SOUTH SHORE — Police arrested an activist Wednesday who was passing out flyers calling for a community benefits agreement between neighborhood residents and the Obama Foundation during Barack Obama's Presidential Library presentation.
Alex Goldenberg, 32, was arrested for trespassing at 10:30 a.m. Wednesday outside the front entrance of the South Shore Cultural Center at 7059 S. South Shore Drive, police said.
Goldenberg is a community organizer pushing for an agreement between Obama’s foundation that is developing his presidential library and the community on specific benefits the library will bring to the neighborhood, including job training, local hiring, affordable housing and other issues.
Goldenberg declined to comment.
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Wardell Lavender was with Goldenberg and said there didn’t seem to be any problem at first. He said he and Goldenberg passed out flyers for a half-hour before staff asked them to move outside the cultural center’s grounds.
“All we were doing was standing there by the door as people were coming in and handing out leaflets,” Lavender said.
Lavender said police arrived shortly after and said they could not pass out leaflets without a vendor’s license from the Chicago Park District.
“He [Goldenberg] was saying he had a right to be in the park,” Lavender said.
He said the situation never got heated, which is why it was confusing for him when Goldenberg was arrested.
“I just walked away from it,” Lavender said.
Marty Nesbitt, chairman of the Obama Foundation’s board of directors, has said he believes the presidential library is itself a benefit to the community and has declined to speak to community groups about creating a written benefits agreement.
More recently, Michael Strautmanis, vice president for civic engagement for the foundation, has said the foundation will meet with groups on a community benefits agreement to better understand their expectations of the library.
Lavender said he hopes Goldenberg’s arrest will push the foundation to start those conversations now.
