John Bracken

It’s not on one of them fancy coastal stations, but WBEZ’s Worldview is one of the global affairs shows on public radio. This month Jerome McDonnell’s show has been looking at Life After Bush; the ongoing series on Global Activism is also worth a gander.  Interviews that stand out for me include one with Iraqi-American environmentalist Azzam Alwash of Nature Iraq and another with Domincan nuns and anti-nuclear protesters Ardeth Platte & Carol Gilbert of Jonah House.

Two other WBEZ notes: Natalie Moore is blogging the R. Kelly trial; and This American Life’s The Giant Pool of Money is an amazing look at the housing crisis.

A final public radio love letter, to On the Media, for Bob Garfield’s snarky, yet sweet, piece on the Newseum.

Tomorrow is the (extended) deadline to apply for one of the summer Obama organizing fellowships. The program is open to “students and recent graduates” who will work, unpaid, at least 30 hours a week for the campaign. “Housing is not guaranteed,” the site adds. I love the fellowship concept, but I worry that the young Latino precinct captain I met in Northwest Indiana, who is not a student but has a passion for the campaign and has been doing political work since he was 13, and hundreds of others like him will not be participating. There is a mixed message in the program’s FAQ, “We expect most applicants to be students and recent graduates. However, anyone can apply and become an organizing fellow… People of all ages are needed to help build the movement!”

I know that Obama staffers are running on fumes at this point, and what the campaign’s accomplished will be the subject of study and praise for years to come. But was there no concern that, in creating a program for those few lucky enough to be in college and able to take an unpaid internship, the campaign could be giving proof to the “elitist” canard? Could it not craft an appeal for a fellowship scholarship program that would fund stipends or housing allowances?

In an odd bit of convergence, this weekend, Time, the New York Times, and the Chicago Tribune each took a look into Obama’s Illinois roots. This sudden emphasis on Chicago reminded me of a Tuesday night tweet from Republican social media guru Patrick Ruffini: ” Over the next six months, we must mention the words Obama and Chicago and/or Daley as much as possible.”

Michael Weisskopf, in Time:

How did the man… come so far so fast? Much of the answer can be traced to the lessons of his first thumping. It was after that brief race in 2000…that Obama learned how to be a politician. He jettisoned his Harvard-tested speaking style for something more down-home. He learned how to cultivate those in power without being defined by them. And he learned how to be different things to different people: a reformer groomed by an old-fashioned machine boss, an African American heavily financed by white liberals, a Harvard lawyer whose bootstrapping life story gained traction with white ethnics. Abner Mikva, a former federal judge and Congressman from Chicago, credits Obama with figuring out “how to appeal to different constituencies without being inconsistent.”…[During the 2004 Democratic primary] while Obama couldn’t win the support of the Daleys’ political machine–he knew they would back Hynes–he shrewdly planted some political seeds. He wrote Bill Daley, a longtime Democratic wise man, saying that while it was only right for the Daleys to support a loyal friend, he hoped they would be for him if he won the primary. “I thought, that’s a very smooth move,” said the younger Daley, who now supports Obama for the White House.

In the Times, Jo Becker and Christopher Drew quote Chicago mainstay Marilyn Katz

“For better or worse, this is Chicago,” said Ms. Katz, who has held fund-raisers for Mr. Obama at her home. “Everyone is connected to everyone.”

John Kass, in the Tribune:

The presumptive Democratic presidential candidate’s politics were born in Chicago. Yet he is presented to the nation as not truly being of this place, as if he floats just above the political corruption here, uninfected, untouched by the stain of it or by any sin of commission or omission. It is all so very mystical.

From McClatchy’s Matt Stearns; Where did the Web rumors about Obama come from?

One practitioner in Virginia, who hates Obama like a dog hates cats, led a reporter through his efforts. Because the man is a retired clandestine CIA officer, identifying him could endanger officers or operations that remain classified, so McClatchy will not reveal his name.

In late 2006, convinced that an Obama presidency would be disastrous for America, he decided to start an anti-Obama operation. He combed the public record on Obama….He assembled a dossier on Obama, including allegations that Obama attended a madrassa, or Islamic religious school, in his youth in Indonesia.

Then the retired spook tried to get Israeli intelligence officials interested in his Obama dossier. They weren’t, to his chagrin. He also shopped it to some foreign reporters. Again, no luck.

He wound up posting some of it on a blog

Kottke collects tweets addressing what will happen “When Obama wins….”

As I mentioned on Twitter last week (and on this blog last year), I suffer from mayoral race envy, for I live in a town that hasn’t seen a competitive contest since Richard Daley was elected 19 years ago. This jealousy was only heightened by listening to the Guardian’s special Politics Weekly podcast on Boris Johnson’s electoral triumph. Rather than leave Chicago, I’ve begun to imagine what a real 2011 mayoral election might look like.

Obviously, should Mayor Daley decide to (or, pending ongoing corruption investigations, not be able to) run for re-election, he will be the favorite to be re-elected. Whether or not that would be the best thing for the city, it is not a particularly exciting prospect for a political junkie daydreaming about 2011. So let’s ignore him.

After Daley, any list of 2011 candidates begins with two Congressmen who came close to challenging Daley last year, Jesse Jackson Jr. and Luis Gutierrez. As Walter Jacobson pointed out on Chicago Public Radio,, and as was pointed out here, one of them could end up being our next Senator– of the two, I’d bet on Gutierrez. City Clerk Miguel Del Valle has been turning up at several benefit dinners in the Loop this spring, and I trust that it’s not due to a love for rubber chicken and weak coffee. I’d place Cook County Commissioner Forrest Claypool into a non-Daley second tier with Del Valle. Two wild cards who may be better off waiting for 2015, are SEIU favorite Ald. Sandi Jackson (Jesse’s spouse) and States Attorney nominee Anita Alvarez. For a wild, wild card, let’s toss U.S. Attorney Patrick Fitzgerald’s name into the ring.

February 2011 seems like a long ways away, but it will be here before you know it.

Do I detect a tone of curmudgeonly resentment in the LA Times’ Andrew Malcolm’s recent Top of the Ticket “blog” post?

In an obvious attempt to be ignored for a while, Tom Hanks with no fanfare, news release or hoopla, late tonight put up a video on his MySpace page endorsing Illinois Sen. Barack Obama for president.

“Blogger” Malcolm refuses to actually link to the video, and also fails to point out the self-declared history buff Hanks’ error– neither Obama nor anyone else will take the oath of office “in November.”

For the last couple of years, Friends of the Parks has been floating a notion to extend Chicago’s lakefront park system to include two miles on both the Side and North sides, with the hope of finalizing a plan by next year’s centennial of the (Daniel) Burnham Plan. As the FOTP points out, “Both the Burnham 1909 Plan of Chicago and the 1972 Lakefront Protection ordinance call for Chicago’s entire lakefront to be public parks.” I take a particular interest in FOTP’s recently published plan to expand the beach 5 blocks from my home, which would also ease my bike commute by reducing the mile of streets I have to negotiate before reaching the lakefront path to a handful of blocks.

On the other hand, my neighbor Philip Bernstein started Stop the Landfill to oppose the FOTP’s plan. Bernstein is neither a paroter of NIMBY resistance nor a run-of-the-mill Edgewater curmudgeon (we have our share), but is, according to Chicago Journal, a “retired chief of planning for the Army Corp of Engineers in Chicago.” According to STL, “[A]ny landfill, no matter how “clean” the fill is, would have a very dramatic impact on the ecology…How many animals would die and how long would it take for Lake Michigan to recover and what about the water quality?” Bernstein’s site also expresses concern for the cost of such an expansion and its effect on “real estate values.” I dont’t have a horse in this race, but I’m paying attention now, thanks to a link from EveryBlock. That link is proof further that the new site provides a lot more than just crime reports and links to restaurant reviews.

(The Pilipino Traveler on Foot blog reveals that Burnham also developed a pan for Manila:

The Burnham Plan, which the London Times called “a miracle by an Alladin,” was approved by the Philippine Legislature, which agreed to set aside two million pesos every year for the execution of the plan. When the fund had reached some 16 million, however, President Manuel L. Quezon decided to use the money on irrigation projects instead. Quezon noted that rice fields were more important than fine structures for Manila. Of Burnham’s proposed government center, only three units were built…”)

I didn’t pick up on the Jay Z reference in Obama’s “Brush the dirt of your shoulder” remarks, but the bald guy in blue to the left of Obama sure did. (Frank James of the Tribune’s Swamp blog asks “s there something somewhat hypocritical about Obama criticizing rap for its frequently demeaning language and portrayals of African Amerians and women, then turning around and borrowing Jay-Z’s gesture of defiance?”)

Exploring the brouhaha over Jimmy Carter’s visit to the region, and his scheduled meeting with Hamas, Kevin Drumm calls out Obama for not walking his talk:

A leading Knesset Member in Israel who strongly favors Senator Obama if he had the chance to vote in the U.S. elections told me recently that his one fear about Obama is that in his quest for the White House, he will ultimately have to shed his pragmatic approach to problem solving and demonstrate to critics “that he will be more Israeli than the Israelis.”…ormer President Jimmy Carter is right to try and do what can be done to kick the tires of an alternative, internal solution to the political division of Palestine. His work may fail — but the effort is worth exploring.

The correct position for Obama to have taken is to say that he would be open to what someone like a Jimmy Carter. . .or a Colin Powell. . .or a Tony Blair, Joschka Fischer, Javier Solana, Vladimir Putin, Hu Jintao, or Saudi King Abdullah might be able to achieve by way of Hamas and Fatah. Emissaries are important, and they can create opportunities a President can’t often take the risks to do himself or herself.

Obama, in my view, has tarnished his foreign policy credentials here. If he can’t embrace what these Americans have been able to do — and what Senator Chuck Hagel has suggested be done with Hamas — then what use is his new vision?

What is his position today if not one that has been influenced by special interests whose political weight has undermined the strategic interests of the United States?