club got on a bullhorn and denounced the brutal murder and racist actions and called for people to get organized for an actual revolution, calling on people to come and stand with the family and oppose the outrageous police murder and the racists in Mt. Greenwood. A crowd of people who had been commemorating the birthday of Rekia Boyd—a 22-year-old Black woman murdered by police in 2012—came from the West Side to stand in support of Joshua's family. ( italics my own)

Chicago's DNA Info, most disappointingly, picked-up the Selma theme memes

The pro-police supporters numbered into the hundreds, while less than 20 activists showed to the scene. They faced racial slurs and repeated requests to leave the neighborhood, and police had to intervene between a few incidents.
"It was hectic," said Ja'Mal Green, the activist who called for the Sunday event. "I was in shock the whole time."
Green said he knew what he was getting into, as he had received death threats in the hours after the event was announced. Still, Green said the racism the activists faces took him by surprise and made the group uneasy.  "It really felt like we were back in the '60s," he said. "The rally shows that a black man can be killed by police and they were overjoyed about that." (italics my own)

Ja'mal and the other civil rights reenactors will be back on election day.  After that I expect they will lose interest.

I hope that my neighbors in the 19th Ward totally and completely ignore REVCOM, Ja'mal D. Green, and the White Priestess , or  KIM FOXX, or Rahm Emanuel.

This is an orchestrated attempt to spark hate, violence and hot-mic'd sound bytes from goofs with an opinion.

I am disappointed that DNAinfo Chicago has decided to go-possum like the Trib and the Times and play make-believe social justice warriors.