Obama creates monument in Chicago

President Obama created a trio of national monuments Thursday that he said will preserve places important to the fights for civil and labor rights, as well as natural landscapes.

Obama traveled to Chicago Thursday afternoon to speak about the Pullman neighborhood, the site of a former railcar manufacturer and company town.

{mosads}The president’s declarations created monuments at Pullman, at Browns Canyon in Colorado and at a former Japanese-American internment camp in Hawaii.

By designating the areas as monuments, Obama protected them from future development and harm without authorization from Congress.

Obama, who was born in Hawaii and lived in Chicago for years, said his actions fit with a very American idea that the most precious places belong to all citizens.

“No matter who you are, no matter where you live, our parks and our monuments, our lands, these places are the birthright of all Americans,” he said.

“It’s one of our responsibilities as Americans to protect this inheritance and to strengthen it for the future.”

With the sites in Chicago, Colorado and Hawaii, Obama has now designated or expanded 16 national monuments, encompassing more land and water than any previous president.

He spent most of his speech Thursday speaking about Pullman. The area and factory spawned one of the most high-profile labor strikes in history, which resulted in the first union for black workers and helped spawn much of the civil rights movement, he said.

“This site is at the heart of what would become America’s labor movement. And as a consequence, at the heart of what would become America’s middle class,” Obama said at a school near the site.

A. Philip Randolph led the union of black train porters and later became a civil rights leader.

“I want this younger generation and I want future generations to come learn about their past,” the president said.

“I want future generations to know that, while the Pullman porters helped forward our right to vote and to work and to live as equals, their legacy goes beyond even that.”

In Hawaii, the internment site near Honolulu held hundreds of Japanese-Americans during World War II in what the federal government saw as a necessary measure to protect the country from Japan.

“Going forward, it’s going to be a monument to a painful part of our history, so that we don’t repeat the mistakes of the past,” Obama said.

He described Colorado’s Browns Canyon as an “outdoor paradise with outdoor fishing, rafting, hiking, wildlife.”

The National Park Service will manage the Chicago and Honolulu sites, treating them much like parks that Congress creates. The Bureau of Land Management and the Forest Service will manage the Browns Canyon area.

When the White House first announced the planned monuments, Republicans were angry and labeled the designations as overreach by the president.

“President Obama has sidelined the American public and bulldozed transparency by proclaiming three new national monuments through executive fiat,” Rep. Rob Bishop (R-Utah), chairman of the House Natural Resources Committee, said in a statement.

“Despite his calls to be the most transparent administration in history, President Obama has once again chosen to stifle public input and thumb his nose at Congress,” said Rep. Doug Lamborn (R-Colo.), chairman of the Natural Resources Subcommittee on Energy and Mineral Resources.

Rep. Ken Buck (R-Colo.) told The Denver Post that he wants Obama to stop acting unilaterally.

“He is not king. No more acting like King Barack. That is not how we do things in the U.S.,” he said.