Originally published in the Valley News on December 22, 2007
Obama Advocates Return to Unity
"He was bright, he identified with people who were left out, he was idealistic and believed things could be better; he was an excellent listener and he formed relationships easily," Kellman said in a recent interview. "(From) the beginning, I knew he would work out."
Obama had taken a circuitous route to Chicago. He grew up in Hawaii, his father from Kenya and mother from Kansas, and spent four childhood years in Jakarta, Indonesia. After graduating from Columbia University in 1983 with a political science degree, Obama took a job as a financial consultant in New York City. He grew bored, and sent an application to Kellman.
For $20,000 and a beater car, Obama took a job working the Chicago neighborhoods. Steel mills had closed, drug use was rising and unemployment was rampant.
Obama walked into churches like Love's, asked local leaders what their priorities were, left, and went to the next church. Soon, he began organizing meetings of local pastors. Obama was able to persuade church leaders to sit down together.
"Those of us who thought we were so different, the Catholic Polish pastor and the African-American Baptist preacher, we sat across the table and suddenly, we're not so different," Love said. "It was really eye opening. He helped us learn how to get together."
From those meetings and other outreach efforts, Obama formed a coalition, willing to try to persuade City Hall and other powers to take their concerns seriously.
One day, a community member brought Obama a notice, saying management was going to remove asbestos that had been discovered in the offices of Altgeld Gardens, a local housing project. If the offices had asbestos, the person asked Obama, could the apartment units, too? Shouldn't somebody ask?
Obama knew he had stumbled on an organizer's dream — a concrete issue around which he could rally the community.
As it became increasingly clear that management was ignoring the residents, even after asbestos was found in their homes, Obama pushed residents to confront the problem while working behind the scenes to build momentum for a confrontation.
The night before a scheduled meeting with the Chicago Housing Authority to discuss the problem, Obama was anticipating a crowd, he recalls in his autobiography Dreams of My Father.
Only a few people showed up. Obama fired up his van and dragged people out of their homes to the meeting. Buoyed by a few members of the media they had summoned, the project residents won pledges to remove the hazardous material.
"They trusted him because he listened well and seemed to care about what they cared about," Kellman said. "He had to find common-ground issues that spread to a large number of people, not just a small minority of people."
Obama's task was to stay out of the spotlight and get others to take the lead. Apparently he was successful at maintaining a low profile. When reporters have asked Love recently for pictures of young Obama at those meetings, the pastor can't find any.
To be sure, the successes in Chicago — which also included gains in job training and education — were not revolutionary, and they were gained with help from other organizers and community volunteers.
Obama admits as much in his book, and says he ultimately realized that to make any big changes, he would be in a better position if he went to law school. After three years of organizing, he left for Harvard Law School.
"He matured a lot," Kellman said. "He had become more practical. He was still idealistic, but he had a better grasp that while he may be idealistic, a lot of other people aren't."
The Speeches
Obama's ability to rally a crowd was on display 20 years later during a July appearance at Sunapee Harbor.
The circumstances were far from ideal. It was in the middle of the afternoon in the middle of a workweek, and the New Hampshire primary was still six months away. It rained hard before anyone showed up, and it rained hard while Obama spoke. The campaign, which had not arranged for a backup indoor location, set up a few overhanging covers, but most of the crowd was forced to stand in a tiny gazebo. Many got soaked.