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Black
Bourgeoisie Defend
Their Own In Chicago
Tragedy
By Marvin X As we can see in the New
York Times article below, there is more concern for the club
owner than the 21 victims who perished at the Chicago southside
din of iniquity. The National Public Radio stated the same, that
civil rites leader Jesse Jackson, Jr., has shown more concern for
his friend, club owner Dwain J. Kyles, than for the 21 victims of
a tragic stampede.
Apparently they were
nothing and their lives represent nothing to Jackson and his
bourgeoisie comrades. NPR noted that Mayor Daly has silenced black
preachers with development loans, muzzled black bourgeoisie with
appointments and bought the grass roots with city jobs. NPR
concluded there was no one to speak for the 21 dead young people
or the poor class they represent. Apparently, Farrakhan doesn't
live in Chicago. Or is he part of the problem?
The incident in Chicago reminds me of how Jim Jones was supported
and defended by the San Francisco Black bourgeoisie down to the
last drop of poison Kool Aide he administered to the 900 poor
black people in Jonestown, Guyana.
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Jesse
Jackson, a Club Owner and Lasting Ties
By
JODI WILGOREN
New York Times
CHICAGO, Feb. 19 -- There was the Rev. Jesse Jackson in the
early-morning chaos, consoling relatives of the 21 people killed
in a nightclub stampede and vowing to help them seek justice in
court.
A few hours later, at a West Side police station, there was Mr.
Jackson again, praying with the club's owner, Dwain J. Kyles, a
man he has known practically since the day Mr. Kyles was born.
This was not their first tragedy together: The night the Rev. Dr.
Martin Luther King Jr. was killed, Mr. Jackson and Mr. Kyles's
father, the Rev. Samuel Kyles, had been escorting him to a
soul-food dinner at the Kyleses' Memphis home.
Monday morning's nightclub disaster, and the finger-pointing
following it, have put Mr. Jackson, this city's most prominent
African-American leader, in a strange spot. As always, he is
supporting the victims, consulting his old friend Johnnie L.
Cochran Jr. about legal options and coordinating funeral
arrangements. But he is also supporting Mr. Kyles, who denies the
city's contention that the club was operating illegally. And he is
trying to explain his own earlier efforts to help the troubled
club survive.
Mr. Kyles's South Loop business -- an upscale restaurant, Epitome,
and a second-story after-hours hip-hop spot, E2 -- was not just
another liquor licensee battling with city officials over building
codes. As Chicago's largest black-owned entertainment
establishment, it was host to all manner of social and political
events for the African-American elite, and was also a magnet for
the rowdy younger set.
Nor is Mr. Kyles just another business owner. A leader of civil
rights protest when he attended high school in Memphis, he later
became a lawyer, worked for Harold Washington, Chicago's only
black mayor, and for a Tennessee congressman, Representative
Harold E. Ford Sr., and toiled with Mr. Jackson's Rainbow/PUSH
Coalition on issues like minority contracting.
Mr. Kyles's former wife, with whom he currently lives, is Mr.
Jackson's former assistant. Mr. Jackson's son, Representative
Jesse L. Jackson Jr., is among the politicians to whom Mr. Kyles
has donated in the past decade. The younger Mr. Jackson issued a
statement this week describing Mr. Kyles as "a childhood
friend" and "an upstanding example of a young
professional person in our community." On Monday morning, it
was the elder Mr. Jackson who called Mr. Kyles's father, known as
Billy, to tell him of the nightmare at the club.
"They were kind of extended family," explained Frank
Watkins, who spent 27 years working for Mr. Jackson and is now
Congressman Jackson's press secretary.
"Because the Reverend and Billy Kyles were such good friends,
obviously there were welcome arms whenever he came around,"
Mr. Watkins said of Dwain Kyles. "He was clearly seen as part
of the civil rights families, so to speak."
Today, back at his club for the first time since Monday's melee,
Mr. Kyles, 48, fell apart, sobbing as he tried to offer
condolences before television cameras. Asked on Tuesday when Mr.
Kyles might be available for an interview, his lawyer, Andre
Grant, said, "Never."
Families of several of the victims have already filed lawsuits
against the club, and the city took steps today to revoke all its
licenses. In court documents, city lawyers said Epitome and E2 had
served alcohol to minors on several occasions, illegally opened
during a liquor-license suspension in January and failed to report
assaults there.
The city also says the liquor license should be taken away
because, it maintains, Calvin Hollins Jr., a convicted felon, is
running the club, though Mr. Grant has described Mr. Hollins as
just a consultant.
Mara S. Georges, Chicago's corporation counsel, said this
afternoon that the city was considering changing its policy so
that the police would be notified of court orders like the one
that should have barred anyone from entering the second-story
nightclub. Ms. Georges also produced transcripts of court
proceedings showing that Mr. Kyles was present when the order was
described as covering "the mezzanine, the second floor and
the V.I.P. rooms." Mr. Grant has said that the court order
prohibited use only of the V.I.P. skyboxes above E2's dance floor,
not the entire second-floor club.
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posted 29 October 2006 / updated 12
July 2008 |
