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Obama Organizer Staff: "If he couldn’t care for people in a small office with a small staff, which would have been relatively easy, how can he care wh

RFFM.org

Daniel T. Zanoza, Executive Director
Dan@rffm.org

September 15, 2008

Obama / I worked with the "community organizer" in 1994: Not personable, not tolerant by

Debbie Revor "In Her Own Words"

RFFM.org conducted an online interview with Debbie Revor. In 1994 Revor was employed as a legal secretary with the law firm Davis, Miner, Barnhill & Galland while Sen. Barack Obama was an associate with the firm. Mrs. Revor's interview sheds light on what Barack Obama was like in private and will help give Americans an impression of the man who is running for the presidency of the United States. The interview with Mrs. Revor was conducted by Daniel Zanoza, RFFM.org's Executive Director, and was not edited in any form.

Biography:

Debbie Revor graduated from Sawyer College with an Administrative Secretary Certificate in 1981. She was a legal secretary for 15 years in Chicago. Revor worked for personal injury firms and corporate law firms. Some of the firms she was employed by include Davis, Miner, Barnhill & Galland (Sen. Barack Obama's former law firm), Rudnick & Wolfe, and Landau, Omahana, et al. Revor does not work for any political party.

Mrs. Revor has two children, 11 and 9, and has been married for 12-1/2 years. She has worked from home for four years as a Legal Transcriptionist. Her interests include coaching her daughter's basketball team, reading, working out, going for long walks, camping and spending time with her family.

Debbie Revor "In Her Own Words"

Q. I understand CBS NEWS approached you to do an interview regarding your history with Obama. Why did you reject that offer and decide to discuss your experiences with the Democratic Party's presidential nominee with RFFM.org?

A. I am a private person and didn't want to be on TV. Since I also don't feel the media is fair right now to anyone but Sen. Obama, I didn't want my experiences to be shown in a different light than the truth. I just wanted the truth to be told about my experience with working in his law firm and I felt that RFFM.org would tell that truth and not change it to fit their preconceived opinions of Sen. Obama.

Q. Can you tell me how you first met Sen. Obama?

A. I met him when I went to work for Davis, Miner, Barnhill & Galland in January 1994, a civil rights law firm on the near north side of Chicago on Erie Street. I got the job through a friend who I worked with at a temporary job two years before. She worked at the firm and gave me a good reference. She was Sen. Obama’s legal secretary.

Q. What was your impression of Sen. Obama?

A. He wasn’t friendly and was standoffish and arrogant from the start of my job there. My first impression was that I didn’t like him because of this arrogance.

Q. What were his duties with the law firm to the best of your knowledge?

A. Obama was an associate at the firm and had been there about two years. I saw him have meetings with the other attorneys and he helped with hearings and did prep work for trials. Obama probably did other things too, but I wasn’t his personal secretary. These are the things I observed him do or heard his secretary talk about.

Q. You told me the law firm you worked for dealt with civil rights. So would it be safe to say Obama was a champion for the downtrodden and less fortunate? What were your personal impressions of Obama? Did he seem like helping the poor was his primary agenda?

A. I didn’t feel at the time Obama cared about the downtrodden and less fortunate and I still don’t feel that way. I didn’t see any proof of that at all during the 11 months I worked there. I don’t have any knowledge of Obama helping in the community in any way. We as legal secretaries weren’t paid very much there and he could’ve started helping with that – speaking up about the low pay we had. I didn’t see that he cared about our state in life. I also saw him act in ways that were very self-serving, self-focused and ambitious.

Q. I know you are a person who cares deeply about your faith. Previously you told me that you did not feel welcome or comfortable as a Christian in your workplace. Why did you feel that way?

A. My friend and I were Christians. We liked to pray together sometimes at our lunch hour in my office with the door shut. After the attorneys found out what we were doing, they would walk in and interrupt us. After a while, Sen. Obama didn’t let his secretary take lunch at the same time I did as he would keep her working very late so she had to take a late lunch. I felt at the time it was because he didn’t want us to spend time praying. He didn’t like his secretary spending time talking about her faith or spending time with me. He rolled his eyes at her and I heard him and an attorney or two talking about her and/or us behind our backs. She felt very oppressed by him and wasn’t herself after a while. We really didn’t talk about our faith after that unless he was out of the office or we were outside the office. You know at other places of employment you could occasionally talk about matters of faith as people would want to in casual conversation or ask about it or ask me for prayer for something, but that never happened there. The attorneys, especially Sen. Obama, made us feel that wasn’t acceptable at all.

Q. It sounds like you feel Sen. Obama and some of those in the law firm were targeting you for your religious beliefs. This must have been distressing to you especially when you were working for a firm that was supposed to champion civil rights. How did this affect you emotionally?

A. I didn’t like to go to work after a while. I didn’t hang around with my friend anymore as I was so uncomfortable around Sen. Obama. He would give me these glaring looks and stare at me like I was invisible. It was very creepy. I became very depressed about the whole workplace situation and left there after 11 months.

Q. Sen. Obama claims to be an advocate for national healthcare. He constantly says in his speeches that everyone in America should be entitled to good healthcare. What was your experience at the law firm regarding this issue? Did the firm offer comprehensive healthcare for its employees?

A. We didn’t have comprehensive healthcare. We may have had a hospitalization plan, but I don’t remember even having that at the time. Why wasn’t Sen. Obama concerned about that? That would’ve been a small issue for him to take up and fight for, right? Better medical benefits for a small staff?

Q. Let’s try to get some of your more personal observations regarding the man, Barack Obama. Was he friendly to the staff? Did he seem like a regular guy? Was he approachable?

A. I don’t remember Sen. Obama ever going out of his way to be friendly or personable to the staff. He was definitely that way with the partners of the firm, but with the staff he was very arrogant and standoffish, very serious and never one to just chat you up or ask how things were with you or anything of that sort. I actually never even talked to him after a while because I was so uncomfortable with his manner towards my friend, myself and the other staff. He was not approachable and seemed very, very driven by ambition and not interested at all in the “little people” like secretaries and staff.

Q. Obviously this is not something that is easy for you to do. You aren’t a public person. You aren’t seeking public office. But yet you had the courage to come forward and share some very private experiences in your life. Some others might not be so brave because politics is a dirty business today or at least many think so. What made you decide to come forward and talk about your work experience with Obama?

A. So that the public would know that Sen. Barack Obama is not a nice, easygoing charmer as he portrays himself on TV. He was a hard, unapproachable, very driven and ambitious person. He was also very self-centered, self-concerned and self-focused. I wouldn’t ever want him to be President as I feel he would make a lot of mistakes in office because of his defensiveness and self-centered attitude. I don’t think he could care for the people of America as he acts like he does. If he couldn’t care for people in a small office with a small staff, which would have been relatively easy, how can he care what happens to the poor and downtrodden?

Also, people need to know he was a new attorney working as an associate with not much experience when I worked with him in 1994. How has he risen to where he is in 14 years? Running for the highest office of the land? How has America let that happen and why can’t people see through his façade? He is a good motivational speaker, but he is not ready to lead this country.

* To hear more of Mrs. Revor's story, tune in to the Dr. Laurie Roth Show on Tuesday, Sept. 16th at 9 P.M. Central. Roth will interview both Revor and Dan Zanoza, the Executive Director of RFFM.org, who conducted the above interview.

Roth's nationally syndicated program will be the first to conduct a live on-air interview with Revor. Roth's program is aired on the IRN-USA Radio Network.

To find the station which carries Roth's show in your area go to: http://www.therothshow.com/listen07.htm.

The program can also be streamed by going to the following link http://www.usaradio.com/listen_live_usa2.php and clicking on "Listen Live".

The above is posted at: http://rffm.typepad.com/republicans_for_fair_medi/2008/09/obama-i-worked-with-the-community-organizer-in-1994-not-personable-not-tolerant-by-debbie-revor-in-her-own-words.html

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posted by Fred Martinez @ 6:44 AM