"Billy,
I understand that you're upset with my comments and wanted to personally talk through this with you.
I respect your stance against the GPAC and in support of other issues. In just searching your email address, I quickly saw that you're passionate about a number of great causes. There's a great deal of corruption in politics and you are not afraid to call people out for impropriety.
I recognize your concerns of being used by the wealthy. I grew up in a lower middle class family. My father did not go to college. My mother stayed home to raise me and my two sisters. We had very little. My parents wanted more for my life, and they stressed the importance of an education. I was fortunate to be a decent athlete and therefore able to fit in with folks that had far more. Some accepted me, some didn't. I enjoyed being around people that had more because it gave me something to aspire to, but I also was able to differentiate between the people that were friends and those that would slit my wrist for a nickel. The possibility of being chewed up and spit out is not something I ignore.
I worked hard throughout my life to gain an education and paid my own way through law school in order to even the playing field. By the grace of God, I was able to get through school and have an opportunity to make something of my life. Most of my childhood neighbors and friends weren't so lucky. Many of the causes that you support are special to me because I know how hard it is for poor people to get out of poverty.
I do not agree with you on the Performing Arts Center because I believe the impact will provide a trickle down effect for the community. I care greatly and give the majority of my free time to local non-profits including Urban Ministry, the Salvation Army, Boy's & Girls Club, Victory Junction Camp, FaithAction International and others. I recognize there are far greater needs, but also recognize the long term impact could be a game changer.
The most important thing in the city is creating jobs and I think having a downtown PAC will make companies look harder at this area. I don't know this for certain, but it's easier for me to support the risk with $35 million invested from private funding.
In the near future, I hope to explore the possibility of bringing a culinary school to downtown. I am not putting any money into nor receiving any benefit for this, but it's my hope that we can create a great downtown food culture that will lead to more companies coming to Greensboro and creating jobs. That's where my passion lies.
I never meant to offend you with my comments. I hope that after this email you can appreciate that we have the same goals, just two different ways of getting there.
Sincerely,
Roland Trout"
My reply:
"But you had to lie to do it. That tells me all I need to know about Roland Trout: http://greensboroperformingarts.blogspot.com/2014/01/rolland-trout-gpacs-newest-shill.html"
How quickly, once they enter the world of the elite, they leave behind what is real and play in the imaginary world of do gooder society volunteering their time to help with the problems created by their own actions. Urban Ministry, the Salvation Army, Boy's & Girls Club, Victory Junction Camp, FaithAction International... those and more would not be necessary if the elites would stop robbing from the poor and pitching their trickle down bullshit that neither modern day conservatives nor liberals would dare suggest actually works. It is only the elites of both sides who keep pitching trickle down while they keep the working classes divided with smoke and mirror issues.
And a culinary school to downtown? Mr Trout displays his obvious ignorance or indifference to all things Greensboro to even suggest such a thing. As I've written many times before: the issue is that Greensboro has been through not 1, not 2 but 3 rounds of downtown renovation at taxpayers' expense in my lifetime with the end result of each round of downtown renovation being the need for another round of downtown renovation. Google Albert Einstein's definition of insanity, Mr Trout.
Besides, the culinary school at Guilford Tech is already turning out more graduates than can be placed in jobs, we need manufacturing, not culinary schools and training to wait hand and foot on the elites for minimum wage. You talk about knowing how hard it is to get out of poverty but you ignore the fact that the kinds of jobs you're promoting keep people poor. Sure, a top chef makes a good living but most culinary school graduates are lucky to do better than find jobs flipping hamburgers. And for evey 1 chef there's a dozen or more low paid waiters, waitresses and dishwashers.
GPAC marks the beginning of Greensboro's 4th round of downtown renovation and the end result will be the same. You think I'm passionate, Mr Trout? Passionate doesn't even begin to describe. Read this passage from the City of Greensboro website:
"This lively community began to wind down in the late 1950s and 1960s when, under the guise of "urban renewal," thousands of people and more than 80 businesses (many minority-owned) were displaced. Most of those businesses never reestablished."
That was and is my neighborhood, Mr Trout. That was round 1 of Greensboro's downtown renovation: bulldoze the Bessemer Community's main economic district just 2 years after annexation and destroy the most economically viable community in the entire Piedmont Triad region of North Carolina so that downtown Greensboro would have no competition. And still the morons running Greensboro were too stupid to keep downtown afloat.
Those are the people whose sons and grandsons you're getting into bed with now Mr Trout. Think about it. You're damned right I have concerns about being used by the wealthy. Greensboro's wealthy made me what I am today. And now you and they have to live with me.
We were promised our neighborhoods would be next, before downtown. The voters voted, bonds were approved but Greensboro's elites balked and the Greensboro City Council never released the bonds so nothing was ever done about our neighborhoods, Mr Trout. Then your spoiled-athletic-scolarship-college-boy-ass has the audacity to come to Greensboro and tell us what you think is best for Greensboro when you've only lived here for 6 months? Go hang out with Pedro at South Of The Border or go back to the Low Country and skin cat fish for all I care, you don't know shit about it.
Yes, I'm sure Mr Trout was hoping I would keep his e-mail private and he could work out some form of damage control but damage control just ain't my style. You jump into the fray you get skint up.
