2001 Article from Chicago’s Community News Project (Funded by Woods Fund) Mentions Obama under “Organizing and Islam” Section

Tonight in a thread at No Quarter I spotted this comment:

Comment by Cooper | 2008-10-14 17:59:54

Can somebody tell my WHY this text

“Barack Obama, 773-684-4809, whose work to empower blacks has included his law practice, community organizing, philanthropy and most recently electoral politics: he is a candidate for state senate”

would appear under THIS headline??

“ORGANIZING AND ISLAM”

http://web.archive.org/web/20010723055650/www.newstips.org/blackchicago.html

After seeing this I decided to snoop around myself.  If you follow the link you will arrive at the site of the “Community News Project of the Community Media Workshop.” Guess who funds this publication/workshop?  Foundations like the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation, the Joyce Foundation, and…..The Woods Fund of Chicago. Yes, THAT Woods Fund…

The article in question, which dates from 2001, is:

For African-Americans, struggle and some gains

Eighty years after the Great Migration from the South end nearly a decade after the 1987 death of Chicago’s first black mayor, Chicago’s African-American community is moving in many directions, separated by class and political division.

(SNIP)

Scroll down see this passage down near the end of the page….(they could have used a proof reader…)

ORGANIZING AND ISLAM

Organizing in neighborhoods has taken two paths that reflect historic dichotomy between integrationist and nationalist strategies. Many top conununity leaders collaborate on urban issues through city’s grasgroots network, forging multi-racial coalitions, while others take black nationalist approach, looking only within the African-American community for leadership and resources.

In first category are Ani Russell of community policing network, 312-461-0444; Jacky Grimshaw, former strategist for Harold Washington now working an community transportation issues; 773-278-4800, ext. 133; and Barack Obama, 773-684-4809, whose work to empower blacks has included his law practice, community organizing, philanthropy and most recently electoral politics: he is a candidate for state senate. A quiet leader with broad vision of empowerment and redevelopment in the Grand Boulevard neighborhood is Sokoni Karanja, 773-373-5700, whose nonprofit Centers for New Horizons provides social services, youth programs, education and child care.

Chicago is national center of black nationalist thought and organization. Head of the nation’s largest secular black-nationalist organization, the National Black United Front, Conrad Worrill, 773-268-5658, is a professor at Northeastern Illinois University’s Center for Inner City Studies and was prominent speaker at last year’s Million Man Man March. Another Northeastern professor, Robert Starks, 773-268-7500, heads local Task Force for Political Empowerment, along with Worrill was major organizer in Harold Washington campaigns. Radio commentator and former newspaper columnist and publisher, Lu Palmer, 773-624-0242, holds forth two nights a week on a WVON-1450AM political talk show. He founded the Black Independent Political Orgization and Chicago Black United Communities. Eddie Read, 773-663-0704, is president of both organizations mentioned above; CBUC members have shut down construction sites where blacks don’t get fair share of jobs. Salim Muwakkil, 773-643-3730, is senior editor of In These Times and contributing columnist for the Chicago Sun-Times. He has done extensive coverage of black activism and the black nationalist movement.

Chicago is home base for African-American Muslim organizations. Muslims have been visible forces for organizing and stability in many neighborhoods, only some of them aligned with controversial leader Louis Farrakhan and his Nation of Islam. Organizer Kublai Toure, 773-538-7217, is a member of Jim Brown’s Amer-I-Can youth organization, with projects ranging from helping arrange gang traces to trips to Chicago Cubs baseball Sitines for public housing youth. Mikail Bilal, 773-721-6588, is chek of the Muslim addiction-prevention group Millati Wami, with twice-weekly meetings on South Drexel St. for recovering substance abusers. Abdul Rashid Akbar is the Muslim chaplin at Cook County jail, 773-721-6588, where many incarcerated African-Americans convert to Islam. The Nation of Islam’s contact point for the media and editor-chief of The Final Call newspaper is James Muhammad, 773-602-1230. Ayesha Mustafaa reports on the larger Muslim community as editor of The Muslim Journal, 312-243-7600.

I’m a bit unclear about the sentence that says Obama “is a candidate for state senate.”  In 2001 Obama was already in the IL Senate, having started his first of three terms in 1997 (ending last term in 2004.)  Perhaps the article was trying to say that he was running for another term…

What does it mean?  Well, at the very least, Obama may have chose to organize among Muslims apparently rather than other groups within the black community.  At least that’s what I take away from it…

Also, this tidbit under the section titled “Community Life”…

COMMUNITY LIFE

Segregated physically and emotionally from other Chicagoans, blacks created institutions as backbones of community life. From early migrant support groups and churches grew political and cultural organizations, plus a musical tradition so powerful that Langston Hughes – describing the South State Street “Stroll” in 1918 – proclaimed that ff you held a trumpet up at night it would play itself, such was the activity at the jazz clubs.

Many churches have played dual role of spiritual anchor and center of activism. Rev. Jeremiah Wright, Trinity Church, 773-962-5650, is active on Southern Africa struggles, supports linking local and international issues.

Shakespeare, Warlocks and Barack Obama…(UPDATE 1X)

~~A Guest Post by American Lassie

Over the weekend in The Past Week roundup,  InsightAnalytical-GRL asked, “Who else out there is ready to find a hole to hide in?”

IA, if you find an extra hole somewhere that I can crawl into I’m about ready for it.

The disgrace in Ohio (and other states) of ACORN getting by with their fraud is mind boggling.

Jennifer Brunner, Secretary of State of Ohio, is telling us that she doesn’t intend to obey an order of the court to verify these many registrations turned in by ACORN. And to make it worse, she is being upheld by the appeals court. In other words, she and many like her, are so determined to see the “one” installed that they will do anything they please to help it happen.*

And now we learn that Barky has already told ACORN that they will play a big part in his plans for America?

We are fast running out of time.

As for Barney Frank, Chris Dodd and Jimmy Carter being the instigators of this financial mess we are in, how about:

Double, Double, toil and trouble
Fire burn and cauldron bubble

Sound familiar? There are male witches (warlocks) as well as female. Although Shakespeare’s witches were female, we have a bunch of males that could fit that bill.

Just as these witches stirred the cauldron of ills to incite Macbeth, so perhaps these three warlocks stirred the pot to cause a calamity that would help Obama get elected. I do not feel that any of the blame for this is going to stick to Obama. Or to Frank or Dodd for that matter. McCain is taking the heat for it.

“Fair is foul and foul is fair
Hover through the fog and filthy air”

Back in 1742 Horace Walpole created a parody whereby three everyday working women manipulated political events in England. He paraphrased Shakespeare using the theme :

“Double, Double, toil and trouble
PARTIES BURN AND NONSENSE BUBBLE

I’d say it aptly applies to the present day situation.

Sorry I got carried away, by my mind is in turmoil these days.

THERE IS NOTHING NEW UNDER THE SUN.

UPDATE

*The court decision referred to in the post has been overturned….see Court casts doubt on Ohio voter rolls

Late in the day – in a victory for Republicans – the full Cincinnati-based 6th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals overturned a decision made last week by three of its members. The result: Secretary of State Jennifer Brunner must create computer programs to cross check all new voter registrations so that county boards of elections can doublecheck new registrants.

The Secretary of State will now have to verify new registrations by comparing information on them with data from the Ohio Bureau of Motor Vehicles or the Social Security Administration.

“As far as we can tell, the problem with the current system (of cross-checking) is not that it is insufficiently user-friendly, but that it is effectively useless,” wrote Judge Jeffrey Sutton, writing for the majority.

The court split 9-6 along mostly partisan lines. The only appeal would be to the U.S. Supreme Court, and it wasn’t clear Tuesday night if that would happen.