EXTRA: How time passes

Some of us always want to think of the presidency of John F. Kennedy as a moment of youth and vigor being shot into our national psyche (while others want to think of it as the moment the “grown-ups” lost control).

White House and Chicago pols intertwined in the past

So what should we think of the fact that Kennedy, if he somehow magically were still alive, would now be 100?

IT WAS ON this date a century ago that Kennedy was born in Boston (he was 46 at the time of his death). We’re probably never going to come to a consensus as to how he should be regarded.

Chicago turned out vote for JFK

And we likely will forevermore dispute the significance Chicago and its electorate played in his 1960 ascension to the White House. Or just how much in debt the Kennedys were to Mayor Richard J. Daley in turning out the vote that put Illinois in his Electoral College column that led to victory?

Although the part that most astounds me over the idea of a centenarian Kennedy is that it means his “first lady,” Jacqueline (whom we perpetually envision in her youthful form) would herself now be 87!

Of course, that’s not the only “anniversary” we could be acknowledging this day. There’s always the labor dispute that got ugly in the South Deering neighborhood on Memorial Day eighty years ago.

ANYBODY WHO THINKS that the Chicago police conduct of the 1968 Democratic Convention protests was an isolated incident doesn’t know of the protest that turned ugly when Republic Steel officials called the police – who then came in, began beating picketers and wound up killing 10 men (all of whom were local residents who worked at the plant).

A leftover structure from the old Republic Steel plant

It’s no wonder that neighborhood residents still pay an annual tribute to those who died. And the fact that Daley himself always tried to justify the police conduct of ’68 by saying no one was killed as a result.

Just one discrepancy, for those who want to nitpick.

The actual date of Memorial Day back in ’37 was May 30. So it will be 80 years ago Tuesday that people lost their lives at a now-remote site along Avenue O.

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Memorial Day “Massacre” a bad memory of how ugly labor tensions once were, and don't need to go back to

Perhaps it’s all appropriate that this Memorial Day holiday weekend comes right as tensions between organized labor and Illinois’ new Republican governor have reached a height that we don’t have a clue when our state officials will be able to put together a balanced budget for Illinois government.



Police attack? Or self-defense? Photo provided by AFL-CIO

We have a governor who seems determined to undermine the influence of labor unions (even if he realizes that “right to work” legislation is mere fantasy) to the point that the Democratic majority in the General Assembly is digging in politically on so many

issues.

SO MANY POLITICAL hotheads. The only thing I feel safe in saying is that there won’t be a state budget enacted by the Legislature by the Sunday deadline.

But how hostile are our labor/management relations these days?

This seems like a time to remember the Memorial Day holiday of 1937. On that day some 78 years ago (the actual holiday that year came on May 30), labor/management relations reached a low point; one that we ought to feel fortunate we haven’t sunk to this far.

That was the day that labor union members picketed outside the Republic Steel plant that used to exist at 119^th Street and Avenue O in the East Side neighborhood.

Who doubted this account 78 years ago?

REPUBLIC STEEL OFFICIALS were adamant about not letting their employees have labor union representation – even though U.S. Steel had given in.

When protesters refused the steel mill management’s orders to go away, they called the police. Who eventually opened fire, then chased away and beat many of the protesters. In all, 10 mill workers were killed and more than 60 people wound up in area hospitals.

If not for the 1968 police activity against protesters of the Democratic National Convention, we’d probably still be talking about this act of police brutality every time a cop does something silly.

Does this poster pay tribute to workers? Or subversives?

It’s fortunate that the Illinois Labor History Society has managed to get ahold of and preserve the newsreel footage that was shot that day. Or else some of us might be inclined to believe the management line that claimed the union-sympathizing protesters were attacking the police – who were merely trying to defend themselves from an unruly mob!

BECAUSE MANAGEMENT WAS merely trying to protect their ability to make the highest profit possible – and ought to be entitled to think of anything that cuts into their bottom line as something subversive that needs to be eradicated.

Some of the nonsense rhetoric we hear these days bears a resemblance to the anti-labor rhetoric of old. It would be overly simplistic to say that nothing has really changed, and that this is merely management trying to get government to give back its old authority over its workers.

Although I’m honest enough to concede that it is highly unlikely that Gov. Bruce Rauner has the Illinois State Police all lined up and prepared to attack anybody who speaks out against his negative labor union talk.

Even though I’m sure there are some ideologue-types who fantasize about such actions, wishing they could “get medieval” on all that organized labor talk.

I SAY THAT because I have noticed in the past how people try to discount the violent activity of that “Memorial Day Massacre” whenever the local neighborhood residents hold their annual service to pay tribute to those workers who were killed.

I have covered the East Side event a couple of times as a reporter-type person (although I didn’t go to this year’s event held two weeks ago), and people from outside the neighborhood always want to think there was something subversive at work on that day.

His poor play that day caused the 'massacre'

Instead of accepting the fact that these were neighborhood residents whose bottom line was to work at their jobs to try to earn a living! Anybody who finds that to be subversive is really ever-so-un-American themselves; and definitely not espousing ideals that those soldiers who made the "ultimate sacrifice" actually fought and died for.

 

Either that, or they’re clueless enough to think that “Memorial Day Massacre” merely means Game One of the 1985 NBA Championship Series when the Boston Celtics beat the eventual champion Los Angeles Lakers 148-114.

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EDITOR'S NOTE: Hilding Anderson, Alfred Causey, Leo Francisco, Earl Handley, Otis Jones, Sam Popovich, Kenneth Reed, Joseph Rothmund, Anthony Taglioni and Lee Tisdale. Working stiffs, or criminals? Depends on who you talk to.

My head’s spinning silly!

I don't think I'll ever be able to walk by the Thompson Center building without remembering the day that a giant, inflatable coal plant was erected out front. Photograph by Gregory Tejeda

If you’d have asked me last week what the funk was that was clinging to my physical being, I’d have said “sweat” from all the heat we got hit with. I was dripping, and I’m sure I didn’t smell all that pleasant – no matter how many times a day I showered.

But this week, the funk that is all about me is nothing more than pure political “spin.”

FOR IN THE past couple of days, I did some work for one of the suburban daily newspapers in covering a pair of protest rallies outside the Thompson Center state government building related to the same issue.

Only different sides. And everybody was pushing their party line off onto me, while also making sure to be on hand to rebut anything the other side might have to say.

At stake in this issue is Illinois Senate Bill 3766 – which was approved this spring by the General Assembly. It is related to the proposed construction of a plant that uses the gasification process to convert Southern Illinois coal into a synthetic natural gas that can be used for heating.

One side (the batch that came on Monday) wants the project because it would be a significant construction project that eventually would be an operating business employing hundreds of people in and around the 10^th Ward – specifically the one-time site of Republic Steel that now sits vacant in the East Side neighborhood.

PICTURE THE SIGHT of 100 or so construction workers, trying to do their best to be an intimidating presence, and literally coming out and saying to Gov. Quinn, “our work boots turned out the vote for you. You owe us.”



One of the Republic Steel remnants that could someday be cleared away for a plant turning coal to natural gas. Photograph by Gregory Tejeda



The other side (the ones on hand Tuesday) hate the project because they fear emissions will further pollute the air (which already has a certain funk you just don’t notice anywhere else in Chicago – the result of more than a century of industry being present in the area).

I’m not about to weigh in on this issue, because personally I can see both points. It’s hard to argue against somebody talking of creating hundreds of jobs (thousands, if you count the temporary construction ones) at a time when there are people desperate for employment of any type.

But I also realize why 10^th Warders are suspicious of anything that has potential to pollute – even though the plant’s backers claim that modern technology would make it as safe an environment to work in as Northwestern Memorial Hospital.

I DON’T KNOW if I buy that line; although I do believe that technology has reduced the potential for emissions into the air.

Then again, seeing the environmental activists set up a giant inflatable coal plant complete with smokestacks (which the plant backers insist will not exist in reality) being set up just about 100 feet from that “Standing Beast” sculpture that sits in front of the Thompson Center is a sight I doubt I ever will forget.

It is burned into my brain (and preserved on this weblog, for however long it may last)! Along with some of the jokes I heard about how they could have used the structure as a “bouncy house” and let kids play in it while the protests are staged.

Just where does one go to get a giant inflatable coal plant? It doesn’t sound like an item stocked regularly at the local Party City store!

JUST AS I didn’t come down on one side or the other on this issue, I’m going to be further wishy-washy and refuse to predict how I think Quinn will react on this measure.

QUINN: Soon to be somebody's enemy

Although I thought it interesting that a member of his staff met publicly with the opponents of a gasification plant, but not with the backers.

Then again, Quinn has signed into law other bills related to this project. For him to suddenly do an about-face now would be extremely erratic – almost like the kind of behavior we’d have expected from our state’s previous governor.

So what’s the one safe bet on this issue? No matter what Quinn does, he’s going to tick off an interest group – one that likely already has its rhetoric prepared to lambaste him for not giving them their way.

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