GREEN MOUSE follows up: "How Dollar Stores Became Magnets for Crime and Killing."

Picking up where we left off on February 13, when I asked, "What sort of upper crust prohibitionist’s rationale is being advanced here?"

GREEN MOUSE SAYS: Neo-prohibitionism, foppery and hypocrisy at Indiana Landmarks as Family Dollar on Vincennes gets a perfectly legal alcohol sales permit.

This led to a traumatic Facebook kerfuffle, deletions and recriminations, and subsequently I was made aware of other back-channel goings-on, but by then the dark pandemic clouds were gathering and nothing much happened with any of it. Honestly, I've no idea whether the Family Dollar in question ever received the alcohol permit.

At the time, I was perfectly well aware of the controversies engendered by the contemporary growth of Family Dollar, Dollar General and other such carpetbagging stores in the context of impoverished areas, employment practices, food deserts, inept local governments and a host of other ills that capitalism gleefully exploits for the benefit of the accumulators of capital, at the expense of ordinary people who exist to be steamrolled.

What particularly bothered me back in February was the involvement of Indiana Landmarks, whether active and real or merely tactically suggested by opponents of the Family Dollar alcoholic beverages permit, as well as the paternalistic attitude of more than one self-identified (and Reisz-stuffed) historic preservationist concerning their responsibility to help the poor folks lest too many paychecks get squandered on booze -- an argument that was tired and regrettable a century ago in the run-up to Prohibition.

To be precise, I take none of it back -- not a word -- and note only that with the intervention of more important matters, the discussion came to an end. So it goes.

Now, about Family Dollar, Dollar General and others of the species. ProPublica is a nonprofit newsroom that investigates abuses of power, and in this gripping long read, Alec MacGillis explains "How Dollar Stores Became Magnets for Crime and Killing."

 ... The Gun Violence Archive, a website that uses local news reports and law enforcement sources to tally crimes involving firearms, lists more than 200 violent incidents involving guns at Family Dollar or Dollar General stores since the start of 2017, nearly 50 of which resulted in deaths. The incidents include carjackings in the parking lot, drug deals gone bad and altercations inside stores. But a large number involve armed robberies in which workers or customers have been shot. Since the beginning of 2017, employees have been wounded in shootings or pistol-whippings in at least 31 robberies; in at least seven other incidents, employees have been killed. The violence has not let up in recent months, when requirements for customers to wear masks have made it harder for clerks to detect shoppers who are bent on robbery. In early May, a worker at a Family Dollar in Flint, Michigan, was fatally shot after refusing entry to a customer without a mask.

The number of incidents can be explained in part by the stores’ ubiquity: There are now more than 16,000 Dollar Generals and nearly 8,000 Family Dollars in the United States, a 50% increase in the past decade. (By comparison, Walmart has about 4,700 stores in the U.S.) The stores are often in high-crime neighborhoods, where there simply aren’t many other businesses for criminals to target. Routine gun violence has fallen sharply in prosperous cities around the country, but it has remained stubbornly high in many of the cities and towns where these stores predominate. The glowing signs of the discount chains have become indicators of neglect, markers of a geography of the places that the country has written off.

But these factors are not sufficient to explain the trend. The chains’ owners have done little to maintain order in the stores, which tend to be thinly staffed and exist in a state of physical disarray. In the 1970s, criminologists such as Lawrence Cohen and Marcus Felson argued that rising crime could be partly explained by changes in the social environment that lowered the risk of getting caught. That theory gained increasing acceptance in the decades that followed. “The likelihood of a crime occurring depends on three elements: a motivated offender, a vulnerable victim, and the absence of a capable guardian,” the sociologist Patrick Sharkey wrote, in “Uneasy Peace,” from 2018.

Another way of putting this is that crime is not inevitable. Robberies and killings that have taken place at dollar store chains would not have necessarily happened elsewhere. “The idea that crime is sort of a whack-a-mole game, that if you just press here it’ll move over here,” is wrong, Richard Rosenfeld, a criminologist at the University of Missouri-St. Louis, told me. Making it harder to commit a crime doesn’t just push crime elsewhere; it reduces it. “Crime is opportunistic,” he said. “If there’s no opportunity, there’s no crime” ...

BEER WITH A SOCIALIST: Paternalism, classism and prohibitionism in Family Dollar's neighborhood.

Consider this item from the Big Apple in 2012. The topic is soda, not beverage alcohol -- and from a time when hard seltzer was only a glimmer in a cynical marketer's eye.

The Classist Side of Mayor Bloomberg's War on Soda, by Jen Doll (The Atlantic)

Those who've lived in New York City for a while remember fondly a time when not much of anything was banned at all. But there's an even darker side to bans. They widen the divide between the rich, who can find a way around them, and the poor, who perhaps cannot.

 ... there's an even darker side to bans. They have a socio-economic impact, by which I mean, some people are more affected by bans than others. Bans widen the divide between the rich, who can find a way around them, and the poor, who perhaps cannot. And while Bloomberg's tactics are obviously part of what people dub a "nanny state" ideology, in which he's telling us what to do, he's telling some people what to do more than others. Rich people, among whom one is billionaire Bloomberg himself, are not going to be impacted by a soda ban the same way poor New Yorkers are—if the wealthy prefer huge bottles of soda, they'll have no trouble continuing to find them. And the problem that Bloomberg's trying to "fix"—obesity—is, according to the stats and research, a "poor" problem, not a rich one. This makes Bloomberg's move seem ever the more paternalistic. A class of people whom he's judged unable to make the proper decision for themselves is now being told what to do, by someone who knows better.

I mention this because of a local episode three weeks ago, and the obvious symmetry with the notion of top-down classism.

GREEN MOUSE SAYS: Neo-prohibitionism, foppery and hypocrisy at Indiana Landmarks as Family Dollar on Vincennes gets a perfectly legal alcohol sales permit.

I’m no fan of Family Dollar, but in terms of alcohol sales permits, what exactly has the company done wrong? If the store is located too close to the school, the local ATC board would not receive a recommendation to approve it. If the store elects to sell to minors, you can rest assured the ATC will intervene, as it does elsewhere. There are very few state institutions that perform their functions as capably as the ATC, trust me.

What sort of upper crust prohibitionist’s rationale is being advanced here?

It is my understanding that some form of appeal is being pursued by the group contesting Family Dollar's alcohol permit, all of whom are of a socio-economic status suggesting they'd not set foot in such a store whether or not booze was available.

At one point in a Facebook conversation that I can't quote exactly because subsequently I was blocked from it, a friend of one of the complainants began discoursing about the need for historic preservationists to intervene in situations where low-income people don't know how to manage their own discretionary income.

Really, Fred?

If I'm exaggerating, it's inadvertent, such was the blatancy of the paternalism on display. All in all, the topic is a trip wire for me, as I'm compelled to remind all and sundry that classism of this nature was a key component of America's disastrous Prohibition experiment, and as the Family Dollar situation sadly illustrates, it remains so today as a tool in the arsenal of those do-gooders who maintain one standard for low-income residents and another for the better heeled.

Returning to Doll's soda commentary ...

 ... none of these bans really serve to get to the point, anyway. If we're to talk of equity, we should also ask why healthy, particularly organic, fresh food costs more than packaged, processed food, why lean turkey or chicken is priced higher than the bad, fatty cuts, or why in some cases the cost of milk is greater than the cost of soda. It seems that a better way to promote health to all would by making it easier for everyone to get healthy, good food—not by "outlawing" the bad stuff, or soda, which beverage industry folks say isn't the cause of the problem in the first place, citing reports that say sugared drink consumption has decreased while our obesity issues keep increasing.

In the Family Dollar debate, which ended when I was censored by the leading elements, one point I kept making was that if the alcohol license in question were being acquired by an investor prepared to spend hundreds of thousands of dollars to save an old building and serve $15 martinis, there'd be no objection whatever.

In fact, the Indiana Landmarks organization supports such outcomes -- and if enough of these outcomes occur in a concentrated vicinity (for instance, downtown New Albany) gentrification will have taken place, at which point the low income people will be displaced from now-unaffordable housing and compelled to commute from a greater distance to work the same lesser-skilled jobs at the new food and drink businesses.

Here's a definition of classism.

"Sociologists have spent a great deal of time studying how populations become stratified by income level. Classism is defined as a set of practices and beliefs which disadvantage groups based on education and socioeconomic status. Classism is the ability of upper income and/or well-educated populations to maintain their privilege at the expense of less educated, lower socioeconomic groups."

And apparently because we need reminding, here's a very good account of Prohibition's tyranny.

Prohibition Was America’s First War on Drugs, by Kim Kelly (Teen Vogue)

Now that the year 2020 is officially in full swing, nostalgia for the Roaring Twenties has come Lindy Hopping back into view. The 1920s were a decade still fondly remembered in the U.S. imagination for shorter skirts, high spirits, and hot jazz licks, but it wasn’t all flappers and ragtime. The decade was also rife with poisonous bathtub gin, murderous Mafia dons, and the merciless rat-a-tat of tommy guns, as well as myriad political and cultural struggles simmering beneath the surface. A dark current of crime, violence, and government malfeasance underpinned the era, much of which can be traced directly back to one immensely influential federal gamble: the 18th Amendment, which outlawed the manufacture, sale, and transportation of alcoholic beverages within the U.S.

The subsequent passage of the National Prohibition Act (nicknamed the Volstead Act after its biggest cheerleader, House Judiciary Committee chairman Andrew Volstead) provided a means to enforce the amendment’s decree. It was the product of xenophobia, racism, classism, and heavy-handed religious moralizing, and had a disproportionate impact on poor and working-class communities. In essence, Prohibition was America’s first drug war — and predictably, once it became the law of the land in 1920, all hell broke loose.

GREEN MOUSE presents NAWBANY WEEK IN REVIEW for 7 February 2020.

This week's mouse droppings are brought to you by HWC Engineering, because as long as HWC is on the scene, we'll be reminding you that it shouldn't be.

The Green Mouse doesn't push drugs, punch his girlfriend or salute when commanded by anger-management-challenged sycophants.

He's just a drinking rodent with a green problem. 

Yesterday I took a glance over the mouse's shoulder to see what he was scribbling in that ubiquitous steno pad.

Let's all work together on a new city motto. I'll start. "NEW ALBANY -- WHERE KOOL-AID IS KING AND SHEEP ARE SCARED." What do you think? Or this: "COME FOR THE TWO-WAY STREETS, STAY FOR THE ONE-WAY THINKING."

It was that kind of week.

But first, a hopeful sign. This is a wonderful new City Hall feature, and at long last, we see a faint glimmer of transparency.

WEEKLY PROJECT UPDATES:

The following project updates were given at the Board of Works meeting on 02/04/20

JACOBI, TOOMBS & LANZ

➡️ Grant Line Road (Daisy Lane To McDonald Lane):

Last Week: Donated $250 to Gahan4Life
This Week: Donated $100 to Applegate for Office 2018 - 2034
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BEAM • LONGEST • NEFF

➡️ SLATE RUN ROAD IMPROVEMENT PROJECT - PHASE 1

Last Week: Donated $250 to Gahan4Life
This Week: Donated $250 to Caesar "The Salad" Re-election Campaign
___

HWC ENGINEERING (AND HOME IMPROVEMENTS)

➡️ EASTRIDGE DRIVE QUALITY OF LIFE HOT TUB - PHASE 5.7

Last week: Donated $250 to Gahan4Life
This Week: Two gallons Scrubbing Bubbles (in-kind donation)

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Things were relatively calm hereabouts until Wednesday evening, when two vicious mind fucks elicited comment. But first, let's revisit the editor's New Year's resolution: a "sabbatical from polemics about local politics."

I said from the start that the Friday column you're reading is an exception, because I'm not a 100% cold turkey kind of guy. Events this week on Wednesday may seem to indicate my resolve is tottering a bit, and to a degree this is true. It's very difficult to cease speaking truth to the prevailing doofuss tomfoolery. However the record clearly shows that I've cut way back, thereby saving time for other important uses (like getting paid), as compared with the hours formerly devoted to explaining the sheer, enduring idiocy perpetuated on a daily basis by NA's ethics-free ruling caste.

I'm making progress, little by little. But when an outsider with an agenda lofts one of those tempting lob passes, every now and then a patriotic citizen just has to slam it home.

Speck's unfulfilled plan: Intellectually lazy carpetbagging shortcuts from clueless Louisvillians don't make New Albany's streets any safer.

Jeff Gillenwater is quoted extensively at the link, and he also made this observation.

In simplest terms, (Chris Glasser) “reported” a bunch of stuff that isn’t factually true. How many times have we had the “thinks he’s educated and liberal but doesn’t have a clue” conversation just in the past few days?

Bunches, Jeff, just as with the other Wednesday night revelation. Prohibition in America often is well-meaning, which doesn't mean it's right.

GREEN MOUSE SAYS: Neo-prohibitionism, foppery and hypocrisy at Indiana Landmarks as Family Dollar on Vincennes gets a perfectly legal alcohol sales permit.

Gillenwater again:

The Family Dollar thing is a hoot. I’ve no doubt that a more upscale, historically housed spirits merchant would get a big seal of approval from the same crowd, “vulnerable populations” be damned.

In closing, this week's column lamented the passing of an institution ... and yes, you're getting another Gillenwater quote as coda.

ON THE AVENUES: Alas, New Albany is less of a place without a bookstore.

I am perennially reminded of just how little most people know about what the hell has actually happened around here in those fifteen years and how quickly they take to filling that knowledge void by considering themselves as central to it. That second bit about self-aggrandizement has at least been consistent. Especially troubling is that so many who either clearly didn’t understand the potential or actively argued against it are now (and in some cases still) in positions of power and are (still) actively working against the spirit and substance of those earlier, more independent days that Destinations and a handful of others embodied as a part of New Albany’s second or third or fourth or whichever coming it is.

Next week: Lobotomy or gin? The experts weigh New Albanian coping mechanisms.

GREEN MOUSE SAYS: Neo-prohibitionism, foppery and hypocrisy at Indiana Landmarks as Family Dollar on Vincennes gets a perfectly legal alcohol sales permit.

Heavens, these people make it hard to take a sabbatical, but someone has to provide the "free press" counterweight by offering an opposing point of view, and it might as well be the Green Mouse. Jeeebus, can you let us rest for once?

In which Greg Sekula of Indiana Landmarks, evidently unaware that the docket for the monthly meetings of the Alcohol & Tobacco Commission’s local board us announced weeks in advance, and furthermore, finds at long last that 1:00 p.m. weekday meetings are difficult for normal folks to attend, strenuously objects to an Indiana alcohol sales permit approved for Family Dollar on Vincennes, and does so on behalf of his employer Indiana Landmarks, which if I’m not mistaken in the past has actually hosted a meeting of the Brewers of Indiana Guild in Indianapolis (which I attended), at which the viability of alcohol sales as a means of saving (that’s right) landmarks was both discussed and advocated.

In fact, is there not a special class of Indiana alcohol sales permits precisely intended for listed historic structures (not newer “shittier” non-contributing buildings), to be used primarily in dense downtown areas, and available as a means of placing alcohol permits where they otherwise might be rejected (in cases of proximity to a church, for example)?

And, isn’t the long existing Uptown Liquors equidistant from New Albany High School? Is the same effort being undertaken to shut it down?

We’re all aware of the Dollar General/Family Dollar opprobrium. It’s real enough, and these sort of stores generally are opposed by the well-heeled, who resent untrammeled capitalism’s inelegant but apparently thriving solution to the absence of shopping options in poor neighborhoods.

You don't hear them questioning untrammeled capitalism, do you?

It’s also quite hard to see how hypocritically massing New Albany’s elite clique cadre against Family Dollar on the grounds of alcohol sales makes sense given the proximity of Uptown Liquors to the high school.

There are numerous reasons why the Vincennes Street corridor has declined, and most begin with the closing of the automobile lanes on the K & I Bridge 40+ years ago. Family Dollar’s very presence in this neighborhood is a symptom of numerous other issues pertaining to institutionalized squalor, which four decades of New Albany civic “leadership” refused to address, and now the beautiful people are disturbed by the ensuing mess.

I’m no fan of Family Dollar, but in terms of alcohol sales permits, what exactly has the company done wrong? If the store is located too close to the school, the local ATC board would not receive a recommendation to approve it. If the store elects to sell to minors, you can rest assured the ATC will intervene, as it does elsewhere. There are very few state institutions that perform their functions as capably as the ATC, trust me.

What sort of upper crust prohibitionist’s rationale is being advanced here?

Is it because Family Dollar won’t be selling $20 six-packs of craft beer, but reasonably priced mass market beers (even hard seltzer) to people who don’t have ready surpluses of disposable income -- or, precisely the reason why Family Dollar exists where it does in the first place?

The supreme irony is this: if the K & I Bridge reopened tomorrow as a pedestrian and bicycle link to Louisville, overnight the desirability of alcohol sales permits located on the Vincennes Street corridor would skyrocket, and just as quickly, Sekula and his pals would be advocating on behalf of Indiana Landmarks to expand the riverfront development area to include the corridor and make more three-ways available for the investors who’ll save historic buildings by selling $15 martinis to gentrifiers.

Those opposed to Family Dollar's lawful exercise are planning a remonstrance with the ATC. It’s not clear to me what real-world criteria they have to oppose it (precious little, me thinks), but I’ll try to keep abreast of this and inform you.

Greg, if you’re reading -- You're okay, but please, enough of this hypocritical elitism. It’s woefully shabby. Can you and Barksdale just stick to buildings and inanimate objects? You’re both very good at that, although the wheels invariably come flying off every time local preservationists pretend to think about actual people.

Following is the correspondence the Green Mouse stumbled across (thanks, D).

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Subject: Family Dollar, Vincennes Street Alcohol Sales Permit Issued - URGENT ACTION NEEDED

New Albany colleagues,

At today’s meeting of the Floyd County Board of the Indiana Alcohol Tobacco Commission, a permit/license for beer and wine sales was approved for the Family Dollar on Vincennes Street. Unfortunately, I was alerted about this meeting at the 11th hour and was luckily able to be in attendance to voice my objection on behalf of myself (a nearby resident) and Indiana Landmarks. Regrettably, only four individuals were in attendance (myself, David Barksdale, John Clere, and a representative of Carter Management), all of whom spoke in opposition to the permit. Other than the Family Dollar representative (who was not from the area and even acknowledged that he was not familiar with the local store), no one spoke in favor of the application. Since the meeting was at 1 in the afternoon, many folks were unable to attend due to work or school obligations.

Shockingly, the Board voted to recommend approval of the license to the State Board! There is a 15-day appeal time frame, the application of which is attached along with the state guidelines that govern the license process. See attachment and link.

Allowing Family Dollar to sell alcohol will be a setback for efforts to revitalize the Vincennes Street Corridor and surrounding historic neighborhoods – Midtown, Uptown, and Depauw Ave. Historic District. Close proximity to New Albany High School is a major concern in addition to trash potential and access to cheap alcohol by a vulnerable population. Successful efforts have been mounted in neighboring states (specifically Dayton , OH, and Louisville, KY) to stop licenses from being granted to specific stores, particularly in vulnerable neighborhoods.

I believe a united effort is needed to stop this! What is uncertain is whether someone who was not in attendance can enjoin an appeal. Shane Gibson, can you see what options we have?

Greg Sekula,
Indiana Landmarks

But every family needs cheap cigarettes, right?

I received a comment, and feeling all sprightly and journalistic, I set out to investigate.

"Well, it's almost a win - have you noticed the four newly installed faux 'windows' on the State Street side of the new Family Dollar store? Dark glass that stares back at you — almost as good as a window on the street scape. New Albany gentlemen walking past can check to see if their neck ties are straight. Thanks Family Dollar!"

Let's not be so cynical. Aren't cheap toys and "low price" cigarettes what we all need for the holidaze?

Gonder: "We can ask for better than what has appeared on State Street."

We chatted with John Gonder during NABC's 25th anniversary picnic, and as always, it was an enlightening conversation, as is this essay at his blog. Slowly but surely, our council is being populated by potential. It is gratifying.

Windows? We Don't Need No Stinking Windows

... New Albany sits at a crossroads, thanks to the opportunities presented by a revivified downtown and a building trend of support for local businesses, in both goods and services. We have a chance to get this right. We must revisit building standards and undertake the difficult work of making those standards fit the needs of what is possible in New Albany today. We can ask for better than what has appeared on State Street. We can do better.