64 Barack H. Obama: The Unauthorized Biographyinnumerable political appearances over the years. The local CBS affiliate in Chicago went to the
Altgeld neighborhood and found that ‘some say Illinois Senator Barack Obama gave himself a little
too much credit for his work as a community organizer. Obama’s past work in the troubled Altgeld
Gardens housing project is a staple of his presidential stump speeches, and a significant part of his
first book. ...at least one resident who worked with Obama back then is unhappy with the senator’s
recollection. Hazel Johnson and her daughter Cheryl are disputing some parts of the version of
events Obama tells. They do not, however, dispute that he worked hard at Altgeld Gardens and say
they are supporting his presidential campaign. But, Johnson says in his book, Dreams from My
Father, and in campaign stump speeches, Obama gets some things wrong about the months he spent
working in Altgeld Gardens in the 1980s. She and her daughter Cheryl produced a document, for
example, showing Obama’s 1987 salary as an organizer in the development to be $25,000 – not the
$13,000 he often talks about. There is a very simple explanation for that, Obama’s aides say. He did
indeed make $25, 000 in 1987, but he was initially hired in 1985 at a salary of $13,000. And, they
claim, Obama didn’t work cleaning up asbestos at Altgeld, but fiberglass, another environmental
hazard. They also dispute his version of an incident in which Obama claimed Altgeld Gardens
residents beat on the car of a government official they were unhappy with. “I think he portrayed us
as barbaric that we ran behind CHA officials beating on the car, and that didn’t take place, because I
was in that particular meeting” Cheryl Johnson said.’ Perhaps Obama thinks that the masses are
after all a great beast.
Interestingly, the one community source who came forward to endorse Obama’s version of
events is a person who was currently on the payroll of the Gamaliel Foundation, and who can thus
be located in the larger orbit of the Ford Foundation. This was the Jesuit priest Greg Golluzzo. ‘“I
discussed every item of this,” said Greg Golluzzo of the Gamaliel Foundation. ... Johnson says that
since all of this has come up, she thinks Obama should go talk to her.’(Mike Flannery, “Altgeld
Gardens Resident Who Worked With Senator in 1980s Says He Is Exaggerating His Role,”
Cbsnews.com, 2007) Obama has not returned to Altgeld to answer the criticisms of Hazel Johnson.
When Obama’s fellow foundation operative Gerald Kellman summed up Obama’s years of work,
he recognized that it had all been a big failure: “It is clear that the benefit of those years to Mr.
Obama dwarfs what he accomplished. Mr. Kellman said that Mr. Obama had built the
organization’s following among needy residents and black ministers, but “on issues, we made very
little progress, nothing that would change poverty on the South Side of Chicago.”^14 So Obama was a
failure as a community organizer. His other big project, the Chicago Annenberg Challenge, was also
a failure in improving education in Chicago, as we will see.
HILLARY REJECTED ALINSKY; OBAMA EMBRACED HIM
Other commentators have tried to show that Obama is still using Alinsky methods in the running
of his presidential campaign. One right-wing observer writes: “Obama also appears to have
mastered the playbook used by...the legendary amoral guru of left wing activism, Saul Alinsky....”
(Kyle-Anne Shiver, Obama’s Alinsky Jujitsu, American Thinker, February 25, 2008) In fact, right-
wing writers on the Clinton-Obama contest have attempted to equate the outlooks of these two
candidates based on the bare fact that they both came into contact with the Alinskyite counter-
insurgency doctrine. The big difference is that Obama looked at the Alinskyite school of organizing,
and decided to join it. Hillary looked at Alinsky in considerable depth, found it totally inadequate,
and turned away.
Hillary’s views are found in her senior thesis from Wellesley College which, contrary to popular
belief, is readily available to the public. Hillary saw an Alinsky who tried to escape ideological