Crossing Paths Daily: Obama and Ayers Shared an Office (Update: For Three Years)

Verum Serum ^ | 10/16/08 | Verum Serum

[Jack Bull]

Crossing Paths Daily: Obama and Ayers Shared an Office (Update: For Three Years)

John on October 16, 2008

It’s nice to be the guy getting tips for once instead of the guy sending them. Yesterday I got two great tips from Morgen, a reader who had found my earlier posts digging into the Obama Ayers connection. Both tips appear to check out and the second one is, I think, big news.

First, the smaller one…

This Chicago Annenberg Challenge website from 2002 shows the total amount of funds given to Bill Ayers’ Small Schools Workshop from 1995 to 2001. The amount is not the $175K I had reported earlier. According to this page, the total given under Barack Obama’s direct supervision was $1,056,162. Adding that amount to the money given by the Joyce Foundation and Woods Fund during Obama’s tenure brings the grand total to $1,968,718. Just shy of two million dollars! That’s a lot of scratch, to put it bluntly. And don’t forget, this doesn’t count the 3/4 million that went to John Ayers during the same time period.

Now here’s the second and bigger break, again big hat tip to Morgen for his work on this…

Bill Ayers and Barack Obama shared an office. Ayers’ Small Schools Workshop, the one Obama directed all that money too is located at 115 S. Sangamon Street, Chicago, Illinois 60607 [Note the link is to a year 2000 version of their website]. Here’s a screengrab from the website’s footer:

In 1998, the address for the Chicago Annenberg Challenge, where Obama presumably worked, was 115 S. Sangamon Street, Chicago, Illinios 60607. Here’s a copy of their 1998 tax return with that address:

The CAC moved to a new address sometime in 1999 or 2000, but the shared office probably persisted for at least three years. I can’t say for sure because 1998 is the earliest tax information available online. [Correction: I can say for sure that they shared the same building for the years 1995-1998. Here is a 1995 progress report from the CAC with the same address.]

Now remember, the NY Times described Obama and Ayers as having “crossed paths.” Ben LaBolt, Obama’s spokesman said:

Mr. LaBolt said the men first met in 1995 through the education project, the Chicago Annenberg Challenge, and have encountered each other occasionally in public life or in the neighborhood.

I’m going to suggest that two guys working in the same building for a period of years probably crossed paths pretty often. For all we know, they had lunch together on a daily basis. Maybe, in an effort at conservation, they were even carpool buddies. After all, Ayers is a guy from Obama’s neighborhood.

Would someone at the Times like to contact Mr. LaBolt for a follow-up?

Update: Made the correction above. Also, Obama was a state senator from 1996-2004. However, he still likely spent some significant time at the Sangamon street address, especially in 1995. But even after his election he would presumably be working on his CAC duties at the Sangamon office, not from some other location.

According to this letter dated 1995, Obama’s office was on the 3rd floor:

And according to this memo dated 1996, Small Schools Workshop was also on the 3rd floor:

Do you think maybe Obama and Bill Ayers ran into each other once in a while?

[BIOCHEMKY]

In 1983, unrepentent domestic terrorist, Ayers, and convicted felon and unrepentent domestic terrorist, Dohrn, move to New York City so Ayers can attend the Bank Street College of Education which is located at 610 West 112th Street.

In 1983, Barack graduates with a B.A. in Political Science and International Studies from Columbia University in New York City. Prior to graduation, Barack wrote many letters of interest, but received no job offers.
From 1983-1984 for a little less than one year, Obama’s first job after graduating from Columbia University was with a company called Business Financial Corporation. Obama held a position as a research associate in its financial services division, where he edited Financing Foreign Operations, a global reference service, and wrote for Business International Money Report, a weekly financial newsletter. Business Financial Corporation was persistently and erroneously identified as a front operation for the Central Intelligence Agency. Part of the company lore was that the unusual role of researching politics and economics from abroad during the 1950s and 1960s “proved” that the company was a CIA front, but no firm evidence ever surfaced.
In his book, Dreams from My Father, Obama wrote “On the spot [at a Lexington Avenue diner], he [Gerald Kellman, the man from the Calumet Community Religious Conference in Chicago], offered me the job which involved organizing conferences on drugs, unemployment, [and] housing. Facilitating dialogue, he called it. I declined his generous offer, deciding I needed a job closer to the streets. After the meeting, I took the long way home, along the East River promenade.”
“I spent three months in 1984-1985 working [on a salary of $10,000/year] for the New York Public Interest Research Group (NYPIRG), a Ralph Nader offshoot up in Harlem, trying to mobilize minority students at City College about the importance of recycling. [NYPIRG is New York State’s largest student-directed consumer, environmental and government reform organization. NYPIRG is a nonpartisan, not-for-profit group established to effect policy reforms while training students and other New Yorkers to be advocates.]

Then [I spent] a week passing out flyers for an assemblyman’s race in Brooklyn — the candidate lost [Vita Lopez won] and I never did get paid.” [Interestingly, in the Democratic Presidential primary race in 2008, the opponent in the 1984 Assemblyman’s race who won, Vito Lopez, endorses IL Senator Barack Obama over NY Senator Hillary Clinton.]

In 1984, unrepentent domestic terrorist, Ayers graduates with an M.A. in Early Childhood Education from Bank Street College of Education at 610 West 112th Street in New York City.

From 1984-1987, unrepentent domestic terrorist, Ayers attends graduate school in the School of Education at Columbia University located at 116th Street and Broadway. While at Columbia, Ayers also works as an instructor in the Pre-service Program in Elementary Education in the Department of Curriculum and Teaching in the Teachers College (1985-1987).

From 1984-1988, unrepentent domestic terrorist, Bernardine Dohrn, is hired by Newton Minow as a paralegal in the Sidley Austin LLP Law Firm in Chicago while she attempts to get admitted to the New York or Illinois State Bar Association. Dohrn got the position because of the influence of her father-in-law, wealthy Chicago businessman, Tom Ayers. Dohrn would not renounce her domestic terrorism so she is not admitted to either Bar Association and she must work as a paralegal.

In 1985, Gerald (Jerry) Kellman at Calumet Community Religious Conference in Chicago receives a grant from the Woods Fund, a Chicago foundation that gives grants for community organizing, to hire a new community organizer for the organization he heads called the Developing Communities Project (DCP). Later, Barack Obama and unrepentant domestic terrorist, Bill Ayers, sit together on the Board of the Woods Fund.

In 1985, Barack “spotted an intriguing help-wanted ad in The New York Times. The Calumet Community Religious Conference (CCRC), a group that aimed to convert the black churches of Chicago’s South Side into agents of social change, was looking for a community organizer to run the group’s inner-city arm, the Developing Communities Project (DCP). I soon arranged to meet in New York with the organizer who was heading up the job search.”

From 1985-1988, Barack works in Chicago as a community organizer for $10,000/year and $2,000 to buy a used car. Having been hired by Gerald (Jerry) Kellman, a social activist who recruited him, Obama takes a staff (community organizer) position with the Developing Communities Project whose personnel work with churches to organize job training and other programs for poor and working-class residents of Roseland and Altgeld Gardens public housing projects on the city’s industrial far South Side. He also organizes workers who had lost their jobs due to the steel mill and factory closings. Perhaps his most confrontational effort was to pressure city authorities to remove asbestos from the apartments in 1986. When the on-site manager didn’t take action, Obama nudged the residents into confronting city housing officials in two angry public meetings.

In 1987, needing a church affiliation to further his community organizing work, Barack Obama joins Chicago’s Trinity United Church of Christ which is headed by the foul mouthed, racist, Farrakhan-embracing, Black Liberationist-teaching Jeremiah Wright.

In 1987, unrepentent domestic terrorist, Ayers, graduates with an M.A. AND an Ed.D. in Education and Curriculum from the Teacher’s College of Columbia University in New York City and moves back to Chicago.

In 1987, Michelle Robinson (Obama) is hired by Newton Minow as a summer associate in the Sidley Austin LLP Law Firm in Chicago. While there, she works with and gets to know unrepentent domestic terrorist, Bernardine Dohrn, (wife of Bill Ayers), who is a paralegal in the same firm.

[A plausible scenario for how Ayers and Obama meet is the following]
In the fall of 1987, Obama working in his role of community organizer for the Developing Communities Project (DCP) is introduced to unrepentent domestic terrorist, Bill Ayers, while both of them are “working” the same side of the Chicago Teacher’s Union Strike of 1987. Ayers is quoted as saying, that he and Obama met “at a luncheon meeting about school reform in a Chicago skyscraper”.

In 1987, Ayers forms a new organization called the Alliance for Better Chicago Schools (ABCs). to push for Illinois legislature approval of Local School Councils (LSCs). Obama in his role of community organizer for the Developing Communities Project (DCP) also works hard to push for legislative approval of Ayers’ Local School Council (LSC) proposal. Ayers would later Chair the ABCs.
In 1987, Chicago United, a group of businessmen concerned about race and education issues is founded by Bill Ayers’ father, Tom Ayers, who was formerly the CEO of the large Chicago utility, Commonwealth Edison (now Exelon) hosts an Education Summit luncheon. At the luncheon, Chicago United releases a report showing that the most important management reforms it had recommended to the School Board in 1981 had been either ignored or “were buried in classic obfuscation.” Chicago United goes on to join Designs for Change and the Chicago Panel in pushing for school system decentralization.
From 1987-1992, unrepentent domestic terrorist, Ayers, is employed as an Assistant Professor in the Department of Curriculum, Instruction and Evaluation, at the University of Illinois in Chicago.

In 1988, Barack Obama moves to Boston to attend Harvard Law School.

[A likely scenario would be the following:]
In 1989, Barack Obama [takes Tom Ayers—Bill Ayer’s father—up on a favor he’s offered and] takes a position as a summer intern in the Sidley Austin LLP Law Firm in Chicago..

In the summer of 1989, the junior associate who is put in charge of overseeing his work is Michelle Robinson (Obama). Barack is introduced to Michelle by her coworker, friend, and unrepentent domestic terrorist, Bernardine Dohrn.

In 1990, the University of Illinois at Springfield publishes a collection of essays called After Alinsky: Community Organizing in Illinois. Obama contributed a chapter, titled: “Why Organize? Problems and Promise in the Inner City.”

In 1990, Barack is named President of the Harvard Law Review and spends his time in that position writing his autobiography, “Dreams from My Father”. It is now highly suspected that Bill Ayers ghost-wrote this book because of all the alliterative language and ikkustrative language that is used in Obama’s memoir and a book by Bill Ayers.

In 1991, Barack graduates with a J.D. degree from Harvard Law School.

In the spring of 1991, Barack moves back to Chicago.

In 1991, Barack and Michelle Robinson travel to rural Nyangoma-Kogel, Kenya to visit his “Granny”, his Uncle, his older half-brother, George, (who all 3 were present for Barack’s birth in Kenya) and the rest of the family on his father’s side.

From 1992-1995, Obama has a position as a civil rights lawyer with the Davis, Miner, Barnhill & Galland Law Firm in Chicago.

From 1993-2002, Obama serves on the board of the Woods Fund with unrepentent domestic terrorist, Bill Ayers.

etc.
etc.
etc.

[Velveeta]

There’s an email link on their site.
I sent it to them as well.

[Rushmore Rocks]

.....”just a guy in the neighborhood”......

Thanks for the pings.

[word_warrior_bob]

I didn’t get to ask Obama about his relationship with Bill Ayers today, but did ask his chief strategist (and reigning expert on Chicago’s political tribes), David Axelrod, about the two men.

“Bill Ayers lives in his neighborhood. Their kids attend the same school,” he said. “They’re certainly friendly, they know each other, as anyone whose kids go to school together.”

He called Ayers current defense of his 1960s bombings “objectionable, and I think Barack would also say that was objectionable. I don’t think he’s ever had an in-depth discussion [with Ayers] about them.”
And he cast the whole subject in the context of Obama’s broader message.

“We can relitiigate again and again these 40-year-old battles,” he said. “He thinks what was done then was wrong and outrageous, and he believes that you can’t defend the indefensible – but he’s looking forward, he’s not looking back.”

UPDATE: There’s been a bit of confusion about Axelrod’s line on the kids, who — as the Guardian’s Daniel Nasaw noted — aren’t the same age. Obama’s kids went go the the University of Chicago Lab Schools, where Ayers kids, who are much older, had gone. However, Bernardine Dohrn is still active at the school, and an Obama aide said that was the connection.

http://www.politico.com/blogs/bensmith/0208/Ax_on_Ayers.html

SO MANY LIES ABOUT AYERS. Axelrod tried say their “kids went to school together”

Also Obama didn’t know about his past.

Also Obama thought he was “reformed”. Reformed from his past that he DIDN’T KNOW ABOUT.

Obama’s LIES about Ayers make just as good a commercial as Ayers himself.

[reformedliberal]

for future reference:
Email tips & suggestions: Editor@americanglob.com

[theBuckwheat]

The shameful and chilling aspect of this attempted communst coup is how close it has come to being successful.

[Velveeta]

The "Sangamon Street Building" at 115 S Sangamon is not that big:

[midway]

PING

[Brown Deer]

This is not about 60s radicalism. It is about Obama and his long association with Ayers

It is about 0bomba getting on national television and lying about his association with Bill Ayers to the people of the United States of America! Shame on him!

[BIOCHEMKY]

See http://www.cityofchicago.org and then search for “Demolition List 2008”

The building in which the office that Bill Ayers and Barack Obama shared exists is scheduled for demolition by the Planning & Development Dept. of the City of Chicago to make room for a new public park.

Demolition Hold List (2008)

#100252187
Date received: 9/5/08

Address: 115 S. Sangamon
Ward: 2nd
Applicant: Midwest Wrecking
Owner: Chicago Park District
Permit Description: Wreck and remove a 1, 2 and 5-story brick institutional building. Salvage select brick and decorative elements for reuse on site. [as part of city park #542, Sangamon/Adams, to be built on site]

[ColdWater]

Do you think maybe Obama and Bill Ayers ran into each other once in a while?

How about living about a block apart when Obama was at Columbia?

[conservative cat]

AAAAAHHHHH! Sorry. Just preemptive screaming that this will never make the MSM.

[justiceseeker93]

Is the chimney part of the building or part of another building behind it?

The building itself looks maybe 100 years old. Could have been a factory at one time.

[justiceseeker93]

The shameful and chilling aspect of this attempted communist coup is how close it has come to being successful.

You hit the nail on the head.

[Velveeta]

The chimney is part of it. It’s tho old Eye and Ear Infirmary building. You can read more about it and see additional photos here:
http://www.preservationchicago.org/chicago7/2005/eyeear.pdf

[Recon Dad]

I’m going to suggest that two guys working in the same building for a period of years probably crossed paths pretty often

I suggest they first crossed paths in the halls and clubs at Columbia between 1981 and 1983.

Communists like rats feed in the same places.

[Velveeta]

Post 65 link shows some great detail on the building slated for demolition.

[Wuli]

Here’s the deal.

All connections can be traced through academia - the education elite.

That includes the media which consists of so-called “journalists” trained by Marxist professors in places like Columbia University; trained in advanced ADVOCACY journalism; the philosophy of journalism that believes you cannot be an objective, uninvolved observer, but must use your reporting to advocate for: the poor, a minority, women, oppressed people of the world, etc. etc.

So, there is no secret as to why, after the longest primary in the history of the Democrats, it is only now, as we kept pushing, that the dear one’s true and deepest affiliations are coming out. No secret at all. You can be totally sure that most of what is revelation to most Americans, and what concerns most Americans, was completely known by the major players in the media all along.

[Jack Bull]

I guess the NYT missed this in their Ayers/Obama story.

Maybe Peggy Noonan and David Brooks will explain to America why this isn’t a story.

[Lynne]

“This is all so silly. Obama had to get to know Ayers when Ayers wrote Obama’s books. But all this attention on Ayers distracts us from the fact that Obama is going to terrorize us far worse than Ayers did. Ayers was just a warm up for Obama.”

I think it was more like 1988 when Michele worked at the same law firm as Ayers wife, Bernadine Dohrn.

[Weirdad]

Just amazing, great post.

[rockinqsranch]

Thanks for the ping LucyT. This is something that transforms Obama into something solid enough that we can sink a drill bit into and actually leave a distinct hole.

[pissant]

AYers wrote Obama’s first book. Without a doubt.

[CriticalJ]

Just saw the other thread on Obama’s parking tickets.

Someone should check parking tickets around the address. Maybe Ayers and Obama both have some from around there.

[CriticalJ]

http://maps.google.com/maps?q=kirsch%20lake%20thomasville&ie=UTF-8&oe=utf-8&rls=org.mozilla:en-US:official&client=firefox-a&um=1&sa=N&tab=wl

[CriticalJ]

Oops.

Sorry. Trying to post a google map image of the address:

http://maps.google.com/maps?q=115%20S%20Sangamon%20St%2C%20Chicago%2C%20Cook%2C%20Illinois%2060607%2C%20United%20States&ie=UTF-8&oe=utf-8&rls=org.mozilla:en-US:official&client=firefox-a&um=1&sa=N&tab=wl

[SunkenCiv]

Thanks LucyT.

Did Obama really say THAT??
Vanity | 10/18/08 | nully
Posted on 10/18/2008 3:02:52 PM PDT by null and void
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/2109098/posts

[mabelkitty]

Annenberg Foundation also manages Factcheck.org - the only place Obama cites in his smearthefacts.org website.

[forYourChildrenVote4Bush]

Here:

Barack Obama’s review of William Ayers’ book

In December 1997, Barack Obama gave William Ayers’ book on juvenile criminals a rave review.

http://www.zombietime.com/zomblog/?p=64

[Blogger]

google maps has a street view. If it is accurate, it is about 4 windows wide and 4 stories high.

[Son House]

The panels with Dohrn is the point, she is just as bad if not worse an acquaintance, and her relationship to both Øbamas’ is not being scrutinized due to Ayers getting all the attention

[cookcounty]

You can add to Small Schools, Rick Ayers, also an SDS nut who has been involved with Small Schools.

[cookcounty]

Look on Google Street view. It’s a VERY small building. There could not be more than 10 people on that floor.

Crazy, but I used to deliver for FedEx in this area, for a short time.....I can’t recall the building. It’s a little west of Greektown, close to Malcom X Community College.

[cookcounty]

Holy smokes. EIGHT years before 1995!

1987——IMMEDIATELY after they BOTH returned from Columbia in New York......how interesting. Keep digging

[cookcounty]

" Not digitized, but Lots of libraries have microfiche (ready to get your eyes bleary? Should check Columbia U and NY newspaper archives for 1987 as well.

[smokingfrog]

Discover the networks

Stanley Kurtz at National Review Online has documented all this from information found at the Daley Library.

[AliVeritas]

http://gatewaypundit.blogspot.com/

[AliVeritas]

Ok people, time to start reading.

A Kind and Just Parent

http://books.google.com/books?id=-fjb7_3Qjy4C&pg=PA82&dq=ayers+obama&lr=#PPA88,M1

[penelopesire]

BUMP!!

[DeLaine]

ping

[gatewaypundit]

Do you know for sure if this is the same building that was listed at 115 south sangamon?

[Velveeta]

Yes, I’m sure.

It’s slated for demo so there’s lots of information at the Preservation Chicago site.