Lay, Elrod, lay;
Lay in your iron lung for awhile.
Play, Elrod, play;
Play with your toes for awhile.
—Weatherman song to the tune of Dylan’s “Lay, Lady, Lay”
Last October the SDS Weathermen went to Chicago to take on Mayor Daley’s oink city. Many felt the “Days of Rage” were successful despite the heavy toll in busts.
The one arrest that stands out is that of Brian Flanagan for the attempted murder of Chicago’s Assistant Corporation Counsel, Richard Elrod, who came out of the melee half-paralyzed resulting from a broken neck.
The question of what really happened to Elrod on the streets of Chicago last October is still present with at least four stories coming out of media accounts:
- Elrod was hit in the neck by a flying brick.
- Elrod was smashed in the neck with a lead pipe.
- A police car had run over Elrod’s neck after he was shoved to the ground. (Really!)
- An affinity group of six Weathermen had picked up Elrod and rammed his head into a pig car.
Naturally, all these stories were more than enough to fulfill anyone’s off-the-pig fantasies. Unfortunately, it did not happen this way.
On that Saturday, police and Weathermen were fighting for control of the city’s streets and Elrod was busy playing pig and arresting anyone he could get his hands on. At one point he was trucking down LaSalle Avenue like a motherfucker after someone who had just done some trashing. He took a flying tackle leap to grab the person, missed and fell down a concrete stairwell, breaking his neck.
Brian Flanagan, the nearest person to Elrod’s now-bent body, was blamed for the would-be pig’s own clumsiness. Flanagan was released on $100,000 bond.
Although months have passed since the action and the charges against Flanagan have been reduced to aggravated assault and mob action, the court date for the trial keeps being postponed. This newspaper has learned that the reason behind the delays is that Flanagan has two straight-arrow witnesses that will testify to his innocence.
Since Elrod is currently running a wheelchair campaign for sheriff of Cook County (which includes Chicago), Daley’s cronies have made sure that an embarrassing acquittal of Flanagan will not come in the middle of Elrod’s anti-anarchy campaign.