{"id":2594,"date":"2023-04-04T12:58:37","date_gmt":"2023-04-04T17:58:37","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/nakedpolitics.net\/?p=2594"},"modified":"2023-04-04T12:58:37","modified_gmt":"2023-04-04T17:58:37","slug":"obama-presidential-center-causing-harm-to-black-families-in-chicago","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/nakedpolitics.net\/?p=2594","title":{"rendered":"Obama Presidential Center causing \u2018harm to black families\u2019 in Chicago"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Former President Barack Obama may have won the votes of the black community but, like his policies, the lasting impact of his vainglorious memorial has the makings of a \u201clegacy marred\u201d with \u201charm to Black families.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Despite legal challenges and the seeming disinterest in host cities, efforts to build the Obama Presidential Center have marched on in Chicago\u2019s South Side. As with his tenure as community organizer-in-chief, corporate media routinely fawned over the $500 million, 19-acre project expected to incorporate a public library, playground, community centers and museum.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">But, even before the September 2021 ceremonial groundbreaking local residents had begun to feel the squeeze of gentrification. Monday, The Washington Post covered the concerns in a piece\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/www.washingtonpost.com\/dc-md-va\/2023\/04\/03\/obama-presidential-center-gentrification-chicago\/\">titled<\/a>,\u00a0\u201cChicago neighbors say Obama center is raising rents, forcing them out.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">The Obama Foundation had foretold of the developing project transforming the poorer neighborhoods, but residents who\u2019ve been squeezed out by skyrocketing rents were experiencing only the negative side of those changes.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">\u201cWhat happens in communities where there is economic development is families get pushed out because of property value raises,\u201d mayoral candidate Brandon Johnson was reported as saying to a room filled with voters. \u201cWe have to make sure, for families that live in the very communities where economic development is taking place, that landlords don\u2019t see it as an opportunity to push the families out who have been a part of these communities for decades.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">In February, 90 percent had voted in favor of a referendum to create more affordable housing and aid residents with the rising costs of living near the Obama Center. Barring any such guarantee, community activist Dixon Romeo said, \u201cObama\u2019s legacy marred by the displacement of thousands of Black families.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">\u201cThis is the community that sent him to the White House, and we should be the community that gets to stay and benefit from the presidential center.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">In 2018 Obama had claimed, \u201cWe\u2019ve got such a long way to go in terms of economic development before you\u2019re even going to start seeing the prospect of significant gentrification. Malia\u2019s kids might have to worry about that. Right now, what we\u2019ve got to worry about is you have broken curbs, and trash and boarded-up buildings, and that\u2019s really what we need to work on\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">However, Tahiti Hamer, a single mother of three, told the Post, \u201cIn 2021, the same year the Obama Center broke ground, her landlord raised the rent by nearly 40 percent.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">\u201cI\u2019m a working mother who can\u2019t afford to live in my own community that I\u2019ve lived in for 42 years,\u201d she lamented.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Meanwhile, residents had\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/www.bizpacreview.com\/2021\/08\/19\/chicago-group-appeals-to-supreme-court-in-last-ditch-effort-to-halt-obama-library-construction-1121084\/\">contested<\/a>\u00a0the location of the project after it appeared as though developers had conducted a bait-and-switch, proposing the use of Jackson Park, listed on the National Register of Historic Places, for his presidential library, only to then announce that the records controlled by the National Archives would be kept elsewhere.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-embed is-type-rich is-provider-twitter wp-block-embed-twitter\"><div class=\"wp-block-embed__wrapper\">\n<blockquote class=\"twitter-tweet\" data-width=\"550\" data-dnt=\"true\"><p lang=\"en\" dir=\"ltr\">\u2018President Regulation\u2019 hit with dose of his own medicine as Obama library delayed for \u2026 well, karma <a href=\"https:\/\/t.co\/C6UkaH9qlu\">https:\/\/t.co\/C6UkaH9qlu<\/a> <a href=\"https:\/\/t.co\/VQ1AFZgHwA\">pic.twitter.com\/VQ1AFZgHwA<\/a><\/p>&mdash; Conservative News (@BIZPACReview) <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/BIZPACReview\/status\/1024307468115968001?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw\">July 31, 2018<\/a><\/blockquote><script async src=\"https:\/\/platform.twitter.com\/widgets.js\" charset=\"utf-8\"><\/script>\n<\/div><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Another resident decried the construction as a project, \u201cnot being built for Chicago. It\u2019s being built for the world\u2026[And the people of the world] don\u2019t want us here. So what do you think is going to happen?\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">\u201cIn political spaces, people can become numbers, experiences can become trends,\u201d 62-year-old Priscilla Dixon said. \u201cBut the reality is that this is about real people, and we don\u2019t want the Obama Center \u2014 the center honoring the first Black president \u2014 to be another page in the long history of displacing Black people or doing harm to Black families.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">\u201cThe city is the only one that can stop that,\u201d she added.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Source: <a href=\"https:\/\/americanwirenews.com\/obama-presidential-center-causing-harm-to-black-families-in-chicago\/\">https:\/\/americanwirenews.com\/obama-presidential-center-causing-harm-to-black-families-in-chicago\/<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Former President Barack Obama may have won the votes of the black community but, like his policies, the lasting impact of his vainglorious memorial has the makings of a \u201clegacy marred\u201d with \u201charm to Black families.\u201d Despite legal challenges and the seeming disinterest in host cities, efforts to build the Obama Presidential Center have marched on in Chicago\u2019s South Side. As with his tenure as community organizer-in-chief, corporate media routinely fawned over the $500 million, 19-acre project expected to incorporate [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":12,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2594","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-democrats"],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/nakedpolitics.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2594","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/nakedpolitics.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/nakedpolitics.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nakedpolitics.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/12"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nakedpolitics.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2594"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/nakedpolitics.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2594\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2595,"href":"https:\/\/nakedpolitics.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2594\/revisions\/2595"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/nakedpolitics.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2594"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nakedpolitics.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2594"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nakedpolitics.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2594"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}