WestSide Press

07/01/2025

"I say: 'When will it end?” Where do we begin?

What good is it even to raise my damn pen or voice in a land of a gazillion opinions and podcasts, blaring in echo chambers and when the willingness to engage in civil discourse is long gone. All around the world same song.'"

'I scratch my head and wonder if this isn’t all a part of some grand masterplan to destroy the Black family at its core . A “feminist agenda” seed now full bloom, sentencing us to doom.'

06/04/2025

“Dreams” is a love song to life itself, emanating from the heart and pen of a gifted master musical storyteller. A ballad in instrumentation and in lyrics, it highlights the landscape of unlimited possibilities that exists on the winds of dreams.

“Dreams” rises like a golden morning sun against a cloudless blue sky, and shines, inspires, soothes, touches the soul. It is a precious gift to us all.

05/24/2025

And it is way past time for us to reunite. To remember that which even in our deepest poverty of stuff and worldly possessions could never compare to the rich substance that was never lacking in our lives in North Lawndale and that uplifted our souls even in those times when we stumbled or fell: love, spirit, family, community, hope.

It is way past time for us to reunite. To remember that which even in our deepest poverty of stuff and worldly possessions could never compare to the rich substance that was never lacking in our lives

05/06/2025

WE ARE NOT YOUR “Millstone.” Not your class of societal misfits. Not your jaded “ghetto” misinterpretation of life beyond the ivory tower. Never have been. Never will be.

And yet, that is how the Chicago Tribune portrayed us and our beloved neighborhood in a 1985 series it dubbed, “American Millstone,” because it deemed us to be America’s albatross. We were, in the eyes of the Tribune, the unbearable weight draped around America’s neck—a “permanent underclass.”

We call BS.

We are not societal misfits. Not your jaded “ghetto” misinterpretation of life beyond the ivory tower. Never have been. Never will be. It is a story we must now tell for ourselves, for history’s sake.

04/27/2025

The NFL ‘castrated’ Kaepernick
And "we" abandoned him

Kap knelt down for us
But we failed to stand by him

Nine years later,
They sully Shedeur
Besmirch his name
In four rounds
Undrafted
Different sound
Same game

Amid Shedeur Sanders draft controversy, 'I wonder what brother Kaepernick has to say...'

04/24/2025

I did not understand most of the words they sang: An occasional “hallelujah” “Gloria… Gloria in excelsis Deo” (Glory to God in the highest.)

And yet, the spirit evident in their melody and song was familiar. It rose to the high ceiling and descended, resounding with divine clarity, purpose and an irrepressible consuming power. It touched my soul.

'I did not understand most of the words they sang. And yet, the spirit evident in their melody and song was familiar. It rose to the high ceiling and descended. It touched my soul.'

04/21/2025

The children smile
And play.
Slapping hands,
They frolic
In the glory of life.
Bask in it.
Sing in it.
Hold tight its gentle reins,
Riding to destiny unknown.

Boys.
Girls.
Pigtails
And pipe dreams.
John W. Fountain

A poetic essay

04/21/2025

I believe in God. The God who warmed me when exhaust poured from our mouths inside our freezing apartment where the gas was disconnected in the dead of another wind-whipped Chicago winter…
John W. Fountain

'I believe in God. The God who warmed me when exhaust poured from our mouths inside our freezing apartment where the gas was disconnected in the dead of another wind-whipped Chicago winter.'

04/18/2025

THIS ONE IS FOR the fellas. For all the Black boys who, like me, grew up in the Chi on the West Side in North Lawndale—whether K-Town or the “Holy City.” Back when bubble gum and candy were a penny and our young hearts ran free.

…Here lately, perhaps by fate, some of us have reconnected and decided that the time has now come. To assemble as those boys who survived and became men.

The story of “us” has yet to be told our way. From the inside looking in. Rather than by outsiders, probing, deciphering, and misconceiving, then misconstructing a portrait of who they think we are.

04/14/2025

Let no one deter you from your purpose. God is in control. Onward & Upward... In Jesus name.

03/27/2025

Never...