Southside With You Page #5

---

your patience and persistence,

y'all got that asbestos

problem cleared up.

- Woman:
That's true.

- Got them toilets fixed.

The pipes cleaned.

Now, I know when times were tough,

this brother right here

had a lot of motivational words for us,

and I'm gonna ask him to come

up and say a few right now,

'cause I'ma tell you something.

We might be down for the count...

but we ain't out.

Brother Barack.

- Why don't you come on up?

- It's all you.

- Thanks, bro. Thank you.

- All right.

- Thank you.

You know, it's good to be back.

It's good to see all of you.

I missed that musty smell up here.

Looks like Pastor Mike hasn't gotten

around to filling in that hole in the roof.

No.

Think we're gonna have to organize a

meeting just to get that leak fixed.

Woman:
Never.

But listen.

I, um... I feel your pain.

I do. It's...

it's a part of me now, that pain.

Sometimes,

it hits me like a heart attack

hundreds of miles away in Cambridge,

Massachusetts.

Now, I could be listening

to a lecture in class

or studying in the library

or watching a movie

or talking to a friend.

- I think of all of you.

- Woman:
Mmm.

I may have gone on to a

different life at Harvard,

but you know what I realized?

- I never left the Gardens.

- Crowd:
That's right.

Now, Tommy deserves some credit here,

folks.

Our fight with the city

council two years ago

was proof that these

victories do not come easy

and they don't come big.

They are few and far between.

But you gotta use them

like building blocks.

You know, one by one,

one on top of the other,

and little by little,

you got yourself a building.

And that's exactly

what you need in this case

is a building for your community center.

Now, I feel your disappointment.

But the truth is

you're in a good position right now.

Woman:
That's why we ain't

got no community center!

All right, all right, all right.

Tommy got funding pledges.

That's real. That's money down the

line and that's hard to secure.

Now, I know it's not the whole package,

but think about it.

Now all you need is a building.

You're halfway there.

The council said no to the building,

but that was before

you had funding pledges

secured with the help

of Brother Tommy here.

So, now when you remount your campaign,

you have something

to bring to the table.

You're contributing.

And the folks downtown who

like to see us contributing,

makes them feel like the money they

give you is gonna be put to good use.

They just wanna know that you care.

And Tommy's right when he says we need

to take a look at why they said no.

Not because it's the right decision,

but because you gotta understand

where they're coming from.

You've gotta understand the city's

motivations, its self-interest

in order to align them with your own.

We turn self-interest

into mutual interest.

All right,

so let's give the council members

the benefit of the doubt for a moment.

Let's say they want you

to have your community center.

- Mm.

- Barack:
Okay, okay.

But let's say for a moment that we

got some good folks on that council

and they'd like to see your kids

have a place to go after school.

- Woman:
Yeah, right.

- Barack:
Now, I believe there probably are a few.

So, if we've got some

good-hearted folks there...

why can't they get your

funding request approved?

- Getting paid to say no.

- Barack:
Okay, Curtis.

I hear you, I hear you. Anyone else?

- Don't care enough.

- All right.

Any other ideas?

Maybe they don't think they can.

That's what I'm thinking, Kyle.

I don't think they believe

they can get it done

even if they wanted to.

They know developers don't

wanna build in the Gardens.

There's nothing in it for them.

No stores, no economy.

These council members don't

necessarily want the answer to be no.

They just believe it will be.

Curtis:
So,

what are you proposing, Barack?

That we build the damn thing ourselves?

Almost. Almost, Curtis.

Now,

Tommy and I have been discussing this,

and we both think you might wanna

consider changing the goal slightly.

Refocus your efforts on

obtaining a land designation.

Now, if you control the land,

you can cut a deal with one developer

to build everything in the area

on the condition that one of the

buildings be the community center.

Now, that's more jobs,

more stores,

and a community center

for your children.

They just gonna say no like

they say no to everything else!

Now, we gotta stop thinking the word

"no" is the end of the line, Curtis.

"No" is just a word.

You flip those letters around,

you get an entirely different word.

- "On."

- That's right.

- As in carry on.

- Yeah, all right.

Say it with me, now.

- Carry on.

- Crowd:
Carry on.

- They say "no," we say...

- Crowd:
"Carry on."

- They say "no," we say...

- Crowd:
"Carry on!"

Carry on, carry on.

That's it. There you go.

You know, Harold Washington...

- Woman:
My man.

- Yeah.

Harold Washington was one of

the reasons I moved to Chicago.

Woman:
Hmm, was he, now?

When I first came here,

every barber shop

and chicken shack on the Southside

had a squeaky-clean picture of him hanging

up on the wall for everyone to see.

- Man:
He's right about that.

- Woman:
They all do.

Chicago's first black mayor.

- He was our mayor.

- Woman:
Yes, sir. Yes, sir.

- Yeah.

- But even Mayor Washington disappointed in some respects.

He had to face the great

truth of our country...

that it's not easy to get things done.

You know, the founders

made it that way on purpose.

They made it messy...

so that no one law,

no one government, no one man,

could decide the fate

of everything and everyone.

In very simple terms,

we got a heck of a lot

of different people

with a heck of a lot

of different agendas.

But I also believe that people,

most people,

are basically,

at their core, good people.

So, if at first we don't

understand their agenda,

city council, the aldermen,

and the state senator...

we have to try our hardest

to understand who they are

and what they need.

We have to let go of judgment.

That's a lesson...

I learned today from a friend.

No matter what we think about someone...

we never truly know what it's

like to walk in their shoes.

But we have to try.

You know, whether it's a colleague,

a family member,

or a particular opponent...

well, especially our opponents.

Because where their needs

align with our needs...

is where things get done.

Now, that's America.

Just a bunch of different states.

States of land,

states of mind,

states of people.

And it's up to us, all of us,

to keep all those different states...

united.

Thanks for inviting me.

It's been a while since I've had

that kind of connection

to real-life struggle.

Me, too.

In high school,

my typing teacher gave me an A-.

I wrote her a letter every day

until she changed it to an A.

I celebrated all day long.

But that night, I couldn't sleep.

I kept asking myself

over and over again,

Rate this script:0.0 / 0 votes