{"id":179510,"date":"2018-01-18T20:29:00","date_gmt":"2018-01-19T01:29:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/2018\/01\/18\/yeah-pretty-much-3\/"},"modified":"2018-01-18T20:29:00","modified_gmt":"2018-01-19T01:29:00","slug":"yeah-pretty-much-3","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/2018\/01\/18\/yeah-pretty-much-3\/","title":{"rendered":"Yeah, Pretty Much"},"content":{"rendered":"

Protesters are demanding that Barack Obama sign a community benefits agreement before building his Presidential library<\/a>, because they do not trust him to keep his word to benefit the (largely minority) residents of the neighborhood.<\/p>\n

I wouldn’t trust him either:<\/p>\n

Black aldermen attempting to congratulate African-American contractors that won the right to help build the Obama Presidential Center in Jackson Park were drowned out Wednesday by protesters demanding that former President Barack Obama put it in writing.<\/span>

<\/span>\u2026\u2026\u2026<\/span>

<\/span>Protesters chanting, \u201cC.B.A.\u201d and \u201cShame,\u201d had other ideas. They were determined to drown out the aldermen and make their voices heard.<\/span>

<\/span>The raucous demonstration was led by Jitu Brown, who used similar, in-your-face tactics during the drive that forced Mayor Rahm Emanuel\u2019s hand-picked school board to save Dyett High School.<\/span>

<\/span>\u201cWe cannot take the president\u2019s word on the fact that they\u2019re not gonna push African-Americans out with the Obama Presidential Center. There is no history that says their word is worth anything,\u201d Brown said.<\/span>

<\/span>\u201cWhat we need is an in-writing community benefits agreement that says that people who live in those communities will benefit \u2014 not in a profiteering way, but jobs, investment in neighborhood elementary schools, transportation infrastructure. That is not a lot to ask. In the case of the Staples Center in Los Angeles, it kept people in their communities.\u201d<\/span>

<\/span>Brown was asked why he is so convinced that promises made by the nation\u2019s first African-American president won\u2019t be kept.<\/span>

<\/span>\u201cThe situation will not be different because our African-American president endorsed school privatization \u2014 the closing of schools all across the United States. Our African-American aldermen have sat by while 50 schools closed in the city of Chicago. And it had a harmful effect on Chicago\u2019s children<\/span><\/b>,\u201d Brown said.<\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

(emphasis mine<\/i>)<\/p>\n

Yeah, pretty much.<\/p>\n

Barack Obama protected the banks while presiding over the largest destruction of black wealth in history<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Trusting him is a sucker bet.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Protesters are demanding that Barack Obama sign a community benefits agreement before building his Presidential library, because they do not trust him to keep his word to benefit the (largely minority) residents of the neighborhood. I wouldn’t trust him either: Black aldermen attempting to congratulate African-American contractors that won the right to help build the …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[491,387,374],"class_list":["post-179510","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","tag-barack-obama","tag-hypocrisy","tag-politics"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/179510"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=179510"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/179510\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=179510"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=179510"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=179510"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}