My supermarket is bigger than your supermarket That’s
what America’s all about…
I wouldn’t want to have Amazon build in St. Pete, or even across the Bay in Tampa. We love our waterfronts, Central Avenue, Beach Drive, and Riverwalk. Let’s move forward slowly, with intelligence and compassion, keeping an eye out for those who get displaced. People tend to forget who’s pushed out by these massive invasions. Remember the planting of Tropicana Field in the old Gas Plant section of St. Petersburg in 1986? In those days the Gas Plant area was a real neighborhood.
St. Pete’s City Council unanimously voted to lease the whole area to the powers-that-be for $1 a year, assuring the African-American community living there that they’d be fairly compensated. Most agree that this didn’t happen; black-owned small businesses didn’t get replaced, the area broke apart, the inhabitants dispersed and grew poorer. Today, many couldn’t afford a ticket to a Rays game.
Those who follow Amazon’s trail weren’t surprised at its behavior — pulling out of NYC (Long Island City) when a vocal minority protested its demand for a $3 billion tax benefit, not to mention its history of aggressive anti-union tactics. I suppose this is how a trillion-dollar company makes its money, but sometimes it’s good to stand up to these bullying invasions, and I’m glad New York did it. Amazon promptly picked up its ball and stomped out of the playground.
New York already had a “successful” big handout in the early 2000s, the Hudson Yard on the Far West Side. It’s now a better neighborhood, no doubt, but according to James Parrott, director of fiscal policies for the New York City Affairs at the New School, “We are still giving tax breaks to billionaire developers that are not benefiting ordinary people in New York.”
Amazon usually brings decent jobs, delivers goods fast, and charges lower fees. That may be excellent capitalism, but it isn’t fair: They seldom cover all the damage they cause. A general summary of their take-overs could go like this: They demand a lot, they give a lot, and a lot of the poorest people get hurt. Bad luck for them. I love New York, and that affection is partly based on my boyhood in blue-collar Brooklyn. Flatbush (where Bernie Sanders grew up) was filled with hard-working, supportive neighborhoods. The idea of a behemoth company coming down on top of it would be difficult to contemplate. The point is, these developers are rich enough to bring good things and make good money without scarfing up even more money from the public, at the expense of the weak, defenseless, and displaced.
A surprise but somehow fitting coincidence is the sudden downward slide of Amazon’s owner, Jeff Bezos, the richest man in the world. Just a few weeks ago he was not only rich, but like his company a paragon of efficiency, no time to horse around. Married 25 years, Bezos was the epitome of the upright uptight businessman. And suddenly, perhaps feeling overly presidential, he has fallen into a Hollywood scandal that’s contemporary, salacious, and unoriginal. Now, instead of being compared to billionaire Bill Gates (the second richest man in the world), he’s being linked with Anthony Weiner, former Democratic congressman, fellow photographer and writer of amorous texts (who’s now in a halfway house).
This is a cross between Greek tragedy and American burlesque, and one doesn’t know whether to laugh or cry. I guess we won’t cry, because, like President Trump, Bezos will be angry about being caught, but — unlike many of the people they hurt — they can always write a check.
But I know this excess is unnecessary
I say My friends think small use the 8-item line who
needs more than 8 items? All you really need is
civility honesty courage and 5 loaves of wheatberry bread
Listen friends life is no rip-off the oranges are full of
juice their coloring the best we can do why do you think
we live so long? So long…
—both quotes from “Supermarket” in Liquid Paper: New & Selected Poems by Peter Meinke, U. of Pittsburgh Press, 1991
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This article appears in Mar 21-28, 2019.