Stadium Stompers Begin Journey at The Bell Tower, Continue to City Hall

WRITTEN BY: SIENA SOHN

This past Wednesday, the Stadium Stompers hosted a protest against the building of Temple’s football stadium in North Philadelphia. Stadium Stompers is an organization made up of Temple University students and North Philadelphia residents, who have come together in opposition of the university’s stadium proposal.

This ‘Day of Action’ started at the Bell Tower at 2 p.m. where multiple guests spoke about various causes they believed to be important. Among these speakers was North Philadelphia resident Joan Bradley, who opposes the proposal because she does not want a stadium in her backyard. Like Bradley, many residents in the area are against building the stadium because it will create more noise within the neighborhood and demolish a park used by kids in an after-school program, according to the Stadium Stompers’ Facebook page.

Another protestor, Ama Seuitu, stated that, as students at Temple “we must no longer buy into the dream that Temple is selling us” arguing that “Temple University was built on stolen land.”

Alongside Bradley and Seuitu stood the Feminist Majority Leadership Alliance and Babel, a poetry-based organization on campus.

Many of the speeches given at the Bell Tower by the Stadium Stompers claimed that issues like white supremacy and gentrification are at hand if President Theobald decides to make the stadium’s proposal a reality.

Around 3 p.m., the Stadium Stompers headed toward North Broad Street and Cecil B. Moore Ave, where other organizations, like the Philadelphia Coalition for Racial, Economic, and Legal Justice, and Fight for 15, joined the cause.

As protesters began to march, a large police presence escorted the cause all the way down Broad Street to City Hall.

Although hundreds of people gathered in protest of the stadium, many Temple students remain neutral on the subject.

Graham Prestly, a freshman at the university, joined in the march to help the cause, but doesn’t “think the protests will stop Theobald. It’s going to happen, the stadium’s going to be built. It’s Theobald’s legacy.”

To get more information on future stadium protests, the Stompers hold meetings every second and fourth Thursday of the month at the Church of the Advocate on Diamond Street at 6 p.m., or visit their Facebook page.