Barack Obama- A Modern Day Superhero

Life
Leader
Books
Civil Rights
Presidential Race
Honors
Links
Acknowledgements

Community Organizer

            After graduating from Columbia University in New York City, Obama decided to become a community organizer. He always had a taste for it ever since he spoke for a movement for Africans during his enrollment in Occidental College. It was only a minute speech, but during that time he was on stage he spoke so powerfully and he felt so strongly about it, that that minute speech became a full book of words and ideas. He became dedicated to the rights of all people and from then on he worked hard as a good citizen and a good person.

            As a community organizer, he worked for the Developing Communities Project, an organization in the South of Chicago, which was funded by black churches. He worked to help improve the neighborhood by getting jobs back, keeping parents' kids off the streets, and giving hope to people. He worked closely with the families from Altgeld Gardens public housing, who were suffering from job loss and lived in terrible conditions. He worked hard and had many rough nights of failures. However, he soon succeeded and as a reward he had the thanks of all the families he helped.

 

 

 

 

Illinois Senator

            In July of 1995, Barack Obama, a man from Hawaii, who worked as a dedicated community organizer, announced his run for Illinois senator. After working hard on his campaigns and many fruitless nights of work, he was finally rewarded with the position as Illinois senator.

            As senator of Illinois from 1996 to 2004, Barack Obama tried to change Illinois as much as possible. He helped low income and working families, supported early education in children, made reforms in law enforcement, helped solve problems, and protected as many people as he could.

            As a community organizer, Obama had worked with many lower class citizens who struggled with housing costs, food, tax, and unemployment. He had helped them unite and fight for what they deserved. Now, as a senator, he was empowered with the right to help them directly. He developed programs like the Earned Income Tax Credit for those families. He was able to generate an estimate of over $100 million to families all over Illinois in just three years. He funded and supported programs that educated children and with his skill as a lawyer he helped talked with many leaders and solved many problems. He also was in favor of fair treatment of criminals and improved the Illinois law enforcement. He made it so that interrogations and confessions of criminals facing capital punishment had to be recorded.

           

U.S. Senate

            Obama wanted more change so he decided to run for the U.S. senate. As a democrat, he defeated his fellow candidates by a large margin and won the Democratic primary election. He became a powerful figure and on July 27, 2004 he gave the Keynote Address at the 2004 Democratic national Convention in Boston, MA. Here he talked about his life, his hardships, but more importantly, his dreams for himself, his dreams for the country, and the American dream.

            He then faced the winner of the Republican primary election, Jack Ryan. However, it turned out that Jack Ryan and his wife divorced and there were some really ugly rumors going around about this matter. These rumors lead to him being replaced by Alan Keyes of Maryland. There was without doubt that Obama would win. He trailed by a huge amount of points at the beginning and the end. He defeated Keyes and became the U.S. senator.

            As senator he had the ability to change even more. He made tax reforms, fixed energy problems and environmental issues, traveled to other countries to talk about defense and foreign policy; he fought against crime, worked on immigration and homeland security, and worked hard to improve education and health care.