The Bridge: The Life And Rise Of Barack Obama Part 5

"You know, I'm amused now when I read quotes from high-school teachers and grammar school teachers, who say, 'You know, he always was a great leader,'" Obama told me. "That kind of hindsight is pretty shaky. And I think it's just as shaky for me to engage in that kind of speculation as it is for anybody. I will tell you that I think I had a hunger to shape the world in some way, to make the world a better place, that was triggered around the time that I transferred from Occidental to Columbia. So there's a phase, which I wrote about in my first book, where, for whatever reason, a whole bunch of stuff that had been inside me--questions of ident.i.ty, questions of purpose, questions of, not just race, but also the international nature of my upbringing--all those things started converging in some way. And so there's this period of time when I move to New York and go to Columbia, where I pull in and wrestle with that stuff, and do a lot of writing and a lot of reading and a lot of thinking and a lot of walking through Central Park. And somehow I emerge on the other side of that ready and eager to take a chance in what is a pretty unlikely venture: moving to Chicago and becoming an organizer. So I would say that's a moment in which I gain a seriousness of purpose that I had lacked before. Now, whether it was just a matter of, you know, me hitting a certain age where people start getting a little more serious--whether it was a combination of factors--my father dying, me realizing I had never known him, me moving from Hawaii to a place like New York that stimulates a lot of new ideas--you know, it's hard to say what exactly prompted that."

Obama and Boerner lived cheaply. They ate bagel lunches in the neighborhood around Broadway. At night, they cooked beans and rice or ate the cheapest dishes at Empire Szechuan on Ninety-seventh and Broadway. Obama wore military-surplus khakis or jeans and a leather jacket.

One of Obama's first and closest friends in those early months in New York was Sohale Siddiqi. Born and brought up in Pakistan, Siddiqi had overstayed his tourist visa and was living, illegally, on the Upper East Side, working as a waiter and as a salesman in a clothing store; he was drinking, taking drugs, and getting by. Obama and Boerner had grown disgusted with their apartment and had decided to look for other accommodations. Obama, after living alone in a studio apartment for his second semester, agreed to room the following year with Siddiqi, in a sixth-floor walkup at 339 East Ninety-fourth Street.

"We didn't have a chance in h.e.l.l of getting this apartment unless we fabricated the lease application," Siddiqi said. Siddiqi fibbed about his job, saying that he had a high-paying employment at a catering company; Obama declined to lie, but they managed to get the apartment anyway. Small wonder. The place was a dump in a drug-ridden neighborhood. of getting this apartment unless we fabricated the lease application," Siddiqi said. Siddiqi fibbed about his job, saying that he had a high-paying employment at a catering company; Obama declined to lie, but they managed to get the apartment anyway. Small wonder. The place was a dump in a drug-ridden neighborhood.

The roommates were friendly but lived entirely different lives. Siddiqi was a libertine, but Obama's days of dissolution, mild as they had been, were over. "I think self-deprivation was his shtick--denying himself pleasure, good food, and all of that," Siddiqi said. "At that age, I thought he was a saint and a square, and he took himself too seriously. I would ask him why he was so serious. He was genuinely concerned with the plight of the poor. He'd give me lectures, which I found very boring. He must have found me very irritating.... We were both very lost. We were both alienated, although he might not put it that way."

Despite his exasperation with Obama, Siddiqi learned to admire his forgiving temperament. Obama, he noticed, never said anything when Siddiqi's mother, who had never spent time around a black man, was rude to him. Long after Obama moved out, because of Siddiqi's constant partying, Obama proved a constant friend when Siddiqi developed a serious cocaine problem. Many years later, as a way of warding off the press Many years later, as a way of warding off the press, Siddiqi recorded a telling message for his answering machine: "My name is Hal Siddiqi and I approve of this message. Vote for peace, vote for hope, vote for change, and vote for Obama."

On the night of November 24, 1982 of November 24, 1982, during Obama's first semester of his senior year at Columbia, his father got behind the wheel of his car after a night of drinking at an old colonial bar in Nairobi, ran off the road, and crashed into the stump of a gum tree. He died instantly.

Obama, Sr., had spent the day working on a new infrastructure plan for the Kenyan capital. Although he'd become, by all accounts, a bitter man, one in perpetual danger of losing any opportunity to work, he had had a decent day. He had heard rumors that he might be promoted to a relatively good government job, maybe in the Ministry of Finance, and he bought rounds of drinks for his friends that night. A man of promise, Obama had failed not only his ambitions, but also the dozens of family members who depended on him for financial help and prestige. "He couldn't cope," said Obama's sister "He couldn't cope," said Obama's sister Auma. "He was one person trying to look after hundreds." Auma. "He was one person trying to look after hundreds."

An aunt called Barack, Jr., on a scratchy line from Nairobi to tell him the news. Hundreds of people in Kenya gathered to mourn Barack, Sr., but the government-controlled press paid him no great tribute. "At the "At the time of his death," Obama wrote, "my father remained a myth to me, both more and less than a man." time of his death," Obama wrote, "my father remained a myth to me, both more and less than a man."

At Columbia, Obama kept showing up at talks and lectures, including one by the former SNCC leader and Black Power proponent Kwame Ture--Stokely Carmichael--but he was not walking any picket lines or immersing himself in any movements. "I don't remember him going to rallies or signing pet.i.tions," Phil Boerner said.

At Columbia, Obama was a serious, if unspectacular, student. He majored in political science with a concentration in international relations and became interested in the nuclear standoff between the United States and the Soviet Union. In his senior year, in Michael Baron's course in American foreign policy and international politics, he wrote a seminar paper on prospects for bilateral disarmament. The cla.s.s a.n.a.lyzed decision-making and the perils of "groupthink," the ways that disastrous policies, like the escalation of the Vietnam War, develop.

In March, 1983, Obama wrote an article for Sundial Sundial, a student weekly, t.i.tled "Breaking the War Mentality." Nominally a report on two campus groups--Arms Race Alternatives and Students Against Militarism--the article makes plain Obama's revulsion at what he saw as Cold War militarism and his positive feelings about the nuclear-freeze movement, which was very much in the air in the early years of the Reagan Administration, before the emergence in Moscow of Mikhail Gorbachev. He wrote: Generally, the narrow focus of the Freeze movement as well as academic discussions of first versus second strike capabilities, suit the military-industrial interests, as they continue adding to their billion dollar erector sets. When Peter Tosh sings that "everybody's asking for peace, but n.o.body's asking for justice," one is forced to wonder whether disarmament or arms control issues, severed from economic and political issues, might be another instance of focusing on the symptoms of a problem instead of the disease itself.Indeed, the most pervasive malady of the collegiate system specifically, and the American experience generally, is that elaborate patterns of knowledge and theory have been disembodied from individual choices and government policy. What the members of ARA and SAM try to do is infuse what they have learned about the current situation, bring the words of that formidable roster on the face of Butler Library, names like Th.o.r.eau, Jefferson, and Whitman, to bear on the twisted logic of which we are today a part.Both in the seminar and in his muddled article for Sundial Sundial, Obama expressed sympathy for the urge to reduce, even eliminate, nuclear a.r.s.enals. In a letter to Boerner, he joked that he wrote the piece for Sundial Sundial "purely for calculated reasons of beefing up" his resume. "No keeping your hands clean, eh?" At around the same time, he started sending out letters to various social organizations, looking for work. "purely for calculated reasons of beefing up" his resume. "No keeping your hands clean, eh?" At around the same time, he started sending out letters to various social organizations, looking for work.Two months before graduation, Obama told Boerner he was bored. "School is just making the same motions, long stretches of numbness punctuated with the occasional insight," he wrote in a letter to Boerner. "Nothing significant, Philip. Life rolls on, and I feel a growing competence and maturity. Take care of yourself and Karen, and write a decent note, you madman, with a pen so the words aren't smudged by the postman's fingers. Will get back to you when I know my location for next year. OBAMA."

With everyone around him applying to law school, graduate school, and investment-bank training programs, Obama got it into his head to become a community organizer. He was a young man who lacked members.h.i.+p in a community and a purpose, and to work as an organizer would move him toward community, maybe even toward "the beloved community" that King had spoken of a generation before. applying to law school, graduate school, and investment-bank training programs, Obama got it into his head to become a community organizer. He was a young man who lacked members.h.i.+p in a community and a purpose, and to work as an organizer would move him toward community, maybe even toward "the beloved community" that King had spoken of a generation before. In his early twenties In his early twenties, Obama admits, he was "operating mainly on impulse," full of a yearning both to surpa.s.s his parents' frustrations and to connect to a romantic past. He recalls staying up late at night thinking about the civil-rights movement and its heroes and martyrs: students at lunch counters defiantly placing their orders, SNCC workers registering voters in Mississippi, preachers and churchwomen in jail singing freedom songs. Obama wanted to be part of the legacy of the movement. But, since the movement was long gone, he applied for members.h.i.+p in that which persisted.

"That was my idea of organizing," he writes. "It was a promise of redemption." Obama, his friend Wahid Hamid said, "had already developed a sense that he wanted to get involved in community work and not go down the regular path. He was trying to figure out how to have the biggest impact and not succ.u.mb to a traditional path like being a research a.s.sociate at an investment bank or a corporate lawyer."

In the summer of 1983, after graduation, Obama visited his family in Indonesia. He wrote a postcard to Boerner, saying, "I'm sitting on the porch in my sarong, sipping strong coffee and drawing on a clove cigarette, watching the heavy dusk close over the paddy terraces of Java. Very kick back, so far away from the madness. I'm halfway through vacation, but still feel the tug of that tense existence, though. Right now, my plans are uncertain; most probably I will go back after a month or two in Hawaii."

When Obama got back to New York, he found that the many letters he had written to organizing groups and other progressive outfits had gone unanswered. Frustrated and broke, he interviewed for a job, in late summer of 1983, with Business International Corporation, a publis.h.i.+ng and consulting group that collected data on international business and finance and issued various newsletters and reports for its corporate clients and organized government roundtables on trade.

"I remember distinctly meeting him," Cathy Lazere, a supervisor at Business International, said. "He was lanky, comfortable with himself, smart. He was so young that his resume still had his high-school stuff on it. He had taken some international economics in college. And, as you might expect, he talked about his name, a little about his mother in Indonesia, the Kenyan father. I hired him, and let's just say the salary was nowhere near enough to pay off his college debts." Founded by Eldridge Haynes, of McGraw-Hill, in 1953, Business International, or B.I., as it is known, was among the first research firms designed to provide information services for multinational firms.

Obama worked in the financial-services division, interviewing business experts, researching trends in foreign exchange, following market developments. He also edited a reference guide on overseas markets, called Financing Foreign Operations, and wrote for a newsletter called Business International Money Report. He wrote about currency swaps and leverage leases. (The currency swaps and derivatives that Obama covered for Business International Money Report were components of the financial engineering that led to the crash of 2008.) Obama also helped write financial reports on Mexico and Brazil.

In his memoir, Obama paints a picture of the office that is rather more corporate and formal than it was. He had no secretary, and he wore jeans more often than a suit. "We had w.a.n.g word processors that the young people shared," Lazere said, "and I remember Barack working hard and puffing away on Marlboros. You could still smoke in those days. He was very even-tempered, even-keeled. He definitely had a certain emotional intelligence, the ability to figure out what people wanted."

Obama was not uninterested in economics--he had taken a senior seminar at Columbia on foreign aid and capital flows between the developed and developing worlds--but he found himself doing research on companies, investments, and levels of risk, and, at times, found it stultifying, even morally discomfiting. He had a young idealist's disdain He had a young idealist's disdain for even the most tentative step into the world of commerce: "Sometimes, coming out of an interview with j.a.panese financiers or German bond traders, I would catch my reflection in the elevator doors--see myself in a suit and tie, a briefcase in my hand--and for a split second I would imagine myself as a captain of industry, barking out orders, closing the deal, before I remembered who it was that I had told myself I wanted to be and felt pangs of guilt for my lack of resolve." He made his boredom plain to his mother in Indonesia. In a letter to Alice Dewey, Ann Dunham reported on her son: for even the most tentative step into the world of commerce: "Sometimes, coming out of an interview with j.a.panese financiers or German bond traders, I would catch my reflection in the elevator doors--see myself in a suit and tie, a briefcase in my hand--and for a split second I would imagine myself as a captain of industry, barking out orders, closing the deal, before I remembered who it was that I had told myself I wanted to be and felt pangs of guilt for my lack of resolve." He made his boredom plain to his mother in Indonesia. In a letter to Alice Dewey, Ann Dunham reported on her son: Barry is working in New York this year, saving his pennies so he can travel next year. My understanding from a rather mumbled telephone conversation is that he works for a consulting organization that writes reports on request about social, political, and economic conditions in Third World countries. He calls it "working for the enemy" because some of the reports are written for commercial firms that want to invest in those countries. He seems to be learning a lot about the realities of international finance and politics, however, and I think that information will stand him in good stead in the future.

Once in a while, Obama brought his ideals into the office. William Millar, a colleague on the money report, recalled that Obama told him they should boycott any firms doing business in South Africa. "I said he needed to realize "I said he needed to realize that it's the non-South African companies who were hiring blacks and giving them positions of authority with decent pay," Millar recalled. "That's what accelerates change--not isolation." that it's the non-South African companies who were hiring blacks and giving them positions of authority with decent pay," Millar recalled. "That's what accelerates change--not isolation."

Obama's supervisors liked him. They found him intelligent but removed, possessing a "certain hauteur, a cultivated air of mystery." They called him, affectionately, "Mr. Cool." One afternoon, Obama was having lunch at a Korean restaurant with a colleague when the subject of exercise came up. Obama mentioned that he worked out in Riverside Park after work and on weekends.

"I jog there, too," the colleague said.

"I don't jog," Obama replied. "I run."

People in the office had the distinct impression that Obama was a friendly guy looking to mark time, make some money, and move on. "When I gave him something to do, he would smile and say 'Gotcha,'" Lazere said. "The truth is, I thought he would end up as a novelist or something, taking the world in. He was a real observer, a little off to the side, watching, not totally engaged." Obama kept his work life and his social life separate, preferring to see his Columbia friends rather than socialize with his colleagues. "He always seemed a little aloof," said Lou Celi, who managed the global-finance division. "At the time, I just figured he was doing his own thing and wasn't as sociable as some of the others in the office. Some people, you know all about their lives outside work. Not Barack."

"There were several African-American women who worked in the library as our internal clipping service," said Cathy Lazere. They cut out relevant articles on business, finance, and trade, and often doubled as receptionists. "They would have been about ten years older than Barack--around my age or older," she recalled. "He created quite a frisson when he arrived on the scene, but to my knowledge he had very little interaction with them. Most people a.s.sumed from his bearing that he was a wealthy preppy kid. Some of the preppies I had met at Yale were like the Lost Boys of Peter Pan. I thought Barack might have been like that. Beneath his cool-cat facade, I sensed a little loneliness, since he was never fully engaged in what was going on around him."

Obama sometimes took part in an evening discussion group with Phil Boerner and his wife-to-be, Karen; Paul Herrmannsfeldt, who went on to work at McGraw-Hill; George Nashak, who works with the homeless; and Bruce Basara, who pursued a doctorate in philosophy. They read Nietzsche, Sartre, Rilke's The Notebooks of Malte Laurids Brigge The Notebooks of Malte Laurids Brigge, Samuel Beckett's Murphy Murphy. Boerner admitted that the group often either failed to do the reading or relied on what they remembered from their undergraduate courses, but it was a way to keep thinking and talking "about serious stuff after graduation."

Obama left B.I. after little more than a year, telling his colleagues that he was going to become a community organizer. A big mistake, Celi told him in his exit interview. "Now he seems so in charge, but back then Barack seemed like a lot of kids who graduate from college and don't know what they want to do with their lives," Celi said. "I thought he had the writing talent so that he could move up in publis.h.i.+ng. Turned out he had other fish to fry."

"Despite all the self-a.s.surance, Barack was trying to think through his life," Lazere said. "He was the only black professional in the office then, and I think New York was making him think about his ident.i.ty and what to do with himself."

In early 1985, Obama took a job at the New York Public Interest Research Group, a nonprofit organization, begun in the seventies, with help from Ralph Nader, that promotes consumer, environmental, and government reform. He spent the next four months working mainly out of a trailer office at 140th Street and Convent Avenue, helping to mobilize students at the City College of New York. He got students to write letters and speak up on a variety of issues: a Straphangers Campaign to rebuild public transportation in the city; an effort to fend off construction of a munic.i.p.al trash incinerator in Brooklyn; a voter-registration drive; and a campaign to increase recycling. Obama's first taste of organizing didn't last long and did little to shake the foundations of the city, but he did impress his supervisor, Eileen Hershenov, with his ambitions for the future.

"Barack and I had some really engaged conversations about models of organizing," she said. They talked about their admiration for Bob Moses's voter-registration drives with SNCC, the radically different organizing means of Saul Alinksy in Chicago and the Students for a Democratic Society during the Vietnam War. "And we talked about models of charismatic leaders.h.i.+p, the pros and cons of that, what it can achieve, and the dangers of not leaving behind a real organization," Hershenov said. "Remember, this was the Reagan era. People were not exactly taking to the streets for a social movement. We weren't red-diaper babies, either. But we were thinking about how you engage the world: what works coming out of the sixties, what structures and models worked and what didn't."

Obama was working at City College with students who tended to be older, lower-income, some of them with families of their own already. "They were pressed for time," Hershenov said. "So how do you get them to organize, especially when what you were pus.h.i.+ng was not something tied to ident.i.ty politics or some sort of 'cool' Marxist, Gramsci, theory-oriented thing? NYPIRG was a Naderite group, and seen as kind of wishy-washy and bourgeois. But Barack was getting students involved in bread-and-b.u.t.ter community issues and he was very good at it. And, while Barack himself was not a radical, he had read, he could speak that language if need be. He had the gift of being able to talk with everyone: students on the left, in the center, faculty, everyone."

Obama drove to Was.h.i.+ngton with some student leaders to get members of the New York congressional delegation to oppose cuts in public funding for student aid. After delivering stacks of pet.i.tions to members with offices in the Rayburn Building, he and a few friends walked around the city and ended up on Pennsylvania Avenue, peering through the iron gates at the White House. Obama had never seen the building before. Inside, the high command of the Reagan Administration--an Administration that Obama and his friends saw as the ideological enemy--was at work. Obama was struck, above all, by the proximity of the White House to the street. "It embodied the notion "It embodied the notion that our leaders were not so different from us," he wrote later. "They remained subject to laws and our collective consent." that our leaders were not so different from us," he wrote later. "They remained subject to laws and our collective consent."

At the end of the academic year, Obama knew that he had had enough of New York. Hershenov tried to get him to stay another year. It was rare to get such a thoughtful organizer. "I asked him if it would help if I got on my knees and begged--and so I did," she said. "But it didn't help. It was time for him to go."

Part Two

In my body were many bloods, some dark blood, all blended in the fire of six or more generations. I was, then, either a new type of man or the very oldest. In any case I was inescapably myself.--Jean Toomer

Chapter Four.

Black Metropolis.

In 1968, Saul Alinsky, the inventor of community organizing and one of the most original radical democrats America has ever produced, met an earnest young woman from Wellesley College named Hillary Rodham. Like many college students of the time, Rodham was in the midst of a political transformation--in her case, from Goldwater Republican to Rockefeller Republican and then to Eugene McCarthy supporter all in the s.p.a.ce of a few years. It was the summer before her senior year and she was spending it as a kind of political tourist. In June and July In June and July, she worked in the Was.h.i.+ngton office of Melvin Laird, a Republican congressman from Wisconsin who became Richard Nixon's Secretary of Defense. Then, as a pro-Rockefeller volunteer Then, as a pro-Rockefeller volunteer, she went to the Republican National Convention in Miami, where she stayed at the Fontainebleau Hotel, shook hands with Frank Sinatra, and saw Nixon win the nomination. Finally, she spent a few weeks Finally, she spent a few weeks with her parents, in the Chicago suburb of Park Ridge; at night, with her friend Betsy Ebeling, she went downtown to the edges of Grant Park and, from a distance, witnessed Mayor Richard J. Daley's police beating up antiwar demonstrators. In Chicago, Rodham heard more and more about Saul Alinsky, who was always on the lookout for new recruits. with her parents, in the Chicago suburb of Park Ridge; at night, with her friend Betsy Ebeling, she went downtown to the edges of Grant Park and, from a distance, witnessed Mayor Richard J. Daley's police beating up antiwar demonstrators. In Chicago, Rodham heard more and more about Saul Alinsky, who was always on the lookout for new recruits.

Alinsky had made his mark three decades earlier, in Chicago's Back of the Yards, a poor neighborhood of meatpackers and stockyards that formed the landscape of The Jungle The Jungle, Upton Sinclair's doc.u.mentary novel. A native Chicagoan and already a veteran of union organizing, the young Alinsky set out to organize in the Yards. "People were crushed and demoralized "People were crushed and demoralized, either jobless or getting starvation wages, diseased, living in filthy, rotting unheated shanties, with barely enough food and clothing to keep alive," Alinsky recalled. "It was a cesspool of hate; the Poles, Slovaks, Germans, Negroes, Mexicans and Lithuanians all hated each other and all of them hated the Irish, who returned the sentiment in spades."

Alinsky had his own enemies in the Yards, including not just the ward heelers of City Hall, who resisted outside interference, but also the purveyors of racial hatred: Father Coughlin's National Union for Social Justice and William Dudley Pelley's Silver s.h.i.+rts, who railed about the influence of international bankers and rapacious Jews. His main ally was the Catholic Church; at the time, Chicago had one of the most liberal archdioceses in the country. Alinsky thought of himself as a man of action, committed but unsentimental, a keen student of what made the world go around: power. He loathed do-gooders and moral abstractions; he valued concrete victories over dogma and talk. To combat the defeatism and apathy of the meatpackers, he appealed to their self-interest. He came to understand their most concrete grievances and went about organizing them to fight for themselves.

Alinsky staged rent strikes against slumlords and picketed exploitative shop owners. He arranged sit-ins He arranged sit-ins in front of the offices of Mayor Edward Joseph Kelly, whose political machine was so ruthless and encompa.s.sing that, in Alinsky's words, it made Daley's version "look like the League of Women Voters." Alinsky was not only a democratic revolutionary but a consummate tactician. He was more than willing to exploit Kelly's vanity and innermost anxieties, as long as it brought results. Although Kelly was a.s.sociated with the Memorial Day ma.s.sacre of 1937, in which Chicago police opened fire on unarmed striking steelworkers, he still craved acceptance by the liberal, and pro-labor, President, Franklin Roosevelt. There was nothing Kelly would not do, according to Alinsky, to get an invitation to the White House. Alinsky, who had been an acolyte and biographer of John L. Lewis, the powerful head of the Congress of Industrial Organizations, told Kelly that if he would close a reasonable deal with the meatpackers' union, he would deliver the C.I.O.'s endors.e.m.e.nt. in front of the offices of Mayor Edward Joseph Kelly, whose political machine was so ruthless and encompa.s.sing that, in Alinsky's words, it made Daley's version "look like the League of Women Voters." Alinsky was not only a democratic revolutionary but a consummate tactician. He was more than willing to exploit Kelly's vanity and innermost anxieties, as long as it brought results. Although Kelly was a.s.sociated with the Memorial Day ma.s.sacre of 1937, in which Chicago police opened fire on unarmed striking steelworkers, he still craved acceptance by the liberal, and pro-labor, President, Franklin Roosevelt. There was nothing Kelly would not do, according to Alinsky, to get an invitation to the White House. Alinsky, who had been an acolyte and biographer of John L. Lewis, the powerful head of the Congress of Industrial Organizations, told Kelly that if he would close a reasonable deal with the meatpackers' union, he would deliver the C.I.O.'s endors.e.m.e.nt. Such an endors.e.m.e.nt Such an endors.e.m.e.nt, he a.s.sured Kelly, would magically transform him into a "true friend of the workingman" and thus make him acceptable to F.D.R. Alinsky had found the avenue to Kelly's self-interest. A deal was struck.

As a pragmatist, the aging but still vigorous Alinsky disdained the leaders of the youth movement who were streaming into Chicago in August of 1968 for the Democratic Convention. He had little patience for these kids. What did they understand about power, about what real Americans wanted and needed? They were, in his view, dilettantes--spoiled Yippies who smoked pot, dropped acid, and had never met a working person in their lives. "s.h.i.+t," Alinsky said "s.h.i.+t," Alinsky said, "Abbie Hoffman and Jerry Rubin couldn't organize a successful luncheon, much less a revolution."

Hillary Rodham was hardly a revolutionary. When she arrived at Wellesley in 1965, her ambition was to become head of the campus Young Republicans. She fulfilled it. But, in time, as she gave increasing attention to the civil-rights movement and the war in Vietnam, her views began to s.h.i.+ft. Not that she ever joined the radicals of S.D.S. She was elected head of the student government, and in that role she tolerated, even enjoyed, interminable committee meetings; she was a practical-minded liberal, concerned with easing dress codes, ending parietals, and reforming outdated academic curricula. She certainly thought about national issues--particularly Vietnam, race, and the growing women's movement--but, unlike some of her cla.s.smates, she focused mainly on problems that she could actually solve. And so there was something about Alinsky that appealed to her.

After his success in the Back of the Yards, Alinsky organized other communities on the South Side of Chicago, in the barrios of Southern California, in the slums of Kansas City, Detroit, and Rochester, New York. He carried out his work with an absurdist flair. In 1964, he threatened Mayor Daley In 1964, he threatened Mayor Daley, who seemed to be backing out of a series of agreed-upon concessions to poor blacks on the South Side, with a prolonged "s.h.i.+t-in" at O'Hare Airport. The airport had been a cherished project of the Daley machine--its gla.s.s-and-concrete embodiment--and Alinsky threatened to bring its operations to a standstill by calling on a few thousand volunteers to occupy all the urinals and toilets at his signal. Daley made the concessions. And when Alinsky was working And when Alinsky was working in Rochester's black community in the mid-sixties, he threatened to organize a "fart-in" at the Rochester Philharmonic in order to get Kodak to hire more blacks and engage with black community leaders. After a pre-concert dinner featuring "huge portions of baked beans," a hundred of Alinsky's people would take their seats among Rochester's elite. "Can you imagine the inevitable consequences?" he said, envisioning the ensuing "flatulent blitzkrieg." in Rochester's black community in the mid-sixties, he threatened to organize a "fart-in" at the Rochester Philharmonic in order to get Kodak to hire more blacks and engage with black community leaders. After a pre-concert dinner featuring "huge portions of baked beans," a hundred of Alinsky's people would take their seats among Rochester's elite. "Can you imagine the inevitable consequences?" he said, envisioning the ensuing "flatulent blitzkrieg."

Alinsky may not have been a theoretician, but his view of what was ailing post-war America influenced generations of community organizers. When an interviewer asked When an interviewer asked him if he agreed with Nixon that there was a conservative "silent majority" that disdained everything about the sixties, he dismissed the idea, but said that the country was in a state of terrible disruption and likely to move either toward "a native American fascism" or toward radical social change. him if he agreed with Nixon that there was a conservative "silent majority" that disdained everything about the sixties, he dismissed the idea, but said that the country was in a state of terrible disruption and likely to move either toward "a native American fascism" or toward radical social change.

Right now they're frozen, festering in apathy, leading what Th.o.r.eau called "lives of quiet desperation." They're oppressed by taxation and inflation, poisoned by pollution, terrorized by urban crime, frightened by the new youth culture, baffled by the computerized world around them. They've worked all their lives to get their own little house in the suburbs, their color TV, their two cars, and now the good life seems to have turned to ashes in their mouths. Their personal lives are generally unfulfilling, their jobs unsatisfying, they've succ.u.mbed to tranquilizers and pep pills, they drown their anxieties in alcohol, they feel trapped in long-term endurance marriages or escape into guilt-ridden divorces. They're losing their kids and they're losing their dreams. They're alienated, depersonalized, without any feeling of partic.i.p.ation in the political process, and they feel rejected and hopeless.... All their old values seem to have deserted them, leaving them rudderless in a sea of social chaos. Believe me, this is good organizational material.

Alinsky declared that his job was to seize on the despair, to "go in and rub raw the sores of discontent," to galvanize people for radical social change: "We'll give them a way to partic.i.p.ate in the democratic process, a way to exercise their rights as citizens and strike back at the establishment that oppresses them, instead of giving in to apathy." That was as good a definition of community organizing as any.

Alinsky came to his conclusions about the state of American society via first-hand experience. His parents were Orthodox Jews who emigrated from Russia at the turn of the century to the slums of the South Side. His father started out as a tailor, ended up running a sweatshop, and then left the family. At sixteen, Alinsky himself At sixteen, Alinsky himself was "shackin' up with some old broad of twenty-two." When his father died in 1950 or 1951, he left an estate of a hundred and forty thousand dollars--fifty dollars of it for Saul. was "shackin' up with some old broad of twenty-two." When his father died in 1950 or 1951, he left an estate of a hundred and forty thousand dollars--fifty dollars of it for Saul.

As a graduate student in criminology at the University of Chicago in the early nineteen-thirties, Alinsky decided to do research on the Outfit, Al Capone's gang, which dominated the city and City Hall. He used to hang out at the Lexington Hotel where Capone's men spent their evenings. Because Alinsky presented no threat to these invulnerable gangsters--he was a source of amus.e.m.e.nt to them--he was able to spend hours listening to Big Ed Stash, one of Capone's executioners, and Frank (The Enforcer) Nitti, a leading deputy, tell stories about bootlegging, women, gambling, and killing. "I was their one-man student body "I was their one-man student body and they were anxious to teach me," Alinsky recalled. "It probably appealed to their egos." Alinsky never wrote his dissertation. Instead, he gathered up his understanding of the way power worked in Chicago and launched into progressive politics, raising money for the International Brigade in the Spanish Civil War, the Newspaper Guild, Southern sharecroppers, and various labor const.i.tuencies. and they were anxious to teach me," Alinsky recalled. "It probably appealed to their egos." Alinsky never wrote his dissertation. Instead, he gathered up his understanding of the way power worked in Chicago and launched into progressive politics, raising money for the International Brigade in the Spanish Civil War, the Newspaper Guild, Southern sharecroppers, and various labor const.i.tuencies.

In the late nineteen-fifties, Alinsky was approached by some black leaders in Chicago about Woodlawn--a neighborhood on the South Side of Chicago, he said, that "made Harlem look like Grosse Pointe." In 1960, working with a young white organizer named Nicholas von Hoffman, who later became a prominent journalist, a black organizer named Robert Squires, and clergymen like Arthur Brazier, a Pentecostal minister who turned a storefront church into one of the largest congregations on the South Side, Alinsky formed what became known as the Woodlawn Organization, or TWO, whose goal was to head off the kind of deterioration and discrimination that had already laid waste to neighborhoods like Lawndale, on the West Side. "Those were the days of what was called urban renewal, which we saw as Negro removal," said Brazier.

Nick von Hoffman said, "There were no idealists around then. It was a wasteland, particularly because we were tiptoeing on the question of race relations. Any white person fooling around with that stuff was tagged as a Red. Two or three years earlier, we had made our first attempt to organize on the question of race on the southwest side of Chicago. We had money from the Roman Catholic Church. It was a boundary area between the white and black worlds that was in flames. The situation was, if a black family moved into the white area and their house were to catch fire, the fire engines would not come. The local banks formed a union with the local real-estate people to buy up empty houses that might be bought by black people."

Alinsky and von Hoffman, working with neighborhood activists and clergy, scored a series of improbable successes, going after the Board of Education for maintaining de-facto segregation, department stores for refusing to hire blacks, merchants for selling their wares at inflated prices, and the University of Chicago for trying to push out poor local residents to make room for new buildings. Von Hoffman haunted the Walnut Room of the Bismarck Hotel, where he met the heads of the Cook County Board of Supervisors and the Chicago Board of Realtors. Over lunch--"an ice cream soda and three Martinis"--he tried to cut deals with them. The Woodlawn Organization became a legendary paradigm of community organizing. Besides fighting the University of Chicago, it ran voter-registration drives, won better policing, and forced improvements in housing, sanitation facilities, and school conditions.

Hillary Rodham became so interested in what she was hearing about Saul Alinsky that when she returned to Wellesley for her senior year, she decided, together with her faculty adviser, Alan Schecter, to write her thesis on Alinsky and American poverty programs. Relying on both wide reading and her own interviews with Alinsky, Rodham produced a paper that probes beneath Alinsky's legend to consider his successes and his limitations as an organizer. so interested in what she was hearing about Saul Alinsky that when she returned to Wellesley for her senior year, she decided, together with her faculty adviser, Alan Schecter, to write her thesis on Alinsky and American poverty programs. Relying on both wide reading and her own interviews with Alinsky, Rodham produced a paper that probes beneath Alinsky's legend to consider his successes and his limitations as an organizer. She wrote of Alinsky She wrote of Alinsky as existing in a "peculiarly American" group of radical democrats who set aside high-flown rhetoric: "Much of what Alinsky professes does not sound 'radical.' His are the words used in our schools and churches, by our parents and their friends, by our peers. The difference is that Alinsky really believes in them and recognizes the necessity of changing the present structures of our lives in order to realize them." as existing in a "peculiarly American" group of radical democrats who set aside high-flown rhetoric: "Much of what Alinsky professes does not sound 'radical.' His are the words used in our schools and churches, by our parents and their friends, by our peers. The difference is that Alinsky really believes in them and recognizes the necessity of changing the present structures of our lives in order to realize them."

Rodham's thesis is sometimes knotty with undergraduate display, but it is also a judicious a.n.a.lysis. She was prescient about the all-too-essential role that Alinsky played in his own movement. Without him, the movement would flounder, she warned. Alinsky's personality was large, distinct, and, likely, irreplaceable. Community organizing after his death--and it came soon, in 1972--would suffer the same internal debates and drift as psychoa.n.a.lysis after Freud. While Rodham praised Alinsky for his cool-eyed methodology, she expressed concern about his reluctance to enter mainstream politics to effect change on a far broader scale.

"In spite of his being featured in the Sunday New York in the Sunday New York Times Times, and living a comfortable, expenses-paid life, he considers himself a revolutionary," she wrote in conclusion. "In a very important way he is. If the ideals Alinsky espouses were actualized, the result would be a social revolution." She placed Alinsky in the lineage of Eugene Debs, Walt Whitman, and Martin Luther King, all of whom, she wrote, were "feared, because each embraced the most radical of political faiths--democracy."

Alinsky wrote to Rodham offering her a place at his Industrial Areas Foundation Inst.i.tute, where she would learn to be a community organizer. "Keeping in mind that "Keeping in mind that three-fourths of America is middle cla.s.s, a new and long overdue emphasis of the Inst.i.tute will be placed on the development of organizers for middle cla.s.s society," Alinsky wrote. Rodham, an honors student and a speaker at the Wellesley commencement, had a sparkling range of options for life after graduation: law school acceptances from both Harvard and Yale and Alinsky's invitation to train and work as a community organizer. She decided on law school, and Yale seemed more intellectually flexible than Harvard. three-fourths of America is middle cla.s.s, a new and long overdue emphasis of the Inst.i.tute will be placed on the development of organizers for middle cla.s.s society," Alinsky wrote. Rodham, an honors student and a speaker at the Wellesley commencement, had a sparkling range of options for life after graduation: law school acceptances from both Harvard and Yale and Alinsky's invitation to train and work as a community organizer. She decided on law school, and Yale seemed more intellectually flexible than Harvard. In the endnotes In the endnotes to her senior thesis, she wrote that Alinsky's offer had been "tempting, but after spending a year trying to make sense out of his inconsistency, I need three years of legal rigor." to her senior thesis, she wrote that Alinsky's offer had been "tempting, but after spending a year trying to make sense out of his inconsistency, I need three years of legal rigor."

Sixteen years later, Barack Obama was in the Main Reading Room of the New York Public Library on Forty-second Street, leafing through newspapers, searching for the work he wanted most. He picked up a copy of Community Jobs Community Jobs, a small paper that carried ads for public-service work. In Chicago, an organizer named Jerry Kellman, a follower (more or less) of the Alinsky tradition, was looking for someone to work with him on the far South Side where the steel mills were closing and thousands of people were facing unemployment and a blistered landscape of deteriorating housing, toxic-waste dumps, bad schools, gangs, drugs, and violent crime. Kellman, who led the Calumet Community Religious Conference, a coalition of churches designed to help the people in the area, was especially desperate for an African-American organizer. The neighborhoods on the far South Side were nearly all black and he, as a wiry-haired white Jewish guy from New York, needed help.

For white organizers in those neighborhoods, "getting any traction was like selling burgers in India," Gregory Galluzzo, one of Kellman's colleagues, said. "Jerry had had to hire a black organizer." Yvonne Lloyd, a South Side resident who worked closely with Kellman, said that African-Americans in the area were unreceptive to white organizers. "Black people are very leery when you come into their community and they don't know you," she said. Lloyd and another black activist who worked with Kellman, Loretta Augustine-Herron, pressed him hard to hire an African-American. to hire a black organizer." Yvonne Lloyd, a South Side resident who worked closely with Kellman, said that African-Americans in the area were unreceptive to white organizers. "Black people are very leery when you come into their community and they don't know you," she said. Lloyd and another black activist who worked with Kellman, Loretta Augustine-Herron, pressed him hard to hire an African-American.

The ad in Community Jobs Community Jobs was long and descriptive. "I figured if I could paint a picture of the devastation and show it as a multiracial but mainly black area, it would interest someone," Kellman said. The address at the bottom of the ad was 351 East 113th Street, Father Bill Stenzel's rectory at Holy Rosary, a Catholic church on the far South Side. Kellman was using a couple of rooms there as his base of operations. was long and descriptive. "I figured if I could paint a picture of the devastation and show it as a multiracial but mainly black area, it would interest someone," Kellman said. The address at the bottom of the ad was 351 East 113th Street, Father Bill Stenzel's rectory at Holy Rosary, a Catholic church on the far South Side. Kellman was using a couple of rooms there as his base of operations.

Obama sent Kellman his resume.

"When I got it with the cover letter signed 'Barack Obama,' I thought, What the h.e.l.l is this? And Honolulu? I thought, well, he's j.a.panese," Kellman said. "My wife was j.a.panese-American and so I asked her about it. She figured there was a good chance he was j.a.panese, too."

Like many young people of promise and ambition, especially ones with absent parents, Barack Obama had a hunger for mentors. He had the gift of winning over his elders and getting them to teach him about worlds that were alien to him. More than many of his peers, he sensed that there was much to learn from older people who had special knowledge of the way things worked, and his eagerness to learn brought out their eagerness to teach. In years to come, Obama befriended and absorbed all he could from elders like Laurence Tribe, at Harvard Law School; Jeremiah Wright, at Trinity United Church of Christ; Emil Jones, in the Illinois State Senate; Valerie Jarrett, Judson Miner, Abner Mikva, Newton Minow, David Axelrod, Penny Pritzker, Bettylu Saltzman, and many others in the worlds of politics and business in Chicago; Pete Rouse, Richard Lugar, and Richard Durbin in the U.S. Senate. of promise and ambition, especially ones with absent parents, Barack Obama had a hunger for mentors. He had the gift of winning over his elders and getting them to teach him about worlds that were alien to him. More than many of his peers, he sensed that there was much to learn from older people who had special knowledge of the way things worked, and his eagerness to learn brought out their eagerness to teach. In years to come, Obama befriended and absorbed all he could from elders like Laurence Tribe, at Harvard Law School; Jeremiah Wright, at Trinity United Church of Christ; Emil Jones, in the Illinois State Senate; Valerie Jarrett, Judson Miner, Abner Mikva, Newton Minow, David Axelrod, Penny Pritzker, Bettylu Saltzman, and many others in the worlds of politics and business in Chicago; Pete Rouse, Richard Lugar, and Richard Durbin in the U.S. Senate.

Jerry Kellman was the first of these mentors. And in the formation of Obama's ideas about community, effective political change, storytelling, and forming relations.h.i.+ps, Kellman may well have played the most influential role in Obama's life outside of his family. Kellman was born in 1950 in New Roch.e.l.le, New York, a large and diverse suburb in Westchester County. When he was in seventh grade, the Supreme Court ordered the integration of New Roch.e.l.le's school system, the first such case in the North. When he was in junior high and high school, his political pa.s.sions were Israel--he was so active in Jewish youth groups that he was selected to introduce David Ben-Gurion at an Israel Bonds dinner--and the civil-rights movement. In high school he helped run a black candidate's campaign for student-council president and then organized a series of discussion groups among white and black students. Kellman and his friends mourned the death of Martin Luther King, Jr.; the day after King's death, they launched a campaign to get the school board to stop using Little Black Sambo Little Black Sambo readers in the schools attended by kids in local projects. At graduation, he helped lead a walk-out to protest the war in Vietnam. readers in the schools attended by kids in local projects. At graduation, he helped lead a walk-out to protest the war in Vietnam.

In August, 1968, Kellman enrolled at the University of Wisconsin in Madison, and it was clear from the start that he would be majoring in student protest. A regular at antiwar meetings and demonstrations, he helped organize a march of a thousand students to ban mandatory R.O.T.C. a week before he even began cla.s.ses. The demonstration was a success and the policy was changed. In his freshman year, the Milwaukee Journal Journal ran an article on the new breed of radical; Kellman was featured. But, despite a growing reputation on campus for political commitment, he thought that S.D.S., the dominant radical group on campus, was "nuts," its rhetoric of revolution comically impractical and dangerously violent. The next year, 1970, Kellman transferred to Reed College, in Oregon; not long afterward, a group of antiwar extremists bombed the math building at Wisconsin, killing a physicist named Robert Fa.s.snacht and injuring several others. At Reed, a group of professors, tired of the traditional academic structure, set out to start a "commune-college." With a grant from the Carnegie Endowment, they started a "learning community" in a series of farmhouses and the inner city. Kellman spent most of his time there counseling people on the draft. ran an article on the new breed of radical; Kellman was featured. But, despite a growing reputation on campus for political commitment, he thought that S.D.S., the dominant radical group on campus, was "nuts," its rhetoric of revolution comically impractical and dangerously violent. The next year, 1970, Kellman transferred to Reed College, in Oregon; not long afterward, a group of antiwar extremists bombed the math building at Wisconsin, killing a physicist named Robert Fa.s.snacht and injuring several others. At Reed, a group of professors, tired of the traditional academic structure, set out to start a "commune-college." With a grant from the Carnegie Endowment, they started a "learning community" in a series of farmhouses and the inner city. Kellman spent most of his time there counseling people on the draft.

In the summer of 1971, Kellman went to Chicago, long acknowledged as the national center of community organizing. ("It was either that or going to live on a kibbutz.") He slept on people's floors and took jobs in restaurants; for a while, he chopped onions and grilled hot dogs at Tasty Pup. But mostly he learned organizing and the realities of Chicago: the isolation and dismal conditions in the poor black communities of the South and West Sides; the machine structure of political power; the discriminatory tactics of local mortgage bankers and real-estate developers. In such a grim and ironclad political culture, Kellman discovered, ordinary people go about their lives with little sense of community, cohesion, or possibility. They do not express their self-interest because they automatically relinquish any hope of fulfilling it. "What was drummed into us was self-interest," Kellman said. "That's Alinsky. It's all self-interest. Very hard-nosed. What is their self-interest and how to use it to organize."

In Austin, a neighborhood on the far West Side, he spent nights drinking with church and neighborhood leaders, learning people's life stories and the details of their disenfranchis.e.m.e.nt. He was no longer trying to end a war. He was trying to stop a bank from leaving the neighborhood, trying to get a pothole filled, a local drug dealer arrested, a stop sign replaced. He arranged meetings with priests to gain their support, with ordinary people to build up an energized community, with politicians to get them to do the right thing.

Like so many young organizers, Kellman became obsessive about his work. He did not stay long in any one place. He bounced from Austin to suburban DuPage County, from Lincoln, Nebraska, to Philadelphia. To slow down, and to please his wife, and maybe earn a decent living, he studied for a while at the University of Chicago, but it wasn't for him.

In 1982, Kellman trained organizers for the church-based group the United Neighborhood Organization, converted to Catholicism a couple of years later, and then joined the Calumet Community Religious Conference, which worked with black churches, and started organizing in the most poverty-stricken areas of the South Side. He and colleagues like Greg Galluzzo, an Alinsky apostle who had extensive organizing experience, and Mike Kruglik, a barrel-chested Chicagoan, took stock of the devastation in the wake of all the mill closings in the Calumet region, which ranged from the far South Side into Indiana. With thirty thousand workers in a single industry, Calumet was a kind of local Detroit; it had once produced more steel than Pittsburgh. But now, because of foreign compet.i.tion and the cost of retooling plants, the men were out of work, the plants were rusting sh.e.l.ls.

Kellman's early attempt to organize church leaders in the area got a boost when Cardinal Joseph Bernardin signaled that if local priests didn't join the effort they should rush to confession. Father Stenzel at Holy Rosary helped Kellman pull together ten parishes, which kicked in a thousand dollars apiece and promised to help organize willing paris.h.i.+oners. Kellman knew that he couldn't sustain an organization that tried to yoke together the white neighborhoods of Indiana and the black areas of the South Side; to deal with the South Side and gain access to greater funding, he conceived the Developing Communities Project for Chicago. He told his board of local activists, all of whom were black, that he would find an African-American organizer. What he could offer was a miserable salary, a resistant public, and only a slender hope of success.

"It was easier to promise than it was to deliver," Kellman said. "The logic is that you need someone very smart, but if you are smart enough to be an organizer you should be smart enough not to do it. And if you are black and the pride of the family, why become downwardly mobile? It doesn't make a lot of sense. It was hard. I got no one I liked. The heat was beginning to build. I procrastinated. I scrambled. Meantime, I kept taking out ads and looking at resumes. The Tribune Tribune. The Times Times. The Detroit Free Press Free Press. But also that one in Community Jobs." Community Jobs."

Kellman read Obama's resume and called him in New York. They spoke for two hours. ("Over the phone I figured out he wasn't j.a.panese.") A couple of weeks later, Kellman, in New York to visit his parents, met Obama at a coffee shop on Lexington Avenue. He looked very young to him. Obama was twenty-four. What concerned Kellman about very bright, very young candidates was the possibility of early burnout. Community organizing is isolating, tedious, and deeply frustrating work. More often than not, battles drag on, and then fizzle out without a satisfying result. A young person with some options is likely to leave at the first hint of boredom or defeat. Kellman had already known a young organizer who was so psychologically distressed by the work that he'd had to let the person go and find psychiatric help.

The terms for a training organizer like Obama were less than modest--a ten-thousand-dollar salary and a couple of thousand more for a car. "But preposterous propositions are what being an organizer is like," Kellman said. "So we went over Barack's story, and it was clear to me that he was never very long anywhere and he was different wherever he goes." Even in that early conversation, Kellman saw Obama as someone looking for himself and for a place to call home.

"He kept asking, 'What will you teach me, and how will you teach me?'" Kellman recalled. "I thought of him as an outsider, and he wanted to work with the poor, with people who have faced racial discrimination. His heroes were in the civil-rights movement, but that was over. This was as close as he could get. And he needed to live in a black community."

Kellman quizzed Obama about his background and, like most people, found the flood of details hard to absorb on first hearing. Kellman tried to push him: Why didn't he go to graduate school? Didn't he want to make money? Obama had said that he was excited by the election, in 1983, of a black mayor in Chicago, Harold Was.h.i.+ngton. So why not go work for him? Kellman asked. Why organize? But Obama kept repeating how inspired he was by the civil-rights movement and his desire to work on a gra.s.sroots level.

Obama admitted to Kellman that he had another motivation for wanting to be an organizer on the South Side. He was thinking about being a novelist. "He told me that he had trouble writing, he had to force himself to write," Kellman said. He was looking not only for experience, an ident.i.ty, and a community; he was also in search of material.

Before Kellman could hire him officially, Obama had to be confirmed by a small board of directors, which met at St. Helena of the Cross, a Catholic church on the South Side. Many of the community activists on the South Side were middle-aged black women, and they were more eager than ever for Kellman to settle on an African-American organizer. "We interviewed three other people before Barack. n.o.body really fit the bill of what we needed," one board member, Loretta Augustine-Herron, said. "We did want someone to look like us, but that wasn't the only thing. If Barack hadn't had the ability to understand our needs, it wouldn't have worked. He had the sensitivity. He was honest to a fault. He told us what he knew and what he didn't. When we described our plight, he understood. He didn't have a c.o.c.kamamie idea to resolve some problem we didn't have." Augustine-Herron and the others had only one concern: "He was so young. Was he going to be up for this?" hire him officially, Obama had to be confirmed by a small board of directors, which met at St. Helena of the Cross, a Catholic church on the South Side. Many of the community activists on the South Side were middle-aged black women, and they were more eager than ever for Kellman to settle on an African-American organizer. "We interviewed three other people before Barack. n.o.body really fit the bill of what we needed," one board member, Loretta Augustine-Herron, said. "We did want someone to look like us, but that wasn't the only thing. If Barack hadn't had the ability to understand our needs, it wouldn't have worked. He had the sensitivity. He was honest to a fault. He told us what he knew and what he didn't. When we described our plight, he understood. He didn't have a c.o.c.kamamie idea to resolve some problem we didn't have." Augustine-Herron and the others had only one concern: "He was so young. Was he going to be up for this?"

Obama decided to move to Hyde Park, an integrated neighborhood and home of the University of Chicago. Obama found himself a cheap first-floor apartment on East Fifty-fourth Street and Harper Avenue. As he had in New York, he outfitted the apartment for monkish living: a bed, a bridge table, a couple of chairs, and some books. Eventually he went out and got a gray cat which he named Max. Hyde Park was the logical neighborhood for Obama from the start. The area was mainly black, but integrated, and, because of the presence of the University of Chicago, salted with intellectuals. From Hyde Park it was a short trip to the neighborhoods where he would be working, including Roseland and West Pullman on the far South Side.

During his first weeks in Chicago, Obama spent many hours with Kellman, touring the South Side and talking. "He was very idealistic--naive only in his lack of experience," Kellman recalled. "He had no experience of Chicago ward committeemen and graft and the rest. We talked a lot about race, how to deal with it. We were trying to organize blacks with white priests. Barack has always had to deal with the way people react to him, which has nothing to do with him, but, rather, with the fact that he is black or looks black. A lot of the struggle for him was to figure out who he was independent of how people reacted to him. He was working on it. He had been in school all his life, which is not a very real environment in terms of race. This was the first time when he would be in one neighborhood and identified in one way. He had never encountered a place where race was so determinative."

Kellman drove Obama around to see the abandoned mills, the rusted s.h.i.+ps in the abandoned port, and to meet with community leaders. "It was like going to an exotic country for him," Kellman said. "He had so much learning to do about how people live their lives, but he learned almost effortlessly. He had gifts. He was comfortable with people and talked easily with people."

The standard books for beginning organizers are Alinsky's two theoretical tracts: Reveille for Radicals Reveille for Radicals and and Rules for Radicals Rules for Radicals. Kellman thought those were trivial and glib and recommended Alinsky's biography of John L. Lewis and Robert Caro's The Power Broker The Power Broker, a t.i.tanic biography of the unelected master builder of New York, Robert Moses. The books were intended to give him a short course in the way cities and power really work. "Decisions in Chicago are not made where they are supposed to be," Kellman said. "Aldermen and state representatives make no decisions; ward committeemen do, and they are making a lot of those decisions because of their second professions as funeral-parlor directors, insurance salesmen, attorneys."

Obama spent most of his time methodically compiling lists of priests, ministers, and community leaders and arranging to interview them. The idea is that the organizer does not barrel into a neighborhood like some sort of Moses in a black leather jacket, ready to lead; first he listens listens and only then tries to engage enough people to form an effective leaders.h.i.+p group. He helps them learn to a.n.a.lyze power and even speak in public. That group then goes on to confront elected officials and city bureaucrats and take power into its own hands. and only then tries to engage enough people to form an effective leaders.h.i.+p group. He helps them learn to a.n.a.lyze power and even speak in public. That group then goes on to confront elected officials and city bureaucrats and take power into its own hands.

At night, Obama wrote long meticulous reports about what he had learned in his interviews. He often drew sketches of his subjects in the margins to help him remember names and faces.

"He was very disciplined in the way he lived," Kellman said. "