Free Republic

When Charlotte Adelman was a student at the University of Chicago, the nearby parks became a refuge for her, a sprawling expanse of green where she could escape the concrete urban landscape. It was then, many decades ago, that Adelman began her journey to becoming a fighter for environmental justice. Along the way, she has fought to preserve open spaces, ban pesticides in Wilmette and co-authored a book, “Prairie Directory of North America.” Now, Adelman, 81, has set her sights on her biggest target yet — to block the Obama Presidential Center from being built in Jackson Park. Adelman, along...

In Barack Obama’s adopted hometown, of all places, his $375 million Obama Presidential Center is running into growing headwinds from a few gutsy souls. Ironically, the winds aren’t gusting from the usual direction—Republicans and others the left often labels racist Obama-haters. Rather, it’s blowing from the very people who have long lionized Obama: white Chicago lakefront progressives, University of Chicago professors, environmentalists, African-American activists, and a community organization of the kind that once employed Obama as an organizer. On May 14, a preservationist group called Protect Our Parks filed a lawsuit in U.S. District Court in Chicago, seeking a court...