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“Up With the Community, Down with the Stadium”


Stadium Stompers Among Several Groups Protesting Through North Philly, Center City In “Day of Action.”

On April 14th, around 2 PM, chants of “Up with the community, down with the stadium” and “Like a bad neighbor, Temple is there” could be heard ringing throughout Temple University’s campus. The “Day of Action” – spearheaded by the Stadium Stompers, Fight for 15 and the Philly Coalition for REAL Justice – had begun.

The Stadium Stompers organized a mass walk-out from classes for Temple students and faculty to protest the stadium proposed to be built at the site of Geasey Field on North 15th Street. A group of about 100 people gathered at the Bell Tower on Polett Walk.

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“It’s always been Temple versus the community. It’s never been Temple and the community,” Philip Gregory, a Stadium Stompers leader and Temple student told Spirit News at the protest. “I’ve talked to residents that have been here for 60 years. They said ‘We have never partnered with students before to actually see a change.’ This here can go down in history.”

Despite continuous opposition by students and community members over the past few months, university officials have continued with their plans for the stadium. Moody Nolan, an Ohio-based architecture firm, was recently appointed to design the stadium as part of preliminary plans the Board of Trustees approved $1 million of funds for at a meeting in February.

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In an effort to understand the community’s concerns about the stadium, representatives from Moody Nolan have met with some local residents, like Joan Briley who lives on the 1500 block of Norris Street, which is across the street from where the stadium may be built.

Briley was also one of four Temple-area block captains who travelled to New Orleans last November to see Tulane University’s 30,000-seat Yulman Stadium. Reports have stated that the proposed Temple stadium would be similar in size and style to Tulane’s. At the Bell Tower in the center of campus, Briley told the crowd she was unimpressed with what she saw.

“It’s right in their backyard and this stadium is going to be right in my backyard,” Briley later told Spirit News. “I was born and raised in that house and I don’t want to open up my door and see a gigantic stadium first thing in the morning.”

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The rally at the Bell Tower continued as members of several student organizations, like the Feminist Majority Leadership Alliance and Temple Socialists, spoke about the injustice of Temple building a stadium and the importance of unity amongst multiple movements.

The group moved to the corner of Cecil B. Moore and Broad Street around 3 PM to meet with a group of Fight for 15 protestors. Four drummers also joined the protest, adding tempo and rhythm to the cacophonous chanting that filled the North Broad Street corridor as the group of about 150 people moved toward City Hall.

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At a Stadium Stompers meeting two weeks before the “Day of Action,” leaders of the organization said the march down Broad Street would be championing three main causes — opposition of the stadium, increasing the minimum wage to $15, and ending the stop and frisk policy in Philadelphia.

“The issues of the minimum wage and the stadium are totally interconnected,” said Holly Trnka, a Temple student who supports Fight for 15 and the Stadium Stompers. “If Temple were to build the stadium, the workers would not be paid a fair wage of $15. It would be poverty… All of this [tension] has been building up for decades and decades.”

Adele Quiman, a life-long Philadelphia resident currently living in Germantown, joined the march to City Hall in hopes of ending the stop and frisk policy because of racial profiling.

“We are human beings. Why do they have to keep pinpointing the black man?” Quiman said. “I got 34 grand-children and guess what, I don’t want them living in the city of Philadelphia, not like this.”

As the group moved deeper into the city, the numbers grew larger as people from across town and the region joined the march to support one of the causes, if not all.

Chief Inspector Joe Sullivan said the Philadelphia Police Department rerouted traffic around intersections to minimize the disruption of traffic and ensure the safety of the protestors.

“The First Amendment rights of people is a very important thing. We balance that against disruption and inconvenience, but the First Amendment is always going to come out on top,” he added.

He also reported no arrests or incidents for the “Day of Action” protest, although three protesters were arrested in earlier protests in Center City that morning.

“We wish all protesters were just like this group. They’re certainly getting their objective accomplished here,” Sullivan said. “It’s an example of how protestors can come out and they can cause disruption, they can make sure their point is heard by a lot of people loud and clear while at the same time obeying the law.”

One of the stops during the march was by a McDonald’s on the intersection of Broad and Girard, symbolic of the fast food workers on strike that day in hopes of raising the minimum wage.

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“We stand here today ready to fight. We stand here today ready to take on the challenge. We stand here today believing that unless we change these service jobs into well-paying jobs that can provide for our families, our children and our neighborhood, we will always be stuck in a circle of poverty,” Reverend Gregory Holston from North Philadelphia’s New Vision United Methodist Church (3259 N. Broad St.) said to the crowd on Broad and Girard.

After circling City Hall, the protestors gathered for a final rally in front of the McDonald’s on Arch Street. A crowd of about several-hundred listened as speakers from several movements spoke.

At the end of the day, Rev. Holston said the “Day of Action” was the biggest event the Stadium Stompers had accomplished all year. However, the Stadium Stompers and other organizations within the city have no plans on stopping.

“I hope that if this doesn’t work we are going to come out again next month. I hope we keep doing things,” Holston told Spirit News. “We have to make it so they can’t ignore us.”

“With all these people actually waking up and saying ‘I want to take an active role in my community’ and make it better instead of passively sitting back and saying ‘That’s how it is’ shows Philadelphia isn’t going to sit back and take it anymore,” he added.

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