Happy St. Valentine’s day to all our readers. Much as we love Valentine’s Day and send cards to our sisters, daughters, daughters in law, grandchildren and beloved spouse, it is still hard to live in Chicago and not think about the famous St. Valentine’s Day Massacre on North Clark Street in 1929.
St. Valentine’s Day Massacre 1929
We were down at the site of the SMC Cartage company on North Clark Street where the Massacre took place some years ago when they were tearing down the building, hopefully to erase all trace of this notorious event, and since bricks were just lying around I picked up a few and later built them in a small patio in our side yard where they remain to this day.
Whenever I see them I am reminded of the seven members of the Bugs Moran gang who were gunned down one cold St. Valentine’s morning, while thinking they were simply being harassed by the police, since the killers were in police uniforms. The massacre caused quite a stir and was a catalyst for ending the gang warfare in Chicago.
Capone was wintering at his estate in Miami beach at the time of the massacre and denied any connection with the event but word went out quickly that only Capone works like that, and that he was trying to eliminate Moran.
But while it was set up so that his arch-enemy Moran was supposed to be in the garage making a deal on illegal booze at the time of the shooting, a lookalike was executed instead–Moran was having coffee at a nearby restaurant. At least that’s how the story goes.
St. Valentine’s Day Massacre 2003
I mention the Massacre because Chicago massacres are still going on, only this time they are in neat little buildings called Planned Parenthood and Albany Health Center and they massacre a lot more than seven a day. Although nobody was ever apprehended for the St. Valentine’s Day Massacre of 1929, it was illegal. Today’s Valentine Massacres of the children is legal, and if the police come by it is to target the people who are trying to discourage massacres, not carry them out.
The hit men are protected and the life savers are the suspects. All this in one’s lifetime. The Massacre of 1929 was world news and it turned people against the gangs. The massacres that take place worldwide today aren’t even news and only bother a few of us. But in the sight of heaven a massacre is a massacre and we are renewing our vow to fight the massacre of the innocents the end.
Pray for Fr. Charles Fiore
We ask our readers to say a prayer for a valiant pro-lifer who gave the most powerful talks on the sin of abortion that we ever heard. Fr. Charles Fiore is in a coma and is not expected to revive. He is in St. Mary’s hospital in Madison, WI.
Known in pro-life circles as “Lord,” Father was very active in pro-life in the seventies and eighties, helped direct a group called Friends for Life and co-hosted a radio show, Lifetime, with Tom Roeser and your editor on Sunday afternoons out of Evanston. Some of our Action News Hotline readers may remember it.
The show didn’t last more than a year but we had some wonderful guests during its airing, including Mother Theresa of Calcutta. Father was a Dominican friar and a powerful preacher. Pray for him.
Al Sharpton: Democrat’s #1 Nightmare
Bob Novak writes in Thursday’s Chicago Sun-Times that the Rev. Al Sharpton is turning out to be the Democrat’s number one nightmare. Sharpton is a professional troublemaker who was preaching before he could read or write. Yet he already has secured between 20 and 30 percent of the black vote and he has only started campaigning. He could get as much as 40 percent of the vote in South Carolina’s crucial early primary and this will give him a speaking slot at the Demacratic convention.
Democrats had written him off as a no-problem case but that was before the event sponsored by NARAL Pro-Choice America in Washington, held the night before the 30th anniversary of Roe v. Wade, when Sharpton announced his candidacy for President. The announcement wowed the crowd.
Yet Democrat leadership still see him as a rabble-rouser who has never been elected to public office–although he has run for nearly everything.
At the NARAL Pro-Choice America dinner in January, Sharpton was the only candidate to give a rousing talk and he promises that he won’t take orders from the Democrat establishment and its bigwigs. And since he’s black they can’t confront him or kick him out and Novak thinks he will be their enduring nightmare throughout the campaign. We sure hope so.
