Former President Barack Obama urged organizers and social innovators gathered at the Obama Foundation summit Monday evening to be patient in their pursuits of wide-scale community change.
And in their moments of exhaustion, Obama said, they must remember that generations before them fought for equality, justice, environmental protections and other rights.
“You should be extraordinarily impatient about the injustices and nonsense and foolishness you see around you and you should be finding opportunities at every juncture to challenge those things,” he said. “At the same time, you have to keep in your mind: Societies are these complex, organic things that you don’t turn (like) switches. They evolve. They shift. They change.”
The summit is in its second year and both have resided in the South Loop - this year at the Marriott Marquis on Cermak. This likely will change when his Obama's Presidential Library is complete, but in the meantime it's nice to have the event in our neighborhood.
If you're wondering what the summit is here is a recap:
The Obama summit is a two-day conference that brings together civic innovators and community activists from around the world to network, exchange ideas and use the Obama brand to strengthen their platforms. Guests from 41 countries and 17 states attended this year. About 100 participants were from Chicago.
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