Half. [applause] everybody have a seat. So, what has been going on while i have gone . [laughter] it is wonderful to be home. It is wonderful to be at the university of chicago. It is wonderful to be on the southside of chicago. It is wonderful to be with these young people here. What i want to do is maybe speak very briefly at the top about why we are here and then i want to spend most of the time we are together hearing from these remarkable young people who are representative for some amazing young people in the audience as well. I was telling these guys that it was a little over 30 years ago that i came to chicago. I was 25 years old, and i had gotten out of college filled with idealism and absolutely certain that somehow i was going to change the world. I have no idea how, or where or what i was going to be doing. I worked first two payoffs and student loans, and then i went to work at the city college of new york on their harlem campus with some student organizing. Then there wer
President obama there were a grup of churches on the south side who tried to deal with the steel plant that had closed in the area. The economic station that had been taking place but also the racial tensions and turnover that was happening in these communities. So they formed an organization. They hired me as what was called a community organizer. I did not really know what that meant. Or how to do it. But i accepted the job and for the next three years i lived right here in hyde park but i worked further south in communities like roseland and west pullman. Working class neighborhoods. Many of which had had changed rapidly from white to black in the late 1960s, 1970s. And full of wonderful people who were proud of their communities, proud of the steps they had taken to try to move into the middle class, but were also worried about their futures because in some cases their kids werent doing as ell as they had. In some cases these communities had been badly neglected for a very long tim
Local reporters this week in 1994 were kept busy gathering details about several tragedies and near-misses in our area. But there was also hopeful news about the future – although