Scenes From a Poorly-Attended Soda Tax Protest

Scenes from a (soda revenue enhancement) protest

Last week's rally confronting the soda tax lacked many things—including a crowd

Scenes from a (soda tax) protest

Last week'southward rally against the soda tax lacked many things—including a crowd

Jun. xv, 2016

Orlando Marmol and his married woman Kenia, who own a small grocery in Olney, made the trip considering they were distressed past the prospect of losing sales due to the tax. "When the cigarette taxation passed, we lost 40% of our cigarette sales overnight," Kenia says. "This will exist even worse." Del Conor and his wife, Jacqueline, who own the soda company Dr. Physick, agreed. The profit margins on their locally made soda are already tight, and the higher prices volition "kill our sales," Del says.

These are a few of the people who showed up at the rally outside City Hall last week to protest the soda tax, on which City Council will vote tomorrow. I've spent the terminal 2 decades writing about workers' rights and problems that pertain to income inequality. I went to the rally to find out: Is this a fight between moneyed interests or is there something grassroots afoot? What I saw was not impressive: To protest against the new revenue enhancement, in what is already one of the highest taxed cities in the country, it would be generous to guess that 300 people take shown up.

When it comes to organized protestation, size matters. In fact, it's well-nigh the only thing that does. It's hard to imagine the Arab Leap would accept gotten underway if a mere 300 people had massed in Tahrir Foursquare in 2012. And at least half the people here this forenoon are Teamsters, organized protestors whose participation has the feel of membership obligation rather than connectedness to the consequence. I ask one of the teamsters why he is here and he says something about the government coming for his guns if they are not stopped. Another says that City Regime will revenue enhancement the air nosotros exhale if they are not stopped. The prospect of an unchecked, tyrannical city government seems like it has motivated them more the actual specifics of the soda tax, and a lot of the conversation has a distinctly Tea Party vibe.

The air-we-exhale motif also appears a lot on signs that are being waved around. SODA Revenue enhancement-NEXT AIR TAX, one protester has written. Some of the other signs are straightforward (NOT Another PENNY FOR KENNEY), some are clever (ALL THESE TAXES ARE SODA-PRESSING) and some appear to take been left over from other rallies (NO JUSTICE NO PEACE.) Someone has diddled upwards an unflattering picture of Kenney giving the photographer the finger while getting boozer, and emblazoned several different quips on information technology. No thing. If Kenney had looked downward from his office and seen how sparse the crowd was, he would probably have found the scene encouraging.

A parade of potable trucks roll past and accident their air horns, making the starting time real noise of the morning as some speakers take the stage. Local businessman Gary Hines talks well-nigh pre-K, the intended use of the soda taxation funding, and says, "At that place's got to be other means to fund this…Some of these bigger corporations don't pay their off-white share. I'm non naming names." I wonder why not. Maybe leaving us hanging is red meat for the Tea Party conspiracy types. Danny Grace from Teamsters local 830 makes reference to a "wide coalition" of over "a m businesses and 17,000 people," and I wonder where they all are. If a third of them had shown up this morning, the rally would accept a totally different feel.

The lack of a female speaker underscores the organizational experience of the protest.  For a tax that has been labeled the "grocery taxation," in a city where women exercise a vast majority of the grocery shopping, this protest has been arranged to demonstrate how the new taxation will affect businesses.

Other speakers, business owners and heads of various organizations, come up up and tick off the listing of damages that will be inflicted by the tax. All of them are men. The lack of a female speaker underscores the organizational feel of the protest. For a tax that has been labeled the "grocery tax," in a city where women do a vast bulk of the grocery shopping, this protestation has been arranged to demonstrate how the new tax will affect businesses. The man aspect, the single female parent who can barely afford to pay for her groceries today, or the cash strapped family human, is absent. Besides missing is racial diversity. If this motion has a face up, it is a white business owner aroused about profits.

A protest similar this is always a gamble. Charles de Gaulle famously said that the job of president was elementary: To keep the people from rioting. The impact of protestation is routinely underplayed past the corporate media, probably in the hopes that fewer people will really do it. But everyone who has ever served in regime knows full well the impact of looking out an office window and seeing an impressive crowd, furious about a proposed policy. And if they expect out the window and see a small crowd that barely fills out a few hundred foursquare feet of public space, they take that as a sign, too. It is a sign of implicit permission to go on along whatever path they have chosen, to double downwards on the policy that initiated the protest in the get-go place.

Certain enough, later in the twenty-four hours, at a preliminary vote, Metropolis Finance Director Rob Debow announced right before the vote that not but will the taxation proposal become to a vote, but that much of the money it generates in the showtime year will not be used for pre-k and city parks. Instead it will become into the city's full general fund, a black pigsty of unspecified expenses. Why wouldn't he? The Kenney assistants cleverly used kids to sell the revenue enhancement, but in the cease they were mere props.

I'chiliad not suggesting that a ane.5 cents/ounce tax on sugary drinks should describe a Tahrir Square-blazon demonstration, merely a regime is only equally good as the citizens make it. If a beverage manufacture-sponsored poll said 58% of Philadelphians really oppose the soda tax, why did so few of them prove up to say so? (A Citizen co-sponsored poll with BeHeardPhilly constitute 58.seven percent favored the tax.) The usual complaint, that there is no real opposition party in Philadelphia Urban center Government, which makes the Democratic primary the real election and hands excessive power to the mayoral part, is only partly to blame. In an environment like that, civic engagement becomes fifty-fifty more necessary. Only today the showing was besides weak to brand a difference.

The soda tax passed out of committee afterward that day. The vote tomorrow volition likely make it law. Soon, Philadelphians may take to pay 1.5 cents actress for every ounce of soda they drink. Maybe the air we breathe really volition be next. If we don't speak up and participate in the process, anything is possible.

Photo credit: Iain Levison

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Source: https://thephiladelphiacitizen.org/soda-tax-protest-poorly-attended/