This book touched me on a deep personal level. It compelled me to look back on my life and rediscover the surrounding social issues whirling around me and the personal decisions I made as a young man in that environment of 60’s and 70’s social justice warrior/civil rights. I had a front row seat. It defined me more than I realized.
Our family moved to the Far Southside of Chicago, and St. Elephant’s parish, when I was 5 years old. Because of residency rules of city workers, teachers, police and fire employees, and my father being a police officer and my mother a clerk in the public schools, we had to reside in city limits. We did. We moved to the farthest point on the map from the Southside, and St. Cranberry of Elphesius parish, for the same reason the parishioners of Most Blessed Sacrament in Philadelphia moved to the suburbs –“because the niggers drove us out.”
Chicago was slaughtered, along with Philly, Boston and Detroit being highlighted in this meticulously researched and edited work. The mechanization of social engineering, whose hands were on the levers, who were traitors to their community in the process, and the cynical players belonging to the think tanks and elite foundations using the federal government to disperse unified groupings so they can continue the Master Plan of eugenics, atomization and alienation, ultimately control of all aspects of modern life.
The most aggrieved in this country, the ones crying for special favors at every turn, generations away from the initial injustice of forced displacement, namely the Jew and the Negro, never take responsibility for conspiratorial actions on their part – with the help of the duplicitous Quaker – in the Stalinesque ethnic cleansing of large swathes of real estate within big city America after World War II until Reagan. This part of the Plan was instituted by the Jew, like Louis Wirth and the social “scientists” from the University of Chicago, the Quakers with their self-righteous attitudes leading the block busting and the southern migrant, never urban, never responsible, taking ownership of whole established neighborhoods only to let them quickly decay. I am one of those millions of Wandering Irish American in diaspora looking for a parade. I have no other identity, it seems, after they got through with us. One thing the Irish do well is hold a grudge.
I went through eight years of grammar school at St. Elephants, Dominican nuns at the helm, from 1962 to 70. In 67-68 we had a great influx of new kids caused by the final wave of escaping families from areas of the city being destroyed for expressways, high rise public housing, or any other damn thing the government wanted to build. The Berman case decided by the Warren Court allowed eminent domain on a fast track, owning a house meant nothing in America anymore. The stories they brought melded with ours and as young teens we were inspired to defend our neighborhood and, especially, our park.
A black person didn’t play basketball in our park unless under police protection until well into the 80’s.
My father, Chicago Police Dept., used the word ‘nigger’ liberally. He hated them. As a father in the neighborhood, it wasn’t unusual. My mother, worked as a clerk in the Chicago Public School system, in Altgelt Gardens on the Southside. Our neighborhood was targeted next. You can see I had a unique perspective on the MLK/Marquette Park march, the Gage Park forced integrations finagled by the American Friends Service Committee, or Quakers, busing of children to other than neighborhood schools and the kerfluffle reactance to such a stupid idea. And in the backdrop of all this, the Vietnam War, King Riots and 68 Democratic Convention were viscerally taken in. This is when I came of age. Dr. Jones explains to me who were the men behind the curtain and life why it went as it did.
One person Dr. Jones could enlighten me on is Rev. Francis X. Lawlor, pastor of St Poco de Flores, a few parishes over from Elephant’s. He was mentioned in passing, I’d like to learn more about him. He was a priest who fought for his parishioners, fought the real estate sharks, and fought the redlining government policies of FHA loans where an indigent tenant farmer could get a home loan for 100 dollars with some military experience. He was a leading Catholic voice against the ethnic cleansing in Chicago, eventually winning the alderman seat in that ward. Alas, the city was rolled over by the G, grassroots campaigns didn’t stand a chance. He was a far cry from the phony Fr. Michael Pfleger, pastor at Our Lady of the Soup Kitchen, that Chicago Catholics are stuck with now.
In all these cities stories it still is amazing to me how quickly the Catholic Church leadership, its Cardinals and Archbishops, allowed the destruction, in fact ably helped the process of parish destruction. Perhaps, young men like me saw how a weak, full of bluster, stand for nothing, organization can lose membership very quickly. In finding myself as a young man, I did what many young men do and totally repudiate their fathers. So, I tended to drift over the more liberal, Quaker infused religion of Love Your Neighbor Even When He’s Taking Your House mentality. The pacifist, never fight back, milquetoast loser ethic – but Catholic, nonetheless. And then the manipulated priest boy diddling PR campaigns started, and they were toast. What exactly do they do but offer community and they buckled under first weight. Not the Parishioners, the leadership was corrupt and pitiful.
In Detroit, the destruction of Poletown reads like it’s a story from communist Russia. The Polish Catholics were a horse of a different color. Unlike the Irish who were seduced with the potential of upward class mobility and suburban living, the Polish were connected with language the rulers didn’t speak, traditions of culture and home ownership pride. They didn’t share the ethos of the Irish and Italian Catholics and hung tough. Poletown neighborhood real estate was given to General Motors by a corrupt mayor and political system, up to and including, the Michigan Supreme Court. You won’t think your American citizenship means much after you read this account.
In Philadelphia, The holier-than-thou, lying sacks of shit, agents for the Ford Foundation and WASP-y elite, traitors to their race and their class, the Quakers, ruined their city in the most destructive way possible. The Quakers dealt with the NAACP, the Urban League, gang leaders and thugs. Those organizations told them integration didn’t interest them, the housing did. The black migrant from the South had no interest in living with white ethnic people, and neither did the elites of Philadelphia. Yet, the Quakers persevered to do their bidding and clear out the Catholics.
In Boston, a tenacious resistance to these bizarre social policies like busing today earns them liberal scorn. You just can’t stick up for yourself in this country, it seems. They weren’t Quaker-ized sufficiently, I guess.
Reparations? You can go to 7935 Sangamon St, Gresham, Chicago, IL. Our family already gave.
There will be no unified groups within the group. There will be no identification other than what is given to you. The over-reaching power of governmental authority will rule over you and your possessions. Your God will not protect you if your intercessors have the backbone of a chocolate éclair. Your meeting place and social halls will be destroyed. Your family members will fall to the siren call of destructive living. Your old friends will move away. Faith is gone, as is your family home. And you will wander.
Thank you, Dr. Jones. I will be reading more of your works.
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Pfleger's Paradox*
Chgo Headlines 2020
Buh Bye Chicago*
Clueless in Chicago*
Best Wishes*
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Ghost Town Poletown, Detroit: Slash-and-Burn Corrupto Capitalism on Full Display
... The land grab was close to freeways. It had low housing values. Its residents were vulnerable, poor and could be easily moved. Poletown was a done deal. What surprised everyone was how quickly the deal was done, and how residents were kept out of the loop until the last minute.
GM mandated the city of Detroit to provide land within 10 months or else the automaker would approach another city. In those 10 months, State of Michigan lawmakers rewrote its eminent domain law to “authorize the taking of private property in order to encourage commercial development,” a clause not previously written into the law. But as the law was already written, residents would find it “impossible” to protect their homes against any kind of eminent domain.
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