Community Organizing - A practical career ladder to the U.S. Presidency!

[FrenchieCat]

Vote of Confidence

january 1993
A huge black turnout in November 1992 altered Chicago's electoral landscape—and raised a new political star: a 31-year-old lawyer named Barack Obama.

In the final, climactic buildup to November's general election, with George Bush gaining ground on Bill Clinton in Illinois and the once-unstoppable campaign of senatorial candidate Carol Moseley Braun embroiled in allegations about her mother's Medicare liability, one of the most important local stories managed to go virtually unreported: The number of new voter registrations before the election hit an all-time high. And the majority of those new voters were black. More than 150,000 new African-American voters were added to the city's rolls. In fact, for the first time in Chicago's history-including the heyday of Harold Washington-voter registrations in the 19 predominantly black wards outnumbered those in the city's 19 predominantly white ethnic wards, 676,000 to 526,000.
-snip-
None of this, of course, was accidental. The most effective minority voter registration drive in memory was the result of careful handiwork by Project Vote!, the local chapter of a not-for-profit national organization. "It was the most efficient campaign I have seen in my 20 years in politics," says Sam Burrell, alderman of the West Side's 29th Ward and a veteran of many registration drives.

At the head of this effort was a little-known 31-year-old African-American lawyer, community organizer, and writer: Barack Obama. The son of a black Kenyan political activist and a white American anthropologist, Obama was born in Hawaii, received a degree in political science and English literature from Columbia University, and, in 1990, became the first black editor of the Harvard Law Review. In 1984, after Columbia but before Harvard, Obama moved to Chicago. "I came because of Harold Washington," he says. "I wanted to do community organizing, and I couldn't think of a better city than one as energized and hopeful as Chicago was then." He went to work for a South Side church-affiliated development group and "was heartened by the enthusiasm." But barely three years later, Washington died, and Obama, convinced he needed additional skills, enrolled at Harvard Law School. The African-American community he left, rent by political divisions and without a clear leader, went into a steep decline. By 1991, when Obama, law degree in hand, returned to Chicago to work on a book about race relations-having turned his back on the Supreme Court clerkship that is almost a given for the law review's top editor-black voter registration and turnout in the city were at their lowest points since record keeping began.

Six months after he took the helm of Chicago's Project Vote!, those conditions had been reversed.

more.... http://www.chicagomag.com/Chicago-Magazine/January-1993/Vote-of-Confidence/

[Whalestoe]

1. "Just a community organizer"

:rofl:

Take that Palin.

[elkston]

2. Wow. Nice find. This is the "experience" everyone misses (n/t)

[FrenchieCat]

3. I posted this article many times during the Primaries....

when folks wanted to know how he could win the GE. :)

[elkston]

4. Ah. I first came to DU in the middle of the Primaries, so I prob. missed it.

[DrToast]

5. It's sort of like being a small-town mayor....

...except small-town mayors don't get to be President.

[FrenchieCat]

6. Correctomundo!

[DrToast]

7. I loved watching Roland Martin take it to Palin and Guilani last night...

He was so pissed when they were mocking the community organizers during the Republican convention. He said his parents were community organizers and you could tell how hurt he was.

Last night he was saying how the ground game, or a bunch of community organizers, crushed McCain/Palin.