Barack Obama's Community Work

Employment

While working as a community
organizer, Obama was repeatedly asked to join Christian congregations but begged off.

period	event
New York	Obama graduated from Columbia College in 1983 and briefly entered the commercial world.
New York	Obama stayed in New York for a little more than a year after graduation. He was employed by Business International Corporation before moving to the activist New York Public Interest Research Group. Business International Corporation (BI) was a publishing and advisory firm dedicated to assisting American companies in operating abroad. In 1986, Business International was acquired by The Economist Group in London, and eventually merged with The Economist Intelligence Unit. The New York Public Interest Research Group (NYPIRG), innovated by Ralph Nader in the 1970s, is New York State's largest student-directed consumer, environmental and government reform organization. It is a not-for-profit group, established to effect policy reforms while training students and other New Yorkers to be advocates. Since 1973, NYPIRG has played the key role in fighting for more than 120 public interest laws and executive orders.
Chicago	The Chicago Period began in 1985, when some white leftists were looking for someone who could recruit in a black neighborhood in the south side of Chicago and Obama answered a help-wanted ad for a position as a community organizer for the Developing Communities Project (DCP) of the Calumet Community Religious Conference (CCRC) in Chicago. Obama was 24 years old, unmarried, and according to his memoir, searching for a genuine African-American community. Both the CCRC and the DCP were built on the Alinsky model of community agitation, wherein paid organizers learned how to "rub raw the sores of discontent," in Alinsky's words. Alinsky viewed as supremely important the role of the organizer, or master manipulator, whose guidance was responsible for setting the agendas of the People’s Organization. "The organizer," Alinsky wrote, "is in a true sense reaching for the highest level for which man can reach -- to create, to be a 'great creator,' to play God." One of Obama's early mentors in the Alinsky method was Mike Kruglik, who had this to say to an interviewer of The New Republic, about Obama: "He was a natural, the undisputed master of agitation, who could engage a room full of recruiting targets in a rapid-fire Socratic dialogue, nudging them to admit that they were not living up to their own standards. As with the panhandler, he could be aggressive and confrontational. With probing, sometimes personal questions, he would pinpoint the source of pain in their lives, tearing down their egos just enough before dangling a carrot of hope that they could make things better." The agitator's job, according to Alinsky, is first to bring folks to the "realization" that they are indeed miserable, that their misery is the fault of unresponsive governments or greedy corporations, then help them to bond together to demand what they deserve, and to make such an almighty stink that the dastardly governments and corporations will see imminent "self-interest" in granting whatever it is that will cause the harassment to cease. In these methods, euphemistically labeled "community organizing," Obama had a four-year education, which he often says was the best education he ever got anywhere. For three years Barack Obama was the director of Developing Communities Project, an institutionally based community organization on Chicago’s far south side. He has also been a consultant and instructor for the Gamaliel Foundation, an organizing institute working throughout the Midwest.
Chicago	During this period, Obama worked at a Chicago housing project, Altgeld Gardens in 1985, where he refined his skills. Here, Obama worked as an ethnic activist, helping the impoverished black community wring more money and services from the government. That government money was wrecking the morals of the housing-project residents seems obvious from his book, but Obama never comes out and says it. Numerous white moderates assume that a man of Obama’s superlative intelligence must be kidding when he espouses his cast-iron liberalism on race-related policies, but they don’t understand the emotional imperative of racial loyalty to him. His mentor during this period was the veteran local agitator, Hazel Johnson, who disputes the version of events at Altgeld Gardens that Obama wrote of in his book and tells audiences at his political gatherings.
Chicago	For those unfamiliar with Saul Alinsky, his writings on radicalism and social change will chill the bones of not only conservatives, but more moderate liberals: "Any revolutionary CHANGE must be preceded by a passive, affirmative, non-challenging attitude toward CHANGE among the mass of our people. They must feel so frustrated, so defeated, so lost, so futureless in the prevailing system that they are willing to let go of the past and CHANGE the future." "This acceptance is the reformation essential to any revolution. To bring on this reformation requires that the organizer work inside the system, among not only the middle class but the 40 per cent of American families –- more than seventy million people -– whose income range from $5,000 to $10,000 a year [in 1971]." And what word comes out of Obama's mouth the most -- why, CHANGE!
Alinsky	Here is a wonderful backgrounder on Hillary, Obama and the cult of Alinsky -- the weird thing, it's published in the Tehran Times in English.
Chicago	In 1988, while working as a community organizer, Obama was repeatedly asked to join Christian congregations but begged off. "I remained a reluctant skeptic, doubtful of my own motives ..." he wrote. When Obama first undertook his agitating work in Chicago's South Side poor neighborhoods, he was un-churched. Yet his office was in a Church and most of the folks he needed to agitate and organize were Church people -- pastors and congregants -- who took their churches and their church-going very seriously. Again and again, he was asked by pastors and church ladies, "Where do you go to Church, young man?" It was a question he dodged for a while, but finally he relented and joined a church. Obama didn't join just any church, but a huge black nationalist church, the Trinity United Church of Christ (UCC). Its pastor, Rev. Jeremiah A. Wright, unabashedly preaches a "black" gospel. The crosscurrents appealed to Obama. He came to believe that the church could not only compensate for the limitations of Alinsky-style organizing but could help answer the nagging identity problem he had come to Chicago to solve. "It was a powerful program, this cultural community," he wrote, "one more pliant than simple nationalism, more sustaining than my own brand of organizing." So it is very clear. Obama joined Trinity UCC for political reasons.
Harvard	Obama interrupts his activist career to attend Harvard Law School.
Chicago	Obama is a summer intern at the corporate law firm Sidley Austin LLP in Chicago where he meets Michelle Robinson, his summer adviser -- and Michelle's friend and fellow counsel, the left-wing terrorist Bernadine Dohrn.
Harvard	Obama graduates from Harvard Law School in 1991 and receive his Juris Doctor law degree, magna cum laude.
Chicago	Obama moves back to Chicago where he takes a job with the civil rights law firm, Davis, Miner, Barnhill and Galland. Obama is a member of the Illinois Bar. He was admitted on December 17, 1991. He is voluntarily inactive, with no record of discipline or pending proceedings. You can check the status of Illinois lawyers at www.iardc.org. People who knew Obama in the early 1990s said he made it clear that he aspired to run for public office. For that, the firm, now called Miner, Barnhill & Gallard, was a good place to start. The firm has been a force in Chicago politics. Carol Moseley Braun, one of Obama's predecessors in the U.S. Senate from Illinois, briefly worked there. Miner was counsel to the late Chicago Mayor Harold Washington. Allison Davis, a co-founder of the firm who since has left, is a major Chicago developer. Miner, Davis and other partners and clients have been a regular source of campaign money for Obama, giving him $100,000 over the years. Miner said he organized fundraisers for Obama's first state Senate run, his 2000 congressional campaign and his 2004 U.S. Senate race. Davis, who could not be reached for comment, has been a partner with other Chicago developers who also are clients of the firm and are Obama backers. One Davis partner was Antoin "Tony" Rezko, a major Obama patron who has now been convicted in a federal public corruption case. Over the next several years, Obama represents victims of housing and employment discrimination. The law firm says Obama logged 3,723 billable hours during his tenure from 1993 to 2004, most of it during the first four years. In 1995, the year his first book came out, Obama started his successful run for the Illinois state Senate, and stopped working full-time once he took office in 1997. He remained associated with the firm until he was elected to the U.S. Senate nearly eight years later.
Chicago	Obama also works on voting-rights legislation for a small public-interest firm.
Chicago	He also began teaching at the University of Chicago Law School, although he declined to pursue a tenure-track post, hoping to save time for politics. During the presidential campaign, Obama would consistently and falsely claims that he was a law professor. The Sun-Times reported that, 'Several direct-mail pieces issued for Obama's primary [Senate] campaign said he was a law professor at the University of Chicago. He is not. He is a senior lecturer (now on leave) at the school. In academia, there is a vast difference between the two titles. Details matter.' In academia, there's a significant difference: professors have tenure while lecturers do not. The University of Chicago Law School has now posted a statement declaring his claims semantically sound: "The Law School has received many media requests about Barack Obama, especially about his status as 'Senior Lecturer.' From 1992 until his election to the U.S. Senate in 2004, Barack Obama served as a professor in the Law School. He was a Lecturer from 1992 to 1996. He was a Senior Lecturer from 1996 to 2004, during which time he taught three courses per year. Senior Lecturers are considered to be members of the Law School faculty and are regarded as professors, although not full-time or tenure-track. The title of Senior Lecturer is distinct from the title of Lecturer, which signifies adjunct status. Like Obama, each of the Law School's Senior Lecturers have high-demand careers in politics or public service, which prevent full-time teaching. Several times during his 12 years as a professor in the Law School, Obama was invited to join the faculty in a full-time tenure-track position, but he declined."
The Book	If one had to name Barack Obama's chief accomplishments in public life, his two books would outweigh anything he has done in politics. The New York Times had a fascinating article, The Story of Obama, Written by Obama, on the front page of Sunday's paper. The piece points out that Obama's attraction to the masses is driven not by what he has accomplished in the real world (especially in the Senate), but by his ability to tell a tale -- his own. Unspoken by the NYT is that this phenomena does have its place in history -- it is the very definition of "cult of personality." After he was elected as the first black president of the Harvard Law Review. He was approached by an agent, Jane Dystel, who got him a contract for a book. Obama missed his deadline, and Dystel promptly got him another contract and a $40,000 advance for the same book. Obama had been given free use of an office at the University of Chicago, along with a law school fellowship and the aforementioned advance, to finish his first manuscript. Obama and Dystel worked mostly by telephone and by manuscripts sent by Federal Express between New York and Chicago. Obama, an inveterate journal writer who had published poems in a college literary magazine but had never attempted a book, struggled to finish. His half-sister, Maya Soetoro-Ng, said he eventually retreated to Bali for several months with his wife, Michelle, "to find a peaceful sanctuary where there were no phones." Ah, retreating to Bali after getting a $40,000 advance and while receiving income from a law school fellowship -- a tough life indeed. We can all empathize. Oh, and about the "truthfulness of the book"? In the introduction, Mr. Obama acknowledged his use of pseudonyms, composite characters, approximated dialogue and events out of chronological order. He was writing at a time well before a recent series of publishing scandals involving fabrication in memoirs. "He was trying to be careful of people's feelings," said Deborah Baker, the editor on the first paperback edition of the book. "The fact is, it all had a sort of larger truth going on that you couldn't make up." That's how we judge "truth" now? Ignore the lies used to build the foundation for the benefit of the quest for the nebulous "larger truth"? This article is looking more and more like an apologia for upcoming disclosures that Obama's story as told by himself has more than a few holes in it.
Chicago	In 1995, when Obama gets the chance to run for the state senate in a district that includes Hyde Park, the home of the university and some of the poorest ghettos on the South Side, he jumps at it. A longtime, widely-revered matron of the civil rights movement named Alice Palmer had held the seat for a number of years, but she announced that she wanted to run for Congress. So, Obama seized the opportunity and proclaimed his intention to run for Alice's open seat. Palmer lost the congressional race and decided that she wanted to hang onto that hard-won state senate seat. Most of the community leaders tried to persuade Obama to withdraw and wait his turn; he was a newcomer after all. Instead Obama performed his first real act of political jujitsu. He hired fellow Harvard Law alum and election law expert Thomas Johnson to challenge the nominating petitions of the four other candidates, including the popular incumbent, Alice Palmer, a liberal activist who had held the seat for several years, according to an April 2007 Chicago Tribune report. Obama sent his aides to the courthouse to carefully examine all of Palmer's signatures to see if enough could be disallowed to knock her off the ballot altogether. And indeed, some of Alice's signatures were fake. The aides also found enough other fake signatures on opponents' ballot initiatives to knock them off the ballot as well. By the time Barack Obama walked handily into his state senate seat, everyone there knew him as "the man who knocked off Alice Palmer." Quite a feat indeed for the newcomer, the young whippersnapper with the odd name. And, we're off!