Wednesday, March 07, 2018

Why Didn't They Listen To His Ideas?

Because despite not holding any community meetings until now, they know exactly what his "ideas" are: to build a football stadium in the middle of a residential neighborhood so people don't have to take a 15 minute subway ride (it's door to door) to see football games.

Sometimes you gotta yell, because it's the only way they or anybody else will hear you, and "listening to their ideas" grants legitimacy to the farce.

Protesters shut down a Temple University town hall meeting called to discuss plans for a controversial football stadium within 10 minutes of its start Tuesday.

Community members for months had asked Temple to hold a public forum to hear from residents upset about the proposal and to answer questions about what was in it for the community.

Temple planned to have president Richard Englert speak, then let architects present stadium schematics to the crowd, and end with a question-and-answer session.

Instead, the evening was taken over by those in opposition, whose frustrations drowned out any hope of dialogue.

It was a never a process in which community ideas were listened to and incorporated, and won't be now, so why pretend?