The President-elect has said that he learnt more from the locals when working in the Chicago
projects than they learnt from him. Those who remember him say that he made little impact
Posted on 01/15/2009 9:52:11 PM PST by bruinbirdman
On the far south side of Chicago, separated by more than 20 miles and a vast chasm in wealth from the city's soaring skyline, is a collection of squat brick buildings where Barack Obama says he found his calling.
The President-elect has said that he learnt more from the locals when working in the Chicago
projects than they learnt from him. Those who remember him say that he made little impact
The Altgeld Gardens public housing project reeks of decay, fear and despair. At the only shop serving its 2,000 homes, water pours in from the roof on to sodden cardboard below while a high Perspex barricade protects staff from assault and cheap merchandise from theft.
Lincoln King shuffles in with snow on his boots and Mr Obama's name stitched in big letters on his hat. He is 49 but looks a lot older as he carefully counts out his money for a six-pack of beer at ten in the morning. Did he know that the President-elect worked here in the mid-1980s? “No.” Does he care? “I don't remember him.” Will having a black President make any difference? “This place don't change much. Same old s***.”
Mr Obama says that he “grew up to be a man” and received an education at Altgeld Gardens “better than anything I got at Harvard Law School” - where he retreated after working these mean, dark streets.
Now, as he prepares to be sworn in as President, this blighted housing project may become both a symbol of the challenge and a test of his success in healing America's divisions. Mr Obama devoted more than 150 pages of his first autobiography, Dreams From My Father, to a chronicle of his efforts as a community organiser here. As the future
(Excerpt) Read more at timesonline.co.uk ...
By the end of his first (and only) term, we will be lucky if as a nation we are in any better shape than he left Altgeld Gardens.
It sure would be interesting to talk to those ladies that “mothered” him when he was there.
Altgeld Gardens, Haiti, Africa....honestly, what is the difference? All just a complete mess......
This guy is a complete phony. He had a hand in turfing out loads of residents from the worst Chicago housing projects. They were shipped to various downstate towns and have wreaked havoc on their new towns. The crime rate has skyrocketed in the small town where I graduated high school. Please, God, don’t let him do to our country what he did to the small towns across Illinois.
I think a lot of this comes from a victim mentality, and that’s what community organizers do, they foster that us against them attitude that makes common purpose and effort almost impossible.
I remember a disagreement I had with my daughter’s American History teacher in high school. She was a PhD from Berkeley and taught the “America is a festering pile of crap” doctrine to these kids. I pulled her out after she refused to consider that there were virtues here which needed to be addressed in order to let these kids see that the nation was worth working to improve.
Obama saw an opportunity to get what he wanted on the backs of these people. In all his time in Congress; I bet this was the last place he was thinking about except maybe to exploit them.
Yet, they all voted for him.
yitbos
A turd is still a turd, even when polished.
Is the MSM beginning to awaken to the monster they have created?
Thanks, Candor7.
Ping to mojitojoe.
Obama is arguably the most successful con artist in all of human history. He had to learn his craft and hone his skills somewhere. Apparently the Chicago projects were a big part of that education...
More like Ayers, Farakhan, Alinski, and Emanuel.
yitbos
Obama did nothing. Ever.
He is an expert at re-arranging the pencils on his desk.
He got to be the President of the prestigious Harvard Law Review - and once in, never wrote a single article. He just re-arranged the pencils on his big fancy desk.
He got to be a lecturer in law, and worked in Academia, but again, never published a single thing - in 8 years. He did, however, re-arrange the pencils on his desk.
He was a “Community Organizer” who was to fix urban violence in Chicago. In 2008, more Americans were killed by gunfire in Chicago than in Iraq and Afghanistan combined. He must have been busy re-arranging the pencils on his desk...
He was elected to Senator and yet again, did not do a thing but re-arrange the pencils on his desk.
Now, he used his broad experience to become elected President and is already creating new offices for himself, like the Office of the President Elect - a place of solace and comfort with a big chair and desk and a lot of nice pencils to re-arrange.
God help us.
Lot of money and crime in asbestos abatement. Wonder who got the contract to spend the federal money?
A great percentage of the people who voted for Obama are people who devoutly believe that whoever is in the White House determines their success or failure in life. What will they say four or eight years from now if their pathetic lives remain unchanged as the day The Great Spreader took office? Which is highly likely. Will they be disbelievers in the idea of Big Government Is Great, or will they engage in paranoid fantasies about Obama’s work being sabotaged? My guess in the latter. Anyone who believes a particular poltitican makes or breaks their personal lives will believe anything.
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