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a thing abt this Starbucks mess that has been really interesting to watch has been the way people have tried to explain away what happened by falling back on the supposed protocols that govern posting up in a Starbucks. "why didn't they just *buy* something?"
I mean, first...what *are* the rules of posting up at Starbucks? Or using the bathroom? if you asked 100 people abt what their actual experiences at Starbucks had been re: the potty and posting up, you'd prolly get a decent split in the responses.
my point being: whatever the OFFICIAL rules of Starbucks, they're followed or enforced mad inconsistently. The rules, even if they are codified somewhere, they're interpreted as loosely or as strictly as the person in the role of arbiter needs them to be at the moment.
(FTR: Starbucks has actively leaned into this culture of chilling, because its stores are, you know, coffee shops, and that's what people do in them.)pic.twitter.com/cSzCf85WY1
and so this Starbucks mess has illuminated the ways our public spaces are *actually* policed. You know, the way we think about the rules. Parks are for chilling, until one day certain people --- maybe people without homes --- get shooed out. Loitering, you know.
the rules abt loitering were always on the books, you know? and so the gentrifiers complaining to the police about those "loiterers" can invoke them and the whole thing can seem a lot less like the declaration of ownership of that space... but just a concern for rules and order.
think abt any of the terrible stories of a black woman or man killed by the police. and think about all the dubious ways that contact was initiated, all the rules that work as pretext. broken taillight? tinted windows? "car matched the description..."? sure! any will work fine!
which brings us back to the Starbucks on Rittenhouse Square. Let's say you're the store manager, and two Black dudes come in. And they're chilling but them being there is making you a lil jumpy, right?
And let's say your jumpiness abt...those ppl...is broadly shared. that it is so pervasive an idea to be jumpy and uneasy that you read the stuff they're doing, like sitting and texting, as weird and vaguely menacing. and let's say you ask them to leave because of it.
that would be bad, right? and unfair? and discriminatory? maybe even racist? don't worry. you're none of those things. and that's not what this is. it's just that there are, you know, *rules.*
They were asking for it?
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