Professor Sabir's Posse

Christine So
Eng 201 B
first draft i'm going to add more, i have too many quotes.

5. Talk about his work as a community social worker on Chicago's South Side. What does he learn or come to realize about his role in the African-American community?

Obama comes to realize about his role in the African-American community is tough. Obama became a community organizer in 1983. He wanted to organize African Americans, he wanted a change. He says:

Such images became a form of prayer for me, bolstering my spirits, channeling my emotions in a way that words never could. They told me that I wasn’t alone in my particular struggles, and that communities had never been given in this country, at least not for blacks. Communities had to be created, fought for, tended like gardens. They expanded or contracted with the dreams of men-and in the civil rights movement those dreams had been large. In the sit-ins, the marches, the jailhouse songs, I saw the African-American community becoming more than just the place where you’d been born or the house where you’d been raised. Through organizing, through shared sacrifice, membership had been earned. And because membership was earned-because this community I imagined was still in the making, built on the promise that the larger American community, black, white, and brown, could somehow redefine itself-I believed that it might, over time, admit the uniqueness of my own life. That was my idea of organizing. It was a promise of redemption(134-135).(block quote)

A community is an interacting population of various types of individuals in a common location. One of the communities Obama encounters is Chicago’s South Side. It is a community where people want to change the gang activities, bring jobs back to the neighborhood, fix schools, and develop community. The community in Chicago is a majority of poor’s and blacks.

“Determined not to repeat my mistakes, I drove both myself and the leadership to exhaustion: preparing a script for the meeting, pushing hard for the other churches to send their people, developing a clear demand. . . .”(184) Obama realized the mistake in not targeting most of the MET programs in the city in helping his organization. Realizing that mistake he made no hesitation in fixing it. His group was very flattered by his change. “Have this whole damn town organized by the time we’re through. I lit a cigarette and, in my self-congratulatory mood, and discuss the fate of the city”(186).
 

Larry Smith
English 201 B
M/W 1- 2 50

In my opinion what Obama’s comes to realize about his role in the African American community is that he has to take a leadership role and its going to be a big responsibility on his part whether something gets done in this community or not.

A community is an interacting population of various types of individuals in a common location. For Obama this community is a certain part of Chicago that he’s trying to make a difference in. Obama is apart of this organization called the developing communities project and the name of the organization speaks for itself with what their trying to do in certain communities in Chicago. What Obama said he want do for the community is “Fixing the schools. Bringing back jobs to the neighborhood” (p. 160)(Direct Quote).

Chicago’s south side is a certain part of Chicago:
The ALTEGELD GARDENS PUBLIC housing project sat at Chicago’s southernmost edge: two thousand apartments arranged in a series of two story brick buildings with army-green door and grimy mock shutters. Everybody in that area referred to Altegeld as “Gardens” for short, although it was until later that I considered the irony of the name, its evocation of something fresh and well tended-a sanctified earth (p 164) (Block Quote).

What brings Obama’s to Chicago was basically for his job, he wanted to be an organizer and he heard from marty through a phone call and marty wanted him to come work for this organization he was building and Obama accepted his offer so that’s why he’s there. Earlier in the book Obama kind of made up his mind to be an organizer so the idea was in his head then he hooked up with marty and went to Chicago to work for him to do some things for the community. By Obama being from Chicago I guess he felt that if he goes back he can kind of relate to what’s going on out there because he’s from there also.
 

Christine So
Eng 201 B

Obama comes to realize about his role in the African-American community is tough. Obama became a community organizer in 1983. He wanted to organize African Americans, he wanted a change. He says:

Communities had to be created, fought for, tended like gardens. They expanded or contracted with the dreams of men-and in the civil rights movement those dreams had been large. In the sit-ins, the marches, the jailhouse songs, I saw the African-American community becoming more than just the place where you’d been born or the house where you’d been raised. Through organizing, through shared sacrifice, membership had been earned. And because membership was earned-because this community I imagined was still in the making, built on the promise that the larger American community, black, white, and brown, could somehow redefine itself-I believed that it might, over time, admit the uniqueness of my own life. That was my idea of organizing. It was a promise of redemption(134-135).

A community is an interacting population of various types of individuals in a common location. One of the communities Obama encounters is Chicago’s South Side. It is a community where people want to change the gang activities, bring jobs back to the neighborhood, fix schools, and develop community. The community in Chicago is a majority of poor’s and blacks.

“Determined not to repeat my mistakes, I drove both myself and the leadership to exhaustion: preparing a script for the meeting, pushing hard for the other churches to send their people, developing a clear demand. . . .”(184) Obama realized the mistake in not targeting most of the MET programs in the city in helping his organization. Realizing that mistake he made no hesitation in fixing it. He wrote a letter to Cynthia Alvarez and she agreed to meet with him and the group. Cynthia is the city-wide director of MET. Obama had a meeting where in the beginning it seemed to be unsuccessful but later on in the night it was becoming something he hoped for. The group he was working with was very satisfied by the outcome of the meeting and flattered by Obama’s turn out.
 

Kelley Yuen
Professor Sabir
English 201A
6 April 2009

5. Talk about his work as a community social worker on Chicago's South Side. What does he learn or come to realize about his role in the African-American community?

While in Chicago, Obama had made many mistakes and had learned from all of them. The mistakes were mostly about how to change the African-American community a neighborhood called Altgeld. Obama came to realize that Altgeld had go through so much, this community will take a long time just to get back up on its feet. Lots of people in Altgeld were so desperate from not having a good environment to live in. It was a difficult time for the African-American people that are living in that community.

Obama wanted to be a community organizer. Marty had offered him a job as a community organizer. This was an opportunity for him to do something for the community. Obama went to Chicago for this organization. Marty had brought him into this community in Chicago called Altgeld. This community has a group of poor, black, and lots of gang violence community.
Altgeld was not a safe environment for the people to live there:
“The people of Altgeld couldn’t see the plant or the open-air vats that went on for close to a mile…dotted with hastily planted saplings that refused to grow month after month, like hair swept across a bald man’s head.” (164).

Chicago south side is a poor city, where the African-American poor people are living. This area has lots of gang violence, and poor housing. Obama is there to change this community. He had talked to lots of churches there to see if they want to be in an organization to help change this community. Most of the priest didn’t want to and knew that that community will be hard to change. The priest there was just waiting for an opportunity for someone to take their place, so they can move out.
The Chicago Housing Authority didn’t have a well organize, safe place for the people to live in:
“Altgeld’s occupancy rate held steady at ninety percent, and if you went inside the apartments, you would more other than not find them well-kept, with calendar left hanging one the wall for its tropical beach scenes-that the expressed the lingering idea of home.” (165).
 

Lauryn Helling
Eng 201 B
1-250

Obama comes to reason with the fact that he's taking on a big responsibility of being a social worker for Chicago's South SIde. He notices very quickly that this is not going to be an easy task but he already committed to it so he has nothing else to do but go through with it. Obama knows that when he's done, he would have made a world of a difference for the community itself and for the people that live there.

I can see that Obama sees the severity of this community and the help that it's demanding. He's more than willing to take the first step. As he starts talking preparing for this opening sentence, he lets the audience know that this is not a job that can be done alone. "With your leadership this can be the a first step towards cooperation on all kinds of issues. Fixing the school. Bringing jobs back into the neighborhood . . . " (160)

Obama had always had an interest in organizing. He knew that fixing something, no matter the size would make a difference to someone somewhere. "But officials could do nothing to hide the smell-a heavy, putrid odor that varied in strength depending on the temperature and the wind's direction, and seeped through windows no matter how tightly they were shut." (165). In that paragraph you can only imagine the terrible conditions that these residents had to deal with on a daily basis, but knowing that there was nothing anyone could do about it. Obama strived to think of ideas to fix this destruction.
 

Jacky Leung
English 201B, MW 1-2:50

“Determined not to repeat my mistakes, I drove both myself and the leadership to exhaustion: preparing a script for the meeting, pushing hard for the other churches to send their people, developing a clear demand --a job intake and training center in the Far South Side--that we thought MET could deliver.” (184) Obama learned from his previous mistakes. With two weeks of preparation, he pushed himself and the leadership hard to make this meeting successful. Fifteen minutes before the meeting, Obama was disappointed that very few people showed up. Two minutes before seven o clock, over hundred people showed up. The meeting was over an hour long but was very successful.

“Now that the jobs were gone, and those people that had already left, it seemed only natural to use the land as a dump. A dump--and a place to house poor blacks.” (165) Chicago’s south side was very poor. The housing around the area had crumbled ceilings, pipes bursting and toilets backed up. Many African Americans resided in the area. People were barely making it with part-time jobs. Obama came to this part of the city to make a change. He asked many priests to be a part of this organization but they were just there waiting for a transfer. Obama was greatly disappointed.

In 1983, Obama decided to become a community organizer. While in New York, he was a research assistant for a consulting house to multinational corporations and was then promoted as a financial writer. He decided he would give up on becoming a organizer. He even rejected a job for civil rights organization in the city. Obama then took Marty Kaufman’s job offering as a community organizer. He came to Chicago with Marty to make a change.
 

Adries Ahmed
English 201
Chicago seemed different to Obama because it had a diverse organization. The community at there was mostly a black one and was l looking for some black. He states “now he was trying to pull blacks and suburban whites together around a plan to save manufacturing jobs in metropolitan Chicago.” “he needed somebody black to work with, he said somebody black. In Obama’s last organization he felt like an outsider so he went to Chicago to get accepted (pg 141).
Obamas mistakes and lessons. He has learned a lesson not to expect people to be like his romodels. He states “ these past two and a half years wasn’t it? That most black folks were not like the father of my dreams the man In my mother stories. Full of high blown ideals and quick to pass judgment they were more like my stepfather Lolo practical people who knew life was to hard to judge each others choices , to messy to live according to abstract ideals (pg 184)
He made a mistake when he was young. At school the black population was very little he used to talk about white folks . Then at home he had a guilty feeling when hearing his grandparents talk .He states sometime I would find myself talking to Ray about white folks this or white folks that, and I would suddenly remember my mother smile and the words that I spoke seemed awkward and false (pg 81). So him and ray agrees to not talk about white folks anymore without knowing what there doing.
 

Adries Ahmed
English 201
The social entrepreneur profilied is Bart Weetjens. The problem Bart weetjens identified was deadly unexploded landmines in Africa. The name of the organization they started is Hero Rats.They have helped prevent many explosion, saved peoples lives,and allowed students to resume their education without fear of stepping on a mind. They decided to Adress this issue because rats affect the enviroment less, and many people have died. The community owns the process by training rats.
 

Adries Ahmed
english 201
The social entrepreneur profiled is Mimi Silbert. The problems Mimi Silbert identified is convics homeless. The name of the organiztion is delancy street.There relationship with the community is teaching them how to be apart of a team. They decided to address the issue to give people a second chance. They move things to do good things like working in restuarents, and gardening.