Mr. Obama tries to go to Washington
Law School lecturer charts an unconventional path to Congress
Adam Harrington / CWN Asst. News Editor
[Barack Obama]
Law School lecturer and Hyde Park State Senator Barack Obama is waging an uphill campaign for Congress against long-time incumbent Bobby Rush. (Photo by Adam Harrington)
In many respects, Barack H. Obama is much like his fellowfaculty members of the U of C Law School. With a bachelor's from Columbia, a J.D. from Harvard, and a stint as president of the Harvard Law Review, Obama could easily have spent his days doing research on the tenure track.
Or, like his Harvard classmates, he could be pulling down six- or seven-figure salaries in a LaSalle or Wall Street law firm. But instead, Obama has spent his time in the inner city, setting up job training and public health programs for low-income populations, and encouraging them to vote.
Now, Obama, who has served as a senior lecturer at the Law School since 1993, and as an Illinois state senator since 1996, is trying to take this work a step further by running for the U.S. Congress.
"The First Congressional District is a historic district; this was the first African-American district in the country. The entire African-American community looks towards the occupant of this congressional seat for leadership," he said. "It's my sense that Congressman [Bobby] Rush has been relatively passive in this seat. He hasn't taken much leadership on some of the major issues that confront the community."
Obama's trek to Washington started in Hawaii, where Obama's Kenyan father met his Kansas-born mother. His parents divorced shortly after his birth in 1961. His mother remarried an Indonesian man, and Obama spent five years of his early life in Indonesia.
He later returned to Hawaii, where he attended high school. He received an undergraduate degree in political science in 1983 from Columbia University, where he developed his a lifelong interest in community organizations.
"I realized I was interested in how to address issues of poverty and high unemployment in urban areas. And I also became interested in political organizing in general; I was active in the anti-apartheid campaign that was very active on college campuses back in the early '80s," said Obama. "I worked as a journalist for a year after college and then decided I wanted to become an organizer."
Obama started with an organizing job in Harlem. Meanwhile, the Developing Communities Project in Chicago, made up of a church leaders on the far South Side, was looking to hire a young organizer to address the many issues that to plagued their communities. Offered $12,000 a year and a $1,000 grant to buy a used car, Obama drove to Chicago and took the job.
"I started working right away with the churches," Obama said. "A lot of the steel plants had closed. There was a lot of racial transition in the community; basically the entire area had gone from white to black and Hispanic in a decade. For three and a half years, I worked to set up job training programs and addressed issues concerning school reform, public housing, public health programs and city services."
Obama then returned to school in 1988 and obtained a law degree at Harvard University. While in law school, he became the first African-American president of the Harvard Law Review and worked on the executive board of the Black Law Students Organization.
After graduating magna cum laude from Harvard Law School in 1991, Obama wrote a book about his heritage and his father's return to Africa called Dreams for My Father: A Story of Race and Inheritance, which was published in 1995.
Obama also served as the Illinois director of Project Vote!, an organization that registered nearly 150,000 new voters in communities with low-income and minority populations during the 1992 presidential campaign.
After the election, rather than going to work for a large corporate law firm or an investment banking firm, Obama chose Miner, Barnhill and Galland, a small civil rights firm where he practiced law for four years. During this time, he married his wife, Michelle, who now works as the Associate Dean of Student Services at the U of C. He also became a senior lecturer at the University of Chicago Law School, a position he still holds today.
Crain's Chicago Business named Obama one of the "40 under 40" outstanding leaders in the city in 1993. He also received the IVI-IPO's Legal Eagle Award for his work to bring Illinois into compliance with the State Voter Registration Law.
In 1995, incumbent State Senator Alice Palmer vacated her 12th District seat to run for Congress in the 2nd Congressional District. "Some mutual supporters asked me if I might be interested in running [for Palmer's seat], and I thought about it and decided to throw my hat in the ring," said Obama. He was elected to the Illinois Senate the following year.
In the three and a half years he has been in the State Senate, Obama has continued to work as a civil rights attorney and has served on the board of a number of not-for-profit foundations.
"I still do some practice--civil rights law and employment discrimination law, and also some work for community development organizations that are working for affordable housing or setting up health centers," Obama said. He also served as the chair of the Chicago Annenberg Challenge, which gave $50 million to school reform efforts across the city during the mid-1990s.
During his first year as state senator, Obama focused on welfare reform. "I focused on the issue of welfare reform because the federal government had just ended the 60-year entitlement to welfare and had block-granted the welfare programs to the states," he said. "I worked to set up a program that didn't just kick people off welfare rolls, but provided support services like daycare, health care, transportation assistance and job training."
The next year, Obama concentrated on juvenile justice reform, an issue which he said will also be a focus for him in Congress. "We have, in this state, a bias towards incarceration as the solution to our crime problems, particularly when it comes to juveniles," Obama said.
"I worked as the lead Democratic negotiator to craft a major reform of the Juvenile Justice Bill and didn't get everything I wanted, but I was able to help secure $20 million per year for juvenile crime prevention and intervention," he said.
In his third year, Obama focused on campaign finance reform, which had become a major issue on both a state and national level following accusations of wrongdoing during the 1996 presidential election. "I worked with former U.S. Senator Paul Simon to bring together a bipartisan group that designed the first campaign finance reform legislation to date in 25 years and I was one of 14 co-sponsors of the bill," he said.
Recently, Obama has concentrated on public health, for which he has been the Democratic spokesperson since he entered the Senate.
"I've been deeply involved in setting up assisted living programs that assure that our seniors don't just have to go to nursing homes, but can have some intermediate care while still staying at home. I was the chief sponsor of the Bernardin Amendment to create a constitutional amendment encouraging the Legislature to design programs to provide basic health care to uninsured persons throughout the state," Obama said.
Obama has also focused on education and tax reform. "I've been very active on the education front in trying to change the school funding formula that we have in this state, which I think is biased towards property-rich districts because it's so reliant on property taxes," he said.
"I've also been very concerned with tax justice issues; we have one of the more regressive tax systems in the state and in the country, and I was one of the leading proponents two years ago to get the personal exemption on the income tax increase. This year, I'm pushing very hard for the earned income tax credit at the state level to mirror what's going on at the federal level. I'm going to measure this design to provide some tax relief to the working poor," he said.
After focusing on issues central to developing and sustaining urban centers like the South Side, Obama decided he was prepared to take on Congressman Bobby Rush in this year's congressional race. He says that Rush hasn't paid enough attention to the community during his seven and a half years in the U.S. Congress.
If elected to Congress, Obama says he will continue working to solve the most important issues that affect the South Side of Chicago, including education, health care, juvenile justice, gun control and urban development.
"The top priority is figuring out how to retool and revamp our public education system to provide the skills to our young people that allow them to compete in the new global economy," he said. "A lot of that is a state and local function, but I think the Federal Government can make a significant difference in improving access to technology in the schools, hiring more teachers, and providing better training."
Obama also sees a strong federal role in health care. "I think that ultimately we should provide some basic health care to all citizens through programs designed at the federal level, even if some of the implementation takes place at the state level," Obama said.
Obama also hopes to soon see the South Side of Chicago enjoy the same economic benefits enjoyed by more prosperous communities. "We've had a wonderful, booming economy, and Hyde Park has been part of that boom. But the South Side as a whole has not experienced the same levels of growth that have taken place across the country, and I think part of that is because we haven't devoted enough resources to job training and providing the human capital that we need to compete," he said.
The Democratic primary, where Obama will compete against Rush, fellow State Senator Donne E. Trotter and Charles Roby, will be held March 21.
Barack Obama
Born in Honolulu, Hawaii, 1961
B.A., Columbia University, 1983
J.D., Harvard Law School, 1991
Married to Michelle Obama and has one daughter
Director, Illinois Project Vote, 1991-1992
Civil Rights Attorney, Miner, Barnhill & Galland, since 1992
Senior Lecturer, University of Chicago Law School, since 1992
Elected to Illinois Senate, 1996
Campaign Web Site: www.obama2000.com
February 17, 2000
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