A Quote by Barack Obama
I think if you worked at the community level in Chicago and then a politician on the South Side of Chicago, and worked at the state level, then you're pretty familiar with all the variations of politics in the African American community and criticisms you may get. If you're not familiar with those or you don't have a thick enough skin to take it, then you probably wouldn't have gotten here.
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President Obama started in public life not as an elected official but as a community organizer. He worked with churches and other groups on the south side of Chicago to push public leaders to fight poverty, improve the local school system and make housing more affordable, and to bring about the change the community needed and deserved.
My character started off on 'Chicago P.D.' as the brother to Detective Jake Halstead, and then I also played on 'Chicago Fire.' So, I really worked on both shows before 'Chicago Med' even started.
I worked on Capitol Hill, I worked in the White House and I've worked in politics enough to be familiar with the basic broadstrokes of public policy.
I grew up in Synagogue in the boys' choir. We didn't listen to music in the house; only at temple. Then I went to a mostly African American high school on the South Side of Chicago and joined a gospel choir.
Because once the black man becomes the political master of his own community, it means that the politicians of that community will also be black, which also means that he then will be sending black representation or representatives not only to represent him at the local level and at the state level, but, but even at the federal level.
I had worked for ten years in theater; I had worked at Second City in Chicago. Then I got to Hollywood, and I was like, naively, 'Where's my pilot?'
Writing-wise, I started when I was 17. Whatever was bothering me, I could just write about it in a song. I was in the west suburbs of Chicago, then I moved an hour south, and then I went to school up on the South Side - Saint Xavier, though I was at Purdue for a second before I dropped out.
There was a lot of feeling that with an African-American president, life on the South Side of Chicago would be radically different.
I've never seen a theater community to rival that of Chicago. Neither New York nor L.A. has the raw talent or integrity that Chicago theater has, and I think it's because Chicago doesn't have Broadway or the film and TV business to distract it.
As NBA coach, people get on you. But politics, maybe even more so at the local level, is nasty on a very personal level. I have a thick skin, but I don't want to deal with it.
When you're in operations, the best thing you can do at the top level is get the strategy right. You have to get the big ideas right, you have to determine what is the policy, what is the level of effort you're willing to commit to it? And then you delegate to those who have to execute that strategy to the appropriate level. What's the appropriate level? It's the level where people are trained and equipped to take decisions so we move swiftly against the enemy.
Look, we live in a celebrity culture and sometimes you get caught in the wave and the buzz and a lot of it's flattering but, you know, one of the things that I try to remind people of is, is that I was in politics as a state senator operating in obscurity for many years. Before that I was a community organizer working in low income communities in Chicago and nobody knew my name then. And so, having involved myself in public service for a pretty long time without getting too much attention, hopefully I can keep some of the attention that I'm getting now in perspective.
I believe in God. I got down on my knees and I said, 'I get it. If this isn't for me, then it isn't for me.' And then a week later, I started working. I worked on 'The Following,' I worked on 'Elementary,' I worked on a pilot and then I got 'Orange.' So literally from that moment of deep surrender, that's when you're blessed.
I've worked my butt off to get to where I am. I know that any chances that I'm getting is because I've worked hard and I've gotten myself to this level.
My mother is an African-American from the South Side of Chicago who married a white guy in 1978. She was hyperaware of racism and made me aware of that.
Dr. King said, 'We are all tied together in a garment of mutual destiny.' Which says to me no matter how well I may be doing in Hollywood, if a young brother or sister in Louisiana, the South Bronx, the South Side of Chicago, South Central Los Angeles - is not doing well, then I'm not doing very well.
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