A field guide to Obama's career
Here are some additional links to learn more about Obama and his days as a community organizer:
- • An essay Obama wrote in 1988 about community organizing can be found here. The article was later included in the book After Alinsky: Community Organizing in Illinois.
- • Two of the best profiles written about Obama and his early days in Chicago politics ran in the Chicago Reader. In this 1995 piece, published when Obama first made the transition from community organizing to electoral politics, Obama is quoted at length explaining how he would take the lessons learned on the South Side of Chicago and apply them to the Illinois Senate.
- • This piece, one of the less flattering articles about Obama, documents his uphill struggle against Congressman Bobby Rush in 2000, the only campaign Obama has ever lost.
- • The definitive biography of Saul Alinsky is Sanford Horwitt's Let Them Call Me Rebel.
- • The website of Obama's church, Trinity United Church of Christ, is here. An explanation of the church's "Black Value System" is here.
By Ryan Lizza