Apr 18, 2018

Starbucks



#Starbucks. 

1. So, waiting for your whole party to show up before ordering is pretty fucking normal. The guys weren't doing anything unusual. The fact is, ordering before your whole party arrives is just rude. 

2. Once police saw that that was all that was going on, the officer's job was to take the manager in the back room and tell him: if you call us for this shit again, you'll be the one we're escorting out.

End of story. But it doesn't end, because police decide to stick around where they're clearly not needed (which feels somehow ironic, since they never bought anything).

How do we know they weren't needed? Because white people in the room were more concerned about the police than the "trespassers". 

3. And then White Ally shows up and starts yelling. White Allies never understand that that only forces everyone into a situation where the officer now has something to prove. Whether or not they're trained for it, police hate de-escalation. Why? Because they're people, and any person who knows they will win, hates de-escalation. White Ally has no experience with this, doesn't understand that he needs to STFU.

4. And now we're protesting the chain? This didn't need to escalate to the CEO of Starbucks. He doesn't want to run a racist business, he wants dollar bills from morons of every age, gender, and race. But they protest the chain, because they've protested the police till they're hoarse and police leadership doesn't care.

(...which is cancerous to a community, but let's never mention that. Leave the police alone, it's a difficult job they were inescapably born into.)

So yeah! Bring your megaphones and your hashtags and your tv cameras to the coffee shop. It'll be just like high school. Safe and you can be as absurd as you like. Perform some slam.

5. Manager wrong. Police wrong. White friend wrong. Protesters wrong. 

6. Black dudes kept their cool, went peaceably, and stayed away from the media. They're the wisest of all involved.

It'd be ironic if it wasn't predictable.

UPDATE:
The dudes talked, but weren't disruptive. Still good on them. The cops came out and admitted to being wrong. Good on them. Respect and thank you.