Meet the Press - They Do Not Respect You

 Police said the incident began when an off-duty Chicago firefighter began to argue with motorists in the funeral procession who were blocking a fire lane. Police said the argument became “verbal and physical.”
Beal’s family members have said the incident began when an off-duty police officer tried to run one of their relatives off the road. Sun Times Frank Main &Mitch Dudek  

The shooting, which took place three days before Donald Trump's election as president, happened in Mount Greenwood, a largely white enclave heavily populated by police and firefighters on the mostly black and Hispanic South Side. Dueling protests followed, and the groups traded racial slurs and insults; supporters of the police, largely white, made clear those protesting the shooting, mostly black, were not welcome in the neighborhood. Chicago Tribune - Elvvia Malagon

         Kofi Ademola is a community organizer with Black Lives Matter Chicago and has been in                    regular contact with the Beal family since the fatal shooting.

He had not spoken to the family Thursday but reached out to offer some encouragement during this difficult time. Ademola said the family was already grieving when Beal was fatally shot. And now they are dealing with the arrest of Beal's brother Michael, who was taken into custody following the shooting for allegedly tackling with the officer and attempting to grab his gun.
For Ademola, what stood out among the new information was the 911 call from the officer. He said the officer's tone backs up the family's claims that painted the officer as both "aggressive" and "antagonistic." DNAinfo Kelly Bauer and Howard Ludwig

The media comments on a shooting that took place in November.  The accounts of the video released by the lame-duck Independent Police Review Board and soon to be Rahm-reconfigured as COPA, indicate a good police shooting.

Meet the Press!

None of the above reports from today's sources are accurate.  The funeral possession went on without the family Beal - they were weaving in and out of traffic, one vehicle was doing a U-Turn on 111th Street at Troy and then blocked the entrance to the FIRE HOUSE - which dispatches an Ambulance to black and white residents of Morgan Park and Mount Greenwood.

DNAinfo has been disgraceful from the day of the shooting. Only Ed Komenda presented exactly what had happened.

The incident happened about 3 p.m. Saturday near 111th Street and Troy Avenue. Joshua Beal was in a procession of cars returning from a funeral when he stopped in front of a firehouse on 111th Street, according to prosecutors.
An off-duty police officer told Beal that he was blocking access to the firehouse and the confrontation started, prosecutors said. Another off-duty officer in a nearby barber shop joined in on the confrontation, prosecutors said.
A group of nine people approached the second officer and started punching him, prosecutors said.A police sergeant driving to work saw the fight. He got out of his car, drew his gun and said he was a police officer, authorities said.
"You're not the only mother------- out there with guns," Joshua Beal said and waved the gun "back and forth," according to prosecutors. Joshua Beal then pulled the trigger, prosecutors said. It was unclear whether the gun actually fired.
Beal, who was in town to serve as a pallbearer at his cousin's funeral, refused to drop his gun, and he was shot multiple times, prosecutors said. He later died at Advocate Christ Medical Center.
Michael Beal then tried to pick up his brother's gun, prosecutors said.
"F--- you," Michael Beal said, according to prosecutors. "You killed my brother. I'm going to kill you."

Ed Komenda wrote that accurate account on November 8th and has not written about the Beal shooting since - Howard Ludwig, Kelly Bauer, Joe Ward are the compelling narrators.

The Tribune uses 'dogwhistle' racism and race baiting.

Has a black or Hispanic Community ever been referred to as an enclave?  Is Boystown an enclave?
Might Hyde Park be an enclave?  What is the diversity of Chinatown?  Mount Greewood is a neighborhood and black people live there next door to white people.

Enclave's etymology from the French for 'enclosure' and the Latin root word clavis offers a dog whistle to sensitive ears.  Clavis or 'key' suggests locked up, violent and hostile.  Shucks, link up Google's images for enclave and it jibs with Neil Steinberg's smears.

We get it.  The story of what actually happened on November 5, 2017 at around 3 PM on the north side of 111th Street in Mount Greenwood has yet to be told in the Chicago press, dissected by Phil Ponce on WTTW, or smirked about on WBEZ.

The core of the story is lost in the feathers and boas of 'compelling narrative.'

• 60's style racism
• Tweets from high school girls
• Ja'mal Green's political future
• Pastor Pfleger's grift box
• CPUSA and REVCOM
• Racism, racism and more racism

No an idiot who violated traffic laws with easy contempt, was confronted by people who are not idiots. A fight ensued.  Police officers announced them selves and pulled service weapons when the idiot was 'unresponsive' to police orders. The idiot pulled a gun on the announced police officers who returned fire.  The idiot died, God be good to him, and the press, Ja'mal Green, Black Lives Matter, REVCOM and Pastor Pfleger did the rest - Oh, and Kofi Ademola wants in too. 

Meet the Press!  With contempt. 

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.

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

DNAinfoChicago R.I.P.: Ye Hardly Knew Ye.

I read DNAinfoChicago from the get-go.   It was, at first. a great news aggregate that offered local coverage.

I gotta go with Joe about its demise, Joe Ricketts, that is, the Cubs' Grandpa, “And while we made important progress toward building DNAinfo into a successful business, in the end, that progress hasn’t been sufficient to support the tremendous effort and expense needed to produce the type of journalism on which the company was founded.”

News coverage of local events became less devout and political hack-work seemed to ooze from every column.

DNAinfoChicago somehow morphed into the detested MEDIA.  Same old, same old.

Solid writers like Mark Schipper and Ed Komenda disappeared and activist group-think writers dominated the coverage.

Most telling for me was the awful coverage of the idiot who pulled a gun on people after he was asked to not block the entrance of the firehouse on 111th Street.

The idiot was shot and killed, when he aimed his weapon at people.

The idiot had been celebrating a relative's funeral by weaving in and out of the heavily trafficked lanes of 111th Street, the commercial district for the Mount Greenwood neighborhood.  Traffic stalled and the Hossier Hothead acted out with his weapon and his mouth.

I had had my haircut on the site of the violence and where the dope met his demise, only an hour before the folly.

However, DNAinfoChicago  reporters, Joe Ward especially. conflated identity politics, race-baiting and social justice warfare with what had taken place - Marist high school was placed in the cross-hairs and community scab-yanking over imagined and occasionally accurate racism became the menu all of the month of November 2016, until the facts un-Pflegered the story.  Joe Ward never once considered covering the Revolutionary Communist Party's orchestration of the post shooting protests.  That would have chopped his narrative.


The DNAinfo Joshua Beal mythology can be found here, because the archived yarns are shut down.
Joe Ricketts owned the site and Gothamist and decided to close shop.

Conflated coverage of the news is what the detested American media is all about.  People want to know what is happening in their neighborhoods.  DNAinfoChicago tried to do that and ended up being another detested outlet for prefabricated opinions.

The Sun Times, owned by the public service unions, did a hit piece on the news of DNAinfoChicago's demise, not unlike the covergae of the late Mr. Beal:

A week before the shutdown, the Gothamist and DNAinfo newsrooms in New York voted to join the Writers Guild of America East, which released a statement Thursday saying “it is no secret that threats were made to these workers during the organizing drive.”
In a September post entitled “Why I’m Against Unions At Businesses I Create,” Ricketts wrote on his personal blog of his belief “that unions exert efforts that tend to destroy the Free Enterprise system.”
“I believe unions promote a corrosive us-against-them dynamic that destroys the esprit de corps businesses need to succeed,” Ricketts wrote. “And that corrosive dynamic makes no sense in my mind where an entrepreneur is staking his capital on a business that is providing jobs and promoting innovation.”
According to a New York Times report, 115 reporters from the websites who are now out of a job will receive three months of paid “administrative leave” at their full salaries, along with four weeks of severance pay.

Joe Ricketts was right.   Joe Ricketts gave his employees a pretty decent severance package.  More than an SEIU janitor can expect when all of the public funding has dried up.

So, we say goodbye to DNAinfoChicago.  Goodbye.

Thanks for the shot at news coverage Joe Ricketts.  It was appreciated by people like me, until the good writers disappeared.

Next time you set up shop, hire writers and tell the 'journalists' to get a union card and get fitted for a purple T-shirt.

Like the Late DNA info, Chicago Trib Refuses (Fascism) to Mention Revolutionary Communists

“If you want to know about, and work toward, a different world—and if you want to stand up and fight back against what's being done to people—this is where you go. You go to this Party, you take up this Party's newspaper, you get into this Party's leader and what he's bringing forward.” Bob Avakian - Revolutionary Communist Party

The Tribune is committed to Midwestern values and concerns, and brings that sensibility to the public debate. In both its words and its actions, it seeks out true innovation, but is unimpressed by momentary trend and skeptical of untested theory. This has been a basic hallmark of the Tribune throughout its history and continues to guide this newspaper. It encourages constructive change in the light of tradition and the lessons of history. Experience, as well as intellect, is essential to wisdom. Chicago Tribune Principles

Innovation?   "Innovation, for its part, can refer to something new or to a change made to an existing product, idea, or field.,  says Merriam -Webster 

Innovation like a Revolution"?

How about "give a spoken or written account of something that one has observed, heard, done, or investigated.."  That is the definition of a "Report."  Revolution can come later.

I saw a Malibu and the Malibu is a Chevrolet product.

I saw a Whopper and it is a Burger King product.

I saw a Big MAC and it is a McDonald's product.

I saw a Refuse Fascism (RF) Protest and RF is part of the Revolutionary Communist Party.

I read about the Trump protest organized by Refuse Fascism that was covered in the Chicago Tribune which refused to mention the Revolutionary Communist Party.

Why is that?

Does the Trib assume everyone already knows that Refuse Fascism RF is a product of the Revolutionary Communist Party REVCOM?

Does the Chicago Tribune believe, as the shut-down DNAinfo Chicago did, that people should not know that there is any connection between the two?

I believe it is the later.

More than 100 protesters marched in a light rain through Chicago's Loop to Trump Tower on Saturday, part of demonstrations in more than a dozen cities scheduled nearly a year after President Donald Trump’s election.
The protestors, who carried signs reading “The Trump/Pence Regime MUST GO!” first rallied at Federal Plaza, at Adams and Dearborn streets, then marched north on State Street. They were outnumbered by uniformed police officers.  A group called Refuse Fascism called for rallies Saturday in more than 20 cities. Speakers at the Chicago rally said they hoped the protests would build until millions of Americans took to the streets in opposition to the Trump administration. Steve Schmadeke for Chicago Tribune

Steve Schmadeke probably knows that there is direct link between Refuse Fascism and the Revolutionary Communist Party and Revolution Books. I know that a Malibu is a Chevy, for God's sake and I know that REVCOM was behind most of the Joshua Beal protests last November.  DNAinfo Chicago knew too, but kept it out of print. DNAinfo Chicago and Gothamist were shut down last week by its owner.  Even Wikipedia know offers the connection between between Refuse Fascism and REVCOM.

DNAinfo Chicago failed, because it did not live up to the expectations of owner.  The owner expected solid local coverage of neighborhood events to give ".written account of something that one has observed, heard, done, or investigated." Joe Ricketts said, "while we made important progress toward building DNAinfo into a successful business, in the end, that progress hasn’t been sufficient to support the tremendous effort and expense needed to produce the type of journalism on which the company was founded.”

DNAinfo Chicago ignored the Revolutionary Communist Party's key role in the Joshua Beal protests all last year, even though the signs (paid for by REVCOM) pointed in that direction.

The Revolutionary Communist Party is as dangerous as any alt-right band of bravos.  It is a thug organization that provides street cover for left-leaning activists, journalists  and politicians, while killing off public debate and free speech everywhere.

Protest up a storm against Trump, or fois gras, 24/7!

Just report honestly . . . for once.

Look at the signs.

Look at the players.

Report what is there.

Leave the innovation and revolution to the Edisons and the Lenins.

Chicago Will Cure Cancer Decades Before It Does an Accurate Prognosis on Killings

Editor’s note: To memorialize the victims of Chicago’s most violent year in two decades, the Chicago Sun-Times wrapped Sunday’s print editions with 618 faces of the 780 people murdered citywide in 2016 — every victim’s photo that the newspaper could obtain. Columnist Mary Mitchell offers her take on steps to address the city’s violence problem here. To read more stories of homicide victims, go to the Homicide Watch Chicago website: homicides.suntimes.com.  Chicago Sun Times

"You're not the only mother------- out there with guns," - the late Joshua Beal

 What's the cure to Chicago's homicides?  An accurate diagnosis would be a great start. However, compelling narratives are the rule of the day.  People kill people.  They will use a gun, a 2 X 4, a tire iron, a rock, a blade, or  broom to effect the demise of some person who has something the killer wants, or to send a message, or to quiet a witness, or burnish one's street cred, or just playing.

White people kill, black people kill, even Alsatian Quakers kill, if they are accustomed to bad behavior, have no moral core, or happen to be psychopaths. People tend to work their way up the gradus of bad behavior, before becoming killers.

Compelling narratives frame people with very bad behavior as victims of systemic racism, economic exploitation, or identity frustration.  But that is not why people kill.  People kill when they believe that they can get away with it.  If one gets away with misbehavior at every turn, be it jaywalking, disrupting the classroom, intimidating weaker people, stealing, spitting,littering, raping and looting, why not light some one up?

Shopping Malls are up for grabs as mobs of kids act out, just as they do during the school day.  Dots remain unconnected.

We see the problem as a chalk outline and not the previous few hours and minutes of the life outlined and its encounter with a gun owner.

When we are sick and hurting we need good, no-nonsense physicians attending our problems.

 My son was three years old and one morning he could not walk.  " My legs somehow can't work."  His older sister cried, "Conor can't walk!" Terrified his mother and I scooped him up and darted to La Porte Hospital ER.

There the child was examined for hours.

In the mean time, I had called Dr. James Kennedy, M.D. recently retired surgeon who was himself in the early stages of the Parkinson's Disease that would take his life, far too soon. Dr. Kennedy spent all of his free time either going to swimming meets for his seven  athletic children, or attending burn seminars, or surgical methodology demonstrations.

My two physician pals, Doctors Rick Clark and Mark Manning trained under the gimlet eye of Dr. Kennedy.  They told me of a mass shooting that flooded victims into the St. Mary's Hospital ER in Kankakee, Illinois one summer's night.  Dr. Kennedy was off and the ER was a madhouse.  Dr. Kennedy happened to be walking west on Court Street when he saw the all of ambulances charging toward St. Mary's.  Doc went straight there.

Into the chaos, panic and blood appeared Dr. James Kennedy - deus ex machina!  Quiet, order and efficiency saved a dozen lives.

Doc Kennedy counselled, " Don't sign off on anything.  Stay calm like your wife, Mary.  She never panics.  I 'll be there in an hour."

The doctors ran a series of blood tests on the little guy. They were very concerned. Recently, a three year old in Long Beach had been diagnosed with cancer and the first sign had been an inability to walk.

Mary and I clutched hands and prayed.

Dr. Kennedy arrived and needed no introduction as his reputation preceded him even here in Indiana.

" What's the trouble Conor?"

" I can't somehow walk."

Dr. Kennedy examined his feet and legs, " He has been wearing cowboy boots," he stated and not asked.

Mary told him that her mother had bought Conor and his two cousins cowboy boots at Lighthouse Square the week before.

" They're too tight."

No cancer.  no Byzantine pathology required.  No extended stay, or observations necessary.  Conor went on to play every sport but baseball, never dropped a snap as a football center in four years of play at St. Rita and La Lumiere.  He is walking to the Cotton Bowl to watch the Broncos of Western Michigan challenge the Badgers and walks proudly.  He never again wore cowboy boots.


Chicago's murder scores sit at 795.

Here is current wisdom from activists, politicians and the go-along Chicago Media and my rejoinder.

• It's Guns - inanimate objects; pencils do not fail exams
• It's Gangs - Old Homies no longer run the show
• It's Poverty -guns are not free
• It's Unemployment- guns are not free
• It's Racism - what isn't?
• It's Policing - Policing has been outlawed by City Hall, the Peoples Law Office, Black Lives Matter, Carol Marin, Eric Zorn, The Chicago Tribune and Sun Times and WTTW
• It's Not Policing - Depends upon which side of the compelling narrative the media got up on

My Dr. Kennedy-esque empiricism tells me that wrapping the Sunday Edition in photos of the murder victims, Pastor Pfleger Photo Ops, Mag Mile Marches, Blue Ribbon Panels, ACLU studies with pre-cast conclusions, and weeping and wailing for the cameras are all very nice, but will not stop the killing.

Checking behavior at the root, just might.

Acting the fool, playing the Cell Warrior, just playing, cutting in line, playing chin check, just playing, passing in the imaginary right lane, and working the gums 24/7 are very early indicators of a person capable of riding the 9 down on some chump. See - the late Joshua Beal*

Bad medicine.

Until the Chicago death diagnosis recognizes the true cause of the problem - an inability to realize that getting over on people is not getting by - our 'legs won't somehow work.'

* Ed Komenda's DNAinfor account was the only media piece to exactly report the incident. 

Chicago Values Taught at CPS by Dave Steiber: Pointing a Finger Trumps Pointing a Gun

CPSTeacher/Activist /Journalist Dave Steiber



“Racism is learned,” O’Shea said. “Kids aren’t born with it. They learn it.” Chicago Sun Times

If you live in Chicago, and are young and black, you probably deal with the police — or are tense because of the police — daily. I only have to deal with this tension when I choose to listen to black youth.
In my mind, I was trying to operate in a world where police and black youth could exist in the same space. Thanks to Page, I am beginning to see differently. I now realize that if we teachers cared as much about why so many of our black students have a hatred towards the police to begin with, as we do to Page saying, “F*ck the police” at a rally, we would be much closer to stopping police brutality.  Dave Steiber*, CPS Teacher/Activist in Huffington Post  and Twitter SJW

Alderman Matt O'Shea ( D 19th Ward)  met the 'demands' of six high school girls from Walter Payton Prep.

   DNAinfo/Joe Ward
DOWNTOWN —  With racial tension spiking in Mount Greenwood and at Marist High School, the neighborhood will hold prayer vigils, town hall meetings and workshops in hopes of improving race relations in the area, city and police officials said Friday.
Ald. Matt O'Shea (19th), Police Supt. Eddie Johnson and Marist Principal Larry Tucker met with members of Black Lives Matter Youth at CPS headquarters Friday to discuss ways to improve the tension that spiked with the police killing of a black man in the area and racist texts from Marist students that followed the shooting.
"I was caught by surprise and I'm saddened by it," O'Shea said about racial tension enveloping Mount Greenwood. "Today, I hope we can turn the corner."
City officials had offered the meeting DNAinfo

Matt O'Shea is a hard working alderman and a very nice guy.

Everyone in the 19th Ward which includes Beverly, Morgan Park and Mount Greenwood, as well as Black, Mexican, Lithuanian, Italian, Polish, German, Swedish, Latino, Moroccan, Chinese, Japanese, Croatian, Bosnian Serb, Catholic, Methodist, Lutheran, Jewish, Muslim, Unitarian and Atheist people is "caught by surprise and . . . saddened by"  the fact that  the gun pointing and brawling by foolish young man forced off-duty police officers to fire on him and kill him has taken on Chicago Values.

Chicago Values are very confusing.

If any person thinks and believes that his/her religious, philosophical, or moral code requires that he/she refuse actions mandated by the political class, that person should not operate a business, or speak his mind.

Chicago Values are strict, disciplined, but they can also touch the heart, of people they agree with, or who help the agenda.

Chicago Values can also forgive turning a rally in support of the a teachers union over to this person - Page May

I** was taught values by parents and had them reinforced in Catholic schools.  That was acceptable at one time.

Now, young people are taught Chicago Values by people like Dave Steiber and Page May.  Dave Steiber has one goal and that is to end racism forever.  Page May?  I am not seeing it because, I'mma Boss that bitch, bitch,bitch, bitch/Imma Boss that bitch,bitch,bitch, bitch' and 'F@#$ a Police!' is all that is coming through.  This come from a tactic employed by Black Lives Matter and learned from REVCOM and International Socialist when employed nationally in the failed ouster of Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker - drum circles and hip-hop meter fights the power, “(Expletive) Whomever, (expletive) the system, ’bout to burn it down./“Kill ’em off with kindness, tuck your burner, you can put it down.”

Dave Steibel writes for Huffington Post and teaches in Chicago Public Schools, he has never set foot in Mount Greenwood but he has told the nation everything it needs to know about Mount Greenwood.His HufPo piece this week has been expanded to excoriate people who do not question the legality of the Joshua Beal shooting, or his motives, into a jeremiad on the impossibility of any future democracy.

One person asked me, “Have you been to Mount Greenwood?” I honestly must say I have not. I don’t need to go there to get to know the community. I was raised in a predominately white community. I know as a white person that I have the privilege to feel safe and respected in a community like that. My whiteness allows me to be accepted wherever I go.

The blatant racism of Mount Greenwood is the issue. Mount Greenwood has many examples of historical racism. Add in the recent racist actions and the threats of violence on protesters who want to practice their Democratic right to protest, further proves that what I wrote last week is accurate. . . .    Whether you agree or not with the message of the protestors they have the right to protest without having their lives threatened and/or made to feel like we are all living in the 1950’s.

Unless you happen to be a Blue Lives Matter protestor;  see, how surprising and sad Chicago Values can be? Unless you happen to be a Black family living in Mount Greenwood for many years and enjoy your white neighbors as well as the safety enjoyed by all.

A young white girl texted ' I @#$%ing hate n#$$%^&' on Twitter and it was intercepted by a Twitter friend who contacted the media and Black Lives Matter and then DNAinfo scooped the story that Mount Greenwood girl texted a racist message as evidence of wholesale 1960's Jim Crow. Bishop Cupich tossed his two cents in and the girl and her immediate circle of texting friends were expelled from Marist High School - that is a sin Chicago Values refuses to counsel.  Dave Steiber went hot under the collar as much as Pastor Pfleger in his ill-fitting Roman collar.

The students who lead and organize Black Lives Matter Youth had planned a teach in downtown about what happened to Joshua Beal as well as a racial incident that happened at Marist High School in Mount Greenwood this week. After the teach in they planned to travel to Mount Greenwood to protest. The day before this protest the students parents were contacted by CPS and told, “White supremacist groups are threatening to kill students on site”.

Dave Steiber has a wonderfully smug tone in all of his pieces for Huffington Post that suits that source and many of the young Progressive elites training to be louder and more image-conscious in Chicago's magnet high schools like Walter Payton Prep.  Walter Payton Prep is the home school of the young ladies who demanded that Alderman O'Shea and Chicago Police Superintendent meet with them on a monthly basis.

Chicago Police Supt. Eddie Johnson on Friday said he has agreed to meet with Black Lives Matter Youth activists every month to discuss relations between police and minority communities.
Johnson talked of his plans following a meeting between him, leaders of minority youth groups, Ald. Matt O’Shea (19th) and the principal of Marist High School.
After the closed-door meeting, which ran more than two hours, leaders from Black Lives Matter Youth and the Black Student Union of Walter Payton College Prep told reporters that their demands had been met.

Dave Steiber is working closely with the young ladies. Chicago Values are taught and they are highly coordinated.  You are not born with values.

Chicago Values are learned.  You now know one of their teachers - Dave Steiber.

*I ( Dave Steiber) am a father, husband, Chicago Public Schools teacher of Social Studies and Spoken Word Poetry coach. I have my Masters in Urban Education Policy Studies and I am working to become a National Board Certified teacher. I am passionately committed to promoting and improving urban public education, while simultaneously improving the lives of students, especially the students that I teach on the South Side of the city.

**  I taught English and raised money in Catholic High Schools for forty years - 21 at Leo High School.

Bishop Cupich is the New Cardinal Cody

John Cardinal Cody was a sad man, a flawed man and a very small man.  He was a prince of the Church.

Cody took over the Archdiocese of Chicago and immediately fired pastors who built parishes and schools and served the needs of their flocks. Cody never took the time to learn anything about the City and the people he was supposed to serve.  In fact, John Cardinal Cody didn't much care for the people of Chicago. He was Cardinal for a very long time.

Cardinal Cody wanted only good press and powerful financial people to help tighten his grip on the Archdiocese through Project Renewal ( 1965-?) He got both here in Chicago.  He had the media until 1981.  People with wallets and check books loved him; people with change purses, not so much.

Bishop Cupich reminds me of Cardinal Cody - quite a bit.

One of his first remarks to the press seemed to be open slap at the dying Francis Cardinal George, "Wherever I live, I want to have a place where I can get some rest and feel the support of people who are around me,It is a lovely place, and I really want to honor that," he said. "At the same time, I would have to say I'm going to take my time to make that decision. I'm going to see where I can be most effective."

Cardinal George understood that the Cardinal's Residence was the peoples house in this Archdiocese, but the Chicago Media ( Carol Marin, Michael Sneed, Eric Zorn, Jay Levine et al) harped constantly on a priest living in such luxury.  Bishop Cupich is a Media Man.  He crafted a narrative parallel to Pope Francis I and will soon be rewarded with a red hat when he is elevated to Cardinal.

Cardinal George had poor kids from Englewood, Canaryville, Bronzeville and Gresham in as his guests on very regular basis.  He fed them cake, pop and cookies.  He listened to their struggles to avoid the GDs, the Stones and the Irish Deuces.  He prayed with them.  He called Leo High School to ask about their progress and chew them out when needed.

This weekend, Bishop Cupich saw to it that a young girl who texted a racially offensive thought to her friends in her Twitter circle be expelled - Excommunicated  - from Marist High School as a political sop to Pastor Pfleger, Black Lives Matter and Rahm Emmanuel. That made the media happy because damned a whole neighborhood as well.

"Marist High School is a privately operated school in the Archdiocese dedicated to Gospel values," Cupich said. "We support them as they take the necessary steps to deal with this situation swiftly and take appropriate disciplinary action." 

His taking a shotgun to kill a gnat approach to race relations this past weekend went one better gave it to people who have done nothing but live their lives.

"Racism is a sin and has no place in the church, including the Archdiocese of Chicago," said Cupich, who recently was chosen by Pope Francis to become a cardinal. "Our schools must be places where all are respected and the values of tolerance and peacemaking are taught and nurtured." 

The people of Mount Greenwood , the students at Marist High School and all of Chicago did not 

• block a firehouse exit after right lane weaving
• brawl with a firefighter and an off-duty cop
• draw a hand gun and threaten to fire  
• Joshua Beal did that and died as a result

Instead, the media want to replay the 1960's and make Mount Greenwood Selma and Ja'mal Green and Pastor Pfleger the Dr. King twins.  Bishop Cupich joined in the fun. Cardinal Bernardin never called out a high school kid, even when a few beat a kid with bats.  Cardinal George took hurting young men from Chicago's meanest streets and treated them to what a priest is all about and made calls to improve their lives.  The media hated Cardinal George.

Bishop Cupich will have a red hat very soon.  He is Cardinal Cody.

I was at an Ordination Party for a young priests the day Cardinal Cody died.  When his death was announced . . .the prayer was brief and party was back under way.