Kurt Nicklas
2008-09-08 23:15:14 UTC
South Side Veterans for Truth
By JAMES TARANTO
September 8, 2008
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB122075869303807633.html?mod=Best+of+the+Web+Today
Last week we wrote that " 'community organizer' is to Barack Obama
what 'war hero' was to John Kerry." We didn't know the half of it.
Kerry staked his claim to the presidency on the pretense that he was a
war hero, notwithstanding his showy repudiation decades earlier of the
war and his fellow veterans. According to a new exposé in the liberal
New Republic, Obama, before embarking on a career in politics,
similarly, albeit quietly, repudiated "community organizing," only to
re-embrace it decades later, apparently out of political expediency.
TNR's John Judis tracked down Jerry Kellman, who in 1985 "hired Obama
to organize residents of Chicago's South Side." Kellman describes a
conversation the two "community organizers" had at a conference on
"social justice" in October 1987:
"[Obama] wanted to marry and have children, and to have a stable
income," Kellman recalls.
But Obama was also worried about something else. He told Kellman that
he feared community organizing would never allow him "to make major
changes in poverty or discrimination." To do that, he said, "you
either had to be an elected official or be influential with elected
officials." In other words, Obama believed that his chosen profession
was getting him nowhere, or at least not far enough. . . .
And so, Obama told Kellman, he had decided to leave community
organizing and go to law school.
Another way of putting this might be that Obama left community
organizing because he wanted a job in which he had actual
responsibilities (and, of course, earned more money).
But Obama did not decide only that "community organizing" was not for
him. Judis reports the future senator took part in a September 1989
symposium in which he "rejected the guiding principles of community
organizing: the elevation of self-interest over moral vision; the
disdain for charismatic leaders and their movements; and the suspicion
of politics itself." Later, Obama "would begin to construct a
political identity for himself that was not simply different from his
identity as a community organizer--but was, in fact, its very
opposite."
Judis offers the closest thing we've heard to a job description for
"community organizers." What they do, he writes, is "unite people of
different backgrounds around common goals and use their collective
strength to wring concessions from the powers that be." To help
illuminate this rather vague description, Judis also enumerates some
of the tasks Obama and his colleagues undertook.
Before Obama's arrival in Chicago, Kellman and his "partner," Mike
Kruglik, set out "to revive the region's manufacturing base--and
preserve what remained of its steel industry--by working with unions
and church groups to pressure companies and the city; but those hopes
were quickly dashed." Apparently the presence of "community
organizers" is not a strong selling point for companies making
location decisions. Go figure.
Obama set his sights lower, but still missed the mark. He "got
community members to demand a job center that would provide job
referrals, but there were few jobs to distribute." Then "he tried to
create what he called a 'second-level consumer economy' . . .
consisting of shops, restaurants, and theaters. This, too, went
nowhere."
These efforts at economic development having failed, Obama "began to
focus on providing social services for Altgeld Gardens," a government-
owned and -operated apartment complex:
"We didn't yet have the power to change state welfare policy, or
create local jobs, or bring substantially more money into the
schools," [Obama] wrote. "But what we could do was begin to improve
basic services at Altgeld--get the toilets fixed, the heaters working,
the windows repaired." Obama helped the residents wage a successful
campaign to get the Chicago Housing Authority to promise to remove
asbestos from the units; but, after an initial burst of activity, the
city failed to keep its promise. (As of last year, some residences
still had not been cleared of asbestos.)
It is both funny and scary that one of America's major political
parties would offer this record of sheer futility as its nominee's
chief qualification to be president of the United States. Even more
striking, though, is how alien the world in which Obama operated was
by comparison with the world in which normal Americans live.
Reader, when your toilet breaks, do you wait around for some Ivy
League hotshot to show up and organize a meeting so that you can use
your collective strength to wring concessions from the powers that be?
Or do you call a plumber?
As a "community organizer," Obama toiled within a subculture of such
abject dependency that even home repairs were "social services,"
provided by government (or, in Obama's Chicago, not provided). It was
an utterly bizarre intersection between the cultural elite and the
underclass. By Judis's account, Obama's Columbia degree was useless.
He would have been more helpful if he'd gone to vocational school
instead.
Judis quotes an Altgeld resident as telling Obama, "Ain't nothing
gonna change. . . . We just gonna concentrate on saving our money so
we can move outta here as fast as we can." Certainly no one can fault
Obama for doing the same thing. But what did Obama move outta there to
do? To become a politician--specifically, an "idealistic" politician
who wants "to make major changes in poverty." Guys like that created
this mess in the first place.
In his political career, has Obama done or even said anything to
suggest that he has a different approach to "poverty," one that would
reduce dependency rather than promote it? His recent rediscovery of
the glories of "community organizing" certainly isn't an encouraging
sign.
By JAMES TARANTO
September 8, 2008
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB122075869303807633.html?mod=Best+of+the+Web+Today
Last week we wrote that " 'community organizer' is to Barack Obama
what 'war hero' was to John Kerry." We didn't know the half of it.
Kerry staked his claim to the presidency on the pretense that he was a
war hero, notwithstanding his showy repudiation decades earlier of the
war and his fellow veterans. According to a new exposé in the liberal
New Republic, Obama, before embarking on a career in politics,
similarly, albeit quietly, repudiated "community organizing," only to
re-embrace it decades later, apparently out of political expediency.
TNR's John Judis tracked down Jerry Kellman, who in 1985 "hired Obama
to organize residents of Chicago's South Side." Kellman describes a
conversation the two "community organizers" had at a conference on
"social justice" in October 1987:
"[Obama] wanted to marry and have children, and to have a stable
income," Kellman recalls.
But Obama was also worried about something else. He told Kellman that
he feared community organizing would never allow him "to make major
changes in poverty or discrimination." To do that, he said, "you
either had to be an elected official or be influential with elected
officials." In other words, Obama believed that his chosen profession
was getting him nowhere, or at least not far enough. . . .
And so, Obama told Kellman, he had decided to leave community
organizing and go to law school.
Another way of putting this might be that Obama left community
organizing because he wanted a job in which he had actual
responsibilities (and, of course, earned more money).
But Obama did not decide only that "community organizing" was not for
him. Judis reports the future senator took part in a September 1989
symposium in which he "rejected the guiding principles of community
organizing: the elevation of self-interest over moral vision; the
disdain for charismatic leaders and their movements; and the suspicion
of politics itself." Later, Obama "would begin to construct a
political identity for himself that was not simply different from his
identity as a community organizer--but was, in fact, its very
opposite."
Judis offers the closest thing we've heard to a job description for
"community organizers." What they do, he writes, is "unite people of
different backgrounds around common goals and use their collective
strength to wring concessions from the powers that be." To help
illuminate this rather vague description, Judis also enumerates some
of the tasks Obama and his colleagues undertook.
Before Obama's arrival in Chicago, Kellman and his "partner," Mike
Kruglik, set out "to revive the region's manufacturing base--and
preserve what remained of its steel industry--by working with unions
and church groups to pressure companies and the city; but those hopes
were quickly dashed." Apparently the presence of "community
organizers" is not a strong selling point for companies making
location decisions. Go figure.
Obama set his sights lower, but still missed the mark. He "got
community members to demand a job center that would provide job
referrals, but there were few jobs to distribute." Then "he tried to
create what he called a 'second-level consumer economy' . . .
consisting of shops, restaurants, and theaters. This, too, went
nowhere."
These efforts at economic development having failed, Obama "began to
focus on providing social services for Altgeld Gardens," a government-
owned and -operated apartment complex:
"We didn't yet have the power to change state welfare policy, or
create local jobs, or bring substantially more money into the
schools," [Obama] wrote. "But what we could do was begin to improve
basic services at Altgeld--get the toilets fixed, the heaters working,
the windows repaired." Obama helped the residents wage a successful
campaign to get the Chicago Housing Authority to promise to remove
asbestos from the units; but, after an initial burst of activity, the
city failed to keep its promise. (As of last year, some residences
still had not been cleared of asbestos.)
It is both funny and scary that one of America's major political
parties would offer this record of sheer futility as its nominee's
chief qualification to be president of the United States. Even more
striking, though, is how alien the world in which Obama operated was
by comparison with the world in which normal Americans live.
Reader, when your toilet breaks, do you wait around for some Ivy
League hotshot to show up and organize a meeting so that you can use
your collective strength to wring concessions from the powers that be?
Or do you call a plumber?
As a "community organizer," Obama toiled within a subculture of such
abject dependency that even home repairs were "social services,"
provided by government (or, in Obama's Chicago, not provided). It was
an utterly bizarre intersection between the cultural elite and the
underclass. By Judis's account, Obama's Columbia degree was useless.
He would have been more helpful if he'd gone to vocational school
instead.
Judis quotes an Altgeld resident as telling Obama, "Ain't nothing
gonna change. . . . We just gonna concentrate on saving our money so
we can move outta here as fast as we can." Certainly no one can fault
Obama for doing the same thing. But what did Obama move outta there to
do? To become a politician--specifically, an "idealistic" politician
who wants "to make major changes in poverty." Guys like that created
this mess in the first place.
In his political career, has Obama done or even said anything to
suggest that he has a different approach to "poverty," one that would
reduce dependency rather than promote it? His recent rediscovery of
the glories of "community organizing" certainly isn't an encouraging
sign.