On the Streets of Chicago, a Candidate Comes of Age

[BeyondGeography]

As a community organizer, Obama was a pragmatic leader
By Kenneth T. Walsh
Posted 8/26/07
CHICAGO—Far from the centers of power and privilege that have spawned so many commanders in chief, it's an unlikely place to incubate a future president. But the seemingly endless clumps of drab brick apartment buildings and patchy lawns on Chicago's South Side are where Sen. Barack Obama learned some of his most enduring lessons about politics, leadership, and the paths to social change. His experiences here, in fact, amount to a Rosetta stone that reveals the essence of the man who has catapulted out of nowhere into contention for the Democratic presidential nomination for 2008.

...After graduating from Columbia University in 1983 with a major in political science, Obama worked as a financial consultant in New York City. But he was bored—and drawn to public service. In 1985, he moved to Chicago to work with local churches organizing job training and other programs for poor and working-class residents of Altgeld Gardens, a public housing project where 5,300 African-Americans tried to survive amid shuttered steel mills, a nearby landfill, a putrid sewage treatment plant, and a pervasive feeling that the white establishment of Chicago would never give them a fair shake.

...Obama was a stranger to the area but caught on quickly by showing humility and a strong work ethic. "We knew what was wrong in the community but we didn't know how to get something done about it," recalls Yvonne Lloyd, 78, who worked with Obama. Obama insisted on "staying in the background while he empowered us." By Obama's own admission, there were few big victories. But whether it was getting the city to fill potholes, provide summer jobs, or remove asbestos from the apartments or persuading the apartment managers to repair toilets, pipes, and ceilings, Obama encouraged residents to come up with their own priorities with the gentle admonition: "It's your community."

...Perhaps his most confrontational effort was to pressure city authorities to remove asbestos from the apartments in 1986. When the on-site manager didn't take action, Obama nudged the residents into confronting city housing officials in two angry public meetings downtown. These generated "a victory of sorts," Obama said later, as workers soon began sealing the asbestos in the buildings. But the project gradually ran out of steam and money. In fact, some tenants still have asbestos in their homes, according to current resident Linda Randle, 53, who worked with Obama in the '86 anti-asbestos campaign.

Faced with such frustrations, after three years in Chicago, Obama decided to apply his skills in the wider world. He entered Harvard Law School in 1988, became the first African-American president of Harvard Law Review in 1990, and earned his law degree in 1991. He returned to Chicago to work as a civil rights lawyer and teach at the University of Chicago Law School. He eventually won a seat in the Illinois State Senate and was elected to the U.S. Senate in 2004.

http://www.usnews.com/usnews/news/articles/070826/3obama.htm