Oakland – (Special to ZennieReport.com) It’s time to ask some hard questions regarding “Schools Over Stadiums”, the effort formed and ran by a collaboration between Oakland A’s Fan Groups and a set of Las Vegas and Nevada residents to stop the $120 million bond issue for the Oakland A’s Las Vegas Ballpark. It’s time because media outlets are starting to pay attention to it, but do zero analysis of it, or what it claims to do. It’s time because “Schools Over Stadiums” heads want the national spotlight, but without the scrutiny.
If “Schools Over Stadiums” is for schools, why is the organization led by a man who not only doesn’t have children of his own, or kids in Las Vegas schools, but has a gargantuan set of photos featuring himself, and no school kids? This space has nothing personal against the boss of the program, but there are some images coming forward that are increasingly hard to ignore considering the effort he started. The question is, is “Schools Over Stadiums” really about someone’s political ambitions, because it looks that way.
In a normal political campaign, the organizers make sure to have a diverse coalition of backers that popup every time there is a promotional effort. And in a normal urban campaign, the organizers make sure to have scores of notable Blacks and Latinos involved and at more than a token level. Not so with “Schools Over Stadiums”.
By contrast, the work to build a mixed-use development ballpark in Las Vegas has a number of Black supporters as well as Latino supporters like Las Vegas Latin Chamber head Peter Guzman, and why not? The Las Vegas MLB Ballpark means jobs for construction workers, cooks, maintenance specialists, musicians, servers, managers, makeup artists, dancers, casino workers, hospitality workers, and many more.
“Schools Over Stadiums” Doesn’t Care About Las Vegas Job Creation
The “Schools Over Stadiums” people show zero concern for Las Vegas job creation, and give off the view that they’re well-to-do, themselves. Moreover, the Schools Over Stadiums” head was so blind as to who Las Vegas Latin Chamber Executive Director Peter Guzman is, that he brainlessly attacked him on Twitter by reposting one of the many illogical and baseless tweets of conservative, anti-government, anti-union, Georgia-based Professor J.C. Bradbury. This one…
So is the Schools Over Stadiums Las Vegas head also anti-union? Fair question considering his Twitter actions.
On top of that, the Schools Over Stadiums-boss and his friends make fun of efforts to make sure the Las Vegas community has access to the A’s Ballpark in Las Vegas. A set of so-called supporters actually did that on social media during the Las Vegas Stadium Authority Meeting last Wednesday. They proved that they don’t even care that some level of government-funding of stadium and event venues means the public has say in the level of diversity represented via access to the facility.
This call for “privately financed” stadiums means it’s less-likely that the community will have any access to use a large-scale building that the people should be able to have some use of. By contrast, look at every public-private stadium or arena partnership and you see efforts to make spaces available for community groups, which translates into memorable moments for kids.
Public-Private Partnerships Cause A Diverse Group Of People To Be Able To Use Large-Scale Venues
“Schools Over Stadiums” claims to care about schools, but “Schools Over Stadiums” doesn’t care about kids. Moreover, “Schools Over Stadiums” cares more about waging class warfare over what it sees as “billionaires” than anything else. Kids are not the focus of “Schools Over Stadiums”. Jobs for Blacks and Latinos are something “Schools Over Stadiums” wants to stop, just because they rail against the A’s Ballpark.
In fact, “Schools Over Stadiums” is really a conservative, anti-minority, anti-government spending effort dressed as “liberal” and “progressive”. The manager of “Schools Over Stadiums”claims to be a Democrat. And so far, we have a number of people who willingly back that idea without thought – and who happen to be mostly white, claim to be progressive, and live in Oakland, not Las Vegas.
And on the matter of Oakland, the City of Oakland could not get its act together to do any aspect of the pre-development work for Howard Terminal in a timely fashion. There was no stadium authority to oversee anything. No regular updates to the Oakland City Council. No publicly shared information regarding tax increment financing (and because the project manager had no idea regarding the intracacies of tax increment financing).
Sports Business Was Chased From Oakland Due To its 40-Year-Habit Of Class Warfare, Not Class Collaboration
And the entire effort degenerated under Oakland’s 40-year-old habit of over-politicization due to class warfare, eschewing class collaboration. The problem has grown to a point where Oakland’s myopic, self-important, anti-business behavior has taken on massive proportions and chased the the Oakland A’s away to Las Vegas. Now, “Schools Over Stadiums” wants to sent the A’s back to Oakland, where it doesn’t want to be.
“Schools Over Stadiums” isn’t what it claims to be. It’s not for schools. It’s not for kids. It’s not for Blacks and Latinos. It’s just one Las Vegas person’s political asperations matched with a set of A’s fans who don’t care about anything but the fear of losing the right to party at a baseball game. They don’t even care about Oakland government getting its act together to build a large-scale public-private development. Indeed, considering their calls for the A’s to be in San Jose, they don’t care about Oakland, either.