March 24, 2004

A little more than 20 years ago, Chicagoans mobilized across lines of race, class, language and neighborhood to elect the city's first black mayor, Harold Washington.

On March 16, a diverse statewide coalition delivered another decisive victory, this time to the candidate who could integrate the U.S. Senate for only the third time since Reconstruction.

But as was the case with Harold Washington, Barack Obama is not just a brown face with a sharp tongue and a winning smile. He is also a progressive candidate with compassion for the poor and a commitment to social justice.

The son of a black Kenyan and a white Kansan, Obama jokes about his own name. "I have been called Yo mama and Alabama," he told one group of supporters during the primary campaign, and described himself as just a "skinny guy from the South Side of Chicago."

Obama has a charming self-effacing style, but he is also a savvy politician. In the hotly contested Democratic primary for the vacant Illinois Senate seat, He managed to win more than 50 percent of the vote in a six-way race. He did so against politicians with a lot more money and some with more experience.

So, what delivered Obama such a landslide victory?

It was a coalition effort. Wealthy liberals on Chicago's north side held fund raisers for the candidate, impressed with his unflinching beliefs, as well as his Harvard credentials.

Over the course of the campaign, Obama left the elegant surroundings of the Gold Coast area in Chicago to address supporters in the city's impoverished south and west side neighborhoods, where he served up soul food and talked about his career as a civil-rights lawyer.

The next day, he was in the southern area of the state talking to farmers as if he was one of them.

There is a link between those struggling downstate farmers, those unemployed or underemployed black families in Chicago, and those who are materially comfortable but morally uncomfortable with the current state of affairs. That link is the strong dissatisfaction with the conservative policies of the current administration in Washington.

Echoing the idealism of the 1960s, Obama's campaign literature told his supporters "We can believe again." And while Obama has not aggressively taken up every progressive cause that needs an advocate, he has spoken to many of them. As an Illinois state senator he successfully pushed for legislation to force law enforcement officers to videotape interrogations in cases where the death penalty could be imposed. He has also fought and won tax reform measures for the working poor.

And last year he delivered a rousing speech at an anti-war rally in Chicago's Grant Park as thousands gathered to protest the impending invasion of Iraq. It was a politically risky stance, but Obama took it as a matter of principle.

In a noisy and crowded hotel room on the evening of his primary victory, the 42-year-old candidate promised "to give voice to the voiceless and power to the powerless."

If successful in November, Obama's campaign may be one sign of shifting political tides.