The library that holds our story

Last Thursday, in Jackson Park on Chicago’s South Side, President Barack Obama stood before thousands at the Obama Presidential Center and said it “reminds us of what we can be.”

I watched from afar, and wept — not out of nostalgia, but out of recognition.

I am a first-generation Hispanic born in Miami, raised by a single mom and grandmother. I was raised in this country with the deepest belief that America was a place where the arc of history could bend toward justice, where a person’s story was not dictated by where they were born but by what they were willing to build.

That belief was not naive. It was earned, learned and deeply felt. It is the most honest form of patriotism I know — the kind that does not take this country for granted, because my family’s own story is a fresh reminder of what it means to live without it.

When Obama was elected President, I understood in my bones what it meant for the promise of America to be made more real.

And when the United States Supreme Court ruled in favor of marriage equality in 2015, I was able to marry the person I love — during his presidency, under his extraordinary leadership, in a country that finally said my love counted.

That is not a small thing.

That is everything.

Pride Month and the opening of the Obama Presidential Center arriving together in the same week feels like something more than a coincidence. It feels like a reminder of how fragile and hard-won progress truly is.

The LGBTQ community has marched, mourned and fought for every inch of dignity we hold. First-generation immigrants have sacrificed and assimilated and prayed that the country we chose would choose us back. We know better than most that democracy is not a birthright. It is a daily act of faith.

That is why this library matters. Obama said his center “reminds us of what we can be.” Michelle Obama spoke of Barack’s “unshakeable moral fiber” and the work that still lies ahead to preserve democracy.

Those are not empty words. They are a charge — to people like me, to communities like mine, to a nation that must decide again and again what it wants to stand for.

The Obama Presidential Center, at an estimated cost of $850 million, is the most expensive presidential library ever built and the first fully digital presidential library. But its true value cannot be measured in dollars.

It is a monument to the idea that a kid from a complicated family, with a complicated name, from a place the country often overlooks, can lead the free world. For families like mine who came here believing in that promise, seeing it made flesh in stone and steel and memory is overwhelming.

I believe in this country not because it has always been good to me, but because I have seen what it can be — and I have lived it.

I saw it in the support I received when I came out for the first time at work, from a Florida House Democratic Leader who responded with nothing but inspiring support. I saw it when I married my husband after fighting in court for the right to do so. And I saw it as an 18-year-old casting my first vote, believing that America is strongest when we believe in one another and continue the unfinished work of building a more perfect union.

In moments like this one, when history pauses long enough for us to look at how far we have come, we should celebrate and cheer a historic moment.

The Obama Presidential Center is open now. And so, still, is the determination that our work to fortify our foundation as a nation never ends.

We must hold on to the promise embedded in the Declaration of Independence: “that all men are created equal,” and that we are endowed with “certain unalienable Rights,” including “Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.”

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Christian Ulvert is a Democratic strategist and first-generation American born and raised in Miami. He lives in Miami Shores with his husband, Carlos Andrade, a Venezuelan American.