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Obamas state senate district on Chicagos South Side was one of the most economically
diverse in the state. It included some of the poorest African-American neighborhoods and public
housing projects in the country, but it was also home to middle- and up-per-middle-class
residents, most living in Hyde Park. As development spread outward from the citys high-rises
from the 1980s through today, the South Loop and neighborhoods to its near south experienced
intense development pressures.

Obamas Harvard pedigree, the release of his first memoir and his own personal
eloquence combined to draw some interest from the press and from inf luential people outside
the South Side environment.

He was named one of the citys top movers and shakers by NDIGO magazine, a
publication tailored to black professionals in Chicago. The article served as a manifesto of sorts
for Obama. His vision for a new kind of politics was still in its nascent stage, and he was
speaking primarily to the more narrow concerns of his future black South Side constituents. But
the overall principle was essentially identical to what he preaches politically today: If America is
to progress as a free society, people must learn to work together to build healthy communities
rather than fight with each other over parochial, self-serving interests. As Obama put it:

As an elected public official, for instance, I could bring church and community leaders together
easier than I could as a community organizer or lawyer. We would come together to form
concrete economic development strategies, take advantage of existing laws and structures, and
create bridges and bonds within all sectors of the community. We must form grass-root structures
that would hold me and other elected officials more accountable for their actions. Now we have
to take this same languagethese same values that are encouraged within our familiesof
looking out for one another, of sharing, of sacrificing for each otherand apply them to a larger
society. Lets talk about creating a society, not just individual families, based on these values.