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NOTES FROM MEETING WITH SENATOR OBAMA'S AIDES
Chicago, January 29, 2007

Rita Bogolub, Near West Citizens for Peace and Justice (Berwyn/Riverside)
Wayne Vanek, Inner Peace/World Peace (Oak Park)
Jeff Olson, Inner Peace/World Peace (Oak Park)
John Cabral, Oak Park Coalition Truth and Justice
Bob Hetzel, Oak Park Coalition Truth and Justice
John Daniggelis, Oak Park Coalition Truth and Justice
Dan Pearson, Voices for Creative Nonviolence
Ann Schultz, citizen

We met with Obama's State Director Ken Bennett, whose job, he said later, is to connect people who want to talk to the Senator with the appropriate staff, set up the actual meetings, and so on. We met in the Senator's comfortable private office.

The bulk of the meeting was by phone. On the line from Washington D.C. was Harry Kruglick, one of Obama's two legislative correspondents for international issues. Kruglick is originally from Oak Park.

We determined the format of the meeting. I played the role of facilitator. We asked that each person have a chance to speak from the heart about how they view the war in Iraq. The staffers said take your time. Mr. Bennett was in no hurry to empty the Senator's office. (Obama was in D.C.)

When it was my turn, I read five ‘requests' we were making of the Senator, in accordance with what we had agreed on in an Oak Park Coalition for Truth and Justice subcommittee:
• declare now that you will vote ‘no' on any more funding
• declare that you oppose the escalation of U.S. troops now taking place
• declare that you wish to see all U.S. military bases in Iraq closed eventually
• call for troop withdrawal from Iraq to begin immediately
• declare support for a U.S. fund to finance Iraqi's rebuilding their country

Kruglick agreed the U.S. needs to stop the violence in Iraq without adding to it. He said they support beginning a phased withdrawal that would start very soon. He said that he couldn't say anything right now but in the next few days Obama would come out with a new position; he framed Obama's position on withdrawal in terms of the positions of other Democratic Party presidential hopefuls, namely former senator John Edward (begin withdrawal immediately) and Hillary Clinton (get all the troops out by 2009). [The next day Obama released the Obama plan which would begin ‘redeployment' in May of this year and lead to a complete pull-out of all ‘combat brigades' in Iraq by May 2008.]

Kruglick said Obama fears that a simple pull-out right now would waste the U.S.'s leverage over Iraqi politicians and that the military presence there can be used to pressure the Iraqi government to deal with all sectors of the population fairly, for example in the matter of oil revenues. He said Obama would like to try and have U.S. exert that kind of influence while it can.

Dan Pearson of Voices for Creative Nonviolence said their analysis indicated that voting ‘no' on funding appropriations would not affect the troops' well-being because that money would not be drawn upon for one or two years. Kruglick countered that although that is the case with regular Pentagon appropriations, that is not so in the case of supplemental ‘emergency' appropriations. He implied that voting ‘no' on the emergency appropriation for Iraq and Afghanistan would indeed take away support from the troops on the ground in those countries.

We agreed to stay in contact through phone and e-mail. Jeff Olson promised to send Kruglick a letter with Jeff's positions on a new attitude of respect for the Iraqi people that Jeff would like our government to adopt in the future. Kruglick said goodbye to all. We then spent some more time in the office speaking to Mr. Bennett at some length. Bennett said he wonders often why more people don't come to visit them on this issue of the war. He said only the faith-based groups had had any steady or strong visiting presence. He said he would tell Senator Obama about the meeting the next time he talked to him.

After the meeting the six of us who are from Oak Park met in a nearby cafe and discussed the results of the meeting. We were all quite happy and hopeful that a relationship with these aides to Obama perhaps had just been initiated.

Respectfully submitted by
John Cabral

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