South Sider: “He’s a smart, black man. He listens to people.”

2 comments September 26th, 2008

Joan Brumfield of Chicago’s South Side isn’t worried as much about the economy as she is about her mom, whom she’s going to see in McComb, Miss.

“I’m going to see my mom and dad, and she’s very sick,” Brumfield said. Her 13-year-old daughter accompanied her.

The owner of an adult day care business, Brumfield says she feels sorry for a lot of people who don’t have jobs and savings accounts, but who also have families to raise.

“This is an unfair economy,” she says. “We are bailing out wealthy people, a $700 billion gift to financial giants who were bad businessmen. We are not doing anything for the small people whose mortgages have been foreclosed.”

She likes Obama, who she says is smart and adept at the art of politics: “He knows how to work a room.” Friends and associates tell Brumfield that “they’ll never let a black man become president,” but she tells them, “yes, they will. He’s a smart, black man. He listens to people.”

SCOTT MORGAN | RRSTAR.COM
Joan Brumfield (right) and her daughter Tiffany Brumfield, 13, of Chicago talk while sitting in the dining car Thursday, Sept. 25, 2008, on the City of New Orleans Amtrak train between Chicago and New Orleans, La.