It's the Real News.
I'm Aaron Mate.
Years before he became president, Barack Obama got his start as a community organizer on
the south side of Chicago.
Now out of the White House, Obama is coming back to the south side to build his $500 million
presidential center.
But Obama now faces a pushback from the same community he once organized with.
For months, south side residents have been holding protests.
They don't oppose the center, but they want to make sure it doesn't cause gentrification
and displacement.
So we're here to make this stand, to say that we don't want displacement to happen in this
community.
We don't want to see the jobs come from outside, be filled by people from the outside, the
people living here don't get a chance to work.
South side residents have formed a coalition, calling on Obama to sign a community benefits
agreement which, among other things, would help protect low income residents from eviction
and higher rents.
Coalition Member Paru Brown outlined their demands.
We are pushing for a city ordinance that would, one, set aside 30 percent of new and rehab
housing for low-income and working families; two, freeze property taxes for longtime residents;
three, require large developers like the University of Chicago to invest in new affordable housing;
and four, independently monitor local hiring.
But Obama and his foundation are refusing to sign a CBA.
The former president recently told Chicago residents why.
And the danger here is that if we sign an agreement with any one organization, or two
organizations, or five organizations-.
I've lived on the south side and in Chicago long enough to know that they're not representing
everybody on the south side.
So now suddenly I've got five other organizations to say, hey, how come, how come you signed
with them?
What about us?
And then you got 10, oh, I just formed an organization.
You know what I'm talking about.
And next thing you know you've got 40 organizations or 50 organizations, everybody has their own
organization, saying we should get, we should have say, control, decision-making over who
gets the contract, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera.
Well, Obama's plans have now taken a big step forward.
The Obama center has just won approval from two city commissions and the full City Council,
moving the project to federal review.
South side activists are not giving up their fight.
Jawanza Malone is executive director of the Kenwood Oakland Community Organization, and
a member of the Obama library South Side CBA coalition.
Jawanza, welcome.
Talk to us first just about the struggle that you've been involved in for many months now,
and the state of it now, and the aftermath of these city votes moving the project forward.
Thanks for having me on, Aaron.
For the last two and a half years, actually, the CBA coalition has been working to craft
a community benefits agreement that involves not just the Obama Foundation but also the
University of Chicago and the City of Chicago.
In all the turmoil and excitement around President Obama himself, people forget that the University
of Chicago is actually the entity that wrote the bill that was awarded to get the Presidential
Center on the south side of Chicago in Jackson Park.
And Mayor Rahm Emanuel had, you know, said two years ago that he was willing to move
heaven and earth to make sure that it happened.
And that's what we're, we're seeing it happen over concerns raised with the city councilmen,
over concerns raised by the community, particularly about where the money is going to come from
for the infrastructure changes that the foundation has called for.
As you said in your intro, the city council and a quasi-governmental appointed body has
voted to approve the plan moving forward.
What we've been asking for is very simple.
We're asking for a legally binding agreement to ensure that residents are not, do not continue
to get displaced from the area, because we've already seen displacement taking place.
And so without a clear community benefits agreement that protects low-income and working
families, who is the predominant population in that part of town, we're going to see mass
displacement of people, unfortunately.
So, Obama himself has been pushing back very forcefully against this notion you're putting
forward, that his center would cause displacement.
And I want to play more of what he said to Chicago residents at a recent public event.
So there are going to be some people who will not be happy, and are not going to sign up
for every single aspect of this project, which is the, it is the nature of a project of this
size.
But here's the thing, is like, you can never make folks 100 percent happy.
So we want to be open.
We want to listen.
We are going to be fairer than fair, to quote Harold Washington, in how we approach the
design of this presidential center.
And the programming that's involved is going to continually evolve to meet the specific
needs of the community.
But at some point we're going to get going.
That's President Obama, former President Obama, saying we're going to get going.
Jawanza, if you can respond to that, and also what he outlined in that clip you played earlier
where he says that his problem with a community benefits agreement is that if you sign an
agreement with one or two groups, that you're going to have many more groups demanding,
sprouting up demanding that they make an agreement with the Obama center as well.
Sure.
So let me start by saying later, in his most recent presentation to the community, the
former president also said that gentrification is not an issue that we need to be concerned
about.
And I think he said that perhaps Malia's children will have to deal with that issue, but not
us.
And so that assertion is, as well as some of the comments you played for your viewers,
we disagree.
A simple look at the data would indicate that the Woodlawn community, in particular, is
gentrifying.
And when we look at the impact of just the announcement that the presidential center
is going in Jackson Park, we see the impact, the real estate speculators coming into the
area.
Just last year, Redfin, one of these trade associations that conduct studies on property
value across the country, found Woodlawn to have the third highest increase in property
value for neighborhoods across the country.
So when we think about that for a second, you take every neighborhood, in every city,
in every single state in a country, the predominantly African American, low-income community of
Woodlawn had the third-highest increase in property value.
And that's a direct result of, again, this speculative market of banking on increased
interest in that area as a result of the presidential center coming.
And so what we've been calling for consistently is an ordinance.
When you look at the construct of community benefit agreement, you typically have a developer,
you have the community, and oftentimes you have the government or some entity coming
in to make the agreement legally binding.
That's the same thing we consistently have been asking for here.
So we did the hard work of engaging hundreds of residents in the communities surrounding
Jackson Park where the center is being built to find out from them what it is that they
need to feel safe and secure, to protect them from displacement, and to ensure there's long
term benefit.
It produced a document that has six areas of focus.
And we went to our city council, our elected representatives, to say, look, we've done
the hard work.
Let's go the rest of this course together in partnership.
We engaged the University of Chicago in the same conversation, as well as the Obama Foundation,
and they chose not to take us up on it.
Jawanza, why do you think that, why do you think they chose not to engage in the CBA?
Frankly, I don't know.
You know, I don't want to speculate as to why the parties involved have chosen not to
hear the community's concerns and wishes and fears, and do something different.
I do think that the fact that it does force a higher level of transparency and accountability
has to be something that's being considered, when we take into account all the promises
that have been made in the city of Chicago from the elected representatives, as well
as others, and those promises not being brought to fruition.
This smacks of the Chicago way.
The same old thing that we've seen time and time again.
And hopefully that's not what's happening here.
All right.
We'll take a break there and come back in Part 2.
My guest is Jawanza Malone.
He is executive director of the Kenwood Oakland Community Organization, and a member of the
Obama Library South Side CBA Coalition.