Don Grebien – RI Future

February 18, 2016March 4, 2016

Joe Kayata strikes out in his interview with Larry Lucchino

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I watched NBC 10’s sportscaster Joe Kayata interview Pawtucket Red Sox owner Larry Lucchino not once but twice on February 17. It was hard to tell if this was a late Valentine’s Day for the sports franchise owner or if Kayata was just trying to give the Tolman High School softball team a run for their money, but either way it was a wasted opportunity that failed the fans, the taxpayers, and the viewers that was strangely reminiscent of some business involving bears and hand stands.

ONLY ON 10: @NBC10_Joe talks with PawSox owner Larry Lucchino about rebuilding fan trust. Watch NBC 10 News at 5:30. pic.twitter.com/lfRneFHMMN

— NBC 10 WJAR (@NBC10) February 17, 2016

What the discerning viewer could grasp at from the interview, and which Kayata would not vocalize, is the true nature of Lucchino’s plan. Here are the highlights, picked apart for all their meaning.

“This franchise was a jewel franchise for a long time. It has fallen on harder times in recent years.”

Uh, excuse me Mr. Lucchino, that is kind of a stretch. After Ben Mondor died, the team did struggle because his widow was not tuned to business acumen. But as soon as you and the late James Skeffington showed up with haughty expectations of not just moving the team but expecting Rhode Islanders to finance the move to Providence (something Kayata left out conveniently), the fans left in droves. Could it possibly be that you chased them away?

“We just want to recapture that glory, reignite that fan base, (and) galvanize the business community because that’s what was special.”

As reported earlier, this is asking for a subsidy from the state and the business community so to gentrify the poor community out of their homes near the ballpark. Lucchino smudged history in regards to his discussion of the attempt to move the Red Sox out of Fenway when he got involved with the Boston franchise years ago, trying to make it sound like that was all his decision, saying “It took us a couple of years to answer that [relocation] question in respect to Fenway Park.” It was not, a large contingent of Bostonians got up in arms and raised a huge SAVE FENWAY campaign that made it impossible for him to do as he had in Baltimore and San Diego and flip the team at profit a few years afterwards, leaving the taxpayers on the hook for projects that benefited only his bank account.

“We sat down with Mayor (Donald) Grebien here in Pawtucket and are working on a study of McCoy to see what kind of facility we have and what it needs to play an important role in the years ahead and we are focused on getting the fan base back to the ballpark”.

So does that mean that tax monies are being paid to fund this study? Why do you need another study when, this time last year, James Skeffington was telling people that a study had shown repairing McCoy was too costly? What could it possibly need considering the fact that McCoy and the PawSox are cited by many as an exemplary franchise?

Will the team remain in Rhode Island after the end of the current McCoy lease in 2020?

“I don’t know. That’s an impossible question to answer right now.”

In a word, no, unless of course they are given plenty of free money at the expense of the taxpayers and disenfranchise a slew of people who pay a higher percent of their income to taxes than Lucchino and company do.

It seems like Gina Raimondo is not the only vulture capitalist here for the long term. When William Carlos Williams wrote an Introduction to Allen Ginsberg’s classic poem Howl, he said in closing a brilliant line that fits these circumstances perfectly:

“Hold back the edges of your gowns, Ladies, we are going through hell.”

February 14, 2016February 15, 2016

Lucchino moves to gentrify Pawtucket

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A source within the Pawtucket business community has disclosed the other half of the equation that most failed to mention when reporting on Pawtucket Red Sox owner Larry Lucchino’s address to the Northern Rhode Island Chamber of Commerce, his alleged efforts, apparently with full support of Pawtucket Mayor Don Grebien, to gentrify the historic communities of color out of the city.

McCoy Stadium has been adjacent to a large swathe of African, Latino, and low-income white renters who live in multi-family housing units for some time. Now Lucchino is courting the business community around the stadium and encouraging them to buy up the properties so to contribute to an “urban renewal” effort that no one asked for or needed until Lucchino came to town.

Gentrification, called a “benign ethnic cleansing” by writer John Strausbaugh, has been going on for several years in Pawtucket. Unless artists and white LGBTQQI people are conscientious and mindful of their impact on a community, these demographics can oftentimes find themselves as the foot-soldiers of the Caucasian invasion Lucchino and Grebien now wish to throw into overdrive with a sports stadium.

It bears mentioning that sports projects, such as the 1996 Atlanta Olympics or the repeated Super Bowls in New Orleans, have contributed to the gentrification of those historic cities of color. It also bears mentioning that Lucchino was recently seen in the entourage of Hillary Clinton at a Boston stop on the campaign trail before the the New Hampshire primaries. Mrs. Clinton and the policies of her husband are considered much to blame for the gentrification of the past two decades, particularly in regards to the anti-poor “Welfare reform” and “tough on crime” legislation that included housing regulations. When I talked with Glen Ford of Black Agenda Report this past summer, he emphasized that capital is eager to reclaim the metropolis and return the communities of color to a pre-World War II status quo, dispersed and marginalized politically and socially in the hinterlands as they were before the Great Migration was shifted into overdrive by the wartime economy under FDR.

At this point, the situation is divided into a rather unfortunate either/or situation. PawSox fans either have to say goodbye to their beloved team, something I get the impression many can handle considering the behavior of Lucchino and company, or they can get behind a renovation project, totally financed by the taxpayers, that will turn McCoy into a bulldozer of communities of color that probably will be far too expensive for these fans to attend anyways. Unless Lucchino comes out in the next few weeks with a plan to create community land trusts for these housing units or, alternatively, Grebien institutes a series of rent control policies, we are looking down the barrel of a very ugly rifle whose shot sounds eerily like Take Me Out to the Ball Game.

February 6, 2016February 7, 2016

Two major rip-offs Rhode Islanders should not pay for

In a touch of irony, two news stories came across my desk today that share a common trait, instances where the rich and well-to-do are trying to make the taxpayers fork out cash for what is not supposed to be a public problem. In fact, their issues are totally due to poor business decisions made by people who should have and did know better.

First was a letter co-signed by Pawtucket Mayor Don Grebien and PawSox chairman/owner Larry Lucchino. In half-repentant tones that would only be considered genuine by the naive or gullible, the two make the first thrust at what has been long-expected, namely, a taxpayer-subsidized “renovation” of McCoy Stadium that is totally unwarranted and undeserved, particularly considering that the building was just given a makeover some years ago. Invoking a baseless notion of “competitive advantages” given other teams in the minor leagues by “newer facilities”, they are starting the opening round of a public fleecing.

If baseball players are so disadvantaged by sub-standard facilities, why are there so many players from Central and South America playing in the major leagues? Every year the boys of spring include among them a sizable number of talented players who grow up in poverty, played in sub-standard settings, and were successfully scouted by Americans with alluring promises of glory. Of course when they arrive on our shores, they discover that the minor leagues pay a pittance of a salary and that their fantasies of glory may indeed be just that, but such are the empty promises of men like Lucchino. That Mayor Grebien would play ball with such a fleecing shows perhaps his constituents should think wisely about who gets their vote next November, particularly in light of how Lucchino is in the business of professional gentrification.

The other bit of news is equally laughable. It would seem that the Cardi Corporation and the Department of Transportation are in a bit of a public tiff over the deterioration of the ‘I-Way’ bridge that redirected traffic on Interstate 195 several years ago. After a car crashed into a guard rail several years ago, it was revealed that the structure failed to meet Federal Highway Administration requirements. Cardi is now expecting the state (read: taxpayers) to reimburse them for the construction of a new guardrail.

As irony would have it, I have had a source for some years who was intimately involved in the construction of the highway as a unionized construction worker and inspector. This source indicated that, from start to finish, there was a host of corrupt practices to be seen in the creation of the structure, from the fabrication of the skeleton beams in out of state to the pouring of the cement. The I-Way, as is the case with almost every public construction project in Rhode Island, was a magnet for buffoonish corruption of every kind. When it was revealed several years ago that there was a state office operating in the upper floors of a gentleman’s club, it was barely mentioned that the office was located in that venue because it was just adjacent to the I-Way and Cardi’s offices on Allens Avenue. Cardi knew very well that they were cutting corners when they built that bridge and they did so anyway because of the bizarre inter-relations between the construction business, the asphalt/concrete industry, and various political and criminal families that have always had your transportation safety solely at heart.

This is a no-brainer. Larry Lucchino and the Cardi Corporation do not deserve any public monies. Lucchino made a bad business decision by getting into a seamy deal with the late James Skeffington, who thought his connections to the Democratic Party machine made this an automatic venture capitalist success. The Cardi Corporation should have just built their bridge properly. Meanwhile, as two corporate bodies with deep pockets come begging for a bail-out, Providence and the wider state is in a severe economic situation. Our schools are crumbling, the impoverished are left to beg, and the social safety net is a joke in comparison with the rest of the world.