Obama's Future After White House - The DENISE SIMON EXPERIENCE

Obama Says He Might Go Back to Community Organizing

One day when he’s done wrangling with the Iranians and congressional Republicans, President Barack Obama plans to get back to where he once belonged.

The most powerful man in the world wants to return to community organizing after he hands over the keys to the White House in 2017, he told middle-school students at a public library in Washington’s Anacostia neighborhood today.

“I’ll be done being president in a couple of years and I’ll still be a pretty young man,” he said. “And so I’ll go back to doing the kinds of work I was doing before, just trying to find ways to help people.”

“I’ll go back to doing the kinds of work I was doing before.”

Obama, who will be 55 years old when he leaves office in 2017, said his post-presidential agenda includes helping children get educations and better access to the job market, and luring businesses into low-income neighborhoods. Just out of college, he worked on Chicago’s South Side as a community organizer, a career choice that earned him much derision from conservative quarters.

“That’s the kind of work that I really love to do,” he said, after one child asked what inspired him to seek the presidency.

The president’s comments came against the backdrop of unrest in Baltimore, where protests and riots have followed the April 19 death of Freddie Gray, 25, who suffered spinal-cord injuries while in policy custody. Earlier this week, Obama said the violence in Baltimore was indicative of a “slow-rolling crisis” in the nation’s inner cities that would require “some soul-searching.”

“If our society really wanted to solve the problem, we could,” he said at an April 28 news conference. “It’s just it would require everybody saying this is important, this is significant, and that we don’t just pay attention to these communities when a CVS burns.”

The president has previously hinted that he wanted to dedicate his post-presidential life to addressing those issues. Last June, Obama said at a town hall-style meeting that he and his wife, Michelle, had discussions about “developing young people and working with them and creating more institutions to promote young leadership.”

He said at the town hall, however, that his first move, will be to plant himself on “a beach somewhere, drinking out of a coconut.”

So, what are his real plans? A SHARED DESTINY OF TRANSFORMATION

Let us start with his presidential library, his new headquarters. Here will be the Barack Obama Foundation.

ABOUT THE FOUNDATION
The Foundation, officially established as an operating, 501(c)(3) nonprofit corporation in January of 2014, will both plan and develop the Project and engage in activities reflecting President Obama’s values and priorities throughout his career in public service: expanding economic opportunity, inspiring an ethic of American citizenship and promoting peace, justice and dignity throughout the world. The Project will be an anchor for economic development and help cultivate a strong relationship in the surrounding community. In addition to the Library and Museum, it will include an Institute that will enhance the pursuit of the President’s initiatives beyond 2017 and have local, regional and global impacts. The Foundation will raise private funds, convene partners who share the President’s goals and vision, serve as a repository of information and otherwise marshal resources to address present and future global and domestic challenges of interest to the President. The Foundation is governed by a volunteer board of directors and chaired by civic leader Martin Nesbitt.

The president and the Barack Obama Foundation also have considered a plan, according to sources, to place the president’s offices and the foundation in New York. It would be an arrangement similar to former President Bill Clinton, who built his library, museum and institute in Little Rock but operates his foundation, from which global projects are launched, in Harlem.

Sources said Obama’s offices could be built in West Harlem, on land offered by Columbia University, the U. of C.’s chief competitor for the library. However, it was unclear whether the president had made a final decision. That announcement is expected to come later.

Officials in Hawaii already have been told that they would not get the library instead would instead be allowed to build a project that represents the state’s ties with the president, sources said. Hawaii has proposed a presidential center that includes a museum-type visitors center, as well as education and research facilities. The details of the foundation-sanctioned project were still being worked out. Obama’s sister, Maya Soetoro-Ng, who serves on the Barack Obama Foundation board, and her husband, Konrad Ng, led the site selection process, working closely with the president and first lady to figure out what would go where, sources said. Soetoro-Ng and her husband live in Honolulu.

Meanwhile, there is a new White House agenda item, ‘My Brother’s Keeper’. This initiative is based on the young black men in his sights beginning with those with whom he stood in solidarity like Trayvon Martin.

President Barack Obama will announce the My Brother’s Keeper Alliance, a new nonprofit organization, at an event in New York City Monday, the White House announced.

My Brother’s Keeper, a key initiative of Obama’s administration, was launched in 2014 to address the needs of boys and men of color. In launching a non-profit organization separate from the White House, Obama is preparing to continue those efforts when he leaves office.

The announcement is especially timely as tensions in Baltimore this week surrounding the death of Freddie Gray, a black man who was injured in police custody, have stoked conversations about poverty, race, and the unmet needs of young people. In remarks to the media this week, Obama urged a focus on broader issues in addition to police reform. He also alluded to My Brother’s Keeper.

“If we are serious about solving this problem, then we’re going to not only have to help the police, we’re going to think about what can we do, the rest of us, to make sure that we’re providing early education to these kids to make sure that we’re reforming our criminal justice system so it’s not just a pipeline from schools to prisons,” Obama said.

My Brother’s Keeper has encouraged interagency efforts, public-private partnerships, and work at the local level to address issues like disproportionate rates of school discipline for black boys and mentorship programs.

More than $300 million has now been committed to the White House from the private sector in grants, in-kind contributions, or other resources, according to a first year progress report released earlier this year. And more than 200 mayors, tribal chiefs, and county executives from across the country have signed on to the compact and have taken concrete steps to address cradle-to-career opportunities for boys of color and address issues of equity, according to the report.

The president had given some indication that he planned to continue focusing on issues related to boys of color after he leaves the White House, including in a meeting with big-city superintendents and school leaders who met with him in March to discuss progress on the boys-of-color initiatives they were implementing in their school districts.

District of Columbia schools Chancellor Kaya Henderson, who was among those leaders, said the president made it clear to them that “My Brother’s Keeper would not end when he left the White House, but that this, in fact, is work that he will continue after his presidency because this is an important priority for him.”

Many organizations that were involved in the initial formation of My Brother’s Keeper will remain involved when it spins off as an organization of its own, independent of the White House, Yahoo News reports.

My Brother’s Keeper has drawn criticism from some who argue that girls of color should be included in the effort.

Obama’s Future After White House

Denise Simon