You’re probably right, I said that with no data to back it up, only personal experience. I grew up in a relatively large metro area in the rust belt, and our city council made up of pizza shop owners, lawyers, car salesmen, and the like gave up so much to try to attract Walmart to town. It fell through but in the process the council bulldozed a very large neighborhood for the project. The professional staff, in this case the City Manager, was strongly opposed to the project, due to future loss of local business, but the council proceeded anyway.

I would argue, though, that being short sighted about the economic health of communities does imply some level of incompetence on behalf of the local government. They could encourage new local small businesses by starting an incubator program, or offering subsidies for business with less than a certain number of employees. They can find the money to subsidize Walmart and that money isn’t ever coming back, whereas the money spent locally does.

To counter myself on that, maybe that’s only short sighted because we’re looking back and it’s obvious in retrospect. Conventional wisdom at the time Walmart was expanding so rapidly may have been, “more big business means more tax revenue means more nice things for the city.”

Edit: Sorry, I didn’t realize this was two weeks old, it feels like just a couple days ago

Very well said!

When it comes to business being driven out, it’s not even just the direct replacements to existing local business, they also draw traffic away from existing commercial centers which as the local grocery store goes out, the local restaurants, cafes, etc. close down too.

Additionally, often times the big box stores are offered huge uncentives to move in, so not only are they taking away jobs but they are also not paying local taxes and have land purchased and prepared for them to purchase at a discount.

It’s bizarre but many cities are run by folks with no real knowledge of how cities are run, so it makes sense why it happens.

Generally yes but specifically no. It takes more than that to offset the racism built into the system. Since the article was written from a US perspective I’ll talk from that point of view, but the same is true in other countries (In the UK, Black women are 3x more likely to die in childbirth than white women, a symptom of this concept there).

In the US, the system we live in is quite literally built on racism. From the founding document when compromises regarding slavery were baked into the way we vote, to our criminal system which rose from the ashes of reconstruction after our civil war, our foundation is racism. Our government is alternatingly unwilling or incapable of correcting these wrongs, so the onus is on individuals to do so.

Being a good person is the first step, but beyond that is lending a hand to dismantle the structures where we can, and many of the 100 things listed in the article. This isn’t “oh sweetie bless your heart” this is “I’ll show up and fight for you.”

I don’t have a lot on the content other than I read the article and while I don’t think I learned anything new I think it’s probably good to have reminders. This article is pretty clearly intended to be read by people who are already receptive to anti-racism and intersectionality, and this seems like a good spot to post it.

I think people get defensive when they read that headline (and don’t read any further), if they haven’t grappled with the fact the responsibility is on all of us to actively make the world less racist. Just being there isn’t enough when the system is built wrong to begin with.

I also wonder if the time for these kinds of articles has passed. Back in 2018 it was, I think, far more common to find people on the left who hadn’t grappled with race before, content to say they were color blind but open to changing their view. Today I imagine that group is much smaller, and those remaining are doing so out of ignorance, defensiveness, or explicit racism.

I use MXLinux, picked it somewhat at random when I was frustrated with windows 10 privacy settings and haven’t looked back since. I tried mint, mint cinnamon, Ubuntu, and Fedora before MX, and Fedora is the only other one I have stuck with, to use on a Surface Pro (I needed Wayland for the touchscreen).

MX has been really stable, light on resources, and has worked really well through two complete hardware upgrades. I play games on steam, some brand new some old, and I haven’t found one that I can’t play yet. That is due to steam/proton/proton GE more than the OS I expect but I’m happy nonetheless. I also run my home entertainment box on MX on an old PC (I know there are better choices for os for this, I was just comfortable with it).

I like it because I haven’t felt any reason to try anything else, perhaps someday I will and I’ll just find a new OS then, but until then it’s my favorite I think.

By definition, an agenda is “a program of things to be done or considered” which does not equate to wanting to do something. It more closely resembles a daily planner or task list.

So in as much as you and I have an “agenda” when we get out of bed, you are right, the person submitting the PR did likely have an agenda of waking up and going about their day. There isn’t a ‘woke agenda’ at play here, however, as the person I replied to seemed to imply.

Imagine you have been purposefully targeted for harassment or excluded from activities in the past due to your preferred pronouns or perceived gender. Seeing “he” with that context would likely feel excluding, which is a reason someone without an ‘agenda’ would want to see it changed.