a series of meetings on bringing a center to the far South Side. It took six months of negotiations, and the MET decided to put the center in less-remote Roseland, but that was a victory because Roseland is only a fifteen-minute bus ride from Altgeld. It was a lot closer than South Chicago and a lot friendlier to blacks.
Even more exciting was the news that Mayor Washington would attend the ribbon cutting. A mayoral visit was a pageant that would fill South Michigan Avenue. Obama’s phone blew up with calls from neighborhood politicians and pastors, begging for the chance to introduce Harold. It was his very first taste of power—for fifteen minutes, he would hold the most precious coin in Chicago politics, access to the mayor. Had Obama been more familiar with the Machine, he might have allowed the alderman or the state senator to speak before Washington, collecting chits he could cash in when he lobbied the city and state for money. Instead, he asked Loretta Augustine to introduce the mayor. That would promote the DCP, which had after all brought the intake center to Roseland. While Augustine had the mayor’s attention, Obama instructed her, she should invite him to the organization’s big rally that fall.
It was a raw spring day, with clouds the color of stone. Augustine dressed in a ruffled shirt and a belted trench coat, the nicest outfit she could afford on her salary as a teacher for the archdiocese. She waited nervously for the mayor on the windy street, which was blocked off with sawhorses for his arrival. When the limousine pulled up, the mayor popped out and waved to the crowd. A stout but nimble figure, he walked over to Augustine and gave her a hug.
“Ms. Augustine,” said the bachelor mayor in the manner of a practiced ladies’ man, “it’s a pleasure to meet you.”
“Do you mind if I take your arm?” Augustine asked. It was her job to stay close to the mayor. Plus, if she let him go, she’d be overwhelmed by the throng following him down the street. Everyone wanted to shake Harold’s hand.
The pair strolled past the remnants of Roseland’s commercial glory: Herman’s Army Store, Old Fashioned Donuts, and the Ranch, a Western-themed steakhouse with photos of Roy Rogers and Tom Mix in its booths. Augustine pointed out the new facades on the Roaring Twenties storefronts.
When they reached the new intake center, Augustine gave a brief speech.
“This is the kind of success we can have when the community comes together,” she said.
Reverend Alvin Love had walked the four blocks from his church to watch the ribbon cutting. It was a big day in Roseland’s history, he thought. Before, if you’d wanted anything from the city, you had to go through the alderman or a city hall bureaucrat who didn’t know jack about the neighborhood. Before Obama walked into his study, Love had never heard of community organizing or Saul Alinsky. Now this little group of priests and preachers and housewives he’d joined was working in exactly the way Alinsky had intended, as Chicago’s second party, a way for ordinary people to improve their neighborhoods without going begging to the Machine. It did help that the city had a mayor who’d beaten the Machine himself, with the help of just these sorts of church-basement groups. Community groups were welcome in the mayor’s fifth-floor office. It hadn’t been that way when Daley presided there. Organizers who worked in Chicago in the 1980s would recall the Washington years as a golden age, “a fantastic time to be a community person.”
After Washington cut the ribbon, Augustine sighed with relief and headed for the punch bowl. Seeing her alone, Obama ran over in a panic.
“Where’s the mayor?” he demanded. “You’re supposed to be with him until he gets in his limo. You’re supposed to ask about the rally.”
Augustine gulped her punch and found the mayor, just in time to invite him to the DCP’s fall rally. An assistant jotted down the information. Just as Obama had ordered, Augustine stayed by the mayor’s side until the black car pulled up in front of the center. The MET did bring jobs to Altgeld. That summer, it hired teenagers to staff a program for children in the Our Lady of the Gardens gym. It also showed skeptical African-American pastors that Obama’s Developing Communities Project could get city hall’s attention.
“I think he really helped us to get organized in an effective way,” Father Carmon would remember. “We had tried