[Dialogue] 44 years ago today ...

[Ken Fisher]

Dear Colleagues,

On my fb page I wrote ...

44 years today, the West Side and South Side were burning and seething with rage. The shock of 'oblivion' or non-being catapulted Joe Mathews and the Order: Ecumenical into the New Religious Mode and the New Social Vehicle. I recall arriving on the West Side five weeks later and being a part of the spirit rebirth of that cataclysmic event. At that time, Gene Beasely and his gang moved into an apartment of 3444 as protection.

Ken

 

 

From Kathleen Hamm Jones 

Wow, thanks, Ken. I remember so well where I was, in an apartment on Blackstone St in Hyde Park. Unlike the West side of Chicago, the Southside was kept from burning mostly by patrols by Jeff Fort and the Blackstone Rangers, who went door to door of the businesses and posted flyers signalling their protection of the establishments. The back story was of course about Rev John Fry of 1st Presbyterian Church who poured his whole life and at times, his sanity, into making that gang into a precursor of the "guardians" which got attention in NYC later. Somewhere I think I still have his book of sermons from that time called "Fire and Blackstone." Since then I think we have gone backward in institutional racism, as the USA leads the world in incarceration of African-American males. And on top of that fact, the pernicious reality that prison populations are being "sold" as private corporations take over running the prisons. It's a profitable biz if you contract out cheap captive labor. It makes my head feel like exploding.
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