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Help us appeal to Mayor Bing
Host: Andy and Emily Linn
Type: Causes - Protest
Date: Monday, June 8, 2009
Time: 8:30am - 10:00am
Location: Jefferson and Woodward in front of the Spirit of Detroit
Street: Jefferson and Woodward
Please note -- Rally is in front of the Spirit of D -- not in the Courthouse!!
Bring signs if ya got 'em.
I'd bring a sign if I was there, but it would say, "Tear 'er down!"
It's a lost cause now. I'm just hoping we can save the field itself as a park.
"It's a lost cause now. I'm just hoping we can save the field itself as a park."
Too bad, Dave Bing's and Geo. Jackson's vision for Detroit doesn't include these kind of sentiments. There's history to be bulldozed and parking lots to be built.
To butcher a quote from Ernie Harwell, "And they stood there like the abandoned house by the side of the road and watched the stadium being torn down". Keep on fighting the good fight. Your hearts are in the right place.
Hey, Andy Linn. I saw you on Fox 2 tonight. I commend you for trying. I can see The Corner from my desk and having it gone will hurt.
Knock it down. This is stupid.
One Detroit politician fo' $29.99 o' two fo' fif-tay!Quote:
Originally Posted by Mista Alan
Thank you Gertrude.
A lot of wonderful and dedicated people were behind this, believed in this, and worked extremely hard - for free - for years. Perhaps this is why I am most sad.
Perhaps I am most disappointed in Bing. By hiding for a week, he proved himself a coward. Not a phone call, not a public statement. A Bing transition team member, My father, Thomas Linn, called him, no answer. Carl Levin called him, no answer. Sheila Cockrel called him, no answer. Never at his office, never by the phone.
Finally, yesterday one of the conservancy members told a reporter that he would personally donate $50,000 to the City of Detroit for the demolition of dangerous abandoned homes if the Conservancy could have a 15 minute audience with Bing. No answer.
Finally he made a paltry two sentence statement and hid behind a judge.
Coward. Lost my vote. Not because I disagree with him about Tiger Stadium or because he lacks vision, but because he showed that he obviously lacks the fortitude, courage, and class to be mayor.
Slightly off topic but with regards to Bing being unresponsive, it seems like night and day compared to Cockrel. It was a relief when Cockrel took office and seemed to constantly update the public as to his plans and as to what was happening with things. His communications team was great. With Bing, it feels like the Kwame years again, backroom deals that the public hears about way too late.
I guess Bing should have said something, but in fairness to him the city has a little bigger issues on its plate with its broken school district, bankruptcy of GM and Chrysler, threat of GM moving out of the city, shrinking tax base, huge deficit, and slow rotting of Cobo. Not to mention he has to deal with a circus masquerading as a city council and you can understand why he didn't drop everything to save a half-destructed metal scrap heap that used to be a ballpark 10 years ago.
I have three simple things to say in response to this nonsense.Quote:
Originally Posted by GREENTROIT
- Being mayor of one of the largest cities in the nation means that you have juggle lots of things at one time. If Mayor Bing can't do that, he shouldn't be Mayor of Detroit. It's that simple.
- Converting Tiger Stadium into a vacant parcel of land with uncollected trash and overgrown weeds only makes those problems worse.
- Detroit needs a mayor who makes things better; not worse.
Bing's silence has been deafening.
The idea that a meeting with the mayor is based on how much money one can donate to the city is a frightful concept. Bing was smart to not agree to meet with the conservancy and my hunch is that the guy with the $50,000 offer knew it would be rejected.Quote:
Originally Posted by andylinn
Quote:
Originally Posted by daddeeo
Everyone knows that politicians are most visible during election time. Bing was invisible and absent during the campaign and he still got into office. If he wasn't willing to talk to the public when he was a candidate, he's not going to do it now. Besides, talking to people is what a political insider would do. The people wanted a political outsider and we got one. Welcome to the next 4 1/2 years.
Andy, I too was surprised by the lack of response from Bing until the last minute, and a two-line pre-written statment from his PR arm was not good enough.Quote:
Originally Posted by andylinn
While there is something to be said for having to manage this city in the midst of an econonmic depression, vying night and day to make GM stay downtown, and having the eyes of the world fixed upon you -- well needless to say I am sure Tiger Stadium was one of the last things on his mind.
But if he were a visionary, he would have seen the Corner for what it could have been, a beautiful centerpiece of a rising neighborhood and an asset that no other city has.
With that said, I do not think Cockerel would have pushed for a different outcome to this debacle. He might have been more open to fielding the OTSC's concerns & plans, but he was quoted as saying that it was "time to let this go". The stadium was coming down no matter what. Michigan Central Station & the Lafayette should be the real fight now -- and we should also begin ramping efforts to protect the Book Tower when calls for its demolition most assuredly come.