Just A Guy In My Neighborhood

Barack Obama famously said that Bill Ayers is 'just a guy in his neighborhood'. The GOP site notes, that among other things, Obama heaped praise on Bill Ayer's book about the juvenile justice system. I'm parsing through a lot of wonky details to substantiate the intellectual locus between the two. I happen to believe that Barack Obama was a fairly conventional Leftist with Marxist intellectual roots as is fairly typical of the black power, white liberal nexus. Except nobody wants to go there, especially not the Obama campaign, which is why, since August of this year, the Right has been pounding on the Ayers connection. It is a section of Obama's real political history that all of his supporters wish to keep buried because it's clearly not a winner with the mainstream or with independent voters who will make the difference this November.

Anyway, in my spelunking, I came across a mention of Obama in Ayers' book 'A Kind and Just Parent'. It is just as interesting to me why Ayers would be interested in Obama as why Obama would be interested in Ayers. As far as I know, Ayers doesn't want to say. Of course if I were running Obama's campaign I wouldn't have him say... It's curious to see whether or not the Right can force this issue, as they did successfully with Obama, Jeremiah Wright and Trinity Church. People have said this comes late, but a lot can happen in four weeks. I digress - to the text:

..university and its allied neighborhood association have worked to maniuplate borders and boundaries to assure 'stability' and separation. Our neighbors include Muhammad Ali, former mayer Eugene Sawyer, poets Gwendolyn Brooks and Elizabeth Alexander and writer Barack Obama. Minister Louis Farrakhan lives a block from our home and adds, we think, a unique dimension to the idea of "safe neighborhood watch"L the Fruit of Islam, his security force, has an eye on things twenty-four-hours a day. I pass Farrakhan's mansion, offer a cheery wave to the Fruit, get a formal nod in respons, and turn north two blocks across 47th Street, into the lap of urban blight.

To my right the lak, a shining sea of blues and greans, Navy Pier all glitter and liver light jutting a haf mile into the lake, museums, planetariou, giant ferris wheel way up in the middl of the air, a fairyland skyline. To my left, vacont lot, vacant lot, vacant lot, abandoned building, vacant lot. Here a knot of young men stand around a stoop talking and passing a bottle. A little further on, a makeshift tire repair business operates from behind a ragged fence. Another large empty space - once a substantial community church, then headquarters and Mosque #1 to Jeff Fort's powerfule El Rukn Nation street gang - the result of a police seizure and subsequent demolition. I pass the building where Eric Morse lived, the exact spot where he was dropped to his death. I hang a left and shoot past a legendary blues club, toward Comisky Park, home of the White Sox.

Just south I see the Robert Taylor Homes, named for the first head of the Chicago Housing Authority whse daughter, a neighbor and friend is president of the Erikson Institute. Freddie was arrested at Robert Taylor; so was Andrew.

Wendell Phillips High School
Pilgrim Missionary Baptist Church
Harvest Memorial Church
Dave's Liquors.

Here is a spot where two plainclothes cops stopped me while I was picking up a friend at her apartment and checked my ID at gunpoint two years ago. One of the cops, asked, "What are you doing in a neighborhood like this?"

What indeed.

I find it remarkable that Ayers mentions Obama only once in the book and does so only in the context of the black ghetto, presumably as an example of institutional racism. The fact that Obama's first campaign was started in Ayers' house only compliments the picture that Ayers himself has painted in his book - the book that Obama praised.