READ Obama’s First Public Speech Since Leaving Office

In his first public speech since he left the White House, former President Barack Obama opened with a joke. “What’s been going on while I’ve been gone?” he asked a Chicago crowd on Monday.

Obama returned to his hometown for an event at the University of Chicago on Monday, dubbed “Conversation on Civic Engagement.”

The former POTUS took the stage with six Chicago-area students for a discussion on civic engagement and community organizing in front of an audience of about 300, according to the Chicago Tribune.

“Now that [my presidency] is completed, I’m spending a lot of time thinking about what is the most important thing I can do for my next job,” he said.

“And what I’m convinced of is that, although there are all kinds of issues that I care about and all kinds of issues that I intend to work on, the single most important thing I can do is to help in any way I can to prepare the next generation of leadership to take up the baton and to take their own crack at changing the world.”

After all, Obama said the foundation for his own political career was built when he was a young community organizer in Chicago.

“This community taught me that ordinary people when working together can do extraordinary things,” he said.

“This community taught me that everybody has a story to tell that is important. This experience taught me that beneath the surface differences of people that there were common hopes, and common dreams, and common aspirations, common values that stitched us together as Americans.”

We already know Obama will likely return to politics to fight gerrymandering. But as he noted, there are plenty of issues to address — like economic inequality, a flawed criminal justice system, climate change, and more — but they are problems that can be solved.

We just need to deal with the political climate in our country first, he explained.

“What is preventing us from tackling them and making more progress really has to do with our politics and our civic life,” Obama said.

“It has to do with the fact that because of things like political gerrymandering, our parties have moved further and further apart, and it’s harder and harder to find common ground. Because of money in politics, special interests dominate the debates in Washington in ways that don’t match up with what the broad majority of Americans feel.

Because of changes in the media, we now have a situation in which everybody’s listening to people who already agree with them and are further reinforcing their own realities to the neglect of a common reality.”

But it’s not all bad. Obama is quite hopeful, and much of that hope has to do with the next generation of leaders.

“The only folks that are going to solve [these problems] are the young people; the next generation,” he said. “I have been encouraged…to see how sharp, and astute, and tolerant, and thoughtful, and entrepreneurial our young people are.”

Now the former POTUS wants to help that next generation become more active and break down barriers that prevent them from getting involved and from pursuing careers in public service or politics.

“I want to work with them to knock down those barriers and to get this next generation to accelerate their move toward leadership because if that happens I think we’re going to be just fine.”