up dat update babe

one thing that i see about saving the park from the spreading legacy of obama is the same thing i felt for the eight years of his presidency. he is and will always be the first black president and he still has the aura conferred by the nobel peace prize committee and his own rhetoric of hope and change. the man was like a national spell. despite the evidence the aura persists, and in hyde park, while there is resistance, the aura persists. i just talked with someone who was indignant that i blamed obama for the plan and the taking of green public space, and she was black, and considered that i was not from here, nor black, and the plan was suspect of a faint racist tinge, which may have been less faint as my own indignation grew. i must admit i didn't even consider that any criticism of obama or his plans might be construed as racism. she has no issue it seems with obama, but what about the park? she blames the designer of the obama complex, not obama. as though he were innocent of his own designs.
this is sad and upsetting to me. a lifelong resident of hyde park who grew up playing in the green spaces about to be lost i would think would put the community, and the loss of our green space, before the millenium park-style development to honor an ex-president who happens to be black.

postscript

one thing i wanted to say to her. it isn't about obomba's legacy, it's about our legacy. it isn't about black or white so much. it's about green.