Obama’s legacy project offers little hope for Chicago’s South Side residents

The Obama Presidential Center will open soon to the public in Jackson Park, Illinois, an $850 million gleaming monument to one man’s legacy. Yet for the families of Woodlawn, South Shore and the rest of Chicago’s South Side, there are many unhappy faces and concerns. Some of us wonder how this will better our neighborhood. Ever since the monument was announced, the local residents have dealt with unfulfilled promises, rising rents, displacement fears and continued violence. We have a right to be skeptical. After all, it’s common sense.

For many of us, the varnish that Barack Obama once had as the first Black president of the United States has worn off. Many of us remember how Obama first came to these streets as a community organizer. What lasting impact did he leave? Very little. He served as an Illinois state senator. What lasting transformation did he deliver for the South Side? Not much. He became president of the United States. What measurable turnaround did his policies bring to the communities he once organized? Not much at all.

Crime stayed high, poverty persisted, families continued to crumble and too many young lives were still lost. So, after all that, why should anyone expect his grand presidential center to finally deliver the transformation his own career never did?

This isn’t personal. It’s a pattern and an observable one for anyone who wishes to see. Obama was born in Hawaii and shaped far from these blocks. Yet, he, of anyone, has learned how to use Chicago for his ambitions. "Obama from the South Side" sounded better than "Obama from Hawaii."

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He built a compelling story here, then moved on to higher office while the neighborhoods he claimed to champion were largely left behind. That’s carpetbagging dressed up in hope and change rhetoric. The South Side wasn’t his home, it was his launching pad.

I recently came across a social media video making the rounds that featured me. At first, it says that the Obama Library has already brought "immense harm before its doors even open — displacement, deceit and land theft are its heritage." Then it claims that "Pastor Corey Brooks is the hero Chicago needs. He is healing, restoring and revitalizing communities. Give us more Pastor Corey. Less Obama."

That video hit hard because I never made that contrast before. My Project H.O.O.D. never seized land or priced people out. We took a crime-ridden building full of prostitution, drugs, murder and ungodliness and turned it into the Robert R. McCormick Leadership and Economic Opportunity Center. It’s homegrown and being built by the community for the community.

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The Sun-Times is reporting what we’re already seeing: rents climbing, property values doubling near the site, Airbnbs exploding, longtime residents fearing they’ll be pushed out of the very place the center claims to uplift. This is what top-down, celebrity-driven projects deliver — symbols for the powerful, disruption for the powerless. The Obama Presidential Center promises jobs and visitors. But we’ve watched too many grand unveilings that changed very little on the blocks where it matters most.

Our community doesn’t need more monuments or political nostalgia. It suffers from a culture that too often excuses personal responsibility, rewards dependency and trades faith for false political hope. I’ve buried too many young men. I’ve counseled too many fathers locked out by bad choices and broken systems.

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Our children don’t need a distant tower to admire. They need mentors teaching trades, discipline, fatherhood, education and the God-given dignity of work. They need safe streets, strong families and leaders who reject excuses and demand excellence.

Project H.O.O.D. is living proof it works. In what was once O-Block territory, the most dangerous block in America, we’re training people for real jobs, interrupting violence and building economic opportunity from the ground up. No federal mandates. No foundation photo-ops. Just hard work, conservative principles of self-reliance and faith, the same principles that sustained strong families and neighborhoods long before the welfare state expanded and hope became a slogan.

Obama organized here. He represented here. He led the free world. Yet the South Side’s deepest problems — generational poverty, family breakdown, unchecked crime — remain. The center may bring tourists and temporary buzz. But real revelation doesn’t come from granite and quotes high on a tower. It comes from transformed lives, rebuilt blocks and men and women who refuse to wait on politicians.

To my neighbors in Woodlawn, South Shore and across the South Side: Don’t pin your hopes on another outsider’s monument. Bend history yourself with faith, sweat, courage and accountability. We at Project H.O.O.D. are doing it daily. Real hope isn’t imported. It’s forged right here.

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