I came across the following on Facebook this week. Of all the things I've read about Baltimore so far, this takes first prize in my totally unofficial non-competition process. I'm grateful to La Sha for giving me permission to re-post it here.
On CVS:
I remember when People's Drug Store became CVS. My mother would give me a
dollar everyday to spend after school, and on our way home, my sister and I
always stopped at CVS. I loved SweetTarts. When I graduated and changed
schools, there was no CVS near my new school. So I got my SweetTarts from the
corner store.
When I changed schools, I got a new teacher and new friends. Really, they
were just new versions of my old friends and teachers. Same problems, same
love, same fears, just a new building. They were my community. Not CVS. I never
went to CVS to feed my mind, soul or spirit, just my sweet tooth.
And when I watched CVS looted and burned on TV, not one tear did I shed --
maybe a little jealously since I couldn't be there to make off with some of
those SweetTarts, but I digress. That drug store, that business, that symbol of
capitalist greed, that place where they hire the people in the community and
pay them $8 an hour while they exploit the fact that the people of that
community have no place closer to buy groceries so they have to pay more or go
without, that brick and mortar where they pump more narcotics than the boys
from The Wire, where they don't offer cures but temporary soothing for dollars,
where they take money from the people and give it to their shareholders without
any reinvestment into the people who make it, that place meant not a fucking
thing to me.
Unless with all the chips, toothpaste, prescriptions and cotton balls
they're selling, they start giving away fucks free, watching CVS destroyed gave
me no more pain than a piece of lint falling on my head.
