"There has been no oppression in the last 100 years that I know of."
Mike Ditka, Get the Fuck Off This Planet

October 23, 2017 | Revolution Newspaper | revcom.us

From a reader:

This past week Mike Ditka, former player and coach for the Chicago Bears and an ESPN football analyst, proclaimed in a pregame interview before the Monday night NFL game that “There has been no oppression in the last 100 years that I know of.” Ditka was responding to the current anthem protests by NFL players in opposition to police murders and brutality against Black people. Ditka did not stop there. When he was then questioned by the pre-game show host Jim Gray about social injustice, Ditka said, “I don’t know what social injustices have been.” Ditka was doubling down on a previous comment he made when talking about Colin Kaepernick: “I don’t see all the atrocities going on in this country that people say are going on.”

No oppression or atrocities!!? Just look at some of the brutal oppression carried out by Ditka’s beloved Chicago police and others in Chicago just during Ditka’s lifetime.

• 1940s-1960s—Government subsidized housing forced Black people into segregated communities. Vast ghetto housing projects that were highly concentrated areas of poverty were built in Chicago. People in those housing projects were subjected to murder and brutality by the Chicago police. People living in those projects were subjected to poor and racist education, environmental hazards, the worst health care, predatory merchants, and terror by the police. (See American Crime Case #62.)
• In the mid 1960s, the Chicago open housing movement led by Martin Luther King demanded the end to segregated housing in the city. Also known as the Chicago Freedom Movement, they held large rallies and marches demanding that the City of Chicago provide open housing, quality education, transportation and job access, healthcare, community development, tenant’s rights, and a better quality of life for the Black population of the city. On August 5, 1966, Martin Luther King led a march of 700 people starting at Marquette Park in Chicago’s Southwest Side which was to end at a real estate office to demand that properties by rented and sold to Black people in the all-white Chicago Lawn area, where swastikas were regularly seen and Nazis and white supremacists held rallies. Thousands of white people came out in opposition, jeering and taunting the marchers. One sign read: “King would look good with a knife in his back.” A stone was thrown, hitting MLK in the head, knocking him to the ground. (A nun was hit by a brick in another march during that summer.) The racist crowd attacked the march, throwing rocks, bottles, and firecrackers at the marchers. Over 30 people were injured, including MLK. After the protest King said, “I’ve been in many demonstrations all across the South, but I can say that I have never seen—even in Mississippi and Alabama—mobs as hostile and as hate-filled as I’ve seen here in Chicago.”
• 1968 was a year of massive protests against the Vietnam War and uprisings in the urban ghettos after the murder of Martin Luther King. Massive counter-intelligence measures were used by the government and the Chicago police against those going to Chicago to protest. Thousands of antiwar protestors came to Chicago. A massive force of Chicago police, the U.S. Army, the National Guard, and the U.S. Secret Service faced off against the demonstrators. On August 28, as the protestors marched towards the convention site, the cops attacked them with tear gas, rifles, and clubs. Protestors, reporters covering the protest, and doctors attempting to offer medical help were brutally beaten and injured. Over 600 were arrested.
• In 1969, in retaliation against the protests at the DNC, authorities went after the leaders of the antiwar movement by putting eight of them (the Chicago 8) on trial for conspiracy. Bobby Seale, leader of the Black Panther Party, was one of the eight. He was denied his constitutional right to be represented by an attorney of his choice. When he was also denied a request to defend himself, he protested. Racist judge Julius Hoffman had him bound, gagged, and chained to his chair. William Kunstler, one of the defense attorneys, called this out in the courtroom declaring, “This is no longer a court of order, Your Honor, this is a medieval torture chamber.”
• 1969—Fred Hampton, the 21-year old chairman of the Illinois Black Panther Party was murdered by the police who machine gunned their way into Hampton’s apartment and shot him while he was in his bed. The raid was directed by Cook County State’s Attorney Edward Hanrahan in close coordination with the FBI Counter Intelligence Program (COINTELPRO).
• 1977—After the Puerto Rican Parade, Chicago police charged the crowd and shot in the back and murdered two unarmed Puerto Ricans, Julio Osorio and Rafael Cruz, in Humboldt Park as part of the government’s attempts to silence and squelch the Puerto Rican Independence Movement.
• 1970s-1990s—Chicago Police Department’s infamous torture crew rounded up more than 100 Black men who were shocked with cattle prods in the mouth and genitals, beaten with telephone books, and suffocated with plastic bags until many confessed to crimes.
• 2004-2015—At least 3,500 Chicagoans, 82 percent of them Black, were illegally held and detained at a CIA-type Black Ops Site at Homan Square. People were housed in chain-link metal cages stretching from floor to ceiling at the secret location. The detained there were kept out of the official booking databases. The cops would brutally beat people, resulting in head wounds. People were shackled for prolonged periods. Attorneys were denied access to the facility and people were denied access to legal counsel for long periods of time, including people as young as 15.

Mike Ditka has been the face of some of the NFL’s ugliest features—vicious play by trying to rip the head off of his opponents, the “manning up” syndrome, American chauvinism and patriarchy. He supported Donald Trump from the get-go.

Why the hell is this racist Neanderthal still being allowed to spew out his vile shit on the air when Jemele Hill was suspended by ESPN—with current rumors that she is going to be fired—for tweeting a suggestion that fans should boycott the advertisers of the Dallas Cowboys because their owner, “slave master” Jerry Jones, said he would bench players who refused to stand for the anthem?!?

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