Barack Obama, on CNN’s ‘Anderson Cooper 360,’ discusses mentoring young men in Chicago, gun violence and policing
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Former President Barack Obama and a group of young men he met eight years ago as part of the “Becoming a Man” mentoring and support program reunited on national television Monday night to discuss life in Chicago, gun violence and policing.
Obama first joined the mentor and support group for young men and boys in 2013. It was then he met James Adams, Lazarus Daniels and Christian Champagne, who were high school students at the time. And he met up with them again Monday at Hyde Park Academy during a discussion shown on CNN’s “Anderson Cooper 360″ to catch up.
The men, now in their mid-20s, said that talking with the president then was life-changing. The experience also led Obama to launch the “My Brother’s Keeper” initiative at the White House in 2014. Adams, Daniels and Champagne were all there for the launch. Adams said visiting Washington, D.C., then was his first time on a plane and first time out of Chicago.
Daniels said hearing Obama’s story about growing up without a father was relatable. Obama also said he was candid with them about his struggles as a youth, including getting high without thinking about the harm it caused. The one difference between him and those in the program, though, was that Obama said growing up in Hawaii was a gentler environment than Chicago.
“One of the things we all learned from the pandemic was that human connection matters, that we’re not all by ourselves, and we don’t accomplish most of the things we accomplish by ourselves. You know, it requires a community,” Obama said. “Particularly for boys and young men of color, many of whom grow up without fathers but many of whom also live in relative isolation, where the communities, because of safety issues or economic issues, folks don’t have as many resources around them.”
Daniels said that he is the father to a girl now, and that being part of the “Becoming a Man” program helped him speak about things in a way that his father never did. His father was old-school and didn’t know about a lot of the things that he saw as a kid, including a man shooting at him when he was about 7 years old.
Champagne said Obama has checked in with him over the years more than his own father has. During that time, he went to Morehouse College for a semester but went back home when he realized he couldn’t afford it. He started going to another school. Cooper said Champagne is 25 now and had to drop out of the second school because he got ill. He is now working and hopes to go back to school.
“I think the single most important thing I learned as an organizer when I was here in Chicago was that the line between success or failure in this society so often is dictated not by anybody’s inherent merits. It has to do with the circumstances in which they’re in,” Obama said. “That doesn’t mean they don’t have individual responsibility. I think all these young men, you heard them, they recognize, no, I’ve got to work hard, I’ve got to do my part. But it also means that we, as a society, continue to fail them.”
The “Becoming A Man” program did not focus on the kids who were superstars or the most troubled, Obama said. It looked for the kids who were in the middle and who could tip in either direction, and if they had an encouraging adult around, they could succeed.
Later in the interview, the men in the program discussed how they feel both a fear and distrust of the police in addition to a fear of gun violence on the streets. Obama said there has been an uptick in violence and people have also had to process that the relationship between police and the community “is not what we want it to be.”
Daniels said that he was driving for Lyft on the weekends in college, and he was pulled over “like crazy. Almost every night, I was getting pulled over.”
“Their first question, ‘Do you have drugs or weapons in the car?’ Granted, I’m a big Black guy with ‘locks and the first thing they see, I’m just suspicious. But, as I was telling the guys, I got to make it home to my family,” he said. “I can’t be another case where some officer have his knee on my neck, choking me out. So, my biggest thing is making it back home, regardless.”
Two teenagers in the discussion group, 14-year-old Armahn Moorman and 15-year-old Kingsley McCarthy, add on to the feeling of risking their lives every time they leave their homes.
“I love going outside. I love interactions with people. But it’s like the neighborhood that I live in, it’s very hard to do that. Every night, it’s like before I go to bed, is it a gunshot that I’m hearing? Is it fireworks?” Moorman said. “Also, I like to wear — I like wearing hoodies. So when I walk down the street is somebody going to come and target me because I’m wearing a hoodie? Do they think I’m up to no good?”
Adams said he is now lives in Marquette Park, but when he went to school in Englewood, he mapped out his bus route and wore a bulletproof vest to school.
Once he got to school, Adams said he would hand his vest to the principal. Then after school, he would put the vest back on and “navigate through all of the gang-infested areas back home to where I felt safe.”
“Now, I don’t go to certain gas stations. I don’t go to certain restaurants,” Adams said. “And I also bought another vest.
“As far as shootings, like the vest may protect me from that, but encounters with the police? What’s going to protect me from that? What’s going to stop me from going to jail even if I didn’t do anything? ... You have the street gangs, and you have the Chicago police.”
