The Whose Foods? organization has release a video about the June 2 Town Hall Meeting where 3 arrests were made and Boston Police shut down the meeting earlier due to disruption and interruption of residents’ comments.
As the Whose Foods? email we received tonight states:
Whole Foods’ packed Town Hall meeting on June 2nd at JP’s Curley School was met by a large presence of residents who continue to express their concerns and demands about the potential arrival of the store. The meeting marked the first official visit of Whole Foods to Jamaica Plain since the January announcement that the upscale grocery store would be taking over the Hi-Lo Foods space in Hyde Square.
In a statement on behalf of neighbors concerned about the planned store, Martha Rodriguez of Hyde Square asked Whole Foods: “We were promised a forum such as this one as soon as you had access to the store. You gained access and erected a fence in late March, but waited over two months to host this meeting at which the community is allotted a deplorable 30 minutes to speak. Is this your idea of being a good neighbor?” and “What are you going to do about the displacement of our families, friends, and neighbors…?”
Great. Even worse than no statement at all.
The gall of this group is incredible although highly predictable. I especially enjoyed listening to the girl halfway through try to chastise WF for not creating an environment conducive to discussion and an exchange of ideas.
Meanwhile, her compatriots call people “gentrifying pigs”, start chants in the middle of people trying to speak, and go into areas where they have been told they are not allowed to go repeatedly to unfurl a banner.
To suggest that Whole Foods is to blame for the debacle at this meeting is delusional lunacy.
It is beyond strange. As someone who has REPEATEDLY asked anyone in WHOSE FOODS? to answer questions (I even was on NPR and I got no answers), this is a weird video. It’s as if they weren’t even there on Thursday.
This organization needs to take its passion and use it on more important issues.
Actually, if their tactics in this case are representative, I would argue that this organization would do more harm than good to any issue they decided to back. What intelligent objective person could possibly take them seriously at this point?
It is CLEAR that their tactics have backfired and now seeing this video they literally have no more credibility. Sad
The one upside to this nonsense is that with each succesive iteration of stupidity, more and more people are being galvanized firmly on the side of Whole Foods.
Personally, I had never once set foot inside of a WF store until this “movement” began. I am sure that I am not alone.
I have far more faith in this community than to believe that these feeble attempts at propaganda are going to resonate with anyone except the “few” as Menino put it.
Agree 100%
Wow. What’s so bizarre is that they show their disruptive, uncivil bad behavIor then follow it with this huge disconnect: “Huh? We didn’t do anything wrong… Why is everyone being so mean??”. If they had wanted discourse and dialogue then they would have shown courtesy and interest in others opinions. Instead they seemed to think they were at a rock concert. They are all so pleased with themselves outside the station. Self congratulatory, with no reflection as to how their behavior affected other people at the meeting. They basically, with their antics, mistreated every person in that room who disagreed with them, yet in the video a woman talks about the divisiveness currently in JP coming from WF, never once reflecting that anything they may have done might account for that divisiveness.
Yup
Oh my God that is just so, well, sad and funny at the same time. Do they even realize what a disservice they did to their own cause? that they really just completely sabotaged it themselves? no wonder the mayor releases his statement now- they made it obvious how nutty they are as shown in this video. a few things: that last woman in the video was one of the loudest, rudest ones at the meeting. those people didn’t get arrested for “free speech” they got arrested for trespassing into the balcony and disturbing the peace (check and check.) the purpose of the meeting wasn’t to discuss whether or not people wanted whole foods here, as that is happening; it was to ask real questions about things like parking etc. the anti whole foods people could have even used the Q&A time to actually ask that question they have, what will whole foods do about displacement, if they had been peaceful and respectful all along, so that the meeting didn’t have to be ended early! how completely ironic that they’ve complained and complained that wf hadn’t had a meeting yet but then when the meeting happens they act like a bunch of petulant schoolchildren. one last thought, something that I felt many times that night: in the part of the video where they unfurled the banner and started the chanting, you can see such EMBARRASSMENT on the faces of so many people sitting there- their behavior that night made me embarrassed for them and embarrassed that this was the reception that WF got. at least now it’s clear just how fringe the whose food people are.
Hi Julio, thanks for your continued coverage of Whole Foods. One request: The photo above looks exactly like one I took at the meeting. If it is a Patch photo, you are welcome to use it, but I would like a link in the credit line. Thanks!
Will check and if it is then I will definitely add and also add another embeddable link to it. Thanks, Chris!
Chris, we replaced the photo
Wow. That’s their official video that *they* released? Don’t people usually edit stuff to make themselves look good?
Well, the fact that this is what they chose to release to represent themselves tells me that the debacle last week was *exactly* what they were aiming for.