By REY FLORES
Almost two decades ago back in my community organizing days in Chicago, I recall attending meetings and organizing political campaigns with a bunch of anti-American, anti-Catholic, and “anti-anything good” types of people who at worst were annoying, but hardly dangerous.
We would plan rallies, protests, and demonstrations supposedly fighting against the loss of affordable housing, abuses against laborers both legal and illegal, and so on. I even organized a feminist rally against domestic violence once.
Another time I helped organize a pro-amnesty rally with over 10,000 people in downtown Chicago. I even got to write a song about it and was invited to perform it in front of the crowd as part of the event. While my heart was in the right place, my head certainly wasn’t.
Like many of us when we’re younger, we tend to have these pie-in-the-sky ideas about how the world should be. We are, or at least I was, enraptured with this idea that I could change the world, but it was an ego thing.
I had been climbing the ranks of community organizers in a city known for agitators and troublemakers. One could cite the Haymarket Riots, the 1968 Democratic National Convention, and people like Bill Ayers and Barack Obama as part of the city’s legacy of rabble-rousers. Not a good legacy, mind you.
Having been born and raised in a tough blue-collar neighborhood by immigrant parents, I did experience some mild incidents of discrimination and racism, but nothing out of the ordinary in the country’s most segregated city. I felt that these were the bona fides I had, and that I had some kind of divine right to set the world straight.
Initially having worked with people with disabilities in the late 1980s, I considered myself more of a social worker. I then worked with inner-city youth, survivors of domestic violence, the homeless, and in anti-hunger programs. I really liked the idea of being some sort of advocate fighting on behalf of my brothers and sisters who I felt were being mistreated by a patriarchal and systemic power which we were all called to fight against.
During my fighting for “justice” in the streets, I knew a bunch of activists from the religious community including many priests and bishops from the Archdiocese of Chicago. These guys were always right there with us, whether it was City Hall, the Federal Plaza, day labor agencies, or immigration detention centers, hardly a rally or protest would take place without the presence of at least one priest or more.
The prayers were almost mandatory before the start of an event, but in hindsight, I believe that most of the attendees at these types of events could not have cared less if we prayed or not. For those who did care, I am certain that they weren’t well read or solidly formed in their own faith.
Surely and not-so-slowly as I looked around me, that’s when I realized that what I thought were legitimate causes were nothing but a ruse for the actual political agendas of the socialist-wannabe left.
Along with the presence of multidenominational religious folks in this “social justice movement” were always the politicians like Obama, of course, Democrat Illinois Sen. Dick Durbin, and a multitude of other loudmouths like Democrat Cong. Luis Gutierrez and plenty of union fat cats.
The poor “people of color” weren’t so much whom the left wanted or wants to help, as much as they are tools the left uses to claim the higher moral ground. Notice how it’s always people like Bernie Sanders or Elizabeth Warren, rich old white folks with multi-million-dollar bank accounts and mansions, who claim to speak for the “helpless” and oppressed multitudes.
It wasn’t so much that I was blind, stupid, or crazy as much as I had been willfully ignorant of the politics during my entire life up until then. I had zero interest in politics. My youth was spent on partying, chasing girls, good times, and playing in my rock and roll band.
After my parents split up when I was twelve years old, going to Mass also went by the wayside. With hardly a parent in my life during my teen years, I was left to my own devices, and not good ones either. My point is that while my heart was in the right place, it took my firsthand experience with these leftists to realize what a bunch of hypocrites and exploiters they truly are and have been.
Fast forward to the more recent Occupy, Black Lives Matter, Antifa, and Resist movements, particularly the Occupy ICE (Immigration and Customs Enforcement) protests and encampments across the country. All can be put under one anti-Trump umbrella.
These radicals are no longer the obnoxious people whom I organized with back in the day. Today’s so-called anti-establishment radicals are still obnoxious, but they are also too stupid to realize that they themselves are the tools of a corrupt establishment.
The main difference between the protesters of even ten years ago and today is that today’s protesters are more violent, less intelligent, and completely brainwashed by the far-left institutions of academia, the fake news media, and Hollywood.
While the millennial generation has many intelligent, faithful, strong, and solid conservative members, it’s the mindless, Tide Pod-eating, pot-smoking zombies who are causing millions of dollars of damage by destroying both public and private property, and by becoming increasingly violent.
They claim to be fighting against a patriarchy which denies them the right to welcome illegal immigrants into our country. They want to abolish ICE. They want anything and everything that literally represents the Seven Deadly Sins.
Oftentimes, their rallies and protests have no defined purpose. You’ll see the cowards covering their faces in bandanas so as not to be identified as they break the law in a variety of ways. You’ll also see rainbow flags, militant pro-abortion “feminists,” and every type of miscreant one can imagine.
Their movement is not a civil rights movement. Their movement is more of one huge, collective temper tantrum which can be easily dismissed as nothing other than juvenile and disorganized. The problem is that these agitators are becoming a lot less MLK and a lot more Bill Ayers.
How long before these troublemakers take it to the next level? People talk about a second Civil War, and they’re right. As others have pointed out, we are in a soft Civil War, no doubt about it.
As for the clergy involved with these radicals, we have Catholics being attacked in Nicaragua and Pakistan. Why don’t you guys leave the stinky hippie camps and go fight a real fight?
Better yet, increase the number of Confession times at your churches and try to save souls from the biggest misery of all — an eternity separated from God.
+ + +
(Rey Flores writes opinion and book and movie reviews for The Wanderer. Contact Rey at reyfloresusa@gmail.com.)
Powered by WPtouch Mobile Suite for WordPress