Chicago - A message from the station manager

The Weekend Desk Report

By Steve Rhodes

“Thousands showed up Saturday morning at Daley Plaza for a planned rally to protest the Trump Administration’s immigration policies with deportation raids set to take place this weekend in Chicago and around the country,” the Sun-Times reports.

Demonstrators held signs that read “close the camps” and “stop deportations now,” with a large sign hanging from the side of the Daley Center reading “End detention welcome immigrants.”
Mayor Lori Lightfoot, who has said she plans to spend the day in neighborhoods, appeared on CNN Saturday morning and said Chicago police “will not help or facilitate” efforts by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials.
“We can not have the police on one hand asking (residents) for their support to help keep people safe in this city and then facilitating a weaponized agency like ICE,” Lightfoot said.
“The most haunting thing that I’ve experienced, because I’m visible and out in communities across the city, particularly in these last few weeks, is hearing from young children, preteens the age of my daughter who may be the only English speaker in their home.” She said to “have them to have to shoulder this very, real, scary adult burden because of the role they play in their family – they’re terrified.”
The mayor told CNN that based on her experience as a former federal prosecutor, she expects that ICE agents will visit neighborhoods early in the morning “and capture people at home. They’re going to go to businesses where they think that people might be in existence whether it’s a restaurant or whether it’s an actual workplace.”

It’s quite astonishing to see local elected officials bonding with their constituents to protect themselves from a federal law enforcement agency – one that is essentially the brownshirts of an American presidential administration (though again I must point out Barack Obama conducted similar raids for years and deported far more people than Donald Trump has).
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“The key to reading history of Nazi Germany, a wise professor once explained to me, is to attempt to understand the logic and mentality of those who embraced the Nazi movement without ever losing sight of what an ultimately absurd and fundamentally evil project theirs was,” James H. Barnett wrote for The Weekly Standard last year.
“This is the approach readers must bring to Daniel Siemens’s Stormtroopers: A New History of Hitler’s Brownshirts, a superbly detailed account of the Sturmabteilung (SA), the main paramilitary wing of the Nazi party from its inception in 1920 until the consolidation of Hitler’s power in 1934 . . .

Siemens, a professor of European history at Newcastle University, looks beyond the traditional trope of the SA, or “Brownshirts” as they were commonly known, as a group of rowdy young psychopaths looking to brawl. His book paints a far more frightening portrait of a million-member organization that flourished by promising young German men a world of hypermasculinity, camaraderie, and egalitarianism–with genocidal undertones.
While it was the 1923 Beer Hall Putsch that first propelled the SA to the national stage, Siemens notes that the group made a name for itself early on through its members’ actions as self-styled border guards in Upper Silesia, a region that saw turmoil in the Weimar years as ethnic Poles agitated for inclusion into the newly founded Second Polish Republic next door. Many early acts of SA violence were perpetrated in Upper Silesia under the guise of defending Germany’s sovereignty from Polish “infiltrators” and “traitors.”

See also, from ProPublica:
* Border Patrol Official Circulates Article That Deems Our Reporting On Secret Facebook Group A Threat.
“An official who directs a Border Patrol intelligence gathering center sent the article to all top intelligence officials and field offices. The article directly attacks a ProPublica reporter who revealed that agents were posting anti-migrant and misogynistic memes in group for current and former agents.”
* Border Patrol Agents Are Passing Around A Commemorative Coin Mocking Care For Migrant Kids.
“The coin declares “KEEP THE CARAVANS COMING” under an image of a parade of migrants crossing the border.”
* And:
Pool report from McAllen, Texas.


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The cruelty is the point.
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Ordinary Germans.
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We have an autocratic white supremacist president – who is also a rapist and a pathological liar. About 40 percent of the American people support him – intensely. A significant number seem willing to commit violence on his behalf.
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The president’s cover-up of crimes is right in front of our face. Yet, Democratic leaders cower from a perceived political backlash to impeachment, validating the president’s approach to ginning up his base with lies, bigotry and projections of authoritarianism.
No one will ever be able to credibly claim they didn’t know what was happening.
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Meanwhile . . .
Jeffrey Epstein had an Enterprise, as did R. Kelly.
Epstein’s private jet was known as the Lolita Express. He had a getaway known as Pedophile Island.
R. Kelly had the Rock ‘n’ Roll McDonald’s.
Most monstrosities occur right before our very eyes. If you go through life not speaking up, you’re an Ordinary American.
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The same holds true for #MeToo predators. So much silence – and yes, so much of that because of the way victims get treated. But so many more knew what was happening besides the prey.
Remaining silent to preserve your career is a pretty fucked-up moral calculus.
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#NeverAgainIsNow.
And may it be so every day, forevermore.
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New on the Beachwood today . . .
Brit Buys Iconic U.S. Jukebox Company Rock-Ola
Started in Chicago.
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Why States And Cities Should Stop Handing Out Billions In Economic Incentives
They don’t work.
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Weekend ChicagoReddit

Roberto Clemente High School students, 1975. from r/chicago


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Bogan High School students, 1966. from r/chicago


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Weekend ChicagoGram

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A post shared by lucie van der elst (@lucie.van.der.elst) on


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Weekend ChicagoTube
Chicago 45 Johnny Moore “Just Be for Real” Jadan J-222 1968

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Weekend BeachBook
A Jazz Legend Said He Was In Desperate Need Of Money. His Friends Had Questions.

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Weekend TweetWood
A sampling.


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The Weekend Desk McRibTipLine: Now with gator reverb.

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Posted on July 13, 2019