Friends and Family
Goose Island: The Beginning of the Next American Revolution?
Mon, 12/15/2008 - 03:17 — Bobbo
Goose Island is the only island located on the Chicago River. I suspect most Chicagoans would need MapQuest to even find Goose Island. Once a center for manufacturing, the neighborhoods surrounding it have been quietly gentrified over the years. Until quite recently, the island was most famous for the beer that is brewed at its local Goose Island Brewery.
But that was before the December 2008 sit-in by the employees of the Republic Windows and Doors plant located on Goose Island. When their plant suddenly and illegally shut down, the workers demanded a fair severance package and the payment of accrued and unused leave.They occupied the plant in an effort to win their demands.
Grant Park USA
Wed, 11/05/2008 - 14:02 — Bobbo
This was written about 2 am Central Time after we got back from the rally in Grant Park for Barack Obama on election night. It's been edited a bit since that time.
Just got back from Grant Park. We left for downtown around 8:30 pm and stepped off of the CTA Blue Line at around 9 pm. The Loop was pretty much closed off to traffic with lots of people in the street yelling, dancing and singing. Vendors were doing a brisk business in T-shirts and buttons. Best T-shirt slogan of the night: "Yes We Did!"
I can't help it if I'm a patriot
Mon, 09/15/2008 - 07:17 — Bobbo
I was raised to love this country by parents who struggled through the Great Depression and World War II. My mom once saved up 17 cents to buy her mother a coal bucket as a Christmas gift. My dad was the son of Scottish immigrants. He went to war and visited some of the worst hellholes in Europe as the Fighting Thunderbirds of the 45th infantry went up the boot of Italy to Anzio and later to southern France and into Germany. After the war he took a job with the Veteran's Administration to help the GI's move on to better lives than the ones they had in miserable muddy foxholes.
I learned from them that poverty does not have to be permanent and that evil can be overcome. They were proud New Deal Democrats who knew that government was supposed to be of the people, for the people and by the people.
They took us kids to the Civil War battlefields around the D.C. area so we would hopefully never forget the sacrifices that it takes to advance human rights and extend freedom to all.
A Better Class of Criminal
Tue, 07/29/2008 - 12:22 — Bobbo
What is left of the Brachs' Candy factory lies crumbling along Cicero Avenue, frequented only by the homeless, the professional junk scavengers, the graffiti artists and the urban adventurers who love to risk life and limb clambering around abandoned buildings. Brachs is only one example. Today most of Chicago's former industrial glory is a Machu Picchu of weedy rusting ruins or has been plowed under to grow a crop of yuppie condo buildings.
Twas not always thus.
Now Repeat After Me...We're Electing a President, Not a Messiah
Sun, 07/06/2008 - 18:59 — Bobbo
So Barack Obama is tacking to starboard. That's steering to the right for you landlubbers. But as a politician who lives next to those inland seas we call the Great Lakes, he must have seen sailors do this hundreds of times. He's already tacked to the port or the left side. Now it's time to tack to the right or the starboard side. Paradoxically, that's how you sail in a "straight" line and end up arriving at your destination.
Let's remember that Barack Obama is a South Side Chicago politician. Veering to the right after starting out on the left is a time honored Windy City tradition.
Why the Scottish Highland Games and Festival is Starting to Bore Me
Sun, 06/29/2008 - 02:31 — Bobbo
My dad's parents were both Scottish immigrants and my mom's Scottish ancestors go back to before the American Revolution.
I think Scotland is one of the most beautiful places in the world, though it is not a warm cuddly beauty. The Highlands will take your breath away, but the weather can be dangerous and when the mists come down, it's all to easy to take a misstep and fall off a cliff.
Who's Afraid of Reverend Dr. Jeremiah A. Wright, Jr.?
Tue, 03/25/2008 - 19:36 — BobboSince Reverend Wright is not running for office or a place on the Sunday morning gab fests, he can speak truth to power in a way that is forbidden to mainstream political candidates and pundits. Speaking truth to power does not mean that one is always right. Some of his pronouncements are off-base, but he does appear to be speaking from his heart.
Of course one's heart is not where most public political pronouncements come from. Most of these come from the word processors of fresh-faced communications graduates filtered through the mesh of endless focus groups. That way all genuine substance can carefully strained out before being released to the public.
"Early evening, April 4— A shot rings out in the Memphis sky..." 1968 and beyond
Mon, 01/07/2008 - 16:26 — Bobbo
I originally wrote this a couple of years ago to help me remember Dr. King's dream. It was revised a couple of times since. January 15 and April 4 are still sacred dates in my calendar.
I heard the loud thumping of footsteps coming up the basement stairs of my parents' home in Silver Spring, Md. Something was very wrong. My girlfriend Marie appeared at the kitchen entrance, distraught and out of breath. Martin Luther King has just been shot dead in Memphis. It's all over the news. Come downstairs. Now. A terrible primal rage boiled up from somewhere deep in my consciousness. Not Martin Luther King. Not King. For God's sake, not him.
I stood for a moment overcome by a terrible anger then said," They're going to burn America to the ground tonight. And I'm glad."
I wasn't kidding.
A Commune in Takoma Park: The Lincoln Avenue Story
Sun, 12/30/2007 - 01:28 — Bobbo
Estelle Carol and me in front of the Lincoln Ave Commune-1974 |
A number of people were associated with the commune as residents and overnight guests. Following the example of poet and sage Bob Dylan, I have (for the most part), rearranged their faces and given them all other names.
Although named after "Honest Abe", the Lincoln Avenue Commune began with a lie — a monstrous fraud perpetrated on the landlady Mrs. Chu. You see, we didn't think that we could find anyone who would rent to a gang of ruffians like Betty, Becky, Joey, Chet, Sarah, Greg and me (Bobbo) .
Coming Home from the War after Flying Close to the Sun
Thu, 11/08/2007 - 22:13 — Bobbo
I recently read Cathy Wilkerson's memoir, Flying to Close to the Sun about her days in SDS and Weatherman. She was in Chicago a few months ago giving a reading from her book. I attended and here is my report.
Riding the Red Line up to Women and Children First Bookstore had my stomach tied in knots. Cathy Wilkerson was going to give a reading from her new book Flying Close to the Sun.
Thinking about Cathy brought back painful memories of the breakup of SDS, the murder of Fred Hampton, the bloody civil war that tore apart the Black Panther Party, the townhouse explosion that killed three SDS leaders, the splitup of the Mother Bloor Collective.... all of which happened around the last time I had laid eyes on Cathy Wilkerson.
It's the troubles that cause the rebels.
