Stop Crying Over Corporate Businesses
Like CVS, Target will return — the Black people murdered will not
Americans have short memories.
Perhaps it’s the super quick, cyber-reality news cycle that disappears quicker than Instagram Stories…or old SnapChat images. Perhaps it’s the overload of choices: thousands of channels, any movie or song at our fingertips, video games a-plenty. It makes the things that happened last week — no — yesterday, a far away memory.
Despite that, we’ve been hearing the old tropes — “we’re destroying our neighborhoods,” “we’re going to run out opportunity,” “it’s not helping anyone” — so on and so forth. But those tropes are from the uprisings of the mid to late 60s when family businesses dominated cities, which, once destroyed — they were done.
That was what the controversy was about when Spike Lee had the destruction of Sal’s Pizza sequence in Do The Right Thing, which, also to us, is just a memory of a movie; a movie detached from the reality of Yosuf Hawkins, Eleanor Bumpurs, and Tawana Brawley — detached from another time when it seemed that White Supremacy and racism would tear the country apart once again.
But we have short memories.
So reading people speak of tears behind watching businesses go up in flames just brings back to mind when Freddie Gray was brutally murdered in Baltimore a mere five years ago.
Supposedly in trouble with the BPD, Gray was forcibly arrested, tossed in the back of a police van, and it was claimed, he went into a coma. That arrest took place on Sunday, the 12th of April 2015 in the Gregorian calendar. A week later, Gray was dead.
A couple of days passed and the six officers in question were suspended…with pay. Folks were pissed. But they protested somewhat peacefully, perhaps with hopes that charges would be filed. They weren’t. Nor was any information given about the death. Soon, the protest became confrontational with protestors and officers clashing. After Gray’s funeral, protests turned into “looting.”
The symbol of this “looting” — a West Baltimore CVS.
The Penn-North CVS Pharmacy located at 2509 Pennsylvania was broadcast all over the world as citizens looted and then set the store ablaze. Media companies rushed in to get reaction shots and interviews with people insisting that this behavior wasn’t productive — that it would solve nothing. Debates raged over social media about what many called a senseless act.
Nonetheless, on the 1st of May, Baltimore City State’s Attorney, Marilyn Mosby brought up the officers on charges which lead to her receiving enough death threats to require increased security. Incidentally, none of the officers would face any time, all charges were dropped, and by November of 2017, they were all back to work.
The man, Raymon Carter, accused of setting that CVS ablaze wasn’t so lucky. “Ordinary citizens concerned about their neighborhood helped to catch Raymon Carter after he participated in the riot,” U.S. Attorney Rod J. Rosenstein bragged. Not only was Carter ordered to pay $500,000 in damages, ya man had to kiss his three month old daughter goodbye and do four years in prison.
And the CVS?
Less than a year later, the Penn-North CVS reopened for business…and with a larger healthy food section to boot. Because that’s how corporations do. What? You think they’re going to give up that good piece of real estate?
Let’s summarize that: Freddie Grey died for allegedly carrying a knife. Raymon Carter was convicted of arson and had to pay $500,000 in restitution as well as do four years in prison (if he’s out, he’s still under three years of probation). None of the six officers did any time and returned to work, and CVS reopened.
This is recent history. The only thing different now than before is Covid-19, the affects of which may close businesses quicker than any fire or looting. But aside from that, you can best believe that these Multi-National Corporations will be just fine. Stop crying over them. As sure as water is wet, I promise you, someone is going to pay for the looting of these businesses. And to be real, if you are more hurt about them (businesses) than you are the people who were murdered…you might be a racist. Just sayin’.
coda: That Target….the one that made me write this article…yeah. It’s open now. See what the fuck we talking about?
Although the article is short, the hyperlinks are plentiful. Don’t feel pressured to read them all as what is going on is overwhelming enough.
