On my backyard farm I have a small flock of chickens and 1 feral kitten. All of them fear me not because of what I've done but because of what they think I could do. None of them want to be touched by me even though I've never hurt any of them or their kind. And yet every time I open the gate they all come running to me as fast as their little legs and wings will carry them. Why? Because without me they would all die.
Greensboro's GPACers (Greensboro Performing Arts Center supporters) are scared of me and my kind as well. The difference is: they're too self absorbed to realized they too would die without me and my kind. Without me and my kind to do the real work required to run a city and everything in it the GPACers couldn't survive on their own. Don't believe me, GPACers? Repair your own car when it breaks, patch the broken asphalt on your street, fix the roof on your house when it leaks, figure out how to turn the electricity back own when the power goes out, clean the crap out of a stopped up sewer drain or drive the tractor-trailer filled with groceries from Texas or California to Greensboro. Can you use a chain saw to cut the fallen trees from off your roof after a winter storm without cutting off an arm or a leg? Like most of my kind I can do all of those things and thousands more. GPACers? You can't survive without us. And before you tell me I can't do your jobs-- I can and I have. I have both owned and managed businesses for myself and others. Me and my kind do quite well left to our own devices, you only get in the way.
We can and do survive without you. We do so every day. As a matter of fact, me and my kind would be better off if your kind were gone from this world forever. You see, here in Greensboro, you and your kind have a long history of taking from Greensboro's working class-- my kind-- to keep your kind fat and happy. On three occasions in my lifetime, downtown Greensboro has been renovated at taxpayers expense while downtown business owners shout, "Support our Downtown!" but nothing ever came back to our neighborhoods. You see, unbeknownst to downtown business owners until recently, your kind was running off with our share leaving us with noting we could support Downtown with. And unbeknownst to us until recently, most of our downtown business owners weren't in on the scam you and your kind were pulling.
You like to point to the success of DPAC (Durham's performing arts center) but none of you ever bother to mention that Durham's working class neighborhoods are worse off than they have ever been. You don't mention that because you GPACers would gladly do the same to Greensboro's working class neighborhoods.
I tried to warn you. I thought that by bringing attention to the plight of my own neighborhood and other neighborhoods like mine-- a plight caused by you and your kind-- that you might understand what's important, what's a priority and what isn't but you GPACers are either so stupid that it went right over your heads or you really don't give a damn about anything other than yourselves. I mean seriously, did you really believe I wanted a performing arts center next door to my house disturbing my rooster and scaring my hens out of laying? Keeping me up past my bed time... And the poor, poor kitten, already scared of people...
So now with $300,000 of taxpayer dollars wasted and less that 1% of the population of the City of Greensboro behind you, you now want to pull yet another scam under the name of economic development and push City Council to ram GPAC down our throats when to date, nothing you have done has worked. Oh sure you'll point to a ballpark but how many business are clustered around the ballpark that weren't there already? And the biggest business that was there is gone. Yes, you'll talk about a downtown greenway but how can you claim credit for a project that isn't finished and has yet to add 1 job or business? And a privately owned park that the taxpayers pay to maintain and pays no property tax on the most valuable piece of real estate in the entire City of Greensboro? Count the businesses that were pushed out to build it and the businesses that came here because of the park and the result is a net loss in downtown businesses and City tax revenue. Fact is: while you claim your successes it was really none of your doing. People launched businesses in downtown Greensboro because they believed it was the right time and place to do so, not because you were there. But your kind got fat and happy, didn't you?
And now you want to sell us on a performing arts center and another private park that will push out existing businesses and the dirty little secret you were hoping no one would catch... stamp out political free speech downtown? Or were you so self absorbed you never knew there could be an issue as big as the right to free speech involved? And accuse the best on our Council of having a lack of leadership? Go the hell on back to Durham. Let Winston-Salem build anything Winston-Salem wants to build. We know your kind, we know who you are and if we have to we'll starve you out for we really would be better off without you and your kind.
If you and your kind would just go away I could go back to writing and performing poetry and music. You see, while most of you GPACers remain clueless and know me as Billy Jones, your friendly freelance neighborhood Tyrannicide, over 20 Million people around the world already know me as Billy, the Blogging Poet, making me probably Greensboro's most widely known living poet even if I am a hack.
You know, the funny thing is, had you just come to me at the beginning of my anti-GPAC battle and addressed the problems in my neighborhood alone I would have quickly gotten behind you. Morons, the lot of you. GPACers, that is.
