Bridge playing race card called "ludicrous"
The Windsor Star
May 16, 2009
By Dave Battagello
The Ambassador Bridge is playing the race card in a “ludicrous” attempt to derail construction of a new border crossing, Coun. Ron Jones said Friday.
Jones said the bridge’s attempt in a U.S. lawsuit to portray Sandwich Towne as a "white majority racial community” that received preferential treatment from government border crossing planners is misguided.
“The bridge company should do their research,” Jones said. “They are on their last leg and using everything they possibly can to win. They are shuffling chairs on the Titanic.”
The bridge company’s lawsuit, filed Thursday in U.S. District Court in Washington, says race and income discrimination is behind a binational government decision to locate the next Windsor-Detroit crossing in Brighton Beach and link with the underprivileged Delray section of Detroit instead of favouring the company’s twin span proposal in Sandwich.
“For (bridge president) Dan Stamper to play the race card in west Windsor is just ludicrous,” Jones said. “Obviously he has not been in west Windsor. I invite him to walk the streets with me. It’s the most diverse community in all of Windsor, and Windsor is the fourth most diverse community in all of Canada.”
The student body of Forster High School, just a stone’s throw from Moroun’s bridge entrance, speaks 54 languages and represents an even greater number of nationalities, a school official said Friday.
“I challenge (bridge executives) to meet me any day of the week and go through Forster,” Jones said. “I want to see if they have the courage to see what diversity is about.”
Dan Stamper said Delray residents are being sacrificed in favour of neighbourhoods in Sandwich.
“I don’t know how else you can look at it and say that’s not right,” he said.
A local dentist in Sandwich said bridge owner Matty Moroun’s attempt to drag race and income into the debate shows his desperation.
“He has exhausted all the arguments and is scraping the bottom of the barrel,” said Dr. Greg Hanaka. “He is trying to pit community against community. We don’t agree with his philosophy of race and economic barrier. To pull this final card out of the deck is an act of desperation.”
Hanaka said the billionaire businessman has engaged in a blockbusting strategy in Sandwich which belies his expression of concern for neighbourhood.
“There is a sense of irony he is supposedly so concerned about Delray, yet thinks nothing about Sandwich,” Hanaka said. “He has sent his minions in to damage our town for years and now he wants to be perceived as standing up for the little guy. It’s all bogus.”
West-end businesswoman Mary Ann Cuderman said she was not surprised at the lawsuit. “What it shows to me is (Moroun) is down to his last bag of tricks,” she said. “He must be getting pretty worried to go this far.”
The bakeshop owner said any racial or social labelling of either her community or Delray is “strictly off the wall.”
Michigan state Rep. Rashida Talib (D—Detroit), who represents both Delray and the Mexicantown neighbourhood where the twin span is proposed, said a majority of Delray residents supports a new crossing in the community.
“We still have to advocate for more with (the state government) but at least there are discussions,” Talib said. “(The bridge) offered one business owner t-shirts for baseball in exchange for a letter of support. That lacks integrity. Transparency is key here.”
http://www.windsorstar.com/Life/Brid...748/story.html