Monday, February 8, 2016

Help isn't coming


     Controversies boil up, cool down, and are promptly forgotten.
     But sometimes they offer a little clarity that lingers.
     Our ace police reporter popped his head in my office late last week. The Chi-Raq flag—a red and green banner from Spike Lee's movie—is flying above the American flag in front of St. Sabina Church. Cops are upset; one sent him this photo. He couldn't look into it—people are being scythed down in the city. Maybe I was interested in looking into this flag business?
     Well... that would interrupt my musing about opera. But okay.
     I phoned Father Michael Pfleger, the priest at St. Sabina, in Auburn-Gresham, known for his fiery, not always politic activism. It's a miracle he's still there. For years, he clashed with the archdiocese, and it seemed inevitable that he would be cashiered to some obscure parish. But plans to banish him always seemed to get scuttled. Pfleger's a thorn in the side of authority, sure, but so was Jesus.


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10 comments:

  1. Well Neil, EVERYBODY IGNORES a plan to create 10,000 New Jobs on the South Side, the CTA Gray Line Project: http://bit.ly/GrayLineInfo

    Now watch this: the Sun-Times Editorial Board will PROHIBIT you doing a story about creating 10,000 New Jobs because City Hall (Rahm) doesn't like the idea of Jobs for Blacks.

    PLEASE call me at (630) 877-5476 soon to discuss the idea (unless your EB won't let you).

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  2. Mike, this is the first I've heard of the Gray line. That's a great idea.

    Bill McCormick

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    1. I tried looking up CTA Grey Line Project on the internet and came up dry. Need some assurance that this isn't a hoax.

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  3. Great points, Neil! I agree people need to take more responsibility for themselves and each other, because the government isn't always going to be able to help, and others don't care enough to help. Others can learn from the leadership the Reverend MicHael Pfleger is providing.

    LindaB

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  4. Reading Keith Richards "Life," and can't help but see many parallels in his upbringing, schooling, propensity to violence, and drug addiction to those experienced by ghetto youth. If he with all his talent and intelligence and riches cannot be prevented from doing the junkie spiral downward, what chance to the miseducated, abandoned and poverty stricken have? Keith Richards (known as "Keef" to some) was ultimately rescued from dope at great cost. Society spent a lot to try to rescue Laquan McDonald only to have his life ended early (no surprise there) by a crazy cop (we should all be ashamed by that).

    john

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  5. Kind of a bleak opening for the new week. Perhaps you should have continued your musing about opera. Or addressed the burning topic of what a bore the Super Bowl was. (Just kidding. This is obviously more important.)

    The good Father is, of course, wrong in saying people don't want to talk about violence. IF somehow all the cheap talk about the subject could be cashed in there wouldn't be a budget crisis. To put the matter in perspective, it might be useful to recall that there were many more murders in Chicago a decade ago. Just, for a host of reasons, less newsworthy. And conceding that there are no magical solutions need not mean that things aren't worth trying. Or being done. Admittedly long term, I noted the column next to Neil's dealt with an expansion of pre-kindergarten education to low income families. Perhaps naively, I attribute some of my own success in life to being taught to read pre school by my grandmother.

    Tom Evans

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  6. I can understand what the Rev is trying to say here, but to be honest my first thought was that I thought only the President could order a flag a half staff.

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  7. I was wondering how representative the "Chi-Raq" movie flag is to the killings of young African Americans? Not much.

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  8. A year later and nothing much has changed, even with the Fed. probe.FR Phleger is kidding himself.

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