By MARCUS FRANKLIN

The Associated Press
Thursday, September 27, 2007; 10:37 PM

NEW YORK -- Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama told thousands at a rally Thursday that he would bring serious change to Washington if elected.

The Illinois senator, speaking in front of the landmark arch in Washington Square Park in lower Manhattan's Greenwich Village, said that to truly effect change partisan politics must be stopped and the people must have access once again to the federal government.

"We are sick and tired of being sick and tired. We want something new. We want some change," he said, quoting the late voting and civil rights activist Fannie Lou Hamer. The phrase is one he uses often on the campaign trail.

Obama, wearing dark blue slacks and a light-blue dress shirt with an open collar and rolled-up sleeves, came on stage to Kanye West's inspirational song "Touch the Sky," as thousands, including many college students, crammed into the park near New York University.

He discussed the war in Iraq and health care, but avoided direct criticism of any of his opponents in the presidential race.

He also commented on the diversity of the crowd before him.

"You've got young people and old people," he said. "You've got poor folk and not-so-poor folk. You've got blacks, whites, Asians, Native Americans. You've got gay and straight. You've got people with disabilities. You've got Democrats and independents, and, yes, you've even got some Republicans."

He received thunderous applause when he said many came to the nighttime rally because they are fed up with the Constitution being treated as a "nuisance" instead as of the foundation of the country, and with a war "that never should've been authorized and has cost us thousands of lives."

Obama reminded his audience that he was an early opponent of the Iraq war, and that he would step up diplomacy and humanitarian aid.

He also said he would help the millions of people who do not have health insurance, and talked about watching his mother die from cancer at age 53 while worrying about whether the insurance company would pay the bills.

"I know what it's like to watch a loved one suffer not just from illness but from a broken health care system," Obama said.

Read this Article at WashingtonPost.com

Obama Outlines His Foreign Policy Views

NY Times | April 23, 2007

By Jeff Zeleny

CHICAGO, April 23 -- Senator Barack Obama said today that even though the global image of the United States has been sullied by the war in Iraq and a "foreign policy based on a flawed ideology," America must repair its standing in the world and resist the temptation to turn inward.

"America cannot meet the threats of this century alone, but the world cannot meet them without America," Mr. Obama said. "We must neither retreat from the world nor try to bully it into submission - we must lead the world, by deed and example."

In a speech before the Chicago Council on Global Affairs, Mr. Obama presented himself as a presidential candidate "who can speak directly to the world." After a sharp critique of President Bush, Mr. Obama called for increasing foreign aid to developing countries, expanding and modernizing the military and rebuilding fractured alliances.

"This president may occupy the White House, but for the last six years the position of leader of the free world has remained open," Mr. Obama said. "And it's time to fill that role once more."

Mr. Obama, an Illinois Democrat elected to the United States Senate two years ago, delivered the first major foreign policy address of his Democratic presidential bid to hundreds of supporters in the ballroom of a downtown hotel here. It is the first of several policy speeches he is scheduled to deliver in the coming weeks as he works to define his candidacy with specific proposals an Obama administration would pursue.

"This election offers us the chance to turn the page and open a new chapter in American leadership," Mr. Obama said. "The disappointment that so many around the world feel toward America right now is only a testament to the high expectations they hold for us. We must meet those expectations again, not because being respected is an end in itself, but because the security of America and the wider world demands it."

He added: "This is going to require a new spirit, not of bluster and bombast, but of quiet confidence and sober intelligence, a spirit of care and renewed competence."

In the opening three months of his presidential race, Mr. Obama has solidified his role as one of the leading contenders for the nomination, raising more money than any of his rivals for the primary campaign. But Mr. Obama is also striving to expand his appeal beyond that of a best-selling author and political celebrity as he tackles questions of substance and policy.

The United States must build a 21st century military, Mr. Obama said, in addition to "showing wisdom in how we deploy it." He called for expanding American ground forces, adding 65,000 soldiers to the Army and 27,000 to the Marines. But less than 1 percent of the military can speak Arabic, Mandarin or Korean - a shortcoming he said needs to be corrected through training and recruitment.

"We know what the war in Iraq has cost us in lives and treasure, in influence and respect," Mr. Obama said. "We have seen the consequences of a foreign policy based on flawed ideology, and a belief that tough talk can replace real strength and vision."

The Bush administration, Mr. Obama said, "squandered that opportunity" to unite the world after the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001. The war in Iraq, he said, "was based on old ideologies and outdated strategies, a determination to fight a 21st century struggle with a 20th century mindset."

"And after all the lives lost and the billions of dollars spent, many Americans may find it tempting to turn inward, and cede our claim of leadership in world affairs," Mr. Obama said. "I insist, however, that such an abandonment of our leadership is a mistake we must not make."

If elected, Mr. Obama said he would lead a global effort to secure all nuclear weapons and materials across the world within four years. In addition to securing stockpiles of nuclear material, Mr. Obama said the United States should work to negotiate a ban on producing new nuclear weapons material.

To discourage countries from building weapons programs, Mr. Obama endorsed the concept of providing reactor fuel through an international nuclear fuel bank, proposed last year by former Senator Sam Nunn, a Georgia Democrat who now advises the Nuclear Threat Initiative. As president, Mr. Obama said he would provide $50 million to get the fuel bank started and urge Russia and other countries to join.

Mr. Obama also called for the United States to rebuild its alliances, reform the United Nations and strengthen NATO.

"We have heard much over the last six years about how America’s larger purpose in the world is to promote the spread of freedom - that it is the yearning of all who live in the shadow of tyranny and despair," Mr. Obama said. "I agree, but this yearning is not satisfied by simply deposing a dictator and setting up a ballot box."

Lisa Miller, a spokeswoman for the Republican National Committee, dismissed Mr. Obama's criticism.

"Senator Obama started his career with a tone of hope, but has quickly turned to one of blame," Ms. Miller said. "Obama has no foreign policy experience; therefore has no record of having done anything - wrong or otherwise. His comments today blamed others and failed to detail his own plan for success."

 Click here to read the article in the NY Times

Jesse Jackson Backs Obama for President

NY Times | March 30, 2007

By Associated Press

CHICAGO (AP) -- Civil rights leader Jesse Jackson said Thursday he's backing Democrat Barack Obama in his presidential bid, giving his support to a new generation of black politicians. ''He has my vote,'' the Rev. Jackson told The Associated Press in a telephone interview.

Jackson sought the Democratic presidential nomination in 1984 and 1988, winning 13 primaries and caucuses in 1988. His son, Rep. Jesse Jackson Jr. of Illinois, has already endorsed Obama.

Jackson represents a different era of black politician, battle-tested by the civil rights struggles of the 1960s with Martin Luther King Jr.

Obama, 45, is biracial -- his white mother was from Kansas, his father Kenyan -- and educated at Ivy League universities.

In his best-selling memoir, ''Dreams From My Father,'' Obama said he couldn't even get in the door at national civil rights groups when he was younger. He wrote letters to them after graduating from Columbia University but said none responded.

In a statement responding to Jackson's support, Obama said, ''This campaign has been about giving hope since Day One and I am proud to have the support of my friend Jesse Jackson. It is because people like Jesse ran that I have this opportunity to run for president today.''

Jackson could help Obama to secure the support of black voters, a critical bloc in the Democratic primaries.

Jackson has a long history with one of Obama's chief rivals, Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton and her husband former President Clinton. He counseled the two when the president's affair with former White House intern Monica Lewinsky became public.

But Jackson said his history with the Clintons doesn't complicate his decision to back his home state senator, calling Obama Illinois' ''favorite son.''

''It's not awkward at all,'' he said, adding, ''I don't owe a debt to any of them.''

Jackson said he will support the winner of the Democratic nomination, whether it's Obama or not, and he is talking to other candidates because of his agenda that includes the war on poverty and voter protection.

Although Jackson failed in his bids for the White House in 1984 and 1988, he said that helped make it easier for not only blacks, but women and other minorities to run for president and function at the highest levels of government.

''We broke down barriers,'' Jackson said.

Jackson said Obama has not asked him to campaign for him and he is not in Obama's inner circle of advisers and fundraisers.

''I just have an appreciation of him,'' Jackson said.

Click here to read the story in the NY Times

Obama hits Chicago during Council Wars

Chicago Tribune | March 30, 2007

By Bob Secter and John McCormick

Barack Obama packed his few belongings into his newly purchased but creaky old Honda and headed west from New York into a political and social battle zone.

When the raw 23-year-old community organizer hit Chicago in early 1985, the racially charged fighting between Harold Washington, the city's first black mayor, and white ethnic aldermen led by Ed Vrdolyak had earned the city a bitter nickname: Beirut on the Lake.

Obama learned just how bitter on his first trip to a Hyde Park barber, who recalled how Washington's victory two years earlier had sent African-Americans into the streets "like the day Joe Louis knocked out [Max] Schmeling," Obama writes in his memoir, "Dreams from My Father."

But Obama, the youthful outsider, brought a decidedly practical view of the Washington-Vrdolyak bouts to the Far South Side community he was organizing.

"They're not enemies, he used to tell us. They're both working for their constituents, and they have to do this," recalled Loretta Herron, a founding member of Obama's Developing Communities Project. "Whoever can help you reach your goal, that's who you work with. ... There are no permanent friends, no permanent enemies."

That mantra of professional organizers has come to define Obama's public life. Even his choice of church in Chicago involved a political calculation of sorts. Now his penchant for pragmatism could prove one of his greatest political strengths, or liabilities, on the presidential campaign trail.

Much has been made of Obama's ability to bridge feuding conservatives and liberals in Illinois, and before that at the Harvard Law Review, where in 1990 he became its first black leader. As a presidential candidate, he bills himself as a uniter who can usher in a post-partisan era where Washington fights less and gets more done.

The path to his party's nomination, though, runs through Democratic primary voters still chafing from years of conservative Republican rule. And what Obama highlights as an eagerness to plow common ground with political opposites, some voters may view as a sign that he lacks firm principles or an ability to stake and hold his ground.

Obama firmly rejected that notion. "There are a set of principles that I care about. And there are people I'm fighting for in this campaign," he said in a recent interview. If any Republican, or Democrat for that matter, opposes those principles, Obama vowed to "go after them with everything that I've got."

The art of working with one's enemies comes straight out of Community Organizing 101, the on-the-job course in human relations and activism Obama took in the mid-1980s alongside low-income residents in the Roseland community and the Altgeld Gardens public housing development.

"It was in these neighborhoods that I received the best education I ever had," Obama said in the February speech that launched his White House run.

The work was rewarding -- pushing for asbestos removal at Altgeld, pressing for a local job training office, even agitating to fill potholes and erect stop signs.

Still, work on the ground floor of politics also was limited. The young Obama yearned to do something on a bigger stage, he confided to Gerald Kellman, the organizer who had brought him to Chicago.

Two years into Obama's time in the city, the men attended a conference at Harvard University. Strolling the same ivy-covered campus his father had left their family to attend more than two decades earlier, Obama reflected on a lesson from his father's life.

The elder Obama had returned to his native Kenya bursting with intellect and ambition, only to devolve into an embittered bureaucrat because he couldn't find a way to reconcile his ideals with political realities, Kellman remembers Obama telling him.

Obama was determined not to follow in those footsteps. "He talked about what happens to you if you're not practical in finding ways to do things effectively," Kellman said.

Maybe he should go to law school at Harvard and prepare for a life in politics, Kellman recalled Obama saying. Not long after, that is precisely what Obama did.

As he said his goodbyes in Chicago, he told some acquaintances that a law degree would allow him to return to the city and press for change more effectively, maybe working to revitalize unions. Obama remembers thinking he might come back to lead a non-profit group to develop affordable housing.

But to another organizer colleague, Obama confided a far more ambitious goal someday following Harold Washington as mayor of Chicago.

Obama arrived in Chicago a blank slate. He knew little about the city's then delicate power structure, its social fabric or its ethos of "we don't want nobody nobody sent." He grew up mostly in Hawaii, far removed from urban America's African-American communities and culture.

The experience in Chicago "taught me a lot about listening to people as opposed to coming in with a predetermined agenda," Obama recalled.

He also got a crash course in realpolitik. "Barack had to learn real estate and insurance and mortgage banking and all the scams of the world," said Kellman. "He had to learn Chicago ward politics and the relationship between graft and public life."

Community organizing has long intrigued young social activists with its goal of guiding the poor and disenfranchised to exercise power. Hillary Clinton, now a rival of Obama for the Democratic nomination, wrote her undergraduate thesis at Wellesley College on the life and ideas of Saul Alinsky, the godfather of professional organizing.

Chicago was Alinsky's lab. He began his work in the Back of the Yards neighborhood during the Depression, convincing hostile groups of white ethnics to band together to pressure meat packers and slumlords for better working and living conditions. He later took the same tactics to Chicago's black neighborhoods and other cities as well.

Thanks to Alinsky, would-be organizers considered Chicago something of a Mecca. Not Obama. After his graduation from Columbia University in 1983, Obama worked briefly for a New York financial consultant and then a consumer organization.

Restless, he read the classifieds, the same way others might look for a job as a fry cook or find a puppy to buy. On a trip to the Midtown branch of the New York public library, Obama was scouring what he described as a "newsletter for do-gooder jobs" when he spotted a help-wanted ad from Kellman's Calumet Community Religious Conference.

Based on the South Side and south suburbs, CCRC needed an African-American organizer for the dozen black churches that comprised its city branch, preferably to work cheap in helping residents develop the tactics to influence politicians. In short, he was expected to turn the cloutless into players.

The rookie organizer was half the age of those he was hired to inspire. Behind his back, many called him "Baby Face Obama." It became a term of endearment.

Obama's poise quickly grabbed their attention and respect, said many who worked with him back then. "The guy was just totally comfortable with who he was and where he was," said John Owens, who Obama eventually hired as an assistant.

The man who brought Obama to Chicago was a frumpy, soft-spoken New Yorker. In CCRC, Gerald Kellman hoped to organize churches to fight fallout from the rapid decline of the steel industry, the main economic engine for the South Side and south suburbs.

But Kellman and his organizer buddy Mike Kruglik were both white and Jewish, and some black members in those congregations couldn't warm up to them. So Kellman shifted Kruglik to the suburbs and found Obama to replace him.

It might not have happened at all. Kellman was looking for an African-American, but the resume he received in the mail was from a Hawaiian native with a name hard to place. "What is this guy, Obama, is that Japanese?" Kellman asked his Japanese-American wife. "Actually, it could be," was her answer.

Kellman had plans to visit family in New York anyway, so he called Obama and set up an interview. They met at a coffee shop on the Upper West Side, and Kellman quickly began testing Obama with pointed questions. Why would someone with Obama's potential want to go into a field as gritty and unglamorous as organizing? If he was so interested in social change, why not do something more practical like attach himself to a rising African-American political star like Harold Washington?

"He said he wanted to make fundamental change, he wanted to make it from the grassroots and he wanted to learn," Kellman recalled.

Impressed by Obama's answers and eagerness, Kellman hired him on the spot for $10,000-a-year. He threw in an extra $2,000 so Obama could buy that beater of a Honda and get moved.

A month later, he was at a South Side church being introduced to leaders of CCRC's Chicago branch, which would soon be spun off into DCP.

Off the bat, Obama acknowledged his inexperience, recalled Dan Lee, a deacon at the now defunct St. Catherine of Genoa Roman Catholic Church who became DCP's president.

"I know you all think I'm a young whippersnapper," Obama conceded. "Let me set your fears to rest. We're going to learn together."

And there was a lot to learn. On long walks through Montrose Park, Kellman filled in the basics. To the Alinsky school of organizing, power was a cherished concept. There were two sources of power in the world, organized money and organized people.

Organizers weren't supposed to set the agenda for their group. Their fundamental role was to probe and prod to find out what made individual members tick-unlock their self-interest in the jargon of the profession.

Obama was expected to conduct 20 to 30 in-depth interviews a week with community members. Organizers called the process "learning who's who in the zoo." In laymen's terms, he was networking.

Rev. Alvin Love, pastor of Lilydale First Baptist Church at 113th and Union Streets, was used to having strangers knock on the door and ask for handouts. When Love opened it one day in 1985, he assumed that's what the lanky young man was up to. "Who is this skinny guy and what does he want," Love thought.

Obama was looking for Love's thoughts, though, not his money. "He asked what I wanted to see get done and what was important in this neighborhood," said Love.

Obama's interest impressed the 28-year-old minister, who had been looking for ways to connect his aging congregation with a surrounding neighborhood that was getting younger and rougher. He joined DCP and now serves as its president.

On a crisp spring afternoon not long after he arrived, Obama made another important contact. DCP members from St. Catherines had decided to stage an old-fashioned street corner meeting to lure people out of their homes and get them talking about neighborhood improvements.

They started outside the church and then headed a few blocks north to the corner of 114th and Lowe. By chance, that's where state Sen. Emil Jones lived and he came out to see what the fuss was about. It was the start of a long relationship between Obama and Jones, who helped mentor Obama's political rise.

Middle aged women like Herron formed the core of Obama's group. He had grown up apart from his mother for much of his youth. At DCP, he was surrounded by surrogate mothers. He coached them in the skills they would need to effectively confront bureaucrats and politicians. They complained he ate like a bird and needed to lighten up. Herron appointed herself fashion adviser, coaching him on what matched and what didn't.

"You shouldn't be so somber and uptight and serious all the time," Herron once told him. "Yeah, but I'm doing serious work," he replied.

Obama worked out of a cramped office at Holy Rosary Church at 113th St. and Calumet Avenue. He shared it with Kellman and Kruglik, who acted as sounding boards for the young organizer.

Obama's hallmark at DCP was meticulous planning. Before encounters with public officials, Obama would have members rehearse possible scenarios over and over to minimize surprises. DCP board meetings dragged on for hours. There was a meeting before the meeting to map out what was to be discussed. Then there was the meeting. Then there was the meeting after the meeting to critique how it all went.

His penchant for calculation played a role in Obama's decision about where to worship. DCP had its base in churches, and some members grumbled about why he didn't have a church home of his own.

Obama, whose mother treated organized religion with the distance of the anthropologist she was, eventually found Trinity United Church of Christ, a congregation with an activist minister and message he was drawn to.

But Obama admits part of Trinity's appeal was that it wasn't affiliated with DCP. "If I joined one of the churches I was already organizing, that might have caused some tensions," he said. "And part of it was there was an explicitly political aspect to the mission and message of Trinity at that time that I found appealing."

Wherever he went, Obama was constantly scribbling and doodling. The margins of his notepads were filled with detailed sketches of the people he met, Owens said. Sometimes he drew them laughing, sometimes smiling, sometimes with pointy heads.

As part of his training, Obama was expected to take copious notes about his interactions and file frequent reports to more seasoned organizers. But he had another motive for jotting everything down.

"I want to be a writer," Obama told a friend one day. "These are for a book I plan to write."

At night, Obama would hole up in his Hyde Park apartment and write short stories, basing his characters on people and situations he encountered in Roseland. None of that fiction was ever published. The memoir, after its reissue in 2004, became a best-seller.

He lived sparingly. Obama's mother teased him about having just two of everythingâ€"two plates, two towels. The main indulgences were his books and his cat, Max.

Owens was fascinated by Obama's eclectic library. Volumes on black power were stuffed next to books on Karl Marx, the writings of conservative economist Milton Friedman, and a biography of Robert Moses, a ruthless developer who relied on organizer-like motivating tactics to build public works projects in New York.

Obama wasn't a monk. He played pickup basketball with a fervor. He gradually developed a social circle in Hyde Park. There were girlfriends, including one he lived with for a time. But DCP remained the main focus of his life.
The group's territory sprawled from 95th street to the Chicago Housing Authority's Altgeld Gardens on the city's far southern edge. Altgeld was surrounded by waste dumps and industrial brownfields. In 1986, it also was the center of a dramatic protest over CHA foot-dragging on cleaning up asbestos in the living units.

In his memoir, Obama wrote extensively about how a member of DCP discovered the asbestos problem and then the group mobilized for action to pressure the CHA to fix it. But Hazel Johnson, a longtime Altgeld resident, recently accused Obama of stealing credit for the work of the environmental group she runs.

"He wants to make himself look good," said Johnson, who claimed Obama assisted her group on other problems with the CHA but not the asbestos issue.

Johnson's allegations were disputed by several members of DCP, who said Obama was in the thick of the asbestos protests and they were right alongside. The only error in the book, Kellman said, was that it was Obama, himself, who discovered the problem and not a DCP member.

The more Obama worked as an organizer, the more he became convinced that the most serious problems he confronted couldn't be solved on the local level. "People were still poor, kids were out on the corner selling drugs, schools weren't working," he explained.

Ironically, his frustration was amplified by Washington's popularity in the black community. Washington was more attentive to the needs of the South Side than his white predecessors had been, but city services were still lacking. Rallying people to fight City Hall is immensely difficult when the mayor is their hero.

Then Washington died in late 1987. The fight to replace him discouraged many in the African-American community.

Obama's resignation months later came as a surprise to DCP members, though they weren't shocked, either. "We always knew he was not ours to keep," said Herron.

There were loose ends to tie up. The break-up with his girlfriend was hard. He flew to Kenya to visit his the homeland of his father, who had died years earlier. The tiny Honda that had carried him from New York was on its last legs and would never make it to Boston.

It was a classified ad that brought Obama to Chicago in the first place and it was another classified that helped him leave. A Glenview police officer was selling a used Datsun 210 hatchback for $500. It was bright yellow, marred by lots of rust spots and had a hole in the floor. But it ran.

And that's how Obama set off for Harvard and a road that eventually would lead to his run for the White House in a car he thought looked like an over-ripe banana, the wind rushing through the floorboard.

Click here to read the story in the Chicago Tribune

Activism blossomed in college

Chicago Tribune | March 30, 2007

By Maurice Possley

LOS ANGELES -- Barack Obama's interest in political activism took root at Occidental College, a small liberal arts institution in this city's hilly Eagle Rock section.

He was barely 18 when he arrived in 1979, a kid from Hawaii who still called himself Barry.

Obama has portrayed most of his Occidental days as a haze of pseudoradical talk, parties, alcohol and illicit drugs -- not an uncommon experience for college students of that day.

His mother scolded him for turning into a "good-time Charlie," but classmates also saw flashes of depth, talent and seriousness.

Kenneth Sulzer, who lived in the same dormitory as Obama, remembered long discussions about politics, the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan and a possible reinstitution of the draft. Obama was "relatively quiet. But when he spoke, his opinion was respected," said Sulzer, now an attorney in Los Angeles.

The two took classes together and Sulzer was struck by the clarity and conciseness of Obama's mind. "I would take down everything the professor said and dissect it 12 times," Sulzer said. "Barry printed his notes. And it was very short. Probably just one long paragraph."

Another classmate, Amiekoleh "Kim" Kimbrew of Los Angeles, recalled Obama striding across campus in flip-flops.

"He was very popular," she said. "There were rumors that he was a Hawaiian prince. ... He was kind of flirty, but he wasn't a player."

Some took Obama's professed radicalism as posturing. "I was impressed by the sharpness of Barry's intellect and, like many, his effortless charm," said classmate Mark Dery, a journalism professor at New York University. But "I also harbored an instinctual suspicion of his ... suave demeanor."

Somewhere along the line Barry, the name of the boy from Waikiki, gave way to Barack, the name he inherited from his Kenyan father.

For the most part, Obama's commitment to social activism was limited to coffeehouse talk. But near the end of his time at Occidental, he got caught up in protests against apartheid in South Africa, helping plan a large campus rally demanding that the college divest investments there.

He opened the rally in a bit of street theater, he recalls in his memoir, speaking for a couple of minutes until two white students in paramilitary dress dragged him away in midsentence. That cameo so impressed Rebecca Rivera, another rally participant, that she wondered why he hadn't been more politically active on campus. She made a mental note at the time to "try to get him involved."

Obama spent just two years at Occidental. He said in a recent interview that he had begun to weary of the parties and fretted about a lackadaisical approach to his studies. He grew more introspective and serious. His mother's warnings were beginning to take hold.

Seeking a fresh start, he transferred to Columbia University in New York City. Classmates and teachers from those days remember him as studious and serious, someone who hit the library in his off hours instead of the bars.

"If I had to give one adjective to describe him, it is mature," said William Araiza, who took an international politics class with Obama. "He was our age, but seemed older because of his poise."

Click here to read the story in the Chicago Tribune

Obama says he's always opposed the war

Sioux City Journal | March 22, 2007

By Charlotte Eby

DES MOINES -- Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama told reporters Wednesday he has been against the Iraq war from the start, countering questions from the campaign of Sen. Hillary Clinton in recent days about the sincerity of his opposition.

On a conference call with reporters Wednesday, Obama said he didn't know what would be gained from the parsing of his position of the war.

"I think that my position on the war has been consistent. It has been unequivocal, and that's the only presentation that I've made during the course of this campaign," Obama said.

Obama denied that his support in the Senate for funding the war undermines the idea he is a longtime opponent, arguing troops had to be adequately protected.

"I've always been clear and consistent on the notion that we should not get in there, that once we were in there, then we had to make the best of a bad situation," Obama said.

Obama has called for a phased withdrawal of U.S. troops from Iraq beginning on May 1, with a goal of having troops out by the end of March 2008.

His early campaign rallies have brought their biggest applause when he talks about a war "that should have never been authorized."

Obama was not yet a member of the Senate when the vote was taken in 2002 authorizing force in Iraq, but he said Wednesday he would have voted against it.

"I am certain that I would have voted to oppose this war," Obama said. He said intelligence showing Saddam Hussein did not, in fact, have weapons of mass destruction was available at the time the vote was taken.

"There was a lot of ambiguity in the case that the (Bush) administration was making," Obama said, noting that dissenting voices in the intelligence community had been widely reported in the media.

Obama was careful not to directly criticize Clinton or Sen. John Edwards, both of whom voted in favor of the resolution authorizing force in Iraq and are his top rivals in the Democratic presidential primary.

"I prefer not to, you know, state it in the negative. I'm, I think, making an affirmative statement about my judgment when it came to this critical issue," Obama said.

Obama on Wednesday also pointed to his 2002 speech at an anti-war rally in Chicago, which he said has turned out to be a "fairly accurate assessment of the consequences of invading."

According to a speech text provided by the campaign, Obama outlined the dangers of military action in Iraq.

"That's what I'm opposed to," he said at the time. "A dumb war. A rash war. A war based not on reason but on passion, not on principle but on politics."

Clinton spokesman Mark Daley declined to directly respond to Obama's claim he has been unequivocal on the war.

"Sen. Clinton and Sen. Obama have had the same voting record in Congress on Iraq, and they are united in the need to bring an end to the war," Daley said. "As Democrats, our shared beliefs are much greater than our differences."

State Sen. Joe Bolkcom, a Democrat from Iowa City, said it remains to be seen whether Iowa caucus-goers will hold it against Clinton and Edwards for their votes authorizing the use of force.

"I'm interested in who's got the best plan to get us out of Iraq, and bring our soldiers and troops home n get them out of harm's way," said Bolkcom, who is undecided whom he will support in the Iowa caucuses.

Click here to read the article in the Sioux City Journal

Obama Draws Enthusiastic Crowd in Okla.

NY Times | March 20, 2007

By Associated Press

OKLAHOMA CITY (AP) -- Illinois Sen. Barack Obama brought his Democratic presidential campaign to Oklahoma for the first time Monday with a promise to end the war in Iraq and change the culture of political gamesmanship in Washington.

''We've got a war that should have never been authorized and should have never been waged,'' Obama said as a crowd of more than 1,000 people erupted in cheers and applause.

Obama said the Iraq war, which enters its fifth year Tuesday, has diminished the nation's standing in the world and made it less safe. Without naming her, Obama made an issue of the 2002 vote to authorize the war by Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton, Obama's chief rival, and expressed pride in his public opposition to the war two years before he was elected to the U.S. Senate.

''We are at a crossroads internationally, we're at a crossroads domestically,'' Obama said. Obama, 45, blamed Washington's political culture for the problems and said the nation ''can't afford the kind of games we've been playing over the last several years.''

''It has to do with a politics that is petty, that is small, that is focused on calling folks names and cutting each other up instead of solving the problems of the American people,'' Obama said.

''Politics is not a sport. Politics is not a game. The decisions we make in Washington have consequences for families all across the country. And we've got to create a better politics,'' he said.

Many at the rally said they wanted to see how Obama stacked up on the issues with others in the race.

''I just want to know everything about all the candidates who want to run the country. Information is power,'' said Joyce Johnson of Oklahoma City, an economics student at the University of Central Oklahoma.

Trey Moore, a graduate student at the University of Oklahoma, said his interest had nothing to do with the fact that he and Obama are both black.

''I don't think the color really matters. If you're a good candidate, you're a good candidate,'' Moore said.

Others indicated they had already made up their mind.

Ellen Bray of Tulsa, a student at the University of Oklahoma, wore a ''Barack Obama'' T-shirt to the rally and said she was swayed by Obama's youth and charisma.

''I think he represents new politics,'' said Jeff Goodson of Stillwater. ''I think he represents the future of the country.''

Obama's appearance came one day after New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson, another Democratic presidential hopeful, attended a fundraiser in Oklahoma City. Richardson said the state's Feb. 5 presidential primary could play a major role in determining the Democratic nominee in 2008.

During his 25-minute address, Obama touched on themes key to his campaign, including health care and education.

''We know we've got a health care system that is broken, that is bankrupting families and bankrupting states and bankrupting the nation,'' he said as he called for universal health care.

''By the end of my first term, we're going to make sure that everybody's got decent health care in this country. We can do that,'' Obama said.

''We've got an education system that is leaving too many people behind. I don't care about the president's slogan,'' Obama said referring to the Bush administration's ''Leave No Child Behind'' initiative.

Obama said Oklahoma is a leader in early childhood education. ''If it works in Oklahoma, why don't we do it in the whole country -- make sure every child gets a good start in life,'' he said.

Obama, a former state senator in Illinois, rejected criticism that he is not experienced enough to lead the nation.

''I haven't been in Washington that long. But I've been in Washington long enough to know that Washington needs to change,'' Obama said.

''Every time the American people decide that things need to change, they change,'' he said. ''When a million voices come together and make a decision that we're going to have change, we're going to have change.''

Click here to read this article in the NY Times

Obama Offers Change of Attitude

Valley News | March 19, 2007

By John P. Gregg

Claremont -- U.S. Sen. Barack Obama yesterday said Democrats are "lurching" toward consensus on key issues ranging from the war on Iraq to energy policy and suggested his candidacy offers a fresh start for the country.

"I wouldn't have gotten into this race if I didn't think I have something unique to offer," said the 45-year-old Illinois Democrat, whose black father was from Africa and white mother from Kansas. "I think the day I'm inaugurated, this country sees itself differently and the world sees us differently. ...

"It expresses our belief that anybody can do anything."

Obama, speaking to more than 120 Upper Valley residents at the Earl M. Bourdon Centre in Claremont, also said he was encouraged that he and fellow Democrats are all talking about such issues as health-care reform, energy policy, climate change, and ending the war in Iraq. Obama noted that all but three Democrats in the Senate this week voted for a timetable to end the war.

"I would say the Democrats are lurching towards consensus," said Obama, a first-term lawmaker. "I do think when I'm president, man, we're really going to get our act together."

Obama spoke for almost an hour at the senior center, the site of a much-ballyhooed meeting where then-President Clinton and House Speaker Newt Gingrich agreed to reform the campaign-finance system, an effort that fizzled.

He said voters need to get engaged, with Democrats' victories in November an important step.

"What we've learned is when the American people don't pay attention, Washington gets into a whole lot of mischief," Obama said. "And when we do pay attention, good things happen."

The war in Iraq was a constant theme -- he had seen a flag on the way into town honoring Newport solider Justin Rollins, who was killed in Iraq and has funeral services today. "My thoughts and prayers are with his family and community," Obama said.

In a question and answer session, Charlestown resident Carol Thebarge told Obama her son, who is also 45, had won a Bronze Star in Iraq but that she was concerned he may be sent back for another tour of duty.

"We went over there to do a job, and the job is done," she said. "How long is this going to take?"

Obama said he opposed the war from the start and was an early supporter of setting a March 31, 2008, deadline for the withdrawal of American combat troops from Iraq.

"We are not going to solve the problems in Iraq militarily," he said. "It's time to bring it to a close."

Susan Williams, the chairwoman of Plainfield Democrats, said her town is slated to vote on a climate change resolution today and said she was concerned that Obama had supported a bill to turn coal into liquid fuel.

He outlined his environmental platform, saying he is a chief sponsor, along with U.S. Sens. Joe Lieberman, I-Conn., and John McCain, R-Ariz., of a "cap and trade" bill that would allow polluters to sell and trade credits for reducing emissions, spurring more climate protection by industry. Obama said he also supports higher fuel-efficiency standards for cars, increased production of various types of ethanol, and "sequestration" of the carbon dioxide emitted from coal plants, an emerging, as yet unproven, technology.

"We're not going to eliminate fossil fuel use overnight," he said. "We can see some steep reductions over time."

Bob Dakin, a retired history teacher at Claremont Middle School, suggested that President Bush should be tried for war crimes at the Hague, likening the start of the Iraq war under "false premises" to the onset of World War II because of Adolf Hitler's military aggression.

But Obama adroitly steered away from the bait.

"I don't find the analogy appropriate," he said. "I think this campaign season offers us an opportunity for a fresh start."

After the speech, many attendees sounded satisfied. Thebarge, the Charlestown mother, said his response on Iraq was "awesome" and that she planned to vote for him.

Williams, the Plainfield Democrat, remained uncommitted, yet said: "I thought his priorities are in line with mine. I think he would do a great job in addressing climate change."

But Dakin, the retired teacher, said he was disappointed Obama had not been more aggressive in criticizing President Bush.

"He came to New Hampshire and he brought his ice skates. He ducked it," Dakin said.

Obama met earlier in the afternoon with state legislators at the Concord home of Senate President Sylvia Larsen, but had to cancel a planned town hall meeting in Keene because of the snowstorm.

He greeted several well-wishers as he left the senior center, including a handshake and hug for 73-year-old Marjorie Angier of Claremont, who was retiring yesterday as a receptionist at the Bourdon Centre.

"Wait till my granddaughter hears about this," Angier said.

Polls show Obama in the top tier of Democratic candidates, along with U.S. Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton and 2004 vice presidential nominee John Edwards.

State Rep. Tom Donovan, an uncommitted Claremont Democrat, said Obama represents the type of change that voters appear to be seeking.

"I don't see the old established candidates, even though I supported some in the past, I don't think we need that," Donovan said, citing Clinton and U.S. Sen. John Kerry. "We need new blood."

Click here to read the article from the Valley News

Obama: 'Better future for America'

Oakland Tribune | March 18, 2007

By Josh Richman

OAKLAND -- Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama brought his platform of audacious hope Saturday to the largest and most diverse crowd to pack downtown Oakland in recent memory.

"We are here today because the country calls us, we are here today because history beckons us, we are here today because we face a series of challenges as significant, as daunting as any generation has faced," the junior U.S. senator from Illinois told those who packed Frank H. Ogawa Plaza outside City Hall. Police gave no estimate, but it seemed the crowd might have topped the campaign's early projection of 10,000.

Rather than leaving a poorer and meaner nation for the next generation, he believes "there's a better future for America," Obama said during his half-hour, unscripted speech.

Obama visited the Bay Area last month to raise money for U.S. Sen. Barbara Boxer, D-Calif., but Saturday's stop was his first public campaign event in the area. A $1,000-a-head fundraiser was scheduled Saturday night in San Francisco.

The Oakland rally had a festival air, with people dancing to live music and thronging campaign souvenir tables as they streamed into the plaza. Monica Harper, 37, of Oakland said she had lined up at 1:30 p.m. -- 90 minutes before the gates were to open -- because she wanted to hear every word. "I don't know much about him and I wanted to learn it myself," she said. "I'm proud that he's here in Oakland, and I wanted to represent."

Jonathan Davis, 42, and his wife, Susan, 38, brought their toddlers from Piedmont. Murray, 2, held a "St. Patrick for Obama" sign, while Ellington, 4, held a sign saying "Obama Go Bragh."

"We're really very interested and excited by the language of Obama's campaign. There seem to be good core principles but a willingness to talk with everybody and keep an open mind," Jonathan Davis said.

Jessie Hochhalter, 21, a University of California, Berkeley, senior from Ventura, came with eight Cal friends, each with one character of "Obama'08!" written on their torsos in green paint. "We weren't allowed to have banners or posters, but we really wanted to show our support," she said, adding she's for Obama because "I want a Democratic president and Hillary makes me nauseous and Edwards has no chance."

A CNN/Opinion Research Corporation poll released Wednesday showed 37 percent of registered Democrats would vote for U.S. Sen. Hillary Clinton, D-N.Y., as their 2008 nominee; 22 percent named Obama; 14 percent named former vice president and 2000 presidential nominee Al Gore, who hasn't declared candidacy; and 12 percent backed 2004 vice presidential nominee John Edwards. The poll's margin of error was 4.5 percentage points.

Welcomed by Mayor Ron Dellums and introduced by Iraq war veteran Army Sgt. Greg Georgatos, Obama told Saturday's crowd America faces "a health care system that's broken," bankrupting families and the nation; "an education system that's teaching the few but failing too many;" an energy crisis that sends billions of dollars to hostile nations for oil while "melting the polar ice caps and warming the planet;" and "an economy that has never been more productive, that has never generated more wealth" yet leaves average workers' wages stagnant as living costs rise.

All this, he said, "in the midst of a war that should never have been authorized and that should never have been waged" -- a dig at Clinton, who has refused to call her 2002 war-authorization vote a mistake.

Thousands have died and many thousands more have been wounded, yet most Americans understand that "we are actually less safe and that America's standing in the world has been diminished," Obama said, describing a gravely wounded vet who'd come to one of his weekly town-hall meetings on Capitol Hill.

"I was reminded of why we're here today, and I was reminded of why I'm running for president," he said. "Politics is not a game, the decisions made in Washington are not sport."

Too many politicians have forgotten the concerns of soldiers, veterans, workers and students, he said, and to any who say he lacks experience in the nation's capital, he responds, "I've been in Washington long enough to know that Washington needs to change."

On many issues, "we know what to do," he said: establish universal health care while investing in preventative medicine and medical information technology, pay teachers good wages and give them flexibility to use methods that produce results, spread broadband Internet access far and wide, protect union rights, and invest seriously in alternative energy.

But "we can't send $100 billion overseas every year and expect to solve the problems here at home," he said. "I am proud of the fact that I've opposed this war from the start."

He said his Iraq plan -- troop withdrawals to start by May 1, with all combat troops out by March 1, 2008, but a modest military presence remaining in the region -- means being "as careful getting out as we were careless getting in."

Veterans need proper care, he added, citing the recent scandal over conditions at Walter Reed Army Hospital: "Don't stand next to a flag and say you believe in supporting the troops when you're forgetting about them when they come home."

As he marched across the Selma, Ala., Edmund Pettus bridge this month to honor civil rights activists who were violently attacked by police there in 1965, he said, he was reminded of "the enormous power of ordinary people when they're tired of what has been."

"This campaign is a vehicle for you, this campaign is a vehicle for your hopes, for your dreams," he exhorted the crowd. "Oakland, California, I want to be a partner with you. ... I promise you that not only will we have a better America, but I will be the next president of the United States."

Cal sophomore Rebecca Green, 19, of Long Beach said she wants to hear from other Democratic candidates, but Obama "definitely started to sway me."

Cathy Dunlap, 57, of Oakland said she came Saturday already an Obama supporter, but found the speech "awesome, right on point -- it made you want to go to the polls today."

The California Republican Party earlier Saturday issued a news release saying votes Obama cast as an Illinois state senator on bills involving gangs and drugs could indicate he's the wrong candidate for crime-plagued Oakland.

"How will Obama address the tough on crime needs of a city that continues to grapple with gang violence and increasing homicide rates?" state GOP spokesman Hector Barajas asked in the release. "With limited experience and a 'soft on crime' record, Obama just isn't the right fit for the Bay Area."

Click here to read the article in the Oakland Tribune

Excitement surrounds Obama's visit to Oakland

SF Gate | March 18, 2007

By Carla Marinucci

Illinois Sen. Barack Obama, appearing before an adoring crowd in Oakland, one of the state's largest African American communities, delivered a rousing call Saturday evening for an end to the Iraq war, saying "we can't continue this occupation" because America has got "business right here at home.''

Obama used his forum in this loyal Democratic stronghold -- home to Democratic Rep. Barbara Lee - to hammer home his long-standing opposition to the war in Iraq, taking the opportunity to draw a contrast with his two leading Democratic rivals, New York Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton and former North Carolina Senator John Edwards.

"I am proud of the fact that I opposed this war from the start, that I stood up in 2002 and said this is a bad idea, that this is going to cost us billions of dollars and thousands of lives,'' Obama told the audience, which wildly cheered his statements. Noting that he has sponsored a bill calling for drawing down troops beginning on May 1 of this year, the senator said that "we've got to send a signal to (the Iraqi government) that America's not going to be there forever."

Obama was not a U.S. senator at the time of the vote authorizing the war in Iraq. Edwards has since apologized for that vote and Clinton has said that she regrets it, but has never specifically apologized

Obama also talked about the recent scandal regarding poor treatment of Iraq war veterans at the Walter Reed Army Medical Center, saying that "for all the problems with this war,'' America has failed to meet its obligation to its veterans.

With his voice rising in anger, he said the nation must ensure "that we treat them right ... that we're getting them the treatment they need,'' and "they don't end up homeless because nobody's looking after them.''

"Don't stand next to a flag and say you believe in supporting the troops when you forget them when you come home,'' he yelled, as the crowd cheered.

Obama's campaign speech -- delivered on a gloriously sunny day with the elegant backdrop of Oakland's historic City Hall -- drew an enormous crowd that snaked for blocks throughout the downtown and filled the plazas and streets nearby. And the mood had the feel of a community picnic, with merchants selling Obama T-shirts, rap musicians hawking their wares, and a wide range of supporters, from curious Democrats and loyal grassroots activists to families trailing their kids.

The huge audience -- estimated at 12,000 by some campaign insiders -- created a sea of waving blue "Obama '08" signs and moved to funk and disco music as it chanted "Obama! Obama!" in anticipation of the candidate's entrance.

Besides his appearance, Obama supporters had other reasons to celebrate. The candidate was expected to take in as much as $1 million in a fundraiser Saturday night at the Mark Hopkins Hotel in San Francisco, where 800 attendees paid from $1,000 to $2,300 to hear the candidate.

"I am so psyched,'' said San Francisco District Attorney Kamala Harris, who sat front and center in Oakland's crowd. "The energy, the diversity ... people are excited, and it's not just about Barack. It's about them.''

For many in the largely African American crowd, it was a moment of potent symbolism, with several saying they had traveled to the Oakland City Center to see for themselves the first viable African American candidate for president.

"For him to be here in Oakland means a whole lot. This is the first guy who has motivated me,'' said Marcus Gary, 38, a construction supervisor from San Leandro who had his two young sons, 6-year-old Kunta and Neranti, 2, in tow as he waited for Obama's arrival. "He's new. He's different. And we've been doing the same thing for too long.''

Gary, who had the children dressed in Obama T-shirts, said his older son is "already telling me that Obama will be the first black president. I can tell them that they can aspire to be someone like him.''

But, he added, he had his own reasons for believing in the candidate. "Everything is about money, and doesn't reflect the spiritual values. I want us, as African Americans, to be able to have faith in the country,'' he said. "We need to grab onto something that's real."

Obama's trip to California comes as new polls show he's gaining strength against the Democratic front-runner, Clinton, in the critical state of New Hampshire.

A new WBZ/Franklin Pierce College poll of 401 likely Democratic primary voters there released this week puts Obama just 7 points behind Clinton, who is at 32 percent and Obama at 25, with third place Edwards at 16. The poll, which has a plus or minus 4.9 percent margin of error, was taken March 7-11.

And it came in a week in which California's clout in the presidential race was dramatically expanded -- as Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger signed a bill giving California an early Feb. 5 presidential primary.

Obama's Oakland stop was a unique event for Californians watching the 2008 presidential race -- one populated by real voters who did not have to pay to see their candidate.

"Most of these candidates skip over Oakland like we're not here, and go to San Jose or San Francisco,'' said Joseph Sheppard, 50, of Oakland, as he sat with his mother and his wife at the rally. "Being a black man and watching this, it's wonderful.''

California has seen a flurry of presidential campaign activity in recent weeks -- most of it under-the-radar fundraising events. On the Republican side, Arizona Sen. John McCain crisscrossed the state last week without a single public event, as did former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney -- both intent on raising money for the March 31 federal campaign elections deadline.

Clinton arrives in California next week but has so far announced no public events. She will do three back-to-back fundraisers on March 25.

Only Edwards, who recently hit California, has scheduled major public speeches, and he drew large crowds in both Berkeley and Los Angeles, among other stops.

Click here to read the article from the SF gate