September 4, 2000


Features

Never Mind the Bollocks
BY BILL BOISVERT

Here's the new Republican Party

The Battle of Philadelphia
BY DAVE LINDORFF

Working It
BY DAVID MOBERG
Will unions go all out for Gore?

Black Radicals Regroup
BY SALIM MUWAKKIL
Detroit hosts the Black Radical Congress.

Mad Sheep Scare
BY TERRY J. ALLEN
Farmers, scientists and the USDA square off in Vermont.


News

Cleaning Up
BY HANS JOHNSON
Missouri, Oregon consider campaign finance initiatives.

Star Strike
BY BEN WINTERS
Actors demand a better deal.

Renegade or Redeemer?
BY STEVE ELLNER

Hugo Chavez leads Venezuela into a new era.

The New Front
BY KARI LYDERSEN

American anti-abortion groups crusade in Ireland.

Profile
BY TED KLEINE

Johnny Lira is in their corner.


Views

Editorial
BY DAVID MOBERG
Big money problems.

Appall-O-Meter
BY DAVID FUTRELLE

A Terry Laban Cartoon

Dialogue: The Balkans
More Conspiracy Theories?
BY EDWARD S. HERMAN

A Humanitarian Crusade
BY DIANA JOHNSTONE


Culture

A Man for All Seasons
BY HOWARD ZINN
Francis Wheen's Marx: A Life.

Interstate Rambler
BY PHILIP CONNORS
On the road with Larry McMurty.

England's Dreaming
BY JOHN GHAZVINIAN
History falls off the back of a lorry.

Under the Influence
BY JASON SHOLL
Sadie Plant writes on drugs.

Vanishing Act
BY
JOSHUA ROTHKOPF
Paul Verhoeven's Hollow Man.

Presidential Dance Parties
BY GREG SMITHSIMON

 

In Their Corner
By Ted Kleine

Johnny Lira says he dresses like a clown because boxing without a pension "is a joke." He is holding a picture from his days as a fighter, when he was known as "The World Class Pug." Courtesy of Johnny Lira.

The Windy City Boxing Club is on the top floor of a warehouse in Lawndale, one of Chicago's roughest neighborhoods. It's a dingy room with scarred wooden floors. Punching bags hang from beams, the walls are papered with fight posters, and sweaty young guys skip rope or jab at each other in the rings. "You'll find a gym like this in every city in the world," says Johnny Lira, a.k.a "The World Class Pug." "It's always in the ghetto, because the ghetto is where the fighters come from."

Twenty years ago, when he was the No. 1 lightweight contender in the world, Lira worked out in dives like this. Now whenever he visits a gym, he carries a sheaf of flyers proclaiming "Think Union/Talk Pension." One wintry day at the Windy City, the Pug handed a sheet to Ferny Hernandez, a 28-year-old welterweight. "In California, when you're done with your career, you get a pension," Lira told him.

"Just like any other job," marveled Hernandez, who goes by the nickname "Fearless Ferny." "That's beautiful. I don't plan on playing this game forever. I've got to plan something - life after boxing." Lira, 48, knows what it's like to need a life after boxing. During his ring heyday, he says, "I was pissing my money away, buying cars and cracking 'em up, going on vacation, loaning money to people I shouldn't have."

 

 


In These Times © 2000
Vol. 24, No. 20