Because so many on the Left insist on gaslighting the rest about the prevalence of the Woke Church's endless efforts to impose its values upon every facet of American life, it's worth keeping track of examples as they arise. This brand of stifling, hardcore leftism will not be defeated in one fell swoop, but rather requires chipping away, case by case, often at the local level. On that score, there have been a few small victories recently – including an outcry forcing a school board in New Jersey to beat a hasty retreat after voting unanimously to eliminate the names of holidays – including Thanksgiving, Memorial Day, and Jewish high holy days – on the upcoming academic calendar, replacing them with the generic label "day off." This was supposedly done to avoid offense but had the opposite effect, and the policy was fully reversed after community members made their anger known.
A Colorado mayor's ban on the pledge of allegiance has also been defied by citizens who engaged in a patriotic act of civil disobedience. More culture war skirmishes are playing out elsewhere, including in Northern Virginia. Meanwhile, some new stories on my radar: (1) Woke restaurant owners are starting to levy "equity" charges on customers:
Broders' justifies its "equity" charge by saying many "states have allowed reduced minimum wages for service staff in the form of a tip credit.”
— Jon Miltimore (@miltimore79) June 22, 2021
True. But guess what? Minnesota is not one of those states.
So apparently, Broders' has no problem deceiving its customers. pic.twitter.com/wIH2UFBOY7
The restaurant’s second justification is that many tippers are racist and sexist, according to uncited research. “Studies have also shown that there is inequity and built-in bias in the way consumers give tips,” the statement reads. “In general, Black or Brown servers receive less tips than Caucasian servers. There is gender bias as well.” The final part of the statement says the new policy stems from wider racial injustice and is not a substitute for gratuity. “In the wake of racial injustice protests and the closures due to Covid, now is the time for Broders’ to reimagine its economics and provide fair pay across the company,” the statement reads. “Our Benefits & Equity Charge is applied entirely to employee compensation. This supplement helps us to set a $16 minimum hourly wage for customer facing employees, $18 minimum hourly wage for kitchen employees… Altogether this allows everyone in our company to earn a real living wage. The 15% Benefits & Equity Charge is not a gratuity.” ... Out of curiosity, I looked around to see if other restaurants are adding similar charges. I quickly found one. Pizzeria Toro, a North Carolina restaurant, recently announced that it is introducing a 20 percent Living Wage Fee. The pizzeria’s owner, Gray Brooks, said this is the “equitable” thing to do. “In order for the bottom to rise up, the top has to come down a little bit,” said Brooks.
These people are free to run their restaurants however they see fit, but customers are also welcome to make decisions about where they take their business if certain eateries are going to mandate social justice tithing for the privilege of dining out. We'll see whether this becomes a growing trend, but it seems like a very efficient way to alienate a significant portion of one's clientele. (2) The Washington Post has run a cartoonish op/ed piling on the Lin Manuel Miranda "controversy." This buzzword-laden, hazy drivel should be embarrassing for everyone involved in its publication:
democracy dies in unintelligible word salad pic.twitter.com/oEiK0jyqBy
— joelgrus ?????? fizzbuzzbook.com (@joelgrus) June 22, 2021
A fraction of a fraction of Americans has enough knowledge of the race-fixated activist lexicon to have even the foggiest idea what this paragraph intends to communicate. It's nuts that Miranda, who has made his artistic mark on society in a major way, feels compelled to apologize to such people. (3) Out of that bastion of left-wingery, the University of...Oklahoma?
I get that a lot of people are committed to believing that things like this aren't happening in education, but they are. And conflating being concerned about these illiberal developments with "not wanting to teach real history" is a bad faith obfuscation as the two are unrelated. https://t.co/A9ruQaRXQ9
— Corie Whalen (@CorieWhalen) June 22, 2021
"Utterly absurd, and the instant any of that is operationalized or made policy, completely unconstitutional," reacts conservative constitutional lawyer David French, who has been heavily involved in litigation involving free speech on college campuses. I'll leave you with item (4), the latest nonsense out of America's wokest city:
They have riots every night, homicides are through the roof, theft is growing at an exponential rate, more police officers are quitting daily, businesses are fleeing the city, and Wheeler’s solution is to stop enforcing traffic laws. https://t.co/C98vTw1nAg
— AG (@AGHamilton29) June 22, 2021
The woke army can spend much of its time pretending none of this stuff is happening, but the reality is obvious and relentless.
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