BY JEFFREY JONES
ST. PAUL, Minnesota - "Working people need funding from the state and city for more available child care, rather than spending one penny on building a new stadium for professional baseball," said Jennifer Benton, Socialist Workers candidate for mayor of Minneapolis. Benton was invited to speak October 18 on a candidates' panel as part of the City Parents United child care congress.

Minnesota governor Arne Carlson ordered a special session of the state legislature on October 20, in an attempt to get public funding approved for building a new stadium for the professional baseball team, the Minnesota Twins. The team's owner, Carl Pohlad, has threatened to sell the baseball franchise to a businessman who would take it to North Carolina if this session fails to approve public funding for a new stadium.

Pohlad said that he can't pay for a competitive team without the increased revenues that a new stadium is estimated to bring in. He testified before a legislative committee on October 24 arguing that this required $250 million from the state and $50 million from the city of Minneapolis and Hennepin County, where the new stadium would be built. The Twins currently share revenues from the Metrodome stadium in Minneapolis, opened in 1982, with the Vikings football team.

The owners of professional teams in many other cities across the United States are similarly pushing for new sports arenas, built with public funds. They are driven by the same thirst to cash in on new revenue sources - more ticket sales, concessions, and merchandising, luxury corporate suites, and rights to name the stadium.

Minnesota legislators face opposition to public funding for a new stadium, as expressed in several polls. In response, legislators have floated a wide variety of funding schemes. By emphasizing state revenues derived from the state lottery or proposals to expand gambling under state control, some legislators have claimed this would mean no actual taxes would be involved.

"State-sponsored gambling, whether it's lottery tickets or state-run casinos, still amounts to taxation and it primarily falls on the working class," explained Benton, in a subsequent interview. "My campaign calls for an end to all taxation on the working class and exploited producers. I am also opposed to the attempts to infringe on the sovereignty of Native American nations in Minnesota by the state demanding a share of profits from gambling on Indian lands in return for not opening casinos in direct competition."

Benton also stated her opposition to a professional, profit- driven sports system. By putting the talents of athletes into a market of contracts where they are bought, sold, and traded, the human value of their training and efforts are distorted and debased. Many working people are justly repelled by the frenzied profit taking of the owners and the large contract payoffs to some individual athletes, with additional millions of dollars to participate in the huckstering of capitalist products.

Benton pointed to how differently sporting events are organized in socialist Cuba, where profit-making has been removed from athletics. With the 1959 revolution there, athletic education and amateur sports was opened widely to workers and peasants. Today, Cuban athletes rank among the best in the world.

Another example of the difficulty in winning support for public funding of a new stadium for baseball comes from a proposed city charter amendment on the November 4 ballot in Minneapolis. This amendment would require approval in a city referendum for any city expenditure of more than $10 million on a new or renovated stadium.

The president of the downtown business association opposes this amendment on the grounds that it could force the selection of another city in Minnesota for the site of the proposed stadium or block it altogether. Minneapolis mayor Sharon Sayles- Belton has said she doesn't like policy making by referendum, but has avoided coming out specifically against the amendment. Her Republican-endorsed opponent in the election, Barbara Carlson, sensed an opportunity and reversed her initial position opposing the amendment.

The Minnesota 1997 Socialist Workers Campaign called for a No vote on this proposed amendment. Benton explained that this referendum "places the question in the wrong framework of accepting that some city money - up to $10 million - will be spent. Rather than $10 million or 10 cents being given away for a new opportunity to make profits, we should demand a massive program of building and repairing public infrastructure and expanding public libraries, parks, and athletic facilities."

Jeff Jones is a member of the International Association of Machinists, Local 1833.  
 
 
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