Entries associated with the tag "Jeremiah Wright":

Some critics say Barack Obama is too inexperienced and naive, while others say he’s too closely entwined with treasonous radicals. Months ago he could have countered both attacks at the same time by showing the country a religious mentor who knows how to talk like a progressive, appeal to the center, and quietly make political deals.

And he still could if, as Mary Mitchell speculates, he ends up joining the Apostolic Church of God.

I’m not questioning Obama’s sincerity as a spiritual seeker, but it’s obvious that Jeremiah Wright’s message of black liberation theology (and his congregation full of black politicians and other professionals) was attractive to Obama when he was looking for identity . . . and networking opportunities.

Now, though, his political success depends on his being able to distance himself from left-wing conspiracy theorists and cast himself as a reasonable centrist. (Just do a Google search for "Obama and Jeremiah Wright” if you need to remind yourself of the right wing’s strategy to cast Obama as an H. Rap Brown wannabe.) He couldn’t do better than finding a mentor like Bishop Arthur Brazier, Apostolic’s retiring pastor.

Brazier’s career is a study in social activism moving ever closer to the center. He once protested the segregationist education policies of Richard J. Daley; now, as hands the leadership of his church to his son Byron, he’s an ally of Richard M. Daley.

That wouldn’t hurt Obama at all. 

Wright seems mainstream to locals but like a firebrand to outsiders. For Brazier the reverse would be true. Insiders may consider him a Daley apologist, but to the rest of the country he’d seem like a direct, hardworking, grandfatherly figure. And he's a gifted preacher who won't sound too fiery to anyone who's nervous about that sort of thing. 

Brazier doesn’t believe in the racial politics of Jeremiah Wright; he was one of the first black clerics to endorse Daley as mayor after he defeated Eugene Sawyer in 1989. Brazier also wasn’t corrupt or dumb enough to trade his support for peanuts like so many pastors and community leaders who’ve gone silent under this mayor. He’s a proud, bright, tough old head, but in a fight he wouldn’t call the cameras in and start screaming -- he’d much rather let others do the talking while he makes a deal and gets somebody to do just what he wanted in the first place. He and his protege Leon Finney Jr. could always talk this Mayor Daley’s language: Look, we all want to build some new middle-class homes in Woodlawn, so let’s tear down the last half mile of the Green Line -- nobody who uses it can raise enough of a stink to stop us -- and call it the removal of blight. 

Over the years Bishop Brazier has given thousands of dollars to the mayor and various south-side political figures, including former 20th Ward alderman Arenda Troutman. And there were no doubts about who really led the ward; Brazier stuck with Troutman last year after she was charged with accepting bribes, but when she held up a big Woodlawn development project he backed he found somebody else: a former cop named Willie Cochran. Brazier didn’t do anything lame like endorse Cochran or stand next to him in a photo-op -- he ponied up more than $30,000 in a few weeks’ time and all but escorted his man into office.

Frankly, I used to think Bishop Brazier was a sellout; now I see that he was one of the smartest operators around. I don’t understand many, many of his political decisions or his plans for scrubbing signs of poverty from Woodlawn. But even when he’s a bastard, he makes his views sound quite reasonable. That’s the kind of minister a relatively inexperienced black presidential candidate could use at his side.

People around the country are still talking about Reverend Jeremiah Wright's appearance at the National Press Club Monday. But as our very own Ben Joravsky argues in this piece in the Washington Independent, some Chicagoans are still trying to figure out how someone with so much to say about the federal government's many acts of injustice could all but ignore the politics of his own city. 

The dozens of acres of open space at 83rd and Stewart were once home to a steel plant that employed hundreds of workers. But in a story that’s been repeated across the rust belt, the plant steadily lost business and shed jobs until it finally closed in 2002.

Howard Brookins Jr. was elected 21st Ward alderman the next year, and ever since he’s been working—and sometimes battling—with city officials, developers, and unions to lure some kind of job-producing business to the site. In 2004 it looked like Wal-Mart might be coming, but the City Council voted the plan down, eventually leading to the big-box minimum-wage battle of 2006 and the contentious municipal elections of 2007, which Brookins narrowly survived. Earlier this year the alderman lost his race in the Democratic primary for Cook County state’s attorney, but now he says he’s going to revive his original battle: winning support for his Wal-Mart plan.

The prospects appear to be dim. At the end of last year a Lowe’s home improvement store and Potbelly sandwich shop opened on the old steel plant site. Still, while acres of muddy land remain, in March the Daley administration officially refused to support putting a Wal-Mart on the site; sources say the mayor wants peace with unions as he tries to bring the 2016 Olympics to Chicago. Brookins, though, is vowing to try to get other aldermen to join him in passing an ordinance to overrule the administration. Here’s what he had to say about it in a recent interview at the new Potbelly's.

So where do things stand now with this site?
The site is so vast—it’s about 50 acres—that in order to make all the numbers work and the infrastructure that had to be put in there for this to work, we still need a second major anchor to the development. And for at least five years we have been unable to find anybody willing to take a chance. Target at one point said they were interested, but we found out they were more interested in blocking Wal-Mart from coming to the site than going to the location. We’ve talked to people at Costco. We’ve talked to people at Kohl’s. Dominick’s looked at the site and passed on it. So it’s been hard to get a retailer to come into that spot. I don’t even know of any other nonretailers that would be interested in this type of location, but all options are really on the table.

 
We’ve all heard studies conclude that Wal-Mart and other big retailers drive down wages and knock out local businesses. Aren’t you concerned about those things?
Absolutely. But what people fail to realize who live on the north side or in other areas is that we don’t have those little shops or boutiques in the 21st Ward. I also to some extent discount the idea that a big-box retailer would drive wages down, for this reason: generally ma-and-pa stores pay well for ma and pa, and the people working for them are stuck at the bottom of the economic ladder. And when I’m going to places that have a lot of big boxes and national retailers, generally places that are known for paying a pittance for wages, like McDonald’s, are even paying higher wages than in the city. And that’s because unemployment in those areas is so low that they have a hard time attracting workers. But the converse is going on in the city and in my area and areas surrounding us: unemployment is in double digits, and in certain segments of the African-American community, most notably males between the ages of 17 and 26, you get close to 40 percent unemployment.

What about other types of jobs? Is it completely unrealistic to think you could get some manufacturing in here—some better-paying jobs than retail?
I ran against an opponent who came from the union, and that was one of his arguments. And I asked people at a rally when everyone was saying, "Yeah! Yeah! Yeah!”—I asked them, “OK, well what manufacturing is it? And do you want them located next to you? When we have in the African-American community a higher incidence of asthma and other health-related diseases based on pollutants, is there anyone who’s going to stand for that being in their backyard?” And they backed off.

No, that horse has left—and nobody’s been able to figure out how to bring those high-paying jobs back to their community. And if we have high-tech jobs, they want to be in more trendy areas. And the trendy areas tend to be more built up with places like Wal-Mart. So I see this as a means to an end.

So far Wal-Mart has been the only retailer that’s been willing to dance with the community. You hate to throw a jacket on people, but in a sense it has to be that these retailers are thinking of the past, potentially racist-type thinking that let all of the jobs leave the community when African-Americans moved in here some 30 or 40 years ago. And the reason I say that is that the ward I represent is among the highest in the city as far as median income is concerned—so why can’t we attract any retailers? We’ve got to break the stereotypical thinking that there’s no money to be made in the African-American community.

 
So what are the prospects now, since planning commissioner Arnold Randall essentially said “No”?
We can take the authority out of his hands in the City Council and approve or disapprove the particular use of this land within a new ordinance. But the question that I have, and it hasn’t been fully vetted with Wal-Mart yet, is how far they’re willing to take this particular fight, and how far the developer is willing to take this fight. The developer is Goldman Sachs, and Goldman Sachs does bond work for the city of Chicago. Do they want to risk angering the powers that be? And how does Wal-Mart want to come into the city—do they want to come into the city being welcomed, or do they want to come in filing a lawsuit against the city? Because I do think this discrimination against one company is illegal.

Shifting gears, isn’t Trinity United Church of Christ in your ward?
Yes. And it’s my church. You know, they keep saying certain things Rev. Wright said are racist, and I keep thinking, “What in those sound bites is racist?” You may not like the analysis he made in reaching his conclusion, but clearly we bombed Nagasaki. Clearly we bombed Hiroshima. Clearly this country has done some things that as a person of the cloth you would not be proud of. If you believe in the tenets of your faith, we should not be out killing and bombing innocent folks. 

Clearly, Trinity is ultraprogressive. My church is against Wal-Mart 1,000 percent. There was a bulletin on Easter Sunday: “Don’t shop at Wal-Mart.” But for people to dismiss Jeremiah Wright as a kook or a racist is very troubling to me. And his private persona is much different from his persona in the pulpit—he’s actually kind of a quiet, shy guy.

What about something important: baseball. Are you a Sox fan?
I’m a Sox fan, but not a huge one. My son is really into baseball, so I’ve been getting back into it. It’s funny, though, because when I was in college I was more of a Cubs fan. And the reason is that I went to Southern Illinois, and the only team I could see on TV was the Cubs. And everybody from the Saint Louis area, everybody from south of I-80, was a Cardinals fan, so I wanted somebody to cheer for against them. Back then Lee Smith was our dominant closer. I loved Lee Smith. It seemed like he put a little Jheri-curl juice on the ball and then struck out the side.

Democratic consultant Delmarie Cobb is a veteran--in 1996 she was the press secretary for the Democratic National Convention, and over the years she's managed campaigns and dispensed advice to a long list of local and national politicians, including Jesse Jackson, former Illinois gubernatorial candidates Roland Burris and Dawn Clark Netsch, and congressmen Jesse Jackson Jr. and Bobby Rush.

Over the last few months Cobb has been in an interesting and sometimes frustrating place. As an African-American from Barack Obama's hometown who supports Hillary Clinton, Cobb has been pulled into the national conversation on race, gender, and bare-knuckles campaigning. This afternoon she shared a few of her thoughts in an interview.

You’ve done a lot of work with local politicians and religious leaders. How representative of local black churches is Trinity? Is it really way outside the mainstream, as it’s been portrayed?

I don’t think it is. And Jeremiah Wright is very well respected and very learned. He can draw on foreign policy and make it relevant for today. What black preachers do is try to take social commentary and match it to biblical teachings.

Being a Hillary Clinton supporter, I don’t know why you have to tear down one person to be in favor of someone else. That’s the overall problem I have with this entire campaign. It’s not just been Jeremiah Wright—it’s with so many of Obama’s supporters. There’s the need to attack supporters of everyone else, and to make them into racists. You can’t sit up there and have a speech about having dialogue on race, and then when someone else brings up something about black and white, they’re a racist.

But Hillary Clinton also brought up Jeremiah Wright—and with him, it seems—race.

First of all, she didn’t say anything for awhile. Then she finally said something—in response to a question, she said, “He wouldn’t be my pastor.” What the Obama campaign has done is this: if I have a black candidate and I’m trying to get to the White House, and my biggest obstacle to getting to the White House is a white candidate with a good relationship with black voters, then I need to shut her down. And in effect the Obama campaign has shut the Clintons down. I think it’s horrible what’s been done in this campaign, quite frankly. There are so few white people who will stick their necks out for black people, and President Clinton stuck his neck out.

But the Clintons also have a reputation for doing anything they can to win.

Because that’s the way the media paints them. They’ve tried to paint them from the very beginning that they’re sneaky, conniving, will do anything to win. Coming from Chicago where politics is rough- and-tumble, I had two reporters call me about the 3 AM phone call ad. And they were trying to argue me down, saying the 3 AM commercial is negative. I said, “Well, that’s what you do in a political contest—she’s supposed to say, ‘I’m the best.’ What’s she supposed to do, say he’s the best?”

I hear a lot of people saying, “Hillary’s a bitch.” It seems really difficult for a female candidate to be aggressive and strong without getting that kind of reaction.

You’re right. The overall thinking is that it’s acceptable to call Hillary a bitch, but we wouldn’t dare use a racial slur about [Obama]. Even as a female consultant, I have male clients who are patronizing to me sometimes. When I did Dawn Clark Netsch’s campaign, I had an argument with [other consultants] over the motto they came up with: “Not just another pretty face.” And I was insulted.

It’s always difficult for a woman the higher up you go. And this is the ultimate. That’s the sad part—we’ve allowed Barack to run just as a candidate, and not a black candidate. Hillary has been a woman candidate the whole time, and she’s had to try to prove she’s not a bitch.

It seems to me that the church controversy is about Obama’s critics reminding voters he’s black.

Yes, that is what the conservatives are going to try to do. Hillary has actually pulled her punches; the Republicans won’t. If anyone thinks the party of Willie Horton and swift boats isn’t going to do this, they’re nuts. The Republicans have already shown us they don’t need black people to win.

How’d you think Obama handled the Wright flap? Would you have advised any differently?

No, he did what he needed to do [by giving the speech on race]. I always tell my candidates that the way to do it is Crisis Management 101—attack it, nip it in the bud. I only wish President Clinton had done the same thing when they tried to paint him as a racist—give a speech and say, “Look at what I’ve done for people.”

What [the media has] decided is that [Obama] is a new black person who doesn’t make race an issue. This is someone we can accept. But this is a fight in the black community—it’s between the black people who’ve been fighting their whole lives for civil rights and the people who’ve been the beneficiaries of that fight. When Barack said Jeremiah Wright was part of the old guard, that’s what he meant. But that diminishes and minimizes those people who did all the fighting, because the fighting hasn’t stopped. I mean, the news yesterday was about all of our high school dropouts. That’s not progress.

Want to know how hateful and destructive the Trinity United Church of Christ has been under Reverend Jeremiah "God damn America" Wright? So much so that over the last two decades it's received millions of dollars in grants from both Democratic and Republican administrations at the federal, state, and city levels. Most of the money has gone to provide community child care, HIV and AIDS programs, food services, and Head Start. Here's a sampling from the city of Chicago (which includes federal and state grants the city administers):

 

 

YEAR	PURPOSE	AMOUNT
1993-1994	child care	$          137,592.12
1994-1995	child care food program	$            30,772.10
1994-1995	child care	$          109,581.68
1994-1995	Head Start	$            11,492.70
1995-1996	child and adult care food program	$            31,314.24
1995-1996	child care	$          119,638.44
1995-1996	Head Start	$          103,845.42
1996	Head Start	$            45,691.43
1996-1997	conferences	$              6,500.00
1996-1997	HIV/AIDS programs	$            25,000.00
1996-1997	child care food program	$            55,404.81
1996-1997	day care	$          122,891.00
1996-1997	Head Start	$          122,876.00
1996-1997	Head Start	$          292,883.30
1997	not clear	$          108,975.18
1997-1998	HIV/AIDS programs	$            23,775.00
1997-1998	child care food program	$            27,692.78
1997-1998	child care	$          101,694.40
1997-1998	Head Start	$          300,319.62
1998-1999	child and adult care food program	$            58,352.58
1998-1999	child care	$          336,863.32
1998-1999	Health and Human Services	$          416,143.20
1998-1999	Health and Human Services	$            93,268.05
1999-2000	Illinois Department of Human Services	$          355,467.12
1999-2000	Head Start	$          103,923.21
1999-2000	not clear	$          114,251.43
1999-2000	Head Start	$          326,709.16
2000-2001	child care	$          363,118.00
2000-2001	not clear	$          123,969.60
2000-2001	not clear	$          128,833.29
2000-2002	not clear	$          288,193.47
2001-2003	child care	$          697,864.10
2001-2003	not clear	$          106,542.19
2001-2003	not clear	$          368,437.22
2003-2004	Head Start	$            68,224.87
2003-2007	Head Start	$       1,945,430.20
2006-2008	Head Start	$       1,203,142.50
TOTAL		$       8,876,673.73

 

 

The leaders and members of Trinity United Church of Christ, including Barack Obama have provided a far more informed and articulate defense of the church and “divisive” former pastor Jeremiah Wright than I can. But as a white boy who’s crossed paths with the minister and the church before, I wanted to add a couple of things.

I knew nothing about Rev. Wright or Trinity until I attended McCormick Theological Seminary, a graduate school in Hyde Park, from 1997 to 2000. The student body was mostly white, but I’m pretty sure Trinity had more of us enrolled than any other congregation. Trinity was presented to me and everyone else as a welcome and open place whose pastor and members were dedicated to social justice, especially for the people in their own neighborhoods; and the 20 or so people I knew who went there—including several church leaders—were universally warm, respectful, and open-minded. When I attended services at Trinity I was welcomed no less, and while I’m kind of the skeptical type when it comes to sermonizing, I was impressed with Reverend Wright. He was thoughtful, critical, funny, and deeply spiritual; he railed against white supremacy, which struck me as appropriate; and he seemed to challenge everyone there to become better citizens.

After I graduated from seminary, I returned to journalism, and a few months later I wrote a story detailing the relationships of several large black congregations in Chicago with the Daley administration. The story attempted to show how the city had provided several of them—including Trinity—with thousands of dollars in funding for social programs, and to capture a debate within the black community about whether these churches lost their prophetic voices when they formed alliances with the mayor.

A couple of pastors reportedly denounced the story and me in church on Sunday morning. And when Reverend Wright visited my alma mater, he took the opportunity to attack my story for lumping Trinity in with a group of other congregations with less integrity. It was unfair, he felt: I had proceeded as if all black congregations were the same.

Naturally, I thought he was defensive and plain wrong, but I couldn’t really dispute his right to make an argument in public, since I had done so myself. And unlike a couple of other people I’d written about, he didn’t attack me personally (or get his alderman to write nasty letters to the editor about me).

Of more concern to me, my two closest Trinity friends saw the story the way Wright did, and they were upset enough that they vowed to do something about it: they invited me to dinner. More accurately, they invited me to “break bread” with them.

We did. It wasn’t always easy, but over our food, we talked about my story, Wright, racism, journalism, and a zillion other things, and in the end I agreed that I was right to challenge their church in print and they agreed I was full of shit. Fair enough.

The truth is that I don’t know Jeremiah Wright. I’ve never met him. I do wish that he and the church more directly took on local political figures who claim to be friends of the black community but don’t seem to have delivered.

But if I’m going to measure him and the church he built by the people who have come out of it—which is the point here, right?—then I’ll just say “Amen to that.”