LA Times Feb 2007: “Fellow Activists Say Obama’s Memoir Has Too Many I’s”
CHICAGO — The drama began with a tiny ad in a local newspaper — a notice that asbestos was about to be removed from the management office at Altgeld Gardens, the all-black public housing complex where young Barack Obama worked as a community organizer.
“You think it’s in our apartments?” a worried mother asked.
“I don’t know,” Obama replied. “But we can find out.”
What followed, Obama says in a memoir, was a life-altering experience, an early taste of his ability to motivate the powerless and work the levers of government. As the 24-year-old mentor to public housing residents, Obama says he initiated and led efforts that thrust Altgeld’s asbestos problem into the headlines, pushing city officials to call hearings and a reluctant housing authority to start a cleanup.
But others tell the story much differently.
They say Obama did not play the singular role in the asbestos episode that he portrays in the best-selling memoir “Dreams From My Father: A Story of Race and Inheritance.” Credit for pushing officials to deal with the cancer-causing substance, according to interviews and news accounts from that period, also goes to a well-known preexisting group at Altgeld Gardens and to a local newspaper called the Chicago Reporter. Obama does not mention either one in his book.