Crossing Paths Daily: Obama and Ayers Shared an Office (Update: For Three Years)

It’s nice to be the guy getting tips for once instead of the guy sending them. Yesterday I got two great tips from Morgen, a reader who had found my earlier posts digging into the Obama Ayers connection. Both tips appear to check out and the second one is, I think, big news.

This Chicago Annenberg Challenge website from 2002 shows the total amount of funds given to Bill Ayers’ Small Schools Workshop from 1995 to 2001. The amount is not the $175K I had reported earlier. According to this page, the total given under Barack Obama’s direct supervision was $1,056,162. Adding that amount to the money given by the Joyce Foundation and Woods Fund during Obama’s tenure brings the grand total to $1,968,718. Just shy of two million dollars! That’s a lot of scratch, to put it bluntly. And don’t forget, this doesn’t count the 3/4 million that went to John Ayers during the same time period.

Now here’s the second and bigger break, again big hat tip to Morgen for his work on this…

Bill Ayers and Barack Obama shared an office. Ayers’ Small Schools Workshop, the one Obama directed all that money too is located at 115 S. Sangamon Street, Chicago, Illinois 60607 [Note the link is to a year 2000 version of their website]. Here’s a screengrab from the website’s footer:

In 1998, the address for the Chicago Annenberg Challenge, where Obama presumably worked, was 115 S. Sangamon Street, Chicago, Illinios 60607. Here’s a copy of their 1998 tax return with that address:

The CAC moved to a new address sometime in 1999 or 2000, but the shared office probably persisted for at least three years. I can’t say for sure because 1998 is the earliest tax information available online. [Correction: I can say for sure that they shared the same building for the years 1995-1998. Here is a 1995 progress report from the CAC with the same address.]

Now remember, the NY Times described Obama and Ayers as having “crossed paths.” Ben LaBolt, Obama’s spokesman said:

Mr. LaBolt said the men first met in 1995 through the education project, the Chicago Annenberg Challenge, and have encountered each other occasionally in public life or in the neighborhood.

I’m going to suggest that two guys working in the same building for a period of years probably crossed paths pretty often. For all we know, they had lunch together on a daily basis. Maybe, in an effort at conservation, they were even carpool buddies. After all, Ayers is a guy from Obama’s neighborhood.

Update: Made the correction above. Also, Obama was a state senator from 1996-2004. However, he still likely spent some significant time at the Sangamon street address, especially in 1995. But even after his election he would presumably be working on his CAC duties at the Sangamon office, not from some other location.

And according to this memo dated 1996, Small Schools Workshop was also on the 3rd floor:

I didn’t get to ask Obama about his relationship with Bill Ayers today, but did ask his chief strategist (and reigning expert on Chicago’s political tribes), David Axelrod, about the two men.

“Bill Ayers lives in his neighborhood. Their kids attend the same school,” he said. “They’re certainly friendly, they know each other, as anyone whose kids go to school together.”

He called Ayers current defense of his 1960s bombings “objectionable, and I think Barack would also say that was objectionable. I don’t think he’s ever had an in-depth discussion [with Ayers] about them.”
And he cast the whole subject in the context of Obama’s broader message.

“We can relitiigate again and again these 40-year-old battles,” he said. “He thinks what was done then was wrong and outrageous, and he believes that you can’t defend the indefensible – but he’s looking forward, he’s not looking back.”

UPDATE: There’s been a bit of confusion about Axelrod’s line on the kids, who — as the Guardian’s Daniel Nasaw noted — aren’t the same age. Obama’s kids went go the the University of Chicago Lab Schools, where Ayers kids, who are much older, had gone. However, Bernardine Dohrn is still active at the school, and an Obama aide said that was the connection.

http://www.politico.com/blogs/bensmith/0208/Ax_on_Ayers.html

SO MANY LIES ABOUT AYERS. Axelrod tried say their “kids went to school together”

Also Obama didn’t know about his past.

Also Obama thought he was “reformed”. Reformed from his past that he DIDN’T KNOW ABOUT.

Obama’s LIES about Ayers make just as good a commercial as Ayers himself.

In 1983, unrepentent domestic terrorist, Ayers, and convicted felon and unrepentent domestic terrorist, Dohrn, move to New York City so Ayers can attend the Bank Street College of Education which is located at 610 West 112th Street.

In 1983, Barack graduates with a B.A. in Political Science and International Studies from Columbia University in New York City. Prior to graduation, Barack wrote many letters of interest, but received no job offers.
From 1983-1984 for a little less than one year, Obama’s first job after graduating from Columbia University was with a company called Business Financial Corporation. Obama held a position as a research associate in its financial services division, where he edited Financing Foreign Operations, a global reference service, and wrote for Business International Money Report, a weekly financial newsletter. Business Financial Corporation was persistently and erroneously identified as a front operation for the Central Intelligence Agency. Part of the company lore was that the unusual role of researching politics and economics from abroad during the 1950s and 1960s “proved” that the company was a CIA front, but no firm evidence ever surfaced.
In his book, Dreams from My Father, Obama wrote “On the spot [at a Lexington Avenue diner], he [Gerald Kellman, the man from the Calumet Community Religious Conference in Chicago], offered me the job which involved organizing conferences on drugs, unemployment, [and] housing. Facilitating dialogue, he called it. I declined his generous offer, deciding I needed a job closer to the streets. After the meeting, I took the long way home, along the East River promenade.”
“I spent three months in 1984-1985 working [on a salary of $10,000/year] for the New York Public Interest Research Group (NYPIRG), a Ralph Nader offshoot up in Harlem, trying to mobilize minority students at City College about the importance of recycling. [NYPIRG is New York State’s largest student-directed consumer, environmental and government reform organization. NYPIRG is a nonpartisan, not-for-profit group established to effect policy reforms while training students and other New Yorkers to be advocates.]

Then [I spent] a week passing out flyers for an assemblyman’s race in Brooklyn — the candidate lost [Vita Lopez won] and I never did get paid.” [Interestingly, in the Democratic Presidential primary race in 2008, the opponent in the 1984 Assemblyman’s race who won, Vito Lopez, endorses IL Senator Barack Obama over NY Senator Hillary Clinton.]

In 1984, unrepentent domestic terrorist, Ayers graduates with an M.A. in Early Childhood Education from Bank Street College of Education at 610 West 112th Street in New York City.

From 1984-1987, unrepentent domestic terrorist, Ayers attends graduate school in the School of Education at Columbia University located at 116th Street and Broadway. While at Columbia, Ayers also works as an instructor in the Pre-service Program in Elementary Education in the Department of Curriculum and Teaching in the Teachers College (1985-1987).

From 1984-1988, unrepentent domestic terrorist, Bernardine Dohrn, is hired by Newton Minow as a paralegal in the Sidley Austin LLP Law Firm in Chicago while she attempts to get admitted to the New York or Illinois State Bar Association. Dohrn got the position because of the influence of her father-in-law, wealthy Chicago businessman, Tom Ayers. Dohrn would not renounce her domestic terrorism so she is not admitted to either Bar Association and she must work as a paralegal.

In 1985, Gerald (Jerry) Kellman at Calumet Community Religious Conference in Chicago receives a grant from the Woods Fund, a Chicago foundation that gives grants for community organizing, to hire a new community organizer for the organization he heads called the Developing Communities Project (DCP). Later, Barack Obama and unrepentant domestic terrorist, Bill Ayers, sit together on the Board of the Woods Fund.

In 1985, Barack “spotted an intriguing help-wanted ad in The New York Times. The Calumet Community Religious Conference (CCRC), a group that aimed to convert the black churches of Chicago’s South Side into agents of social change, was looking for a community organizer to run the group’s inner-city arm, the Developing Communities Project (DCP). I soon arranged to meet in New York with the organizer who was heading up the job search.”

From 1985-1988, Barack works in Chicago as a community organizer for $10,000/year and $2,000 to buy a used car. Having been hired by Gerald (Jerry) Kellman, a social activist who recruited him, Obama takes a staff (community organizer) position with the Developing Communities Project whose personnel work with churches to organize job training and other programs for poor and working-class residents of Roseland and Altgeld Gardens public housing projects on the city’s industrial far South Side. He also organizes workers who had lost their jobs due to the steel mill and factory closings. Perhaps his most confrontational effort was to pressure city authorities to remove asbestos from the apartments in 1986. When the on-site manager didn’t take action, Obama nudged the residents into confronting city housing officials in two angry public meetings.

In 1987, needing a church affiliation to further his community organizing work, Barack Obama joins Chicago’s Trinity United Church of Christ which is headed by the foul mouthed, racist, Farrakhan-embracing, Black Liberationist-teaching Jeremiah Wright.

In 1987, unrepentent domestic terrorist, Ayers, graduates with an M.A. AND an Ed.D. in Education and Curriculum from the Teacher’s College of Columbia University in New York City and moves back to Chicago.

In 1987, Michelle Robinson (Obama) is hired by Newton Minow as a summer associate in the Sidley Austin LLP Law Firm in Chicago. While there, she works with and gets to know unrepentent domestic terrorist, Bernardine Dohrn, (wife of Bill Ayers), who is a paralegal in the same firm.

[A plausible scenario for how Ayers and Obama meet is the following]
In the fall of 1987, Obama working in his role of community organizer for the Developing Communities Project (DCP) is introduced to unrepentent domestic terrorist, Bill Ayers, while both of them are “working” the same side of the Chicago Teacher’s Union Strike of 1987. Ayers is quoted as saying, that he and Obama met “at a luncheon meeting about school reform in a Chicago skyscraper”.

In 1987, Ayers forms a new organization called the Alliance for Better Chicago Schools (ABCs). to push for Illinois legislature approval of Local School Councils (LSCs). Obama in his role of community organizer for the Developing Communities Project (DCP) also works hard to push for legislative approval of Ayers’ Local School Council (LSC) proposal. Ayers would later Chair the ABCs.
In 1987, Chicago United, a group of businessmen concerned about race and education issues is founded by Bill Ayers’ father, Tom Ayers, who was formerly the CEO of the large Chicago utility, Commonwealth Edison (now Exelon) hosts an Education Summit luncheon. At the luncheon, Chicago United releases a report showing that the most important management reforms it had recommended to the School Board in 1981 had been either ignored or “were buried in classic obfuscation.” Chicago United goes on to join Designs for Change and the Chicago Panel in pushing for school system decentralization.
From 1987-1992, unrepentent domestic terrorist, Ayers, is employed as an Assistant Professor in the Department of Curriculum, Instruction and Evaluation, at the University of Illinois in Chicago.

In 1988, Barack Obama moves to Boston to attend Harvard Law School.

[A likely scenario would be the following:]
In 1989, Barack Obama [takes Tom Ayers—Bill Ayer’s father—up on a favor he’s offered and] takes a position as a summer intern in the Sidley Austin LLP Law Firm in Chicago..

In the summer of 1989, the junior associate who is put in charge of overseeing his work is Michelle Robinson (Obama). Barack is introduced to Michelle by her coworker, friend, and unrepentent domestic terrorist, Bernardine Dohrn.

In 1990, the University of Illinois at Springfield publishes a collection of essays called After Alinsky: Community Organizing in Illinois. Obama contributed a chapter, titled: “Why Organize? Problems and Promise in the Inner City.”

In 1990, Barack is named President of the Harvard Law Review and spends his time in that position writing his autobiography, “Dreams from My Father”. It is now highly suspected that Bill Ayers ghost-wrote this book because of all the alliterative language and ikkustrative language that is used in Obama’s memoir and a book by Bill Ayers.

In 1991, Barack graduates with a J.D. degree from Harvard Law School.

In the spring of 1991, Barack moves back to Chicago.

In 1991, Barack and Michelle Robinson travel to rural Nyangoma-Kogel, Kenya to visit his “Granny”, his Uncle, his older half-brother, George, (who all 3 were present for Barack’s birth in Kenya) and the rest of the family on his father’s side.

From 1992-1995, Obama has a position as a civil rights lawyer with the Davis, Miner, Barnhill & Galland Law Firm in Chicago.

From 1993-2002, Obama serves on the board of the Woods Fund with unrepentent domestic terrorist, Bill Ayers.

etc.
etc.
etc.