Georeactor Blog

Ten years ago, the Obama presidential library / museum / center location was announced to be Chicago's Jackson Park. And today here we are.

The core thesis of the museum, as I understand it, is that the 2008 Obama campaign was a mass movement which inherited its power from the civil rights generation. The Obamas' time in community organizing/relations and law informed the campaign's outreach and eventual policies.
I don't know whether the Obamas would have framed things that way when their brand was a more politically safe we're-not-Bill-Ayers messages. I couldn't even say if this was a common belief when they left the White House, especially with everyone writing up hot takes on voters swinging toward Trump.

But what's changed in the past nine years? Activists like John Lewis who saw Obama reach the White House are no longer with us. The Obamas are the new elders, and their party is thinking about who could come next. They have to explain why their electoral support and continuing popularity have not transferred to candidates with similar policies.
I would probably attribute it to sexism, conspiracies, and longtime conservatives only willing to flip their vote for personal charm. But this would be a weird cynical message to print on the wall of a museum, right? The story that we're hearing here is that Obama won the primary because you, the door knockers and phone calls and online-organized meetups, made it possible.

Anyway so early on, the museum has a history of civil disobedience / protest / mass movements like this. Note that Dolores Huerta gets featured here. Cesar Chavez is still in a caption for a UFW flag.

That's a lot of history. To what level is it the story of the Obama administration?
When I was working on redistricting, I had a task to add Native American overlays to our app. I could choose from a few Census shapefiles (one covering most of Oklahoma), but ultimately there's a limit to how 'woke' you could be while centering that Oklahoma exists, their legislature has power over you, and your power / voice is emailing a map into their inbox.
Being president is (I think more obviously?) not a position that exists anywhere near dismantling the military-industrial complex. Also Obama didn't (publicly) support marriage equality until May 2012, or transgender soldiers until June 2016. Now those stories are celebrated in the museum.

There is a lot of thought put into accessibility of the museum, super cool.

Other thoughts:

• Equal Earth projection maps!
• Each section has a "The Work That Remained" plaque which includes stuff like gerrymandering, executive orders being rolled back, failures to get sick leave.
• There is weird discourse online around the architecture, cost, digitization, offsite archives, and impact on the neighborhood. I'd encourage anyone complaining about this to wait a year and compare visitor numbers to the Obama, Clinton, and Bush libraries.
• I had absorbed so much post-Obama content about restrictions on immigration and asylum seekers, that I forgot about DREAMers / DACA
• Michelle Obama and her brother have an ongoing podcast. I see why that wouldn't be mentioned in the museum, but she feels much less 'retired'.
• There is a case with a few old pages and one has a minimal caption like, "Declaration of Independence, courtesy of Barack Obama". So I'm thinking, huh, since when and how does Obama personally own a copy? I did some research and found a description of this as a "founding era print of the Declaration of Independence". Is this a provenance thing?
• At the end you take a big elevator down nine floors. I was certain that they would have a "thank you for visiting" or "the future is your responsibility now" audio message, but instead we were just waiting quietly? After decompressing in the sky room, I don't expect anyone to chat with a stranger.