Posted on 12/18/2009 11:16:25 AM PST by a fool in paradise
A short-sleeved squabble ended suddenly Thursday when Town East Mall security raided a kiosk and seized a stash of T-shirts that had southeast Dallas business owners up in arms.
Half an hour after the raid, a half-dozen Pleasant Grove business owners gathered at the Southeast Dallas Chamber of Commerce and celebrated a medium-sized victory.
In the center of the room, draped across the back of a chair like a pelt, was one of the vanquished T-shirts:
"Welcome to Pleasant Grove," it read – below a silkscreen image of a man tossing a body into the trunk of an old Buick.
Like everyone in the room, Pleasant Grove pawnshop owner Joy Vosburg praised the Mesquite mall's quick action.
"It's fantastic," she said. "I don't think any city should be portrayed like that."
Vosburg had first spotted the T-shirts during a Monday evening shopping trip.
"It was horrible," she recalled. "I would have bought them just to get rid of them. But I didn't want to give them money."
...it perpetuates a violent stereotype of Pleasant Grove – a blue-collar neighborhood in the heart of southeastern Dallas – that the chamber has been working overtime to abolish.
In October, it kicked off a re-branding campaign, including "GroveFest" and "Hands Across the Grove," when residents linked hands along South Buckner Boulevard.
The chamber will even move out of its old digs above the Diaper Store in a neighborhood strip mall and into the brand-new Eastfield College branch up the road...
The clerk, who said she had not known about the warning, mostly ignored the raid. She stared serenely into her till as mall staff filled a cardboard box with the contraband...
Screws said the kiosk owner could pick up the confiscated shirts later but probably would have to pay a fine...
(Excerpt) Read more at dallasnews.com ...
It’s the same way a person has a right to freedom. We could just as easily say by what right other than the fact that no one has put him in chains does a person have his own free will.
Human beings have needs, the basic needs of humanity include shelter and food. If we have a fundamental right to life then we have a fundamental right to secure the basic needs to stay alive. If we have a fundamental right to secure the basic needs to stay alive then we have a fundamental right to have a chunk of land to grow food and build shelter.
Force is the way a lot of things have changed hands at the national level for a long time. Wars have been fought to acquire slaves, food, money, and just plain to get rid of those people. Plenty of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness has been exchanged at the point of a sword, if acquisition by force invalidates the right to property then it invalidates all rights. I suppose there is an argument that a species as violent as ours doesn’t deserve these things, but I got rid of my hippy hair a long time ago.
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