Obama’s invited to accept Freedom Of The City

The 44th President Of The United States, Barack Obama and First Lady Michelle Obama have been invited to accept their Freedom Of The City of Dublin.

The Obamas were granted with the honour shortly after Obama left office in 2017, but have not yet had the opportunity to accept the honour in person.

Dublin City Council voted in 2017 to grant to the honour to the Obamas, with the motion at the time hailing their “moderating and progressive” influence on the world stage.

Lord Mayor of Dublin Ray McAdam invited the Obamas to accept the honour when they in Dublin in September.

Barack Obama will be speaking at the 3Arena in September for An Evening With Barack Obama, and McAdam has extended the invitation to the former American president and his wife.

In a letter, the Fine Gael councillor wrote ,“the people of Dublin have long admired your leadership, your commitment to public service and your shared belief in the power of community, equality and democracy.”

“It would be a great honour to formally welcome you both as Freeman and Freewoman of our city,” he wrote.

McAdam said that “during his term in office, he led with a sense of hope and, in terms of Mrs Obama, through her voice, she was an inspiration to many young girls and women across the world.”

The Obamas made a visit to Dublin in May 2011, with the President giving a speech at College Green to thousands of Dubliners, ending the speech with “is féidir linn,” along with a visit to the Obama’s ancestral home of Moneygall in County Offaly.

However, People Before Profit councillors feel that the Obamas should not be granted with the honour.

Barack Obama, specifically, has had a complicated relationship with the left since he was elected in 2008, with a common refrain of his leftist critics that the Obama who campaigned in 2008 governed like every other President that came before and after him. 

His foreign policy has overshadowed his reputation on the left, with councillor Conor Reddy saying “the world has become a far more dangerous place since Obama and all of these changes can be traced back to foreign policy decisions made by the Obama administration,”

“Israel’s genocide in Gaza and their wars on Iran, Lebanon, Syria and Yemen were all made possible by Obama’s decision to double down on support for the Zionist state,” Reddy asserted, pointing to Obama’s 2016 $38 billion military aid package for Israel.

“Obama is just as complicit in the Genocide and ethnic cleansing of Palestinians as his successors – Biden and Trump. For this reason alone, he should receive no welcome in Ireland,” the Ballymun-Finglas councillor said.

Ballyfermot-Drimnagh councillor Hazel De Nortúin added, “it’s not just wars and crimes overseas, Obama failed at home too, and in many ways, his failures led to the rise of Donald Trump and the American far-right.”

“Despite offering Black Americans hope, Obama completely failed to dismantle the ‘new Jim Crow’ of mass incarceration and racialised poverty. He chose to support Wall Street over ordinary Americans and presided over historic increases in economic inequality in the US,” she said.

“We have requested that the Lord Mayor reverse his decision to invite the Obamas to the Mansion House. If the Lord Mayor decides to proceed, Councillor Reddy and I will bring an emergency motion to the first full meeting of the City Council  at the start of September, calling for the revocation of Obama’s Freedom of the City” 

Secretary of the Irish Anti-War Movement, Jim Roche, said that the organisation are planning a protest for when the Obamas arrive in Dublin, saying they organised a similar protest in 2011.

Roche said, “we are seeing the impact of the development of drone warfare horrifically now in Gaza, and of course, there’s great collaboration between the US military and Israeli military.”