I know how you feel, boss. All you want is to grab some valuable Chicago Park District green space to build a tribute to your political genius and some community organizers sh-t all over your dream. Don't they realize that you are the original woke community organizer? Where's the respect? Haha.
Maybe you can build it in Martha's Vineyard! Next to your new $12 million home, where you conveniently live in a neighborhood exclusively inhabited by wealthy Caucasians. Oops, I forget, you're a social justice warrior, except in choosing where you put down stakes.
Chicago Election Results Bring New Challenges for Obama
Will community organizers ever leave his construction project alone?
James Freeman, WSJ
April 5, 2023 5:49 pm ET
Perhaps former President Barack Obama thought he had finally succeeded in crushing local opposition to his presidential museum on Chicago’s South Side. But Tuesday’s election results suggest that his construction project inside historic Jackson Park could face new challenges.
Max Blaisdell, Michael Liptrot and Zoe Pharo report for Chicago’s Hyde Park Herald:
Desmon Yancy, a South Shore community organizer and police accountability activist, holds a narrow lead in the runoff election for 5th Ward alderman over Martina “Tina” Hone, a former chief engagement officer for the city.
With all precincts reporting on election night, Yancy captured 51.79% of the vote and Hone captured 48.21%, according to the Chicago Board of Elections. With only 394 votes separating the two, officials from the Chicago Board of Elections said outstanding mail-in ballots will determine the winner.
As of Wednesday afternoon, April 5, Hone has not officially conceded.
Mr. Obama has largely succeeded in court against conservationists who attempted to defend a treasured green space from the man who produces Nefflix programming on the importance of protecting treasured green spaces.
But residents don’t seem to appreciate all the tree-cutting to make way for the Obama Presidential Center, which will not be an official repository of presidential records, and also a planned golf development.
Now, more than a year after Mr. Obama began the ceremonial destruction of cherished municipal parkland, the local election in Chicago’s Fifth Ward seems likely to bring new challenges. John Byrne and A.D. Quig report for the Chicago Tribune:
The campaign focused a significant amount on questions of gentrification near Jackson Park, where the Obama Center is being built.
Voters in nearly a dozen precincts in the Feb. 28 general election overwhelmingly supported an advisory referendum asking the new alderman and mayor to support legislation creating a community benefits agreement, or CBA, to prevent displacement in the South Shore neighborhood that might result from construction of the Obama Center. They also backed another referendum to build “truly affordable” housing on a city-owned vacant lot on 63rd Street and South Blackstone Avenue in Woodlawn.
Mr. Yancy, the community organizer who is currently ahead in the ballot count, supports the CBA, while Ms. Hone was lukewarm on the idea. The Tribune reporters note:
“You’re talking about 90% of voters in South Shore who are concerned about displacement,” Yancy said. “That’s a real concern. So (I’ll be) making sure in discussions with the Obama presidential library that those concerns are heard and that there is a remedy that makes people feel less concerned about it.”
Any remedy emerging from such discussions seems likely to be expensive. A report on a community forum this week in the Washington Post suggests there is significant dissatisfaction in the areas around the planned center. Marissa Lang reports:
In a windowless room, across the street from the muddy maw of earth that will soon mark the legacy of President Barack Obama, lifelong Chicago resident Michele Williams leaned on the handlebars of her walker.
Wedged between people sitting around folding tables, scattered chairs and standing along every spare inch of wall, the 80-year-old considered whether to ask a question about the issue foremost on everyone’s mind: being able to stay in their homes on the South Side.
The Obama Foundation has told residents that the $500 million presidential center will help transform some of Chicago’s poorest neighborhoods and offer opportunities to those who live there. But Williams and others have watched its construction with mistrust. With the center’s opening still two years away, rents in the surrounding South Shore and Woodlawn neighborhoods already are rising. Median home prices have more than doubled since the center’s location was unveiled. Some longtime residents have been priced out.
While the outcome of the aldermanic election could bring bad news for Mr. Obama, there is perhaps an offsetting impact given the results at the top of the ticket. Tuesday’s mayoral election victory for teachers union ally and police skeptic Brandon Johnson strongly suggests that surging property values will not be an issue in Chicago.
Perhaps there will come a day when Mr. Obama weeps because there are no more community organizers to conquer. But that day probably won’t be arriving anytime soon.
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James Freeman is the co-author of “Borrowed Time: Two Centuries of Booms, Busts and Bailouts at Citi” and also the co-author of “The Cost: Trump, China and American Revival.”
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