and have no great love for corporations, trashed corporate property is not always re-built ( I don't believe the Quik Trip in Ferguson has yet been rebuilt and may not be) and while not knowing the geography of the Baltimore area, in the case of the CVS, it represents both jobs and certainly in some cases peoples access to their medications, which may become more difficult for them to acquire, particularly for the elderly. There are many consequences to many actions in the world.

and suburbs as Starbucks in Manhattan. There's often two on the same block...in a lot of places, that is the local food retailer, department store, stationary store, bodega...(this is itself a problem, one involving access to real food and reasonably-priced goods...but not one related to this civil unrest or political violence.)

Very likely, all those employees will be assigned to other stores for the duration as demand will not fall while locations have. The prescription system is automated and computerized. All the outstanding script will get transferred to nearby stores, including those filled but not picked-up at that location. It'll be a pain in the ass as you'll have to figure out where your script got sent but nobody is going to be denied access to their medication. These systems are redundant in order to account for the unforeseen.

In DC, there's only 1 north of Florida Ave and east of Georgia Ave, and that's way up in Brookland. There's only two CVS's east of the river (compared to more than 40 west of the river).

Meanwhile, there are no Walgreens east of Georgia or across the river.

...so even what looks like competition may not be.

I think of it as just NYC and Philly

Especially small local businesses and community centers, will have nowhere to re-assign the employees of the destroyed location. Because that was the ONLY location.

...you have the moral authority to feel bad about it?

Oh, wait....nvm

You are making a big assumption that CVS will rebuild. They may simply write off that neighborhood.

They may very well do so.

Abandoning the neighborhood damages their "brand".

If they don't, local banks and insurers should do the right thing and back a locally-owned alternative-maybe even a real full-size grocery with fresh produce(this neighborhood is probably a "food desert&quot .

CVS should begin a dialog with that community, to try and understand why their store became a target of local anger in this situation-there may be issues people there have with how they are treated that the corporation could listen to and correct. Targeting like this, whatever you can say about it, usually isn't random.

With some creativity, CVS could use what happened here to improve how it treats communities like this and enhance its reputation for social responsibility.

You're blaming CVS for CVS being looted and burned down?
How about blaming the real culprits? You know, the criminals and thugs that took advantage of the peaceful protests to help themselves to goods that didn't belong to them.

didn't you get the memo?

Damn!!!! I need to pay more attention to those damned memos.

How is abandoning the neighborhood in any way going to damage their "brand"? First off, if they do decide not to rebuild, it won't be announced. They just will delay, and delay, and delay, and then nothing will happen. It won't be news.

Secondly, when some housewife in Terre Haute Indiana or Macon Georgia needs to stop by a drugstore, do you really think they're going to think "oh, I think I'll pick Walgreens because CVS didn't rebuild that store that burned in Baltimore"??

At least, the ones who hear about it. It is sad, but the same thing happened in L.A. after the Rodney King riots. Some chains declined to rebuild in the area, and it never really got any attention, except for a short protest from a few individuals, like Al Sharpton and Louis Farrakhan. After that, residents in the torn areas had to travel long distances to buy groceries and such. I hope it has improved since then.

Many businesses NEVER rebuilt. That's just the reality of the situation. If CVS doesn't think it makes sense to rebuild, then they won't. That means loss of jobs, and and a pharmacy.

It may be a soulless corporation, but the destruction of that CVS will impact real peoples' lives.

don't drive.

The rioters opted to be violent assholes who destroyed property because mobs are generally stupid. Quit trying to give them a reason for acting like miscreants, or blaming unrelated entities for the outbreak of violence.

The only people responsible for burning down the CVS are the scumbags who burned it down. They weren't making a statement, they weren't being political. The peaceful demonstrators are doing that. People burning down buildings are being antisocial misfits.

Blaming CVS for those thugs looting and burning down their store is just

Sad comparison but true.

Holy shit. That might be the craziest thing I've ever seen posted here.

It matters what choices CVS made towards the community...because while most of the community didn't trash the place, the anger those choices caused played a major role in this.

Places get attacked in situations like these because they symbolize something in some of these peoples' eyes. If they can learn what the community as a whole was upset with them about, they can make the kind of changes that will ultimately prevent that kind of targeting.

Saying that is not the same thing as saying it was a good idea to attack the place-it's just saying that these things aren't random. What's the harm in admitting that?

Free stuff to the looters.

Living in India has really opened my eyes about violence in crowds. Not everything by individuals is a "statement"; almost nothing a crowd does is.

Medicare, Medicaid and private insurance plans. Also, without transportation local residents often buy a lot of their household goods there. I went to one yesterday and a 20 oz. diet coke was 1.89. Kroger had a special on 2 Liters 99 cents...for a 2-Liter, not a 20 oz.

They still don't have any a CVS or a Walgreens. Ditto for supermarkets.

don't know there is a corner in this country without a Walgreen's on it. Maybe we should let them know they missed one. LOL

be closing a lot of stores.

40 years from the burning down of the Peoples on 14th St. until a CVS opened. I was one of the early white people to move there, in the 90s, and there were still vacant burned out lots everywhere. I'm hopeful Baltimore won't let that happen.

can always be rebuilt. Lives not so much.

Collateral damage though, I guess?

sometimes one has to sacrifice a little for the long term good of all. Black people are not getting a fair shake in America today and I know that, I suspect most Blacks know that, I also suspect most people in power know that. Shit got to change and sometimes only way to get someones attention is a slap up side of their head, if you get my drift

And those looters have no right to force "sacrifice" on those people who are now out of a job, and those people's kids, and the future victims of crimes that may be committed by the kids whose path to a decent future was broken by someone's decision that those employees needed to "sacrifice" so that someone else could loot and burn a store.

The person who got a "slap up side their head" in this case is a low income worker who is just trying to make a decent life for her and her kids, and now some asshole decided to take that away from her. Fuck that noise. You want to slap someone upside the head, do it to someone that deserves it, not someone else who is just trying to better themselves against all the same challenges that you face.

at any rate have a good day, I plan too

America will see this as a wake up call and change its attitude? Read up on MLK and see which methods work and which don't.

we wouldn't be having a need for this today, now would we. It helped but I know that but it was not an end to discrimination

or looting or rioting than the media would obsess over it rather than the reasons which led to the protests & anger in the first place which is exactly what is happening in Baltimore. Plus there were agent provacutuers pretending to be protesters or whoever committing violent acts for the media to obsess over whether here or Iran in the 1950s.

How Critiques of Baltimore Media Coverage Echo 1992

The Daily Show‘s Jon Stewart wasn’t the first to compare this week’s rioting in Baltimore to the 1992 Rodney King Riots in Los Angeles, which were sparked exactly 23 years ago, and he likely won’t be the last — not just because of the confluence of dates and events, but because of how the media covered those events.

During his opening monologue on Tuesday, Stewart called out what he sees as one of the media’s worst habits: a tendency to search for the most sensational images at the expense of context. He compared coverage of Baltimore to similar footage of white people rioting after sporting events and a pumpkin festivals, and he took particular aim at CNN’s Wolf Blitzer, who said, “It’s hard to believe this is going on in a major American city right now,” just a few months after making similar comments about Ferguson.

“These cyclical eruptions appear like tragedy cicadas,” Stewart said, “Depressing in their similarity, predictability and intractability.”

Even President Obama expressed that he shared Stewart’s frustrations with the media during a Tuesday press conference. “If we really wanted to solve the problem, we could,” he said, noting that coverage of the violence dwarfed coverage of peaceful protests from previous days. “It would require everybody saying, ‘This is important, this is significant,’ and not just pay attention to these communities when a CVS burns or a young man gets shot or has his spine snapped.”

http://time.com/3840363/media-coverage-baltimore-rodney-king/

The quote is often traced to 1968, but it was actually a frequent rhetorical turn for King, appearing years earlier than that. In 1966, for example, in a Sept. 27 interview, King was questioned by CBS’ Mike Wallace about the “increasingly vocal minority” who disagreed with his devotion to non-violence as a tactic. In that interview, King admitted there was such a minority, though he said that surveys had shown most black Americans were on his side. “And I contend that the cry of ‘black power’ is, at bottom, a reaction to the reluctance of white power to make the kind of changes necessary to make justice a reality for the Negro,” King said. “I think that we’ve got to see that a riot is the language of the unheard. And, what is it that America has failed to hear? It has failed to hear that the economic plight of the Negro poor has worsened over the last few years.”

http://time.com/3838515/baltimore-riots-language-unheard-quote/

I'm not so sure that the agent provocateurs aren't the police themselves or closely associated with them at the very least.

were agent provocateurs or the police?

FTR, I was on your side more than the other because during moments like this some people such as Wolf Blitzer and the like quote MLK or condemn the riots with his example & your arguments in this sub-thread was more in line with the MLK example by focusing on the factors that led to this. All throughout history so-called "race riots" were sparked by instances of police brutality but the anger was there brewing before from the unfairness & poverty.

McKesson agreed that the property damage in Baltimore on Monday night was unfortunate, but he urged Blitzer to remember that there had been “many days of peaceful protests here in Baltimore City and places all around the country.”

“But at least 15 police officers have been hurt, 200 arrests, 144 vehicle fires — these are statistics,” Blitzer countered, robotically reading a police press release. “There’s no excuse for that kind of violence, right?”

“Yeah, and there’s no excuse for the seven people that the Baltimore City Police Department has killed in the last year either, right?” McKesson shot back.

“We’re not making comparisons,” Blitzer stuttered. “Obviously, we don’t want anybody hurt. But I just want to hear you say that there should be peaceful protests, not violent protests in the tradition of Dr. Martin Luther King.”

“Yeah, there’s should be peaceful protests,” the community organizer replied. “And I don’t have to condone it to understand it, right? The pain that people feel is real.”

“And you are making a comparison,” McKesson added. “You are suggesting this idea that broken windows are worse than broken spines, right?”

http://www.rawstory.com/2015/04/activist-smacks-down-wolf-blitzer-you-are-suggesting-broken-windows-are-worse-than-broken-spines/

It was killing me to see blaming some looters for destroying economic opportunities by taking down the CVS (without mentioning perhaps they should pay a living wage if it is that dire) when Baltimore has well-known & well-documented de-industralization. The cause & effects of the CVS burning up is unfortunate but there is a larger issue at-play in losing a CVS









http://www.viralnova.com/baltimore/

CVS boarding up wouldn't be unusual since most of Baltimore is boarded up -- whenever poverty is concentrated it is obvious the people that live & grow up in it are being abandoned, neglected, & forgotten -- except to send the police it isn't hard for me to see why this happens. "A riot the language of the unheard." Better efforts could be better focused on those who are neglecting people rather than those who vent their frustrations for the neglect & holding them responsible for the neglect.

And that that was a relatively new store. Do you really think CVS or any other full-service pharmacy is going to be anxious to put a store in that neighborhood any time soon? Really?

There's a reason why so many of these neighborhoods that have had serious riots with lots of property destruction struggle to come back to even the state that they had been before. Businesses will go where they can do business and make money. They'll steer clear of areas where they don't have a reasonably good reason to believe that they'll be able to do so.

The business should have, and probably did have, insurance. It sucks for the business owner but at least they should get some reimbursement for the damages.


But what about the employees? They were probably living paycheck to paycheck as it is, and in any case unemployment check is a lot less. If they are even eligible for it.

F*K the assholes who put innocent people out of their jobs and stole from others.

It's a pretty standard clause. many of those businesses are likely fucked.

you'd go broke. There will be empty holes there and other business will flee. My neighboring city is just rebuilding via habitat some of the housing stock that decayed or was burned long ago. Its taken more than 40 yrs. The city became the largest owner of abandoned property.

and however many jobs it provided.

I hope, for the neighborhood's sake, that they rebuild.

to a neighborhood prone to rioting.

I was stunned to see that this store was looted. It's in a very "cultural" area of Baltimore, near the Enoch Pratt Library, the Basilica and The Walters Art Gallery. It's been in business since 1931. I used to go there in the mid-1960's with a high school boy friend.

60 units that were set for under-served seniors were lost.

No doubt those senior citizens have had their hearts broken by losing their soon to be home.

Perhaps the senior center should start a dialogue with the criminals to understand why they burned down a much needed community resource?

And I haven't said "violence is cool". I said "fight the CAUSE of the violence".

This was caused to happen by generations on neglect and disempowerment-that heritage made these events inevitable at some point.

That's what happens when those who were supposed to fight greed and oppression compromised with those things instead.

they've certainly struck a blow for justice by ripping homes from old people.

Good lord.

So it's not appropriate to act as if I were defending it.

I didn't cause what happened in Baltimore. The whole power structure caused it. President Obama got that.

Buildings do sometimes catch on fire, and from what I've read the police and fire/EMS have been very hesitant to point a finger there. (Though the response times were delayed because of the other fires, so obviously there's some blame there no matter what.)

You are not one of the elderly who got their food and prescriptions from that CVS. There are no other stores of that type in that neighborhood. Many of these people have no cars. The city begged CVS to put a store in that community. No guarantee they will rebuild. They were likely losing money there.

I am one who thinks the cops were wrong again and there needs to be change. Protests can help bring about change. Destruction of property and hurting cops aren't the answer though.

That the area where most of the rioting took place had vacant lots and buildings left over from riots after MLK's assassination and decades of economic destabilization. I don't live in Baltimore so i don't know if that's true but if so it proves the point that riots never solve the economic hardships of black neighborhoods and black people.

I do hope for some help to aid the neighborhood and the citizens with less businesses in the community.

This is part of the whole gentrification pattern that is getting remarkably little press right now.