By all accounts, those associated with the new stadium and the Westside view their presence as at least a 10-20 year commitment toward revitalizing a downtrodden community and bringing the city together. We Present You Trumps Deposition, More or Less Verbatim. Arthur Blank talks sensible gun reform. More must be done to bring people together through meaningful change. Atlanta Falcons employees are most likely to be members of the Republican Party. I mean, I was stuttering when I was senior class president, [and in] student government. Dr. Sanjay Gupta speaks with businessman Arthur Blank about gun regulation and philanthropy. Atlanta Falcons owner Arthur Blank is married to Angela Macuga, his third wife. Sadly, sometimes these young men and women get involved in that cycle and they never get out of it. 15, Two of Blanks children, Dena Kimball and Kenny Blank, sit on the board of directors of the Arthur M. Blank Family Foundation. GPB is committedto bringing you comprehensive news coverage from Georgia, across the country and around the world. /Width 625 Georgia Public Radio GPTV, a 2019 Report from the EJI documents more than 4440 racial terror lynchings in the U.S. between 1877 and 1950], National Center for Civil and Human Rights, Political Rewind: Theater critic Jesse Green remembers Mary Rodgers in 'Shy', Longtime nature writer Janisse Ray delivers gripping debut novel, At new season kickoff, Atlanta United looks for fresh start on the field. Blank retired from the company in 2001 as co-chairman. They survived. /AIS false It's good to be different, said Blank, but he said it's the intolerance of some that worries him about the future. I still remember this as if it was yesterday. The system has worked well for the multi-billionaire and co-founder of The Home Depot. If you would like to customise your choices, click 'Manage privacy settings'. A company where we already know from law suits the teams executives treated its cheerleaders like Vegas escorts and, yup, traded nudie pictures of them changing outfits. Those come first. A study by ESPN and FiveThirtyEight in October 2020 showed Blank is a bipartisan contributor to political campaignsbut contributed more to Democratic candidates from 2012 to 2020. In total, they anticipate hosting each year 40 to 50 big events and an additional 100 to 200 small events in the neighboring park that will be built where the Georgia Dome currently resides. "It's not a red issue or a blue issue, it's about how you treat people, whether it be guests, fans, customers, associates, or shareholders in the case with HD," said Blank, whose Arthur M. Blank Family Foundation has granted over $800 million to help underserved people across the nation. Virginia Prescott is theGracie Award-winning host of On Second Thought for Georgia Public Broadcasting. Kemp and the law's backers said it provides some common-sense reformsto ensure elections are secure. 3 0 obj My suspicion is that while Dungy and Tirico and dozens if not hundreds of other NFL leaders may have been surprised by Grudens racist imagery, they arent as unfamiliar with his other boys club stupidity. You know, dig in [your] heels and it becomes, "My territory, your territory," etc. Blank also contributed $28,500 to the Obama Victory Fund in 2008. When you find common solutions that work for everybody and [are] respectful of everybody to represent the best of you. a guy regularly reviled by sportswriters, players and fans as a (very wealthy) toxic idiot. /Title ( A r t h u r b l a n k p o l i t i c s) American professional sports owners have contributed nearly $47 million in federal elections since 2015, according to research by ESPN in partnership with FiveThirtyEight, including $10 million. ", CNN -- Ted [Turner] did a great thing. Arthur Blank is an American entrepreneur and a co-owner of the home improvement retail giant The Home Depot. "I know what he cares about and he cares about a lot of the same things that I care about.". When he came out, he was on house arrest and I took a meal to him and his family from his favorite restaurant here in Atlanta. He owns the team, after all. %&'()*456789:CDEFGHIJSTUVWXYZcdefghijstuvwxyz So I think that part of that comes out of really being a good listener and responding to what you're hearing and trying to find a way to make things work for the benefit of everybody collaboratively. Marcus has been an outspoken Donald Trump devotee throughout both the 2016 and 2020 elections, donating $7 million to Trump's campaign four years ago. In that way, I don't think my personality, probably, or my patience level probably is not the level it would have to be to sustain myself in this political atmosphere today. Among Blanks diverse interests are the nationwide PGA Tour Superstore chain, three guest ranches in Montana, and a family foundation that counts millions in economic development investments on Atlantas beleaguered Westside among its $660-million outlay to date. But really, in my view, it's mostly that talking to young people about, you know, here's somebody who's been there, done it, gotten on T-shirts, lived it, and somebody whose name they respect or the least they know of, I should say, in most cases. Like many other enormous corporations the NFL, selling a slick, bristling mix of testosterone and patriotism, ducks away from anything with a whiff of political conflict. It is in effect protecting the teams owner, a guy regularly reviled by sportswriters, players and fans as a (very wealthy) toxic idiot. So in this case, we were coming back from a game after the team had played in St. Louis against the old St. Louis Rams theyre now in L.A. and instead of riding in the front of the plane with the coaches and managers, I sat in the back with the players. I'm not sure how they're going to receive you. And now their story is a page-turning novel. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed. GPB intern Eva Rothenberg contributed to this article. Falcons owner Arthur Blank made a $15 million donation on Tuesday to The Cooper Institute, run by its founder Dr. Kenneth Cooper, a friend of Blank's and a strong proponent of preventive medicine. Do it in November. Lawlessness, vandalism and intentionally upending the peace with any form of violence has never been productive and is not the answer. And I remember he told me, he said, You know, when [I went into] the prison system, they gave me three pair of underwear, three shirts, three pair slacks, three socks and one pair of shoes, and that was it. He said, That was all I was going to have, as opposed to the lifestyle he was leading before. w !1AQaq"2B #3Rbr Who knows how successful theyll be, and many residents worry that economic growth could facilitate gentrification. I mean, people were throwing tea off those boats because they were protesting, you know. So, you know, we understood that our culture had nothing to do with which party you are affiliated with. If you don't make good choices, you can end up being in really bad places. Blank is a dedicated Democratic supporter, having donated thousands to Hillary Clinton's campaign, the Bullock Victory Fund, which backs the party's 2020 candidate for Montana senator, Gov. Bernardo Little . It had to do with our set of values.". JFIF K K C There was a six-year period in there, when things went a little south. The guest. Ticket pricing was higher than it could have been or should have been at that time, and so I brought Dick Sullivan over from Home Depot, the gentleman who now runs our PGA Superstores and we came up with a strategy that we've got to sell season's tickets for $100. The Falcons owner, Arthur Blank, the co-founder of Home Depot with a net worth of $3 billion, at first glance certainly fits the bill of your standard billionaire athletic team owner. So, I think the great political leaders and the great spiritual leaders, in my view, have always, always opened up their arms and included everybody. 2, In the late 1970s, Arthur Blank was an officer at Handy Dan, a regional hardware store chain in Southern California. The Athletic reported that Blank gave $2,800 to Biden, the Democratic nominee for president, on July 1. Scott Jensens Dramatic Fall Shows Ads Still Matter. He had a gun on his lap, sitting on his right thigh. So we designed our stadium to accommodate not just for the Atlanta Falcons and National Football League football American football but soccer as well. After stepping down as CEO of Home Depot in the early 2000s, Blank's interests centered on a variety of Atlanta-based sports franchises and the Arthur M. Blank Family Foundation, a private foundation that has awarded over $560 million. We are better than this We are better than this as a country. GPBs Virginia Prescott asked Blank about some of those stories in a conversationpresented in collaboration with Marcus Jewish Community Center of Atlantas Book Festival in Your Living Room, the National JCC Literary Consortium and the Atlanta History Center. And myself, if you will, I'm at the very bottom of the pyramid as a servant leader and somebody who is there to provide leadership, but also provide whatever that needs to be done for us to be successful. Prior to the construction of the Georgia Dome they played at Atlanta-Fulton County Stadium with the Atlanta Braves, and you could see the spot where Hank Aaron surpassed Babe Ruth in home runs. We hold all the records. "I know Bernie's heart. After stepping down as CEO of Home Depot in the early 2000s, Blanks interests centered on a variety of Atlanta-based sports franchises and the Arthur M. Blank Family Foundation, a private foundation that has awarded over $560 million. And then as Dr. King wrote in his last book, which his wife published a year after he passed away. However, the Atlanta Falcons new home, Mercedes-Benz Stadium, may foster a new era of stadium construction and community engagement. Asian Americans Advancing Justice-Atlanta is the first nonprofit legal advocacy organization dedicated to protecting the civil rights of Asian Americans, Native Hawaiian, Pacific Islander (AANHPI) and Arab, Middle Eastern, Muslim, and South Asian (AMEMSA) communities in Georgia and the Southeast. But tell me what I can do to help? And they said, Well, you know, the reality is about 40% of our stadium is empty. And I love him. 5 Other Blank family businesses include the nationwide PGA TOUR Superstore as well as a handful of ranches across the country. So you take your time, you get the words out and people will listen to you. So I think that from those days in college where I raised my hand and I know my buddies around the class would think, Oh, boy, here goes another 5-minute answer, you know? Theres a revelation of Blank stumbling dazedly into a parking lot after being abruptly forced out of Home Depot in 2001, and his devastation after the Falcons epic 2017 loss in the Super Bowl. [/Pattern /DeviceRGB] (To his enormous credit, Leibovich burned up all the access his name and the Times brand afforded him to tell a story the average sports writer only dares hint at.) Blank allowed the previous front office to make shortsighted moves that still are costing the. But you want your core values to be the same, ideally. Today, Blank is the Chairman of AMB Group LLC, parent company of the Atlanta Falcons and Atlanta United. Nationality: United States Executive summary: Co-Founder of Home Depot. It is time to hold mayoral offices accountable, chiefs and deputy chiefs. Since then, they have re-organized their focus areas more specifically into four groups: policy advocacy, organizing and civic engagement, impact litigation, and legal services. I think when the president [Donald Trump] in the fall of 2017 commented during his speech in Alabama about I don't want to use the words, you know what they were but he termed the players that were kneeling, in my view, in a very derogatory way. It's hard to believe. Arthur Blank co-founded the Home Depot in the late 1970s after being fired from a regional hardware store chain in Southern California. Blank told Business Insider that despite their political differences, their different leanings never got in the way of their ability to work together as partners or as friends. Over the past week, figures around the NFL have I felt and others felt that we could be successful here. But the two subsequent CEOs the gentleman there today, Craig Minear, the CEO and president Ted Decker both live the culture.