Evan Osnos on Father Michael Pfleger
The Political Scene | The New Yorker
The New Yorker
4.3 • 3.9K Ratings
🗓️ 29 February 2016
⏱️ 15 minutes
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Summary
Since the nineteen-seventies, Father Michael Pfleger, a white priest at the largest black church on Chicago’s South Side, has been fighting to bring economic justice to his community. At the same time, he is dealing day and night with the victims—and perpetrators—of violence in one of the city’s most dangerous neighborhoods. The New Yorker’s Evan Osnos, who wrote about Pfleger this week, accompanied him to the funeral of a gang member in the South Side, where Pfleger took the opportunity to preach against retaliation.
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| 1:11.7 | I'm Dorothy Wickenden. On today's Politics and More podcast, New Yorker staff writer Evan |
| 1:17.7 | Osnos visits a funeral service on Chicago's South Side, performed by Father Michael Flager. |
| 1:24.4 | Flager, who is white, has been the pastor of the faith community of St. Sabina, Chicago's |
| 1:29.7 | largest African American Catholic Church for 40 years. He's also been a relentless activist |
| 1:35.5 | against gang violence and for economic justice. Chicago, like much of the country, is a safer |
| 1:43.0 | place than it was 25 years ago. |
| 1:45.0 | The murder rate is roughly speaking half of what it used to be. |
| 1:49.0 | But violence on the south side remains stubbornly, tragically high, |
| 1:53.0 | and many neighborhoods there have been dangerous for generations. |
| 1:57.0 | Among the people trying to change the south Side is a priest named Michael Fleger. |
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