Stop me if you heard this one before. Artist rendering of the Cincinnati soccer stadium Major league soccer promoters have proposed building a 30,000-seat stadium in Cincinnati, Ohio’s West End neighborhood a multi-ethnic working-class community that’s already feeling the pressure of gentrification. The promoters want to build the stadium on the site of a high school athletic field.  The soccer folks insist that the stadium will bring new economic opportunities to West End and they promise that no one will be displaced. Sounds a lot like the promise the Orlando Lions and City Hall made to Orlando’s Parramore community. How are those new soccer stadium jobs in Parramore coming along? Many residents in Cincinnati’s West End are understandably skeptical of those promises and they have been pushing back.  About two weeks ago, the public was told that the proposal was dead.  Click here  to see a video showing the West End community’s strong resis...

The folks at Orlando City Soccer Club need to learn how to spell and get their facts right. There are two glaring errors on a large metal-etched plaque installed on the exterior of   Orlando City Stadium in Parramore where the stadium was plopped down. Notwithstanding the lingering controversy about the gentrification of the historically black Parramore community, the plaque – on the east side of the stadium where the new farmers market is held Saturdays – needs to be fixed. Mistakes in this plaque One of the people honored on the plaque is the late Norris Woolfork , one of Orlando’s first black lawyers. In 1962 Woolfork successfully sued the Orange County school board to integrate the local schools. Unfortunately, on the plaque, Woolfork’s name is misspelled with a “d” in place of the “l”. (How would you feel if your relative’s name was misspelled? Doesn’t anybody check this stuff?) The plaque also includes an image of the Callahan Center but identifies i...