At odds with Obama

Something fascinating is happening in Chicago. When Barack Obama became president, the city was ebullient; he was, after all, a favorite son, and he’d promised to deliver the liberal policies beloved by Chicagoans. But now, nearly nine years later, city residents find themselves at odds with Obama over the plans for his presidential library.

In its initial bid for the right to host the library, put forth on behalf of the city, the University of Chicago offered large tracts of idyllic land in Washington Park and Jackson Park as two potential sites.

Almost immediately, the people of those parks’ districts began scratching their heads. “Why not build it in one of the many blighted areas?” they asked. “Why are you taking a huge chunk of our parks?” Obama’s response was essentially an ultimatum: If the library couldn’t be built in a Chicago park, he’d take it to Honolulu or New York City.

After Obama selected Chicago and the Jackson Park site, protests began to grow. Residents of the park’s district, Woodlawn, took to local government and the op-ed pages of the city’s papers to express their fear that the project would rapidly gentrify the minority-majority area, force out longtime residents, and ruin the park’s role as a community gathering place.

In May of this year, protesters began a campaign to implore the Obama Foundation, the group overseeing the library’s construction, to sign a community benefit agreement (CBA), which would commit the Foundation to setting aside jobs for residents around the library, protecting low-income housing, supporting black-owned businesses, and strengthening neighborhood schools. The Foundation refused, and when a resident asked Obama himself to sign the agreement at a September public meeting about the library, Obama refused as well.

Read more at National Review