LEON DESPRES REMEMBERED

Leon DesPres who died this week at 101 served as 5th Ward Alderman from 1955-75. That made him the only Alderman I knew during my time in Hyde Park as a U of C undergrad and afterword from 1963-73.

DesPres was a hero for those of us of a progressive persuasion. He was brilliant, passionate and unrelenting in serving the common good whether it involved his beloved 5th Ward, Chicago, Illinois, America, indeed, planet Earth.

I had the opportunity to invite him to speak at a fraternity parent-student breakfast in 1966 and he was gracious enough to accept the invitation to break bread and discuss current events with us.

Although he lived only a block from my student and later personal residence, I only saw him one other time. While driving from Hyde Park through the vast South Side Ghetto to my boyhood home on the western edge of Chicago, I spotted an elderly white couple bicycling along busy Garfield Blvd. Who could that possibly be, I thought, gazing upon such an improbable city scene. Passing the twosome I instantly recognized Leon DesPres and his wife. That was Leon, totally at ease and at home among the people he championed throughout his life.

DesPres was a one man force for good for nearly eight decades of serving the public in many different fields and endeavors. We don't see visionaries like him anymore and are much the poorer for their absence.

Also published in Chicago Sun Times, May 9, 2009

FULL CIRCLE

In 1945, the year I was born, America took the lead in ferreting out and prosecuting war criminals. We defeated Germany and Japan and immediately began the process which culminated in the Nuremberg War Crime Trials of 1945-46 which were followed by the International Military Tribunal for the Far East which tried Japanese officials for war crimes stemming from their involvement in World War II.
Most defendants were convicted, resulting in death or long prison sentences, but some were acquitted; indicating a basic fairness in the process.

Much of the discussion we hear today about investigating and possibly prosecuting high ranking members of the Bush administration for launching pre-emptive war and implementing a wide scale policy of torture, is based on international criminal law developed from the Nuremberg Trials, most noteworthy of which is the Geneva Convention on the Laws and Customs of War, 1949.

We don’t know whether or to what extent Bush administration officials are guilty of criminal conduct under international criminal law. We do know that, by calling this alleged conduct a “mistake”, and saying we must “look forward, not backward” so we can devote our energies to shore up a collapsing economy, we are telling the world that America is no longer the leader in riding the world of war crimes, but quite possibly a chief practitioner of same, and most certainly an unashamed apologist for it.

In my 65th year it is disheartening to see that America has come full circle on this issue.