But one day in those early months of 1988, Barack went with Mike Pfleger and Tommy West on a different sort of outing. Years later Barack would say that “the single most important thing in terms of establishing” safe neighborhoods “is having a community of parents, men, church leaders who are committed to being present and getting into the community and making sure that the gangbangers aren’t taking over, making sure that there’s zero tolerance for drug dealing.” In 1988 Pfleger shared that sentiment as strongly as anyone could, and he had adopted an interdiction technique that was nonviolent direct action at its most aggressive: walking into a known drug seller’s home in clerical garb, asking if he could use the bathroom, then grabbing whatever narcotics he could and heading for the toilet. Only “a very small group” of men accompanied Mike on such drug raids, and Tommy West—wearing a deacon’s collar—was a regular participant.
Pfleger cannot remember Barack going with him on such a sortie, although “he very well may have.” But Tommy West recalls Barack’s involvement with great clarity. “One time he went with us to this drug dealer’s house, and Father Mike grabbed up the guy’s drugs and ran in the washroom—first he asked the guy, could he use the washroom,” and once in there Mike “dropped it and flushed it, and the guy pulls out his pistol. I said, ‘Look, put that up. He’s a priest—you don’t want to hurt him. Use it on me.’ He said, ‘No, he’s the one who did this.’ I said, ‘Don’t touch him. That’s God’s man. You don’t want God to be down on you the rest of your life. Leave him be and try to find you somewhere else.’ He said, ‘I think I will, because I’m ready to kill him.’ So Barack said, ‘Woo.’ ” Mike Pfleger looked calmly at his colleagues. “I’m doing God’s work. God is taking care of me.”
“He was around for that one,” Tommy affirmed. “That was the first time I remember him going inside of the drug dealer’s home with us to see what Father Mike did.” Then, with the dealer still holding his gun, Tommy again asked the man to leave: “ ‘then we can get out of here.’ ” The dealer did take his gun and leave, and as the raiding party exited as well, “everybody was kind of shook up,” Tommy West recalls with considerable understatement.
Barack had developed significant relationships with Mike Pfleger and Jeremiah Wright, just as he had two years earlier with Bill Stenzel and Tom Kaminski. But at home on South Harper, Sheila Jager never heard a single word about any of them, or about institution-based religious faith. “I don’t think Barack ever attended church once while we were together,” and he “certainly was not religious in the conventional sense,” Sheila reiterated. Barack “never suggested going to church together,” and “I had no awareness of Jeremiah. He certainly never mentioned him to me.”
Barack’s closest Hyde Park male friend, Asif Agha, remembers their conversations similarly. “I always assumed he was an atheist like me.” Barack “had no interest in religion” and knew “nothing about Islam.” Asif’s friend Doug Glick, Barack’s companion on all those long summer drives to and from Madison, bluntly concurred. “I do not believe he believes in Jesus Christ.” Asif states the trio’s consensus succinctly: Barack “did not have a religious bone in his body.”
In Barack’s daily life with Sheila, “he didn’t tell me a whole lot about” who he was dealing with in his work, Sheila explains, “although he did bring a lot of their ideas home.” Barack “never compartmentalized ideas, which we discussed freely.” At home “we spent a great deal of our time discussing/talking about all sorts of things, which was one of the things I liked so much about him.” And, just like at DCP, Barack “was also a very good listener.” Yet “we lived a very isolated existence,” and even their immediate neighbors at 5429 South Harper barely remember either Barack or Sheila.
One longtime older resident had no recollection at all, and custodian Joe Vukojevic, who lived directly across the hall from Barack and Sheila, only remembered being introduced to Barack’s mother Ann during her summer 1987 visit. Barack and Sheila’s immediate upstairs neighbors, John Morillo and Andrea Atkins, thought Joe the janitor was “a very nice guy” but “practically never” saw Sheila or Barack. They would remember the unusual name on the mailbox, and saying hi to Sheila, but Barack was “just another guy doing laundry” in the basement laundry room.68
On January 31, the Daily Calumet reported that South Chicago Savings Bank president Jim Fitch was privately brokering talks to allow Waste Management to use the O’Brien Locks site as a new landfill in exchange for a $20 million community trust fund. Fitch then called for another gathering of neighborhood representatives at 7:30 P.M. Monday, February 8, at his bank to discuss “the structure of the community trust.” Since the Daily Cal story “events have been evolving rapidly,” Fitch explained, and “conversations with Waste Management have continued.”
UNO’s Bruce Orenstein and Mary Ellen Montes had previously attended Fitch’s conclaves, but now they grew concerned. If UNO and the city’s Howard Stanback hoped to have the community fund managed by mayoral allies, they could not allow Fitch to continue driving the conversation with WMI. Bruce and Lena called on Fitch at his bank in advance of the meeting and told him he lacked the authority to have this gathering because he had not been involved in the fight to stop the landfills. Bruce recounts telling him, “We think you’re undermining our agenda, you’re undermining the agenda of the community, the wishes of the community.” Bruce and Lena “really asked him to stop,” but Fitch was no rookie at power politics. He recognized their raw grab for control and brusquely dismissed them.
Orenstein next called Barack to ask for DCP’s support in a confrontational move straight out of the Alinsky-style community organizing playbook. Local print and broadcast journalists were notified, a press release was prepared, and late Monday afternoon prior to the scheduled meeting, Barack, Loretta Augustine, and other DCP members drove to UNO’s office on East 91st Street, less than two blocks from Fitch’s South Chicago Savings Bank. “We met there, we practiced,” Bruce remembered. “Barack and I and Mary Ellen and Loretta have devised this thing,” and shortly after 7:30 P.M., Mary Ellen led a column of more than one hundred participants, including some children, out the door and down the street toward the bank’s second-floor conference room. The goal was “to let Fitch know in no uncertain terms he does not represent the will of the community on this issue,” Bruce recounted. “We just wanted to tell him that in front of everybody else who was around the table,” including UNO and DCP’s old friend Bob Klonowski, pastor of Hegewisch’s Lebanon Lutheran Church. Bruce remembered the group very quietly “walking up the stairs and being actually quite nervous,” for “it was quite a confrontational approach to things.”
But with Mary Ellen in the lead, the “ambush”—as the Daily Cal’s front-page headline the next day called it—worked to perfection. “Mary Ellen led the charge and we walked in and the camera lights went on,” Bruce recalled. “Barack and Loretta and the TV cameras and the Chicago Tribune” reporter Casey Bukro all followed Lena into the conference room. “Everybody looks up” as Mary Ellen approached Fitch. “Tonight we publicly take the position ‘No deals Jim Fitch, no deals Waste Management,’ ” Lena proclaimed. “We will fight you every step of the way.” As a confrontational leader, “she was fantastic,” Bruce knew. “Then we turned on our heels and walked out.” It was a “very memorable action,” even “a hoot of an action,” and from Bruce’s perspective, Barack had shown no discomfort with these tactics: “I certainly think he enjoyed it.”