Dreams from My Father

of the three actually lived in Altgeld—they all owned small houses just west of the project—I had asked them once what motivated them to do what they did. Before I could finish the question, they had all rolled their eyes as if on cue.
    “Watch out, girl,” Angela told Shirley, causing Mona to chuckle merrily. “Barack’s about to interview you. He’s got that look.”
    And Shirley said, “We’re just a bunch of bored middle-aged women, Barack, with nothing better to do with our time. But”—and here Shirley threw a hand onto her bony hip and raised her cigarette to her lips like a movie star—“if Mr. Right comes along, then watch out! It’s good-bye Altgeld, hello Monte Carlo!”
    I hadn’t heard any jokes from them lately, though. All I’d heard were complaints. The women complained that Marty didn’t care about Altgeld. They complained that Marty was arrogant and didn’t listen to their suggestions.
    Most of all, they complained about the new job bank that we had announced with such fanfare the night of the rally, but that had turned out to be a bust. As Marty had planned it, a state university out in the suburbs had been assigned to run the program—it was a matter of efficiency, he explained, since the university had the computers already in place. Unfortunately, two months after it was supposed to have started, no one had found work through the program. The computers didn’t work right; the data entry was plagued with errors; people were sent to interview for jobs that didn’t exist. Marty was livid, and at least once a week he would have to drive out to the university, cursing under his breath as he tried to pry answers out of officials who seemed more concerned with next year’s funding cycle. But the women from Altgeld weren’t interested in Marty’s frustrations. All they knew was that $500,000 had gone somewhere, and it wasn’t in their neighborhood. For them, the job bank became yet more evidence that Marty had used them to push a secret agenda, that somehow whites in the suburbs were getting the jobs they’d been promised.
    “Marty’s just looking out for his own,” they grumbled.
    I had tried my best to mediate the conflict, defending Marty against charges of racism, suggesting to him that he cultivate more tact. Marty told me I was wasting my time. According to him, the only reason Angela and the other leaders in the city were sore was because he’d refused to hire them to run the program. “That’s what ruins a lot of so-called community organizations out here. They start taking government money. They hire big, do-nothing staffs. Pretty soon, they’ve become big patronage operations, with clients to be serviced. Not leaders.
Clients.
To be
serviced.
” He spit the words out, as if they were unclean. “Jesus, it makes you sick just thinking about it.”
    And then, seeing the still-fretful look on my face, he added, “If you’re going to do this work, Barack, you’ve got to stop worrying about whether people like you. They won’t.”
    Patronage, politics, hurt feelings, racial grievances—they were all of a piece to Marty, distractions from his larger purpose, corruptions of a noble cause. He was still trying to bring the union in then, convinced that they would replenish our ranks, deliver our ship to shore. One day in late September, he had asked Angela and me to join him at a meeting with union officials from LTV Steel, one of the few remaining steel operations in the city. It had taken Marty over a month to set up the meeting, and he was brimming with energy that day, talking at a rapid clip about the company, the union, and new phases in the organizing campaign.
    Eventually the president of the local—a young, handsome Irishman who’d been recently elected on a promise of reform—entered the hall, along with two husky black men, the union treasurer and vice-president. After the introductions, we all sat down and Marty made his pitch. The corporation was preparing to get out of the steelmaking business, he said, and wage concessions would only prolong the agony. If the union wanted to preserve jobs, it had to take some new, bold steps. Sit down with the churches and develop a plan for a worker buyout. Negotiate with the city for concessionary utility and tax rates during the transition. Pressure the banks to provide loans that could be used to invest in the new technology needed to make the plant competitive again.
    Throughout the monologue, the union