antoine-roquentin:

First, it’s important to establish the stakes because these have been entirely omitted from all the reporting on the topic.

Regardless of what one thinks Walgreens’ business logic is for the closings, one cannot deny the story—either by design or incident—has become a full blown reactionary meme with a specific political context. As Steven Keehner documented at FAIR in July, a single viral video of shoplifting at Walgreens solicited over 300 articles nationwide, not including write-ups in South Africa, Mexico, UK, and South Korea. If you’re wondering this is, dollar for dollar, 474,183% more coverage than the one (1) mainstream media article about Walgreens admitting it stole $4.5 million from its employees over several years. The five Walgreens closings announced last week garnered coverage in The New York Times, The Washington Post, ABC News, CBS News, Yahoo News (which ran three stories), USA Today, and Bloomberg. There were reports about the closings on Local TV news stations in Rockford, Ill., Miami, Albany, Chicago, Dayton, Ohio and Jacksonville, Fla. Sinclair Broadcast Group, a right-wing media conglomerate that owns TV networks, ran an article about it that was put on the front page of hundreds of “local” new sites. Walgreens closings have been heavily featured on Tucker Carlson, Sean Hannity and Fox and Friends.  

No reasonable person can view this coverage as proportionate or reasonable. Again, even if one thinks “something needs to be done” about the “shoplifting epidemic,” one also must concede this story is very much not about the internal business economics of a single retail drug store. It is a political story about the specter of rising crime and weak-on-crime liberalism run amok. This is an undeniable political reality, however much “nuanced” Bay Area liberals wish to thread the needle between their nominal support for Black Lives Matter and their calls to “do something” about shoplifting. Any basic understanding of U.S. history has shown, time and again, in this country the inevitable result of crime panics is more Black and Brown people being put in prisons and jails. The inevitable and obvious political endpoint of this narrative is to (1) repeal Prop 47, which lowers the felony threshold for theft and will thus lead to harsher and longer sentences for larceny and (2) recall reform San Francisco DA Chesa Boudin and, more importantly, send a message to other genuinely progressive prosecutors that they will be swiftly and harshly punished for attempting to reduce jail and prison populations. Which will also, invariably, result in more poor Black and Brown people thrown into our prison meat grinder. This is not up for debate, or a possibility: It is a political certainty. Not, of course, because this is who is doing the actual stealing, but because this is the demographic of people who are disproportionately harmed by a racist criminal legal system.

The stakes for this narrative could thus not be higher. What happens in California has out-sized weight on the entire country, and the backlash against Black Lives Matter knows of no more potent vehicle than the Walgreens Closing narrative. With these tremendous human stakes in mind—and an understanding that reporters play with live ammunition, and that their reporting has human, material consequences on poor and vulnerable communities—let’s discuss four key plot holes in the Walgreens Are Closing Due to Organized Crime Shoplifting Rings narrative:

click through for the actual debunking, but i want to point out just how intense the recall effort for boudin is and how much the media favour it. the only place this anecdote has been reported on whatsoever is in an independent san francisco paper well into the article:

The deadline for submitting Boudin recall signatures is Oct. 25, and efforts to gather names are continuing—with what appear to be some dubious practices.

Castro resident Chris Vasquez told me that he was walking by the Market Street Safeway in August and saw a tent with a “Free COVID Test” sign on it. He had recently returned from a wedding and decided a test was a good idea.

A technician swabbed his nose, then handed him a piece of paper to sign. It turned out to be a Boudin recall petition.

“It was really sketchy,” he said.

The test was real enough: Vasquez got his results from Crestview Clinical Labs in Southern California. Crestview is on the list of state sites that are licensed to process COVID tests.