By Pat Hickey
August 14th, 2024
In August of 1968, I was working second shift at the old Cracker Jack factory in Chicago’s Clearing industrial district south of Midway Airport. Therefore, I missed the opportunity to work with a cousin at Orchestra Hall on Michigan Avenue and to witness the Democratic National Convention. The following year, I worked at the home of the greatest and most disciplined symphony orchestra in the world for the next five years as a janitor, while in high school and through my years at Loyola University.
I got all of my media news about the ’68 Convention from the Daily News, The American and The Southtown Economist. The Chicago Tribune was anathema in my union stamped home and thus, too, my infant soul. The family and my infant soul were on the money even then, but that was long before WOKE contaminated every news outlet in Chicago and elsewhere. I missed the ’68 Convention, as it has become lionized, but I eye-witnessed the Days of Rage, The Sly Stone No Show Riots, and much less-known acts of urban terror in and around Orchestra Hall.
I learned about what went on at the ’68 Convention from my family and friends who witnessed the events in Grant Park and into Old Town. The word activist became synonymous with “privileged asshole with a millionaire daddy and a phalanx of lawyers.” I still hold that blue collar point of view. Abby Hoffman, Rennie Davis, Jerry Rubin, Bill Ayers, and the rest suffered no consequences for their actions. Guys from my neighborhood like Bill Richardson, Jimmy Finn, Marty Tully, George Svectovich and Pat Thomas went to Vietnam. Some died in Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia. Mike Kelly deployed to Vietnam on Good Friday 1969 and was killed on Easter Sunday. Charlie Miller lost his toes. Jim Furlong lost his right leg and the use of his right arm kicking a Viet Cong rocket-propelled grenade away from his company commander.
Vietnam veterans were never welcomed home in any way, shape or form until 1986. At the same time, Bill Ayers and his odious wife robbed banks, blew up a judge’s home in New York, killed cops in San Francisco and landed sinecures at Northwestern University and U of I at Chicago.
Activists get to create disorder, laugh, and repeat. Old Mayor Daley once remarked “The Police are not here to create disorder. They are here to preserve disorder.” An activist gets others to stand up to the reaction to created disorder. An activist gets others to take the “wood shampoo” from a cop but gets the Sun Times interview and a slobberingly gushing twenty-minute tribute on public television. The activist usually has a retained attorney at his elbow and beck and call.
I have known activists (Pro-Life, Anti-Death Penalty, Wrongful Convictions, Police Torture and even a goofy Say-No- Sex woman) and not one of them was anything more than a serial narcissist and cold-eyed opportunist. The worst of them, in my estimation, were teachers using the classroom as a bully pulpit. One woman “activist” published a collection of her students’ essays on remaining chaste (a good thing) and made a small fortune without a centime going to the writers of the essays, nor to the Catholic high school that gave this grifter a contract. Activists are users and very rarely doers.
As with the ’68 Convention, I shall be nowhere near the action. The Democratic Convention will be a schizophrenic affair. The media will push the nonsensical JOY of Kamala and Tampon Tim and revel in the blood on the streets tapped by the activists.
Watch for these activists to emerge from the mists of history to get others whacked on the noggin at the upcoming DNC from August 19 through August 22, when Kamala Harris and Tim Walz oversee the “Joy” and Pro-Hamas street violence
- Jesse Sharkey
- Kevin Clark
- Andy Thayer.
One home-grown pro-Palestinian member of the International Socialist Organization (ISO), Jesse Sharkey, became the leader of the Chicago Teachers Union (CTU). The Barney Google of Terror, Bill Ayers, taught generations of radical Marxist members of CTU. Jesse Sharkey gets along well with Old Bill.
Jesse Sharkey was the puppet-master behind the late Karen Lewis and stepped up upon her death to drive Chicago Public Education deep into the loam of Illinois. He made oodles of cash and retained his Marxist street cred by condemning Israel and the United States at every given opportunity. Jesse Sharkey will whisper into the waxed-up ears of Brandon Johnson and suggest, suggest, mind you, that some police force upon the demonstrator should be applied. What is an omelet without a few dozen busted eggs?
Jesse Sharkey is an activist’s activist and an insolated louse.
But, the absolute worst of the breed is Kevin Clark, of International Solidarity Movement (ISM) and founder of Catholic School Girls Against The War, who shepherded a naïve girl from Peoria into the path of an Israel Defense Force (IDF) bulldozer in Gaza – Rachel Corrie.
Kevin Clark taught at a suburban Catholic high school, before becoming a full-time activist. In 2008, when Mayor Daley and Cardinal George greeted George W. Bush at O’Hare International, Kevin Clark put together a team of dim bulbs to toss fake blood on Easter Mass-goers. Clark sat in the back pew as a “witness.” ISM no doubt paid for the Commie lawyers who negotiated the dumb kids out of the hoosegow. Richie Daley always played nice when confronted by Commie lawyers.
Speaking of Commie lawyers, our next profiled activist is none other than Chicago’s own, Andy Thayer.
Andy Thayer has a job with Marxist lawyers Loevy & Loevy. Jon Loevy is the son of long-time Marxist lawyer Arthur Loevy, of the Amalgamated Garment and Textile Workers with the deep pockets of Amalgamated Bank and Trust. Jon Loevy made millions of dollars taking Richard M. Daley, the Chicago Police Department and City of Chicago, not to court but to the bank. Richie Daley rolled over every time a Marxist, or Cadillac Commie like G. Flint Taylor walked past City Hall. The firm Loevy & Loevy is a sacred cow for criminals guilty or not and is worshipped by the Chicago News Media.
Andy Thayer has a get-out-of-jail-free card that even works around the globe. He was arrested in Putin’s Russia on two occasions and got out with no problem. Remember, Richard M. Daley has had business in Moscow from the time Jon Loevy first sued the City of Chicago. My bilious antipathy for protected miscreants knows no bounds. I expect that the Friday conclusion will be especially violent and that Chicago’s Loop will be all but shut down.
Andy Thayer’s CV on Loevy & Loevy does small justice to his place in this, my Chicago triumvirate of activists. Do avail yourself of the links provided that are most telling of each culprit.
So, there you have it—a modest pantheon of activists to keep an eye on while watching (the whole world will be watching) the 2024 Democratic Convention, where Joy and bloodshed will catch the eyes of the nation. Stay home, lest you slip on the blood.
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Born November 8, 1952 in Englewood Hospital, Chicago Illinois,PatHickey attended Chicago Catholic grammar and high schools, received a Bachelor of Arts in English Literature from Loyola University in 1974, began teaching English and coaching sports at Bishop McNamara High School in Kankakee, IL in 1975, married Mary Cleary in 1983, received a Master of Arts in English Literature from Loyola in 1987, taught at La Lumiere School in Indiana from 1988-1994, took a position as Director of Development with Bishop Noll
Institute in Hammond, IN and then Leo High School in Chicago in 1996. His wife Mary died in 1998 and Hickey returned with his three children to Chicago’s south side. From 1998 until 2019, it became obvious that Illinois and Chicago turned like Stilton cheese on a humid countertop. In that time, he wrote a couple of books and many columns for Irish American News. When the kids became independent and vital adults, he moved to Michigan City, Indiana, Hickey substitute teaches K-12 for Westville, Indiana schools and works as a tour guide/deckhand on the Emita II tour boat. He walks to the Michigan City Lighthouse every chance he gets.
