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."   TOP HOME SUBSCRIBE MAIL   In These Times © 2000 Vol. 24, No. 20