I could have stopped reading the article when it talked about 'protesting the things we consume gleefully' because I don't know about you or any of my friends, but I don't go around consuming starbucks gleefully.
petty bougie anti-globalizationists are becoming increasingly harder to find and i'm happy for it. I don't care about anyone who sits around corporate coffeeshops drinking starbucks talking about how we need to reform trade policies, really.
sure, starbucks treats its employees well, on the backs of the working classes.
I sure am glad that that 17 year old barista has health insurance, because those janitors and coffeegrowers can't afford to eat...
this is another example of using race tokenism to try and make us think that global capitalism isn't an offensively, disgustingly racist idea in itself. conversations with farmers in central america who grow that coffee reminds me of that. the very fact that the article admits that only in the top [and visible] eschalon of employees is there a decent representation of minorities speaks of tokenism anyway.
and not that I would let any heiarchical institution drive my fuckin corner cafe into the ground, anyway. localization is the only way to defend against globalization [which, of course, destroys the global south].
i too get a kick outta folks who assume that everyone protesting something is really a closet addict of said consumer item. shows how at a loss they really are, and out of touch with the more consistent activist community. it's a shame really...
also liked how she (the *$s apologist author) completely avoided the gentrification of communities issue 100%, except to mention it in the beginning. it was as if by showing that *$s hires minorities, they dont lead to gentrification - an obvious confusion of issues as gentrification is more about class than race.
Coffee, thanks, but no thanks... this article "reveals" how starbucks is really wonderful? ahh...yet another case of someone believing something outta sheer will power.
I have also noticed people posting about the wonders of Kim Jung Il, but i dont believe that either...
I don't need the agitation, the jittery jerkies, that alleviate YOUR constipation
Cause I don't got that brew in my gut, that flow through filter is not paper
No! It's your liver, delivering you the black gold of addiction every A.M.
Every P.M. every time you say "I need my cup of coffee!"
Like a squirrel hiding nuts, tell yourself you're gonna try to stop you can't compete
drinking joe-- it's the number two drug on the street
after meat, a processed carcass, comes coffee
at Starbucks or your local supermarket
any time you tell yourself you cannot live without something else that is external to yourself and that is uneccesary to the functioning of your body, THINK ABOUT IT!
The lie goes past Starbucks to the colonization of the Americas by Europeans eager to find products for their own people to get whacked out on and addicted to-- tobacco, sugar, coffee, tea-- built on the blood of 500 years of slavery!
So I'll have my coffee in a cup of hypocracy and encourgage all the readers of
Portland Indymedia to lighten their java without argument or bickery
Tea from nettles, mint, chamomile or chickory!
Peace out peoples, hip hop poetry in effect ! FENBAR!
I really wish the assistant assistant managers and junior marketing meme pushers at Starbucks would stop tossing chum at Indymedia.
It's transparent. It's pointless. And it's weak.
No one with an ounce of circumspection (look it up, fuckhole. You can T-Mobile it at Starbucks on your Treo while sucking down your third quad mocha, bitch) believes that any of these pro-Starbucks posts are anything but so-called "guerilla marketing" or astroturf meme-pushing by employees of Starbucks or "creative, out-of-the-box" ad agency drones who spend their days thinking up new ways to illustrate a fucking styrofoam cup on their 17" Wacom artpad.
Here's another one you can post...
"Scientists discover shopping at Wal-mart reduces cavities."
Chain stores like Starbucks are NOT good for the local economy:
A recent study by the Institute for Local Self-Reliance and Friends of Midcoast Maine found that only 14 percent of the revenue taken in by a chain store like Starbucks is re-spent within the state. Payroll accounts for most of this in-state spending. The rest, 86 percent, leaves the state, flowing to corporate headquarters and out-of-state.
In contrast the study that locally owned businesses found that 54 percent, or more than three times as much, of their sales revenue was re-spent within the state (almost all of it within the surrounding two counties).
Another recent study done in Austin TX found that for every $100 spent at chain stores like Starbucks only $13.00 stays in the local community vs. $45 out of $100 for a locally owned business.
Starbucks often is a precursor to big words like gentrification. According an article in the May issues of Portland Monthly magazine a local real estate appraiser is qouted as saying the reason she knew the appreciation values in the Beaumont-Wilshire neighborhood in NE would be "outstanding" was "One Word: Starbucks. I know they do their homework on where to locate." meaning follow the Starbucks and you'll make a killing in Real Estate...
The City of Portland owns Pioneer Coutrhouse Square. Why is it that we allow Portland's "living room" to lease space to Starbucks and not REQUIRE that the businesses leasing space in Portland public parks be locally owned and operated? Wouldn't it be great to kick them out of their #1 prime location in Portland and put in a Stumptown or other successful locally owned coffee shop?
you sound just like the racist cops over at ppbcomplaint.com
your histrionic bigoted characterization of anyone who might choose not to demonize starbucks fits the same pattern of shoving groups of people into an ugly box, making it ok in your eyes to disrespect them, kick them, and toss them out as so much refuse not worth being allowed to live.
Forget about Starbucks . . . when is some civic-minded individual going to start up a public toilet franchise? Now that's something we could REALLY use and can never find when we need it.
The City and State complain that unmanned public toilets at parks, etc. turn into sexual way stations and get trashed. I think that the people of Cascadia deserve to have access to their public restrooms and if that means employing someone who needs a job at minimum wage with benefits, then it would be a good investment. Families with small children use parks and when kids need a bathroom, they NEED A BATHROOM.
I once walked for an hour through North Portland and was not able to find ANY business willing to let me use their restroom. Many claimed that they did not have public restrooms, even for the desperate. I looked this up once and I believe that if you are open for business with the public, you cannot deny the use of a restroom to a customer. Yet these places wouldn't even acquiese when I offered to purchase something. Many even post signs saying "no public restrooms" usually scrawled below "no smoking" as though you could compare the two.
The ONLY open public restrooms were at Columbia Park; as far as I recall Cathedral Park does not have any and the restrooms at the smaller parks, such as Arbor Lodge, are always locked.
Starbucks has public restrooms that are open to all . . . that is probably the best thing I can think of to say about them. When a Starbucks moves into your neighborhood, at least you have a pot to piss in if you are away from home.
We can afford to pay retirees astronomical pensions and benefits through PERS, but we can't afford to staff and maintain public restrooms for the rest of us poor mutts who never worked for that gravy train called the State of Oregon, etc.
petty bougie anti-globalizationists are becoming increasingly harder to find and i'm happy for it. I don't care about anyone who sits around corporate coffeeshops drinking starbucks talking about how we need to reform trade policies, really.
sure, starbucks treats its employees well, on the backs of the working classes.
I sure am glad that that 17 year old barista has health insurance, because those janitors and coffeegrowers can't afford to eat...
this is another example of using race tokenism to try and make us think that global capitalism isn't an offensively, disgustingly racist idea in itself. conversations with farmers in central america who grow that coffee reminds me of that. the very fact that the article admits that only in the top [and visible] eschalon of employees is there a decent representation of minorities speaks of tokenism anyway.
and not that I would let any heiarchical institution drive my fuckin corner cafe into the ground, anyway. localization is the only way to defend against globalization [which, of course, destroys the global south].