An $800 million monument to one man's political legacy opened Thursday on Chicago's South Side with Bruce Springsteen, Bono, and Stevie Wonder performing for an invite-only crowd of dignitaries and celebrities — while the neighborhood that surrounds it got a watch party and a basketball court.
The Obama Presidential Center is the most expensive presidential library ever built, according to AOL.com, funded through $800 million in private donations. The three-hour dedication ceremony featured performances by Springsteen, U2, Christina Aguilera, Jennifer Hudson, Eddie Vedder, and others. Every living former president and first lady attended — except the current occupant of the White House, the Chicago Tribune reported.
For the people of the South Side, the Obama Foundation hosted a "free watch party" at Midway Plaisance, AOL.com noted. Inside the eight-story tower, there's a replica Oval Office containing George W. Bush's farewell letter and Obama's BlackBerry, 440 campaign buttons, a dozen mannequins displaying Michelle Obama's dresses, and an 88-foot digital wall. What there isn't: any official presidential papers. Unlike every other presidential library, this one is fully digital — no original documents on display, according to the Deseret News.
"To my fellow South Siders, I want you all to make this campus a part of your lives," Michelle Obama said at the ceremony, per the Deseret News. The 20-acre campus does include a public library branch with 3,500 titles selected by the Obama family, a basketball court, garden beds, and a playground. But telling a community they're welcome at a monument built in their backyard isn't the same as building it for them.
Construction was slowed by legal problems, AOL.com reported, though the specifics of those challenges went unmentioned across all four outlets covering the opening. Valerie Jarrett — Obama's former White House senior adviser, now CEO of the Obama Foundation — declared that "this center is not a traditional museum, nor is today a traditional ribbon-cutting," per the Deseret News. She's right about that much.
Meanwhile, MS NOW — the cable network formerly known as MSNBC, spun off by Comcast in January — flew in 69 staffers and built a rooftop studio overlooking what the Tribune reports locals have dubbed the "Obamalisk." Host Alicia Menendez called it "pretty moving" to see dignitaries and artists "coalescing around the concept of hope."
Michelle Obama delivered the ceremony's sharpest political jab, never naming Donald Trump but denouncing the "lies about your birthright, your faith, your patriotism" and declaring "no one has the right to sit in judgment of who's American enough," CNN reported. Trump had previously called the center's construction a "disaster" and shared an AI-generated image depicting it surrounded by homeless encampments and garbage, according to AOL.com.
Crude as that image was, it raised a question the ceremony's organizers preferred to leave unasked: after a decade of planning, $800 million in donations, and a celebrity spectacle honoring one man's legacy, what exactly has changed for the South Side of Chicago?
