I tossed my third-week report onto Marty’s desk and took a seat as he read it through.
“Not bad,” he said when he was finished.
“Not bad?”
“Yeah, not bad. You’re starting to listen. But it’s still too abstract...like you’re taking a survey or something. If you
want to organize people, you need to steer away from the peripheral stuff and go towards people’s centers. The stuff
that makes them tick. Otherwise, you’ll never form the relationships you need to get them involved.”
The man was starting to get on my nerves. I asked him if he ever worried about becoming too calculating, if the idea
of probing people’s psyches and gaining their trust just to build an organization ever felt manipulative. He sighed.
“I’m not a poet, Barack. I’m an organizer.”
What did that mean? I left the office in a foul mood. Later, I had to admit that Marty was right. I still had no idea how
I might translate what I was hearing into action. In fact, it wasn’t until I came to the end of my interviews that an
opportunity seemed to present itself.
It was during a meeting with Ruby Styles, a stocky woman who worked as an office manager on the north side of the
city. We had been talking about her teenage son, Kyle, a bright but diffident boy who was starting to have trouble at
school, when she mentioned a rise in local gang activity. One of Kyle’s friends had been shot just last week, she said,
right in front of his house. The boy was all right, but now Ruby was worried about her own son’s safety.
My ears perked up; this sounded like self-interest. Over the next few days, I had Ruby introduce me to other parents
who shared her fears and felt frustrated over the lackluster police response. When I suggested that we invite the district
commander to a neighborhood meeting so the community could air its concerns, everyone agreed; and as we talked
about publicity one of the women mentioned that there was a Baptist church on the block where the boy had been shot,
and that the pastor there, a Reverend Reynolds, might be willing to make an announcement to his congregation.
It took me a week of phone calls, but when I finally reached Reverend Reynolds, his response seemed promising. He
was the president of the local ministerial alliance, he said-“churches coming together to preach the social gospel.” He
said that the group would be holding its regular meeting the very next day and that he would be happy to put me on the
agenda.
I hung up the phone full of excitement, and arrived at Reverend Reynolds’s church early the next morning. A pair of
young women dressed in white gowns and gloves met me in the foyer and showed me to a large conference room
where ten or twelve older black men stood talking in a loose circle. A particularly distinguished-looking gentleman
came up to greet me. “You must be Brother Obama,” he said, taking my hand. “Reverend Reynolds. You’re just in
time-we’re about to start.”
We all sat around a long table, and Reverend Reynolds led us in prayer before offering me the floor. Suppressing my
nerves, I told the ministers about the increased gang activity and the meeting we had planned, and passed out flyers for
them to distribute in their congregations. “With your leadership,” I said, warming up to my subject, “this can be a first
step towards cooperation on all kinds of issues. Fixing the schools. Bringing jobs back into the neighborhood...”
Just as I passed out the last flyers, a tall, pecan-colored man entered the room. He wore a blue, double-breasted suit
and a large gold cross against his scarlet tie. His hair was straightened and swept back in a pompadour.
barré
(Barré)
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