Obama center’s ‘victory’

The latest victory in the Obama Foundation’s long campaign to take over Jackson Park extends its winning streak since it revealed its plans in 2016. Strange, isn’t it, how one can win every battle, and still lose the war?

When the bulldozers arrive to clear-cut a thousand mature trees, when the roads around Jackson Park are closed, when a national landmark is transformed into a muddy construction site, when the land adjacent to historical lagoons is excavated for a parking garage below the water table, when South Chicago finds itself cut off from downtown, when all the promises of neighborhood development begin to look hollow, no doubt a final victory will be declared.

Perhaps Barack Obama will come to Chicago to lead the celebration by taking a chain saw to one of the century-old oak trees. Or drive the bulldozer that erases the Women’s Garden with its carefully tended flower beds.

It is truly a shame that a historic presidency that mobilized so many positive forces in American political life will have as its monument the destruction of a beautiful public park, along with crucial urban infrastructure. At a time when forests are burning, Chicago’s stock of trees is shrinking and every environmentalist is striving to preserve fresh air and the free spaces of endangered parkland, the timing for this “victory” could hardly be uglier.

Forgive me if I don’t feel like celebrating.

— W.J.T. Mitchell, Obama Presidential Center lawsuit plaintiff, Chicago