Ode To A Democratic Town: ‘What do I have to show for being a Democrat all my life?’
By John W. Fountain
By John W. Fountain
What do I have to show for being a Democrat all my life? Wasn’t it a Democrat who gave us mass incarceration and harsher penalties for crack cocaine over powder white?
Wasn’t it a Democrat who gave the order in ’68 in my city for police to “shoot to kill”? A Democrat who ordered the police and troops that beat the skulls of Vietnam War protestors and made their blood upon Michigan Avenue spill?
Wasn’t it the Democrats who gave us Chicago machine politics and ill will?
The Democrats who allowed housing segregation and the projects to languish, like Cabrini-Green? The Democrats who have at times treated us black folks so mean?
Wasn’t it a Democratic state’s attorney under whom Detective Jon Burge tortured scores of black men into false confessions? Why have police chiefs — appointed by Democratic mayors — yet to make headway in curing the city’s homicidal obsession?
Are Republicans the only one’s to engage in racist dog whistling? So, no Dems ever went a whoring for the same thing?
How many white liberal Democrats want to live next door to “black”? And why are many of them so inclined to dole us handouts rather than to teach us how to “fish” for what we lack?
The Democrats have never sold us empty promises just to get our vote. Nope. They’ve never passed out watermelon and chickens at the polls.
No, the Democrats didn’t turn the other way and remain mum. Pay out hush money amid the tape that showed Laquan McDonald take 16 shots from that bad cop’s gun.
And Dems — black and white — have never ever sold “the people” out. They didn’t give us Operations “Greylord,” “Gambat” and “Silver Shovel.” Never looked a gift horse in the mouth.
…This is my ode to a Democratic town, where political winds bluster and abound. An ode to the status quo in this my home city. Where corruption, patronage and machine politics are plenty.
Where the poor black and brown are but mere pawns in the game. Where amid the latest political rancor for Lord Mayor I see the same old faces and hear the same old names. Where the more things change, the more they stay the same…
And what do I have to show for being a Democrat all my life?
Why do the Democrats keep insisting that sufficient enough reason to vote for them is because they’re not the Republican right? When the lesser of the evils is sometimes hard to tell and my greatest inclination is to tell both to go to hell?
Email: Author@johnwfountain.com
Website: www.johnwfountain.com