Boycott over LGBT law impacts more than just the music fans
ASSOCIATED PRESS
Kery Eller, left, Stephen Willard and Stephen Eller, right, take a smoke break outside the Greensboro Coliseum Complex in Greensboro, N.C. ,where they are setting up for a trade show. The three men work as stage hands with the local union of International Alliance of Theatrical Stage Employees. Kery Eller estimates in the past two months he has lost nearly $3,000 he expected to earn working at shows that were canceled by artists protesting the state’s law limiting anti-discrimination policies for LGBT individuals.
GREENSBORO, N.C. >> Stagehand Kery Eller doesn’t own any Bruce Springsteen albums, but he would smash them if he did.
Eller says he expected to earn at least $3,000 working the sold-out Springsteen concert and other high-profile shows around the state before artists canceled the events in protest over North Carolina’s new LGBT law.
Eller and about 100 members of the local union of the International Alliance of Theatrical Stage Employees are among the many workers and businesses caught in the crossfire of the national debate over LGBT rights and feeling the economic shockwaves from the growing number of canceled shows. Hotels, restaurants, bars and even community groups who work arena concession stands say they are suffering from the boycott.
“It’s my livelihood; it’s where I make my money,” Eller said. “It’s not just hurting the entertainment industry. It’s hurting our state overall, period. And I’m not talking politically at all.”
The wide-reaching law that directs transgender people to use the public bathroom that aligns with the sex on their birth certificate was signed by Republican Gov. Pat McCrory in March. Since then, Pearl Jam, violinist Itzhak Perlman, Ringo Starr and Cirque Du Soleil have canceled. On Friday, the pop group Maroon 5 became the latest entertainer to decide to skip the state. Other acts performed but donated proceeds from their shows to groups fighting the law.
McCrory, who has sued the Justice Department over its directive allowing transgender students to use their preferred bathroom, has continued his support of the law. His campaign issued a statement Friday condemning Maroon 5’s recent cancellation, saying the artists’ boycott only hurts people of North Carolina and arena employees.
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The last-minute cancellations are disappointing to fans, but more devastating to venue staff, said promoter Gregg McCraw, owner of MaxxMusic in Charlotte.
“Springsteen fired the first shot, and he cancelled that show only two or three days before the show,” McCraw said. “That had a major impact. The venue clearly couldn’t get anything else in there.”
McCraw said the impact is likely to affect the North Carolina live music industry for months to come because artists and agents are wavering on whether to even schedule shows in North Carolina four to six months from now.
“So there will be a period, and none of us know how long this will last, before something happens in a positive way,” he said.
The Greensboro Coliseum Complex, the city’s economic powerhouse, estimated it lost $188,000 from three no-shows so far, according to Ted Oliver, chairman of the advisory board to the complex. The city sent the governor a May 12 letter asking him to reconsider his support of the law.
“When we hear that the coliseum is suffering, what that really means is the employees are suffering,” Greensboro Mayor Nancy Vaughan said. “People who work part-time to balance their budget. That affects workers in hotels, housekeeping, front desks. These are people who are dependent on every single paycheck.”
For a large event like Bruce Springsteen, the venue would have hired part-time work from 225 event staff, 60 parking staff, 30 housekeepers and about 100 stagehands, said Andrew Brown, a spokesman for the coliseum complex.
Concessions booths staffed by organizations such as the Walter Hines Page High School Band Boosters, who get a cut of the funding for their programs, were left with nothing. They can reap at least $600 a night when the shows are on, which helps them pay to dry clean uniforms and feed the marching band before away games.
Band boosters were scheduled to work both Springsteen and Cirque du Soleil, said treasurer Dan Kasper, whose son plays trumpet.
Small business owners that share Gate City Blvd with the Coliseum say it’s too early to quantify how much the cancellations have cost them, but the events are usually big business.
Badreldin Mustafa, general manager at Tito’s Pizza, said a concert night nearly doubles his business because visitors must walk by to get to the coliseum. Jesus Macias, who owns La Bamba Mexican restaurant, said servers rely on tips from those three or four major events to balance out a dwindling stream of regulars the rest of the year.
Owners of some restaurants declined to comment, saying they didn’t want to be entangled in personal and political implications. Both Time Warner Cable Arena in Charlotte and PNC Arena in Raleigh, which have lost Demi Lovato & Nick Jonas and most recently Maroon 5, declined to comment on the cancellations.
Near the Greensboro coliseum, owner and manager Ziad Fleihan of Ghassan’s, a kabob and sandwich shop with a location two blocks from the coliseum, said the potential economic effect is scary.
“We should be making laws that bring business to North Carolina rather than creating barriers keeping people away from the state. The goal of business is to make money,” he said.
He is also worried about the NCAA pulling its championship events out of the state. The coliseum and the accompanying Greensboro Aquatic Center are slated to host NCAA basketball tournament games in 2017 and NCAA swimming and diving championship games in 2018. It’s not yet clear whether the NCAA will keep the events in North Carolina.
“I think that we can continue to try to get the message out that Greensboro is an inclusive city and not to punish us,” said Vaughan, the Greensboro mayor. “It really is punishing the city when acts don’t come here and people continue to feel the brunt of that decision.”
14 responses to “Boycott over LGBT law impacts more than just the music fans”
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By the same token I wonder how Target is doing?
The North Carolina law is based on common sense which, unfortunately, is not so common anymore. If you are born with penis, use the male restroom. If you are born with a vagina, use the female restroom. It is as simple as that. If you are born as a male or female and feel like you are of the opposite sex, see a shrink. It is as simple as that. Liberals have gone mad by saying the law is unconstitutional because it discriminates against feelings or thoughts.
At the root of this is the delusion that fabricated categories are reality, and being so we have to stick with them.
“Transgender” does not exist in the real world. To be sure, there are girls who want to be NFL stars, and boys that would like to fill social roles associated with females. But the idea that there is this thing called “transgender” that has the same reality as the physical reality of gender, is delusional. It is word that has come to be associated with certain emotional and psychological states of certain individuals. And as with all such words, there is a feedback effect. Those who are like this and take the word as something real assume it is all they are. Those who are not like this, but to whom it appeals, make themselves into by deciding to live inside this category, as it gives them an identity, and in today’s world important privileges.
It is a phenomena called “identity” and it can be a source of neuroses. Even the literature promulgated by the social sciences mumbo jumbo artists recognize this, by having categories for people who have not yet “committed” i.e. have not yet transformed themselves (perhaps superficially) by adopting one of their categories.
This is part of a modern phenomena in which the real world is not what is real, it is what we have constructed in the la la land of our minds. It is attractive to clever people who are very good with words, because this is their advantage and strength. But ordinary people often know there is something wrong with this without knowing exactly what it is, and stick to their well-founded sense of reality in the face of the criticisms of the verbal elite.
You’ve struck the core of liberal/progressive political thought, that reality is what we determine/wish/believe it to be, not what it actually is, based on objective observation, fact, or history.
The liberal/progressive mind cannot contend with the simple facts of human nature, creating, instead, cults of victimhood, cultural false equivalence, and quasi-religious interpretations of the physical world. Fiction is easy, unpleasant fact is very hard. That’s why the left is so appealing and conservatism seems so cold and hard, one offers challenge and stress, the other a warm fuzzy lack of responsibility, freedom from guilt and effort. That’s why the progressive path is the likely one we’ll follow—until fiscal and cultural reality says it’s payback time, and we all know what pay back is, rhymes with “itch”.
Great comment. The law upon which the Obama administration is basing its actions against North Carolina and other states is Title IX of the Higher Education Act of 1964. It specifically prohibits discrimination in public school activities and programs based on race, religion, national origin and SEX. The operative word is SEX, of which there are only two, male and female. However, Obama and his surrogates in the DOJ have redefined sex to include transgenders, which, as you so clearly stated is delusional and not based on biology, and they have threatened to cut off federal funds to states that do not fall in line and accept Obama’s new definition of sex. It is crazy. Unfortunately, we are stuck with this insanity until one of several law suits against the Obama administration’s ruling works its way to the Supreme Court or until Congress amends Title IX to specifically define sex as male and female only.
Despite being generally conservative, my understanding is there are those individuals that despite anatomical birth, have opposite chromosomal identification, which gradually emerges with growth. If true, I would have difficulty requiring them to use bathrooms based solely on their physical appearance. Although personally I’d have no issue sharing bathrooms with women, I certainly see where women might not be comfortable doing having to do the same.
Gotta proofread…
Yes, there may be people with chromosomal differences, but it is wrong to force everyone in the country to change their ways to accommodate an infinitesimally small portion of the population.
Wonder how our Dem pols feel about this law & O’s directive to hold federal funds if public schools doesn’t OBEY his command.
I wish this whole LGBT thing would just go away; it’s like a bad dream.
Maybe Bruce Springsteen cares about the livelihoods of peons or maybe he doesn’t. In any case, the Boss probably sleeps well enough just chalking the resultant misery as mere “collateral damage.” After all, the end always justifies the means – doesn’t it?
Sorry to see that there is very little aloha in some of the comments posted here. The law in NC was a solution to a problem that didn’t exist. I feel sorry for these people and there are probably a dozen or less of them in the entire state. The law came about because the Republican governor thought it would bring out the party base in the coming elections which polls show are close. Instead, it has created a nightmare that will only go away when the Supreme Court makes a final ruling. This was never about “bathrooms”. It was always about “politics” and winning an election. Discrimination is wrong and it’s sad to see that these poor people are caught in the middle of this political game and can’t help who they are and what they believe. People in Europe are laughing at us because it is much ado about nothing. In a year, everyone will have forgotten all about it and the politicians will have found a new minority to use for their political purposes.
Cause and effect is a reasonable framework. However, you just got the facts of the cause mixed up. The NC state law came about after the liberal/progressive mayor of the city of Charlotte produced and ordinance having to do with gender identity and use of the bathroom. Had he not done that I doubt the state would have taken any action.
Sorry Winston but you are wrong again. The original Charlotte law extended many equal rights to the gay community. I believe we have such laws here in Hawaii and in most northern states on the mainland. Anyway, a minor part of that law dealt with the “bathroom” It was what the governor used to advance his political career because it worked before when that part of the law was used to reverse a law protecting gay people in Houston, Texas.
Few people today want to discriminate against gay people, African-Americans, Japanese-Americans, Catholics, Jews, etc. Each group had their turn. However, one area that people fear today is the unknown… such as someone of the opposite sex entering the other gender’s bathroom. Hence, he thought this law would benefit his political career which, unfortunately, became a fiasco for the state of North Carolina.