“A Skinny Guy with a Funny Name” – Obama Launches His First U.S. Senate Campaign (2004))

public schools. Well talk about some of these things and again take your questions as we talk with Barack Obama during this hour. And Senator Obama Good morning. Good morning how are you. Thanks. Very well thank you for joining us. Thank you for having me. I wanted to start by asking you I know you've been involved in you know community efforts in Chicago and a number of other activities in addition to your resume as a member of the only Senate and your academic background if you want to you know talk a little bit about your experience of working in the community there. Well you know usually the first thing people want to know is where do I get this name Barack Obama. And people mispronounce it called me Alabama. There are all kinds of variations to it my father. Is from Kenya from Africa and he was a foreign student too who came here to study back in the early 60s. My mother was from Kansas which is why I talk the way I do. And it's actually community organizing that brought me to Chicago. I had graduated from Columbia University in New York and had become interested in figuring out how I could

help rebuild communities that had been devastated by job closings or were hurting because of long histories of segregation. And there were a group of churches on the far South Side of Chicago here that were dealing with steel plants but it closed. And we're trying to figure out how they could help rejuvenate communities so they didn't have much money. All they could afford was a 23 year old kid who was interested and was willing to work hard. So I came out here and worked for three years setting up job training programs for the unemployed. Organizing parents to help promote school reform in the area. Bringing resources and City investment into areas that have been neglected. So I did that for three and a half years before I went to law school and it was the best education I ever had it really taught me that ordinary people can do extraordinary things when they're given the opportunity. The other basic question I have and I want to defer to callers as much as possible since as with issue is

all about what do you hope to bring to the U.S. Senate what would you hope to accomplish there. Well you know as I think you noted in the introduction I have devoted most of my life to public service. Certainly most of my adult life both as a community organizer then as a civil rights attorney and most recently as a state senator. And I'm very proud of the track record that I've been able to. Developed in the Illinois Senate. You know I helped to shape the kid care program that provides health insurance for children who don't have who don't qualify for Medicaid but whose parents don't have health insurance on the job. I helped to implement a welfare reform program here in Illinois that's one of the least punitive but one of the most successful in moving women into the workforce primarily by providing them with daycare and transportation assistance and job training. I helped pass they were an income tax credit that provides tax breaks for people who really need it.

People typically making $30000 a year or less. And then this year really focused a lot on revamping our criminal justice system in the past the first of the nation videotaping of interrogations and confessions. The cornerstone of death penalty reform in the state. So. I'm very proud of my track record at the state level but I now think that this country is at a crossroads both internationally and domestically and the voices of ordinary working people are not being heard in Washington they're being drowned out by special interests. I think we have an administration who sees its primary role as protecting the powerful from the demands of the powerless. And I'm hoping to give voice to the young men who are standing on street corners with vision and hope to families that are struggling to get by and to seniors who are unable to get the medicine they need. Those are the people I hope to represent effectively in

Washington the same way. But I believe I've effectively represented them in Springfield.