He’s a lifelong unionized worker, has gone to PawSox games for the last four decades, and knows cities intimately as a former telephone worker. Dan Murphy also went to every Listening Tour stop last summer when owner Larry Lucchino was trying to get a new stadium built by the taxpayers in Providence as one of the leaders of the grassroots resistance, vociferous in his rejection of the proposed deal then and now still opposed to public funding for renovations of private buildings, be it McCoy Stadium or the Superman building in downtown Providence.

Recently the pre-bid press conference was held at McCoy Stadium for “proposals from qualified firms to prepare a master plan study (the “Study”) of the McCoy Stadium facility and surrounding area located in Pawtucket, Rhode Island. The intent of the Study is to develop a master plan for significant repairs, upgrades, system replacements and/or improvements to McCoy Stadium and the surrounding area. The State of Rhode Island has regularly financed capital improvements to McCoy Stadium.” This comes more than a year after the late Jim Skeffington and Lucchino told the public a study had already been done and found that renovations for McCoy were too costly.

At a moment when bankruptcy is being floated in regards to the capital city, school buildings are in abject shambles, the birthing unit of a Pawtucket hospital is due to be closed, and unemployment and under-employment still high, Pawtucket Mayor Donald Grebien and state leaders are seriously considering this in two different instances. Murphy has read through the bid solicitation document for the PawSox and remains unimpressed.

“You can’t buy it with capitalism and pay for it with socialism, it doesn’t work that way,” he said. “If the state owns a piece of it and it looks like a good deal, then it’s worth considering. Other than that, no. To make rich people richer? No way! Neither one of those facilities is life-essential, like a hospital or a police-fire station combination or something to that effect. This is just a stadium and its just a building and they’re not going to make anyone any richer except for the people who own them.”

Click the Player Below to Listen to More of This Interview!

Is there any indication that Lucchino has any interest in keeping the team in Pawtucket for at least the next 25 years? “Oh God no. They’re shopping around, they’re holding their cards close to the vest. I think this whole song and dance they’re doing now with they’re supposedly rebuilding the trust and all that crap? They’re not looking to do that. They’re looking at the fans that go to a certain amount of games every year, and you can count on them like clockwork, they’re not bothering with them, just like they didn’t bother with us last year. They assume we’ll keep coming and if we don’t we’ll be replaced with the new hipster-type fans.”

Murphy’s years of going to the PawSox games have helped him learn about the neighborhood surrounding McCoy intimately. “I think their only investment in the community surrounding McCoy Stadium would be to level it and to build it into something that they want. That’s about it. If you recall when we were putting up with those dog-and-pony shows last summer, [team president Charles] Steinberg never really had anything good to say about the neighborhood around McCoy, he saw that as a negative, almost like it was a ghetto or a slum or something. It’s a lot of three-decker houses that were very well-kept and that’s a very clean neighborhood. Walk around it sometime! It’s a very clean neighborhood. But that whole neighborhood is going to get the kiss of death if Lucchino and his boys get their way.”

What is Lucchino like in comparison to late owner Ben Mondor? “Ben Mondor brought almost like a warmth, a trust, a friendship, a guy that you would sit down with and have a beer, even though his social and financial stature is way different than your own. He was a good guy. That’s the way he was looked at and people supported what he wanted to do because he never wanted to bring that stadium above the people who went there. He wanted to keep the team in Pawtucket, he wanted to keep the games being played there, he wanted to stay in that stadium if at all possible. He was your typical Rhode Islander, even though I believe he was from Canada originally,” he says.

“Lucchino, his history has been just build a stadium and flip it or rebuild a stadium and flip it. He’s not a baseball man, he’s a businessman and the same thing with his whole crew with him, his yes-men.”

“I don’t think they are above moving [the team] right when [construction] is starting to happen. It’s strictly business.”

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.”

While the neighborhoods surrounding McCoy are not glamorous, they are authentic places and these are the types of stadiums that helped baseball grow into being the sport it is today. Baseball grew to the chosen American pastime in the neighborhoods across America, just like Pawtucket. Our Textile Mill Leagues here in Blackstone Valley provided a work diversion, and entertainment with their baseball teams and that helped the professional teams grow. From these neighborhood fields Rhode Island sent players like Nap LaJoie to the National Baseball Hall of Fame. The roots of great baseball came from McCoy. These roots are what we need to build upon at McCoy.

The announcement of the move was not well received. The community was outraged, upset and created an organized resistance to the team moving. Rallies were held and the fans spoke up and out. Pawtucket’s Mayor, Don Grebien, took on the “up-hill battle” of fighting to keep the team in Pawtucket. The team’s effort to move has drastically changed. For the near future, the team is staying.

Last week, at a lunch at McCoy’s Clubhouse, Pawtucket Red Sox Chairman Larry Lucchino, Team President Dr. Charles Steinberg and General Manager Dan Rea addressed the community in a way that went beyond professional. It was heartfelt, meaningful and seemed to impact positively everyone in the room.   The late owner Ben Mondor and then President Mike Tamburro, now vice chairman, built the team with an amazing spirit that was not just corporate – it was heartfelt and community-driven. We have that spirit back at McCoy Stadium.

Our hearts were broken when the new owners fought so hard to leave Pawtucket. The community was not without blame. We could have done more to help create the “Destination Ballpark” they seek and deserve. It can be done in Pawtucket. We have time on our side and work to do. Economic Feasibility and Design Site Feasibility studies have to be completed.

The new team leadership, and the administrative support they have assembled, is working hard to regain the trust, friendship and support developed by the late Ben Mondor.

The community needs to support the work of our Pawtucket city officials and the new Pawtucket Red Sox ownership, if we are to keep the Pawtucket Red Sox at McCoy. Let’s begin to grow back the attendance, the business support and the high community morale the team gave us. Go Pawtucket Red Sox! Welcome to Pawtucket and Rhode Island Mr. Lucchino! This will be a great year.

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.

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.

David Norton, one of those most responsible for preventing the new owners of the Pawtucket Red Sox from moving to a proposed new stadium in Providence, has announced his intention to run for the District 60 House seat against incumbent Democrat David Coughlin.

“Today, I announce my candidacy for State Representative of District 60 Pawtucket,” said Norton in a statement, “I have many reasons for running for State Representative. My primary reason is the way in which Pawtucket was insulted and ignored by Rhode Island House Leadership during the PawSox fiasco.”

According to Norton, Rep. Coughlin, “has a total of $26 dollars in his campaign account. He has not held a fundraiser in years. He doesn’t attend events in Pawtucket. He has no presence and is not known by his own constituents in the community of District 60 Pawtucket.”

Norton went on to say,

“David Coughlin, essentially, was handed District 60’s seat by Rhode Island House Leadership. Let me be very clear on one point, the Rhode Island Speaker of the House Nicholas Mattiello, not David Coughlin, is in control of District 60’s seat, as is the case in so many other House Districts in Rhode Island.

“In the 2014 election, David Coughlin ran UNOPPOSED for House District 60’s seat, and was given a favored position on the powerful House Judiciary Committee as a freshman legislator, which is likely the reason that he votes as Speaker Mattiello tells him (as so many other Rhode Island legislators are forced to.) I would like to make clear, again, that this is the case in many other House Districts in Rhode Island.

“In reality, I will not be running against David Coughlin, because David Coughlin hasn’t got the resources, organization or independent leadership to run against me. The unfortunate reality is that I will be running against Speaker Nicolas Mattiello and the State political machine. Like so many other seats in the Rhode Island House of Representatives, the Speaker owns District 60’s seat by way of doling out favors in the form of legislative grants and favored committee positions, as is the case in District 60.

“The only way Speaker Mattiello can keep District 60’s seat as his own is to pour money into my opponent’s campaign. The only way the Speaker can hold District 60’s seat is to send an army of anti-McCoy Stadium door knockers or other House Leadership Members to invade Pawtucket to win this race for David Coughlin.

“I like David Coughlin. He is a nice guy, as far as I know. This isn’t personal: this is political. Politics is a fight. I am a fighter. I want the people of District 60 to have an independent voice at the Rhode Island State House. I want to be that voice.”

In a recent article for the Providence Journal, Steinberg, whose training as a dentist just screams professional sports business acumen, said he wants to see ‘passion again’ in Pawtucket. Yet only four months ago he and the other two, along with Cyd ‘Vicious’ McKenna, were publicly insulting and antagonizing the very community they now claim they want to nurture.

Meanwhile, Jorge Elorza and Gina Raimondo continue to jump back and forth between appealing to the vast majority of sanely cynical citizens, who see this as a bail-out for a business model Lucchino’s type likes to impose on America’s past time, not to mention a Baltimore-styled gentrification move for Providence, and appeasing big-name Democratic Party donors who are getting cranky over not getting their way. The great political writer Paul Street has coined the phrase ‘Dismal Dollar Drenched Democrats’, one that is totally fitting herein.

If we look at the new leadership, we see a group of individuals who are more dedicated to the bottom line than the community. Steinberg is a long-time hanger-on of Lucchino’s coattails, having followed him to San Diego, Baltimore, and Boston, where they left less-than-desirable legacies. Rea is a year younger than me and does not remember when Bill Buckner let the ball roll through his legs during the World Series while White is obviously a number-crunching middleman with no interest in sports.

Leaving aside these surface observations, there is something much more important to note. Rea is a history baccalaureate graduate of Harvard, a finishing school of neoliberal public relations, and White comes from a long career of neoliberal financial restructuring deals. This school of thought, as fantastically described by Dr. Michael Hudson in a recent CounterPunch podcast with Eric Draitser, is a get-rich-quick ideology that stuffs the pockets of the few while defenestrating the taxpayers and treasuries. It is true that urbanized stadiums are quickly becoming the norm of baseball. Yet it is also true that baseball is functioning as a major lever of gentrification. During the summertime listening tour, McKenna reused as a talking point the idea that she as a Providence resident wished she could feel safe walking along the waterfront location on the old I-195 land corridor. The underlying implication, that those darned brown people make it unsafe, is a profoundly disparaging race- and class-based remark. Her invocation of the notion that a new baseball park would promote pro-active policing is certifiable lunacy when one recognizes the negative impact such policies have on people of color. Considering how Lucchino’s previous hosts in Baltimore were not exploding into demonstrations of celebratory glee for the police department last spring, only a member of the Chicago Cubs could miss how insidious this whole thing truly is.

Anyone who has followed this story in even a passing fashion this year can plainly see how truly desperate the ownership is now. Without any psychic abilities, it seems like they are ruing the day the late James Skeffington talked them into this because he thought he could pull a fast one and get his way due to the fact he had long-time connections going back to when his buddy Gov. J. Joseph Garrahy handed him a sweetheart real estate attorney deal. If one refers back to the original pitch at the Rhode Island Commerce Corporation he made with Lucchino, he looked genuinely stunned that people reacted in such a fashion to what he thought was an open-and-shut hustle. Now that Skeffington has passed on, the team is being led by a bunch of non-Rhode Islanders, which means they have absolutely zero connections and are left with a franchise whose reputation they destroyed and that they thought they could flip at a profit within five years. Why exactly are Rhode Island tax payers supposed to aid and abet such a scam?

At this point, with Lucchino threatening to pack up and leave town unless we pay his bills, I would offer a simple single word: SEYA!

“The intent of the filing is to compel the City Council to bring the stadium issue to a public referendum,” said the press release, “and allow the voters of Providence to determine its outcome.”

Sam Bell, president of the Stop the Stadium Deal group, said more than 1,500 signatures were collected. He said 1,000 are needed to compel the City Council to consider a specific ordinance.

“If the Council doesn’t pass the ordinance unamended by that point, we will be able to force it onto the ballot by gathering signatures from five percent of Providence voters,” Bell said. “However, given the strong public pressure, we are confident this won’t be necessary.”

The ordinance would forbid a “stadium” or “athletic facility” on the PawSox preferred parcel, and would mandate to all new stadiums to “pay property tax at the full commercial rate” and that “No public money from the City of Providence shall be used directly or indirectly to subsidize or otherwise provide any financial benefit to any new stadium.”

Said Bell, “For years, wealthy owners of professional sports teams throughout the country have been using public monies to increase the value of their private investments. The voters in Providence want the opportunity to express a resounding ‘NO’ to such an irresponsible use of public monies.”

…but the pressure needs to be kept on.

In a rally at the corner of Hope St and Doyle Avenue in Providence, 25 people turned out over the course of two hours to hold signs in an event that was described as not “a protest of any kind, just outreach the public!”

At least three anti-stadium groups, from a variety of political perspectives, were represented at the rally, spurring organizer David Norton to exclaim on Twitter, “Unite the Clans!!!”

A similar rally held last week had just five participants. Organizers hope for even more participation next Tuesday at 4:30. They see signs that Governor Gina Raimondo‘s position on the stadium is evolving, and at least one of the signs echoed a new talking point out of her office, “Take a fresh look at Pawtucket.”

“This effort goes beyond baseball,” said Tim Empkie. “It’s not about just one stadium. It’s about the use of public money for the public good.”

Despite what appears to be recent victories for stadium opponents in the form of RI Speaker of the House Nicholas Mattiello‘s admission that a deal with Brown University and the City of Providence seems unlikely, organizers Tim Empkie, Sharon Steele and David Norton all feel that the pressure needs to be kept on.

Murray Scott says that the video made today will be premiered in a couple of weeks on the Motif Magazine and GoLocal Prov news sites. In the meantime, below is a preview.