Just say "NO" to David Beckham

The land in question.

There's a "Protest David Beckham Stadium Plan" meeting Sunday morning, May 25, at Bicentennial Park at 9 am. While our county Mayor Carlos Giminez and City Mayor Tomas Regalado seem starstruck over the soccer star, the the voting taxpayers are not. The mayors want to hand over public land to sports billionaires again and the citizens are fighting back. The plan is to give the Beckham group land or rather a large slip of water downtown, right next to the American Airlines Arena. The plan is to fill in the slip, one of the last remaining accesses to water views, to allow a soccer stadium to be built.

Many feel that the land near Marlin's Stadium in Little Havana is the perfect spot for a new soccer stadium that will only be used 25 days a year, and not our precious waterfront.

The slip of water is city property and the parcel of land that is currently there that is being thrown in on the deal, is county property. FIND, the Florida Inland Navigation District spent millions of dollars recently to shore up the seawall, using taxpayer dollars. Now the whole thing is planned to be filled in to provide another stadium? Does anyone go to any of the stadiums we have now (other than the Heat games)?

Beckham and his group plan on spending their own money to build the stadium, but locals don't want it on waterfront property. The property was promised as a park to the citizens. 

Sunday's protest is being called a "breakfast." It will be a fun morning with frisbee contests, biking and other events to show the city and county mayors and others what the rea could be if turned into the long-promised park.

The main purpose of the event is to start drawing attention against the Beckham stadium creating a Wall Against our Waterfront before it goes up for vote on August 26. This should be the first of a multiple series of events to send messages to City Commissioners to stop this deal.

There is a petition against the plan called, "Stop the Proposed Building of a MLS Soccer Stadium on Biscayne Blvd at Museum Park," directed at the Mayors and District Commissioner Marc Sarnoff. You can see that and sign it here.

Beckham, who probably doesn't know any better, "is proposing to take away the park and replace it with a privately owned park hidden behind the giant cement walls of a Stadium and this is simply not logical," says the petition.  Come to think of it, Beckham probably knows exactly what he is doing, he knows how easy it is to make fools of all of us with the help of both mayors.