Mayor Zohran Mamdani will announce on Sunday that New York City will open a city-owned grocery store in East Harlem in Manhattan by the end of his first term, taking an early step to deliver on a key campaign pledge.
The mayor wants to spend roughly $30 million to build the store at La Marqueta, a city-owned marketplace under elevated train tracks in a predominantly Latino neighborhood. Mr. Mamdani will announce the plan at a speech on Sunday to mark his first 100 days as mayor.
As a candidate, Mr. Mamdani said he would create five city-owned grocery stores, one in each borough, in hopes of bringing down food costs for struggling New Yorkers.
Uh, what? The article doesn’t mention implementation. How did you get that he was nationalizing “food brokers”?
There’s also no mention of surveillance in this city-run store.
Also, fascism’s tenet of merging with corporate power doesn’t start with small businesses, it starts with large corporations as an economic boost.
Theory: Why do you need a merchant to set prices for food already cultivated by farmers, when you can directly source the food from locals?
By making state food brokers chains (“grocery stores”), he can capitalize on your desires and needs, instead of you sourcing your needs instead.
I’m wondering your level of naïveté here. Which level of surveillance are you comfortable with? Patriot Act style finance surveillance, or NY’s own infrastructure? I ask, because food brokers already analyze and invest in your habits.
New York is quite a big corporation, and if you live in it, you’re already paying for it. Unless somehow found a way to exempt yourself from being taxed. The merging of your taxation with your food habits, is quite a power to leverage huh.