Gamaliel and the Barack Obama Connection
by Gregory A. Galluzzo
President elect Barack Obama has throughout his political career made repeated references to his time as a community organizer on the South Side of Chicago. It is important that we all understand the connection between Barack and Gamaliel. In l980 Mary Gonzales and I created the United Neighborhood Organization of Chicago.
In l982 we decided that we needed some expertise from someone who had done faith based community organizing. A person who had worked as such an organizer in Illinois and in Pennsylvania approached me about joining our organizing team. His name was Jerry Kellman. Jerry helped Mary and myself become better organizers. While he was working for us, he connected with a group called the Calumet Community Religious Conference (CCRC) operating on the South Side in the South Suburbs of Chicago, and in Indiana. CCRC had been formed in response to the massive shut down of major industry and the resulting job loss and all of the concomitant social tragedies.
Jerry and I reached an understanding that we would support his work in the South Suburbs so that he could become director of his own project. It was Jerry Kellman who put an ad in the New York Times about an organizing position in the Chicago area. Barack responded; Jerry interviewed him and offered him a position. Barack accepted. Almost at this very time, Jerry propositioned an old friend of his to return to Chicago from Texas and work with him in this new organizing venture. His friend was Mike Kruglik. Mike and Jerry were the first mentors of Barack in organizing.
CCRC, which spanned communities in Northwest Indiana, the South Suburbs and parts of the City of Chicago proved to be unwieldy. Jerry and I decided to split it into three parts. Barack would work to found a new independent project in the South side of Chicago, Mike Kruglik would be the director of the South Suburban Action Conference and Jerry Kellman would develop organizing in Northwest Indiana. At that point Jerry asked me to become Barack’s consultant.
And at this time we were just creating the Gamaliel Foundation. I met with Barack on a regular basis as he incorporated the Developing Communities Project, as he moved the organization into action and as he developed the leadership structure for the organization. He would write beautiful and brilliant weekly reports about his work and the people he was engaging.
When Barack decided to go to Harvard Law School, he approached John McKnight, a professor at Northwestern and a Gamaliel Board member for a letter of recommendation. When Barack was leaving he made sure that Gamaliel was the formal consultant to the organization that he had created and to the staff that he had hired.
Barack has acknowledged publicly that he had been the director of a Gamaliel affiliate. He has supported Gamaliel throughout the years by conducting training both at the National Leadership Training events and at the African American Leadership Commission. He has also attended our public meetings.
We are honored and blessed by the connection between Barack and Gamaliel.
Interesting.I’m not sure I hear “obama” in the chanting, but in any case - yikes!
Wouldn’t it be nice to see just one person step up and say he knew obama as a college student and they went to the movies together, or a woman who says she was his prom date? There’s been no one like that at any point, and that alone is creepy. I’ll never understand why so many Americans couldn’t see it at election time.
Sounds to me like this Gamaliel Foundation is basically ACORN for churches.
They weren’t praying to POTUS, they were praying to God, but the video producer put the word “Obama” on the screen, which makes your mind think you are hearing that word when you listen.
Listen without looking, and it’s clear that a vast majority of the people are saying “hear my prayer, oh God”, etc. They are not in sync, so the “oh God” comes out spread out, and someone seems to be saying “mother God” (I think, I decided to listen specifically for that, so maybe my brain was playing tricks on me). I also thought I heard someone say “Oh My God”.
It is possible someone was saying “Obama” as well, but it certainly wasn’t in the liturgy they were using. They were all Obama supporters, and would have shouted “Obama” much more clearly and together than what it sounds like on the tape.
Not that it matters whether some stupid church group WANTED to pray to a false god. We conservatives don’t want to take away other people’s right to worship whoever they want.