Wear your white-T . . . No word on baggy jeans:
What: The WHITE T-SHIRT protest.
When: 5-7 pm Sat. Aug. 30, 2008
Plan: Meet at the ACLU office (3601 Main St. KC Mo 64111) at 4pm to pick up signs and instructions.
In response to the growing concerns about Racial Profiling in the Power and Light District, the ACLU will be marching and picketing from the Sprint Center to the Power and Light District. Participants are asked to wear a white T shirt to the march. Each marcher will be asked to write a message to Cordish and the City Council on their T shirts.
For example: "The City Council gave Cordish $300 million dollars in tax breaks and all I got was this lousy T shirt."
The march will serve several purposes.
1. Inform the public about the specifics of the dress code.
2. Remind Cordish and the city council/mayor about their responsibilities to all the citizens of Kansas City. Millions of dollars in tax breaks have been given to the Cordish Company. Discrimination and tax breaks are incompatible. A race neutral dress code is required.
3. Invite the city council and Cordish developers to attend a Town Hall meeting to discuss the issue.
Personally, I couldn't agree more with the protest and it's a great opportunity to stand up to the discriminatory policies of the Power & White District.
The fact is, that even the P&L District pretty much admits that the enforcement of the dress code is along racial lines.
And for every silly anecdote that white people have about not being let into the P&L District . . . There are dozens more people of color who were denied access, in my opinion, because their skin color didn't match the arbitrarily enforced dress code.
From what I've heard . . .
NO MATTER WHAT CLOTHES THEY'RE WEARING . . . THE P&L DISTRICT DOESN'T LET IN GROUPS OF MINORITIES WITH MORE THAN 5 PEOPLE!!!
The rumors circulating in the local Latino Community claim that one family after the next has been denied access with the undefined dress code used as nothing more than a pretext for discrimination.
And it's not like the people I know haven't faced discrimination before . . . Businesses aren't allowed to discriminate along racial lines anymore but they do. That's not the greatest sin of the P&L District.
THE UNACCEPTABLE PART OF DE FACTO P&L DRESS CODE RACIAL DISCRIMINATION IS THAT IT USES TAXPAYER FUNDS TO TURN MINORITIES AWAY!!!
People of color in Kansas City are literally paying taxes in order to finance the bonds needed to build the place and then they're denied access to the District . . . So this isn't big business vs. activists . . . It's the beneficiaries of corporate welfare playing games with Kansas City's cash.
This protest is long overdue.