Voting Ain't Enough

(AP Photo / Matt Rourke)

As the world crumbles a lot of people might think, “What’s the point of doing anything, we’re already fucked?” That sentiment is depressing, but it’s not crazy. I think the answer lies in the idea that if you think things are fucked, you have to try to unfuck them. They won’t fix themselves. The powers that be won’t fix them without a serious struggle to force their hand. We can't count on just elections and voting. Congress newcomers like AOC are moving the conversation (mostly women of color, hmmm?) towards more substantive action but pinning your hopes solely to congress is a fool’s errand. There are too many old entrenched shitheads in congress that only care about clinging to the status quo to put much faith in them turning course. They ain’t gonna change shit without crushingly massive amounts of pressure from who they're supposed to 'represent'.

I want to live in a world where everything isn’t fucked. And that means we have to break free from capitalism and the police state's death grip. Almost every problem in our society traces back to putting the interests of wealth and power over the interests of the people. The groups that accumulate these vast swaths of wealth and power do not care, nor will they ever care, about anything besides furthering their own interests. They won’t willingly change the structures that work so well for themselves. We have to wrest that control from them. One course of action is to build a movement of people that is impossible to ignore (the other is to burn it all down). That means we have to start small and grow. We have to bring in diverse working class communities. We have to collaborate and develop trust with like-minded organizations. We can’t get bogged down in minutiae. We have to continually push forward and outward so the work and movement can spread to the overlooked, the marginalized, the vulnerable. That is where real power lies hidden. Capitalism divides people. Pits them against each other. Plays the blame game. And they use the police and mainstream media to quell any meaningful dissent. We need to get past that. We need to direct this collective fury in the right direction. It’s the people at the top that need to be brought low. So we need to take away their privilege. Stop letting obscenely wealthy corporations skate on taxes and call their shots on regulatory oversight. Demand the defunding of police departments in conjunction with public oversight on how they conduct themselves.

The CEO’s. The Landlords. The Politicians. The Merchants of Wealth and Power. They are the problem. The sooner we can bring that understanding to the people the sooner we can unfuck what capitalism has created. We don’t have a choice. Voting and electing moderate Democrats only reshuffles the deck chairs on the Titanic. It’s incrementalism that can and will be reversed. They aren’t interested in changing a system that they benefit from. Do you think Schumer and Pelosi and Dem Party leadership are going to do a damn thing to help change underlying causes of inequality and injustice in this country? No, they won’t. They can’t even guarantee people the right to vote, let alone enact change. We need fundamental change, not a bipartisan marketplace of ideas. We need Medicare For All, not 'access' to 'affordable' healthcare. You have to fight fire with fire, not with some half hearted optimism about checks and balances and blue waves. That shit is all window dressing that obfuscates what really needs to be done to unfuck our society. Putting power in the hands of the people, and getting rid of moneyed politicians controlled by wealthy jackals and enforced by their badged goons.  

Long Night's Run

I left work on Friday around noon, Tim’s flight was getting in to Cincy around then and we were meeting at my place. I gassed up the car before getting on 71, and then went inside for a hot dog in case we were on the road for a while before stopping to eat. I grabbed one off the roller and put it in a bun. Once I got to the counter the plain hot dog rolled right out of it’s bun and slowly meandered across the well worn transactional space in front of the cashier, who didn’t make any reaction to the sad escape attempt. I think they were acknowledging the understood agreement that some things are better left not remarked upon. I paid, put the dog back in it’s bun and ate it in a couple bites before I reached the car. The Western Road Trip had officially started.

The first leg of the trip was going to be the second worst one, only trailing the last stretch back to Cincy at the tail end of the trip. It was a long night’s run from Cincy to the Badlands without stopping for anything besides gas and dogs. We had to cover that distance overnight to make sure that our schedule for the rest of the trip held together.

As we were rolling through northern Iowa, starting to go road crazy after 8 hours or so, I came up with a ridiculous, kind of disturbing, and ultimately amazing (my opinion) game show idea, but I have to keep it under my hat for now because I have every intention of producing this game show at some point, and it would be a shame if someone stole it from me because I tossed I laid it out in detail for free right here. Fuck that. Let’s just say, people “die” when they answer incorrectly. Iowa brings the worst out in people. I think the point is that when you’re driving through Iowa at night, with nothing to keep your mind from wandering into dark corners, you may end up conjuring up the greatest idea of your life.

Fuck Your Civility

Civility is bullshit. It’s a way for people with power to insulate themselves from the real world. It’s a game they play where they make up the rules as they go along and you will never ever get a hang of them. Who gives a shit about being civil? How does it help you? Do you think that the real world is a civil place? Do you think corporations putting profits over people is the civil thing to do? Do you think turning public space into private space is civil? Do you think cutting away social safety nets is civil? Do you think racism is civil? Capitalism spits in civility’s face?

It’s all a bullshit way to disqualify people from voicing their fury over what is happening to them. When someone tells you that “unless you’re civil we can’t have this conversation,” you should double down on incivility. People call for civility when they don’t like where a discussion is heading, because they know they’re in the wrong and would like to turn the conversation into a matter of semantics instead of substance. They put their powdered wig on and only will converse with other people that also have powdered wigs among an array of fainting couches. Don’t go and try to get yourself a powdered wig. Fuck powdered wigs.

These delicate people’s bubbles need bursting. Otherwise they’ll never see the effects of their decisions. Fearful people are more responsive to pressure. If someone living in a golden tower on the east side isn’t worried about what might happen to them based on their decisions, if they’re feeling breezy about how things are going, then why would they ever change course. Don’t engage in civility with people that center their whole lives around fucking other people over. They don’t care about civility. It’s a parlor trick created at a country club. It’s a cudgel that they use to silence the masses. Don’t give up your own cudgel of rage just because they say the rules demand it. The rules are bullshit. There is nothing to win abiding them.

Shakedown



A couple years ago FC Cincinnati emerged fully formed onto the local sports scene. FC had a lot of things going for it. Soccer is fun to watch because there are no interminable commercial breaks. They play at Nippert Stadium, which is a beautiful venue to consume sports and beer. And they were immediately competitive in their league because they were willing to spend more on talent than a lot of their minor league counterparts. These things helped them cultivate a sizable and vocal local fan base that attend their matches in droves (average attendance at Nippert last year was a little over 21,000), which in turn attracted the attention of the MLS, the top soccer league in America. Attracting the MLS has been the plan for FC Cincy all along. Much like Minnesota United’s new team, part of their MLS plan has been getting a new stadium subsidized by public money (St. Paul and Minnesota are giving their team upwards of $90 million in public money!). Minnesota is not the only team to get public funding for a private enterprise. The MLS and all professional sports in America have a long history of shaking down cities and regions for extravagant amounts of money (Hello Bengals and Reds).

FC Cincinnati and their MLS designs are owned by a group of Cincinnati aristocrats, most notably, the Lindners, but also David Thompson, Jeff Berding, Scott Farmer, and others. The Lindners and their chums are only about one thing, accumulating wealth. FC Cincy might be partly a passion project for them, although I have my doubts, but it’s still first and foremost a money-making endeavor. When the ownership group gets what they want out of the team, i.e. a new stadium and MLS entry, they’ll have achieved their goal. Once they’ve achieved their goal, which is hoovering up as much money as possible from owning the team (mostly through possessing a shiny new stadium that inflates the franchise value if they ever choose to sell the team), they’ll stop spending on good players, the team will stop being competitive because of lack of talent, fans will lose interest and stop buying tickets, and then the ownership group will falsely claim that owning the team is untenable since they are losing money (because no one goes to the matches anymore because they stopped spending on talent), and will be forced to sell the team (conveniently glossing over that it’ll be worth a lot more in the sale after they have a shiny new stadium and MLS membership than when they started in the minors at Nippert). The city will have another stadium they don’t need. And the taxpayers will be left holding the bag, again. This passage is from an article on deadspin,  

“In 1996, Jeff Berding, now the president and GM of FC Cincinnati, led a campaign for a half-percent sales tax increase to pay for two new stadiums: Great American Ballpark for the Reds and Paul Brown Stadium for the Bengals. Now, it’s largely considered the worst stadium deal in American history. In 2010, Paul Brown Stadium costs took up 16.4 percent of Hamilton County’s general budget. In 2015, the county, per lease terms, had to fork over $7.5 million for a $10 million scoreboard upgrade.”  The Lindners already played this shit with the Reds. They think everyone forgot how dirty they did the city back then by getting a new stadium, not spending enough to make the Reds competitive, and then selling the team for a giant profit.

Back in March, I was heartened to see that the West End rejected the deal Jeff Berding and FC were trying to make to build their stadium in their neighborhood. That deal was then revived after career ladder climber PG Sittenfeld’s support flipped the City Council vote from a no to a yes. Last week the West Side Community Council got strong armed by their backroom dealmaking president, Keith Blake, to ratify a new CBA agreement, one that will "help" the community. Unfortunately the sort of “economic development” that would come along with a stadium is not the kind that will actually raise up the West End. It is the kind that pushes out generations of people that have lived there and should continue to be able to live there in favor of rich people playground bullshit. People in the West End won’t benefit from having a stadium. Stadiums don’t revitalize neighborhoods. They don’t create jobs for the existing community. They’re a boon for corporations and upscale housing developers. They pull the roots out and don’t plant anything to replace it. Jeff Berding is a blight on Cincinnati.

Here is what FC so magnanimously laid out for the West End in the finalized Community Benefits Agreement (in exchange for city funding and a stadium site, as well as not having to pay sales tax on building materials or other property taxes through another crooked deal they are pushing through the Greater Cincinnati Redevelopment Authority (formerly the Port Authority). The West End will receive:

• The team will pay $100,000 annually for 30 years to West End organizations.
• The team will transfer options it holds on West End land to the redevelopment authority to build "affordable mixed-income market-rate housing." 
• Prevailing wages will be paid to stadium construction workers.
• For construction, the team will commit to hiring 25 percent minority-owned businesses, 7 percent women-owned businesses and 30 percent small businesses.
• West End businesses will be preferred for any contract.
• The team will work to give those in low-income areas, including the West End, the first chance at jobs, including those with criminal records.
• The team will consult with the community to provide protections in regards to parking, stadium design, security, beautification and the creation of a complaint process.
• A $20,000 entrepreneurship program at Mortar, a minority-owned business development service based in Over-the-Rhine, will be offered to West End residents. 
• A scholarship program will be established for students at West End Schools.
• A West End Athletic Association will be formed to promote athletics in the neighborhood.

Mona Jenkins of Mass Action for Black Liberation had this to say about the West End Stadium Deal, “Time and time again, the voices of black residents get ignored for the greed of profits. We saw this happen in Over-the-Rhine, it’s happening in Walnut Hills and this has happened multiple times in the West End. For years, the West End has asked for a grocery store, a laundromat, and other needs of the community and they were ignored. They didn’t ask for a stadium nor were they included in the decision or process. There has been a history of broken promises in the West End and the residents are not falling for it again. This development will cause displacement, it will destroy the rich history and culture of the neighborhood.”

The Lindners push for a stadium and to be bumped up to the MLS is not about civic pride or soccer. It’s about raising the valuation of the team so that the people that own it can become richer. Building them a stadium would be a state and city funded handout to people who have more money than god. Let them fund and build their own goddamn stadium on a floating barge in the river if they want one so bad.  And on that note, Cranley and the city constantly cry poor when needing to fund critical services for the working class of our city. But when it comes to helping out his big money donors he’s got a gazillion dollars squirreled away in a rainy day fund to shower upon them. Fuck Cranley, fuck FC, fuck Berding, and fuck a new publicly funded stadium in the West End.