This may or may not be relevant to Thursday’s tragic events, but I feel compelled to contribute a bit of background knowledge.
In the last four months I have spent eight weeks (three separate trips) in Dallas on family matters.
I had an opportunity to take an outsiders look at some of the local news stories, and spent time just driving around the city. While I don’t recall seeing any streaming confederate battle flags like I do here in northwest Arkansas, (Another story for another blog) there are some definite quirks to the local geography.
“South Dallas”, the heavily minority area of the city, is a “Food Desert”.
I am aware of this because of a local newspaper story, the city council took note of this, and instead of a tax abatement for another Walmart in an already well served part of the city, offered the subsidy to anyone willing to open a grocery store in the undeserved part of the community. Walmart chose not to (I have written elsewhere about Walmart’s “emerging” strategy), and understand the opportunity was going to be taken up by COSTCO.
Actually, zoom out any google map search for any retail chain (Walmart, Kohl’s, Penney’s, Staples, Lowe’s) and the pattern leaps out at me (the kind of thing the military trained me in). There is a hole on the south side of the city where there are no chain stores, within the “635” ring road and south of Interstate 30.
Add in local stories about Feral Dog Packs in south Dallas (I have my own local problem with a free range pit bull), a couple of accidental drive arounds (So I’m not very good at following my new smart phones directions), well, it reminded me of the bad parts of Chicago. Complete with panhandlers at seemingly every freeway interchange. Probably not a part of town I would want to live in.
Please be aware there are numerous Walmart Neighborhood Markets and other grocery stores in the better parts of town I spent most of my time in.
Part of a consistent pattern I have seen elsewhere, the Republicans are quite willing to abandon a portion of our population. Cut off their housing assistance and food stamps and tell them they should take (non-existent) jobs.
Twice I was stuck while traffic crept past (Single) older vehicles stopped n the middle of a main arterial during rush hour. Broken Down? Out of Gas? Who knows, but a sign there is a portion of the population not doing as well as the Republican narrative there would have you believe.
I have no idea where Micah Xavier Johnson lived or what his life story was about, no doubt details will emerge in future weeks. Plenty of other veterans I have met and talked to are back working the same dead end fast food jobs they enlisted to escape.
Any help on tags or illustrations would be appreciated. Could use some good Dallas Ruins Porn for the header.