"I Can't Believe We're Still Here." | Bill Donabedian
From the desk of Bill Donabedian who discusses recent mandate announcements and the state of small businesses in Cincinnati.
Photo of Bill Donabedian during the 2020 Bunbury Music Festival kickoff event at Woodward Theater, later cancelled. Provided by Twin Spire Photography.
An interview with Bill Donabedian, President of ESK Presents, LLC.
Bill, I know you have been vocal on this in the past, can you tell me what you are thinking today after yesterday’s announcements?
Bill: I can’t believe we are still here. You can’t centrally plan things. Look historically at any centrally planned economy, it fails. The shame that has been placed on anyone to speak their opinion on this has been disappointing. My opinion is not and has never been that I want or I am “okay” with people dying unnecessarily and yet I have had people tell me point blank that they hope I get it and die. My take was always that overreach was occurring which I still believe is true and that the air we breathe is being cut off in order to “save us.”
Expand on that, I would assume this is in reference to the profit vs. people discussion?
Bill: Exactly. We are seeing so many small businesses being choked and dying under these regulations and outcries on social media by local restaurants and I empathize with them. As someone who works within the event industry we dealt with the cancellation of practically all of our events this year. Brandemonium was one of the few we did and it went from being about experiential, engaging marketing and networking for industry professionals in 2019 to a completely online streaming model this year. My point being, I do not understand why profit and people are not synonymous as it pertains to businesses in 2020. Businesses and the employees they hire cannot live without turning a reasonable profit. Money has value because it represents production within our economy, if there is nothing to buy it doesn’t mean anything.
You’ve spoken publicly against shutdowns/mandates as a means of response to this, so I guess I would ask what you feel is a more appropriate response?
Bill: The response to any external factor facing the world at large and business in the private sector traditionally has been something the business has had to own for themselves. Currently, we are not being encouraged to own our own solutions but rather to wait for direction from those in a political position. I don’t know why we are acting like this and from a pure data standpoint the response has been unsubstantiated. The removal of our liberty to make these decisions for ourselves can be far-reaching and far more dangerous in my opinion. We want to work and we want to resolve these concerns by listening to the community, the science that is discovered and by our consumers, but we are not being given the opportunity to do that. I personally would rather have 50 million people working together on these solutions and responses. As politicized as this topic has become I am not taking a political position on this, I am simply stating that liberty is not optional.
Regardless, I imagine this raises a lot of doubt about the event landscape in 2021, what do you believe that will look like?
Bill: I think you will be hearing about next year’s events soon due to budget discussions but the events themselves likely won’t happen until the fall.
