Two powerful political family dynasties in Chicago are nose-to-nose in the latest legacy battle over naming rights – in this instance, a renaming of the Dan Ryan Expressway before the rapidly approaching mayoral election.
Bill Daley, mayoral candidate is petitioning the state to change the name to honor former President Barack Obama, while the Ryan family stands in disgust of the snub against their ancestor, Dan Ryan Jr., once president of the Cook County Board, who died in office in 1961.
Dan Ryan Expressway
As Daniel B. Ryan III asks, “Why would you take an honor away from one man to honor another? Our family has been honored by this for 56 years, and we’d like to keep it that way.”
Well, the answer is because Daley wants to honor his former boss, Obama, whom he served as chief of staff for one glorious year. Of course, the optics and media attention sure to ensue is a nice bonus.
The Dan Ryan Expressway runs from the Circle Interchange with I-290 near downtown Chicago through the south side of the metropolis.
Candidate Daley’s argument is that Obama began his stellar career in politics on Chicago’s south side as a community organizer, and he’s pressuring the state legislature to make the Barack Obama Expressway a done deal in 2019.
Obama Everything!
The name Obama is popping up everywhere, from commemoration in scientific names of species — my personal favorite being Paragor dius obamai, a parasitic worm from phylum Nematomorpha — to schools, a racehorse, and countless roadways and thoroughfares.
Chicago’s Presidential Center
The Land of Lincoln has given Obama enough “atta-boys”: East St Louis, Illinois boasts South Barack Obama Avenue, and the official Barack Obama Presidential Expressway, a stretch of about 80 miles. Those clicks include parts of Interstate 55 from the southwest suburbs to Pontiac. And Illinoisans have a debt of gratitude to pay state Representative LaShawn Ford for his secret squirrel renaming effort. Signs for the road popped up without fanfare last March.
Oh, was it mentioned that Ford is also a Chicago mayoral candidate?
Obama is in the process of building his legacy through a presidential library, which will be located in Jackson Park on Chicago’s south side – which already has drawn ire from locals. At its unveiling, Chicagoans panned the architectural atrocity as an “ugly waste of taxpayer resources” and a “dangerous precedent” for the preservation of historic public parklands.
And, perhaps, this is the motivation behind the challenge to rename everything Obama. It must feed the egoistic appetite of the previous president to mark everything in his sight.
Nero Plays the Fiddle
Of all the issues that face the people of Cook County, swapping names of the roadways seem petty and shortsighted. In a state with some of the toughest gun laws in the nation, in the last year alone nearly 3,000 people have been shot in the city of Chicago resulting in 582 homicides. December 2018 to date, 176 people were shot and 36 of those people have died.
Why is the focus from wannabe mayors of the Windy City renaming inanimate objects for Obama — A man who did nothing to help his fellow Chicagoans from the highest office in the land? [perfectpullquote align=”right” bordertop=”false” cite=”” link=”” color=”” class=”” size=”24″]A man that did nothing for the city he used to launch his political career.[/perfectpullquote]
Possibly because it’s an easy back-slapper photo-op to add to their political platforms of indifference and inertia.
For the family of Dan Ryan, they care not for the antics of Daley, and reminded people, “I couldn’t figure out why he wanted to do it, considering his father was the one who named the expressway after my grandfather.”
But it should be clear as a bell, or as Daley defends his motion, “renaming the highway for President Obama will be a daily reminder for all of us that America’s first African-American president was shaped by Chicago.”
A man that did nothing for the city he used to launch his political career. And those who follow, that carry his legacy of division, indolence, and apathy towards others, do so without shame.
