The Green Bay Packers: Of the People, By the People,
For the People

by Harvey J. Kaye New Deal 2.0

February 7, 2011 

http://www.newdeal20.org/2011/02/07/the-green-bay-packers-of-the-people-by-the-people-for-the-people-35149/

The Super Bowl win is a victory for the working class
fans who own the team.

You've no doubt heard that the Green Bay Packers won
the XLV Super Bowl. And you've no doubt heard that
Green Bay is the smallest city with a major sports
franchise. But have you heard - in this age of global
corporations and private greed - that the Green Bay
Packers are essentially a community- owned team, the
stockholders of which number in the tens of thousands
and receive no dividends on their stock? Moreover, we
would have it no other way!

From the beginning, the team has been a community
enterprise - and whenever the citizens of Northeast
Wisconsin have had to pitch in we have done so. In the
early days, to keep the players uniformed and happy, we
did so by passing the hat and relying on the better off
to pitch in more. On later occasions, we did so by
buying "shares" to keep the team in Green Bay and
thereby block NFL desires to move the franchise to some
bigger urban center. And about a decade ago, when we
needed to build a new stadium, we did so by taxing
ourselves a little extra.

Green Bay is a city of 100,000 with a metro area of
275,000. It's a city of meat packers, cheese makers,
and paper workers; a city of Anglo, German, Belgian,
Polish, Mexican, Hmong, and Oneidan Americans, along
with a growing African- American population; a city of
mostly Catholic and Lutheran folk but with a historic
Jewish community; a city of working people's taverns
and summer baseball and softball leagues. It sustains,
with the help of NFL salary caps and revenue- sharing
arrangements, one of the greatest sports traditions in
the nation. Indeed, the little city of Green Bay, whose
greatest divide has often seemed a matter of which side
of the north-flowing and Great Lakes feeding Fox River
you lived on, enabled Italian-American Vince Lombardi -
a man who spoke his mind, pushed his team, and loved
the game of football and those who played it - to
become America's iconic sports coach and who in turn
helped to make Green Bay nothing less than "Titletown."

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I often joke that I came to Green Bay to teach but
stayed to "back the Pack." But there's some real truth
to it. As I have written in "All that is Solid Melts
into Air" (reprinted in "Why Do Ruling Classes Fear
History?"), growing up in the New York area I was a
fanatic Dodgers fan - that is, until the owners ripped
the team out of Brooklyn and shipped it off Los
Angeles. As a consequence of which I not only became
suspicious of southern California and capitalism, but
also vowed to never root for a professional sports team
again. However, arriving in Green Bay in the late 1970s
I broke my vow. How could I help but do so? I had come
to a city where the people own the team - a city where
no corporate mogul can make off with the team to milder
and richer climes.

I lost my voice watching the game last night at
Titletown Brewing - a loss exacerbated by cheering the
fireworks that the city set off along the riverfront to
celebrate the victory and by yelling "Go Pack Go!" with
my fellow citizens. But however sore my throat is
today, I feel great about and proud of our victory.

No doubt our new Republican and Tea Party-backed
governor, Scott Walker, will declare that the win
attests to the wonders of Wisconsin, small town values,
and free enterprise. But I say it's a victory for the
working people of Green Bay who hold onto their team
dearly and democratically. Or as Abe Lincoln would have
put it: "The Green Bay Packers: of the people, by the
people, for the people."

Harvey J. Kaye is the Ben & Joyce Rosenberg Professor
of Democracy and Justice Studies at the University of
Wisconsin-Green Bay and the author of Thomas Paine and
the Promise of America. He is currently writing The
Four Freedoms and the Promise of America. Follow him on
Twitter: www.twitter.com/HarveyJKaye

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