Showing posts with label Public Allies. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Public Allies. Show all posts

Monday, January 19, 2009

Obamamania!

There are so many great articles about Obama all over the place that it's impossible to keep track of them, and impossible to read more than a handful.

But here are some of the ones that I liked.

From London, the FT has an article about the history of the White House.

In the LA Times, Meghan Daum writes about the poet who will read a poem at the Inaugural, Elizabeth Alexander. I'm looking forward to that.

Also in the LA Times, Obama is in the house - literally. Many people are putting pictures of Obama in their house. Once upon a time, it was JFK or Martin Luther King, Jr. Now it's Obama.

Barack Obama himself observed Martin Luther King, Jr. day as a day of service. Boy does that take me back. I was part of a "day of service" a couple of days before Clinton's Inaugural. A bunch of people decided to try and renovate a historic old theater in Northeast Washington, the Atlas Theater. I was involved with a group called Public Allies. It was a great day - 400 people showed up to paint and clean. I was supposed to find out what the local community wanted from this place. I walked around the neighborhood with an older African American man named Robert Jackson (I'll never forget him). He explained to me what the neighborhood needed, but I never had a chance to communicate to the other people involved. It was just too crazy of a day. Three US Senators showed - media was there by the truckload. Cypress Hill did a concert in the street.

But at the end of the day, it was boarded up, and everybody went home, to see what tomorrow would bring. Plans were a little unclear.

I went back the next day. I was the only one. I spent the day talking to a homeless guy, and he ended up trusting me. But nothing happened there for months.

That was 16 years ago. It was symbolic of the best and worst of the Clinton administration; a lot of excitement, but not a lot of focus. But the best part was that experiences like that trained a lot of energetic young liberals who are now in a position to take advantage of the lessons they learned. For example, later that year Public Allies opened up an office in Chicago, and hired, as the Executive Director, a woman named Michelle Obama.

She was recommended for the job by a member of the board of Public Allies - her husband.

So now we have come full circle - the enthusiasm of that day did not, in fact, dissipate with the lack of follow through the next day. There was follow-up. It took a while. But wow, what results.

I didn't start out this post planning to write about that day so long ago. But I hope I can be excused for getting carried away.

Monday, August 25, 2008

Michelle's Speech

I just read Michelle's speech. It's really good. I also watched the last part of it. I read it before I watched it, which was a little weird (the text was posted before she gave the speech).

She was great. Just phenomenal. She's really one of the Obama's campaigns best weapons, particularly in contrast to Cindy McCain. The best possible argument against this absurd nonsense that the Obamas are elitist is just the simple truth: they were both born to middle- and lower-middle class families. Both of them worked their way up.

The best moment came at the end, when Obama himself was onscreen. He was in Kansas City, Missouri, with a family there. The Obamas' girls came on stage, and Michelle and the girls waved to Barack and chatted with him for a few minutes. Ridiculously charming. Talk about family values.

One reason I am a Michelle Obama fan is that she worked for Public Allies, as the Executive Director of their Chicago office. I got to know Public Allies when I was in Washington, DC. Public Allies is, hands down, one of the coolest non-profit organizations that I know of.

What's even cooler than the fact that Michelle Obama worked for Public Allies is that she was recommended for the position by Barack, who was on the board at the time.

Wednesday, July 2, 2008

Obama on national and community service

Barack Obama gave a speech today in Colorado Springs about national and community service.


"I won't just ask for your vote as a candidate -- I will ask for your service and your active citizenship when I am president of the United States," Obama said.

"This will not be a call issued in one speech or one program -- this will be a central cause of my presidency," he said. "We will ask Americans to serve. We will create new opportunities for Americans to serve. And we will direct that service to our most pressing national challenges."
On the one hand, this sounds like about the most cliched kind of platitude a candidate can offer, a verbose version of Kennedy's "Ask not what your country cand do for you, ask what you can do for your country." But Obama has the potential to follow this up with some real action. This article has a few specifics:


Obama, an Illinois senator, touted a package of proposals he first offered in December that would expand AmeriCorps, the domestic service agency, and double the size of the Peace Corps.

He also would offer more service opportunities to retirees and set goals for middle- and high-school students to serve 50 hours a year of public service, and for college students to serve 100 hours a year.
There are a couple of reasons I am giving him credit for something more than making vague promises. First, there is an infrastructure of national and community service organizations out there. For this, Obama owes a great debt to Bill Clinton, who set up Americorps. National and community service was a very big deal around the time Clinton was elected, and he was very supportive.

Second, those organizations, governmental agencies, and their advocates are starved for attention, and desperate for the right support. "Pragmatic idealism" was a watchword when I was in DC in 92-94. There are a lot of organization which are very focused and competent. They've survived the Bush presidency, and the years of Republican control of Congress before that. They are just waiting for the right legislative action to blossom. All Obama has to do is appoint the right people and set the right priorities, and amazing things will happen.

I have a good friend who once missed a concert because he was working so hard opposing Republican efforts to cut funding for national service. It was a bummer for him, but it worked out for me, because I got his ticket, and I got to see the Rolling Stones.

One of the coolest groups that I was involved with way back then was a group called Public Allies. The Obamas know it well: Barack himself was part of the founding, and Michelle ran the Chicago office.

I've said it before, I will say it again, and I am sure I will say it again and again: The revolution started in the '60's, was kept alive by Clinton in the '90's, and will be finished by Barack Obama in the 21st century.