Obama's Political Lessons In Chicago

Just 23 years old, Barack Obama was nicknamed "Baby Face" by mothers as he tried to organize poor people on Chicago's South Side to join together and pressure the city to fix potholes, clean parks and remove asbestos insulation from public housing.

Those small battles among the decayed neighborhoods and the unemployed left by departing steel mills and factories taught a naive new community organizer that politics included backroom deals not discussed in civics books. Those practical lessons formed the basis of his promise today to fix a broken political system and give people hope.

People who worked with Obama then say he was so naive that he initially didn't understand how people with money and prominence got extra attention from politicians.

Over three sometimes frustrating years on the South Side, Obama met community leaders and politicians who later provided crucial help for his political career, but he also concluded that to make real change he would have to leave the streets and study law.

"What Chicago did for him was teach him how to be practical," said Jerry Kellman, who hired Obama for the organizing job. "The world is not always an honest, nice place. If you want to do honest, nice things, you still have to understand what makes things move."

Today, Obama calls his work as a community organizer "the best education I ever had" and often cites it as one of the reasons he would make a good president.

"We have been told by the cynics that you can't build change from the bottom up. But one of the things that I've learned as a community organizer is that it is the American people who are the true agents of change in this country," he said in one speech.

After graduating from Columbia University, Obama got a dull financial-services job in New York City but soon quit and searched for a community organizing job. Eventually, he got a one-of-a-kind offer: Move to a strange city, earn next-to-nothing and help people in run-down neighborhoods tackle their problems.

The offer came from Kellman, head of Chicago's Developing Communities Project, a one-man organization funded by an arm of the Catholic Church and overseen by a coalition of black churches.

Kellman wanted Obama to get to know the people and problems of the largely black South Side and then take over as the project's sole employee. When he arrived in 1985, Obama was paid just over $10,000 plus enough money to buy a beat-up Honda.

At times, Obama's goals were as small as getting a specific pothole repaired. It was a victory just to get administrators to tour the area's dilapidated parks and see for themselves that the sandboxes were littered with broken glass and the tennis courts lacked nets.

Other projects included trying to bring summer jobs to the area or get asbestos removed from a housing complex.

Obama's job was to explain to local residents how to research their problems, contact political officials and answer reporters' questions. He figured out who the community leaders were and tried to get them to join forces.

"He had to train residents to stand up for their own rights," said Loretta Augustine-Herron, who was part of the Developing Communities Project.

Kellman said Obama stepped into a world of turf battles and jealousy, as aldermen, ministers and community activists resisted anything that might reduce their authority. Some people - Kellman called them "bad-mouthing, rumor-mongering scum" - whispered that Obama was a puppet of his Jewish boss or of the Catholic Church.

Obama ignored the whispers and built personal relationships with people open to change, Kellman said, and he learned the notorious reality of Chicago politics: Politicians help organizations that hire their relatives. Organizations assist politicians who arrange government grants. Businesses, if they're smart, hire lawyers and insurance agents who also happen to be local politicians.

While he got a cold reception from some insiders, Obama was welcomed by the older women active in the Developing Communities Project. They watched over the young man adjusting to a new city far from his family in Hawaii.

"We would get on him about not eating because he was thin. He was a little fella," said Yvonne Lloyd, who now lives in Nashville, Tenn.

Obama, his mother a nonbeliever and his father absent, grew up without religion. But as he worked with South Side ministers and devout volunteers, he became interested. Eventually, he began attending Trinity United Church of Christ, a church - not affiliated with his project - whose pastors honored African history and preached the importance of giving back to the community.

A major task during Obama's stay was getting the Chicago Housing Authority to remove asbestos insulation from the Altgeld Gardens housing project. In late 1987, the authority approved $2.2 million in removal contracts.

One community activist, Hazel Johnson, who won national acclaim for battling South Side pollution, said she - not Obama - was the lead voice in pressuring the housing authority to act, although Obama writes about the issue extensively in "Dreams from My Father."

Others maintain Obama played a key role by arranging community meetings and helping Altgeld residents make plans. Obama was part of a delegation of residents who asked a powerful city alderman to intercede with the mayor, according to a 1986 Chicago Sun-Times story.

If Obama wasn't in the spotlight, it's because his job was to help residents help themselves, according to those who worked with him.

"He could have presented the issue better than any of us, but it wouldn't have gotten us the results that we needed," said Augustine-Herron. "You know, you need someone of the community to identify the problem and to present it to the authorities of CHA."

Obama was visible enough to catch the eye of a future political mentor, Illinois Senate President Emil Jones.

Jones recalls Obama's group holding a demonstration down the street from his legislative office. "I saw him out there, so I went and talked to him and said, 'Why don't you come in the office?"' said Jones.

When Obama was elected to the state legislature, Jones gave him important assignments. When Obama wanted to run for the U.S. Senate, Jones threw his considerable influence behind the longshot candidate.

Lloyd, one of the South Side women who treated Obama like a son, said she wasn't surprised he later ran for office.

"In the back of his mind," she said, "it was politics, I think that was always there ... because he wanted to see things change."

After three years on the South Side, he left to attend Harvard Law School and study "things that would help me bring about real change ... power's currency in all its intricacy," Obama wrote in his memoir "Dreams from My Father."