News Aug 9, 2014 at 9:05 am

Comments

1
I understand Pronto desperately needed logo sponsors to become viable. And that's what did the trick in some other cities that now have thriving bike shares.

But they fucking knew the Market rules and why they're so important. Of course it's their right to apply even with their Alaska Air logos. But they knew it would be rejected, so to now see Pronto's ED happily posing for the Times in an effort to shame the Market? It's a PR stunt Pronto is doing on the backs of our Market vendors.
2
Ugh, guess we're going to get hayden c, Ken Mehlman, and all the other racists shitting over this thread.
3
I don't get the point of that article since it's been well known for decades that there are far more blacks in prison than whites and other races. The future hypothetical is illogical. America's already 'informed'.
4
Of course you can extrapolate theories from blind studies, but only to an extent and then its malleable conjecture to suit all points of view on the subject.
6

Montoya:

"We have tens of hundreds of millions of dollars spent on federal projects," he said. "Is that something we need to take a look at?"


Whistles in dark ...
7
Where is this thirst coming from to be so cynical about racism in America? There is a lot of progress to be made, but it seems that every flash point of over racism (e.g. former Clippers owner Donald Sterling, yahoos protesting immigrant children in crisis) is always to be seen as obstacles that America will never overcome. I remember watching the riots on Birmingham Alabama on a black & white, I even remember a ā€˜Coloredā€™ Jim Crow sign in the south, we have made so much progress since then not to mention electing a mixed race president twice and Obama even lost the Mormon vote in 2012.

But yet, no matter how hard America tries to move to be post racial society there are always steadfast cynical, almost vogue, groups and individuals with narratives to discount progress like this junk science study. Itā€™s almost an industry onto itself.

If you were walking through the park and two white dudes came up and dude A said that dude B is a racist. Then they both walked on so you couldn't gather any more context about the matter. I would give dude B the benefit of the doubt and believe that heā€™s not a racist, despite what dude A said, because Iā€™m optimistic. Is that terrible?

Is being optimistic about racism in itself racist? Yes or no?
8
Oops, missed a sentence in my example: Dude B explicitly says he's not a racist.
9
@1 good point, it's got publicity stunt written all over it.

Another approach might be for Pronto to discuss with their sponsors the importance of the market location and maybe convince them to leave the corporate logos off that one station in order to allow it to be sited at that prime spot.
10
Why can't Pronto just put up one bike station at the Market with no 'naming-rights' ads? Make it 'historical' looking and stock it with Penny-farthings. It'd just be that one station... would it be that damaging to their bottom line? Cripes.
11
Psychiatric boarding is not housing patients in hospital rooms; they are strapped to gurneys in hospital hallways. The point is that there are no rooms for them. Get the story right before you mention it.
12
With the paragraphs about Pronto's rates, the article sure sounds like a promo.

The story gives me the impression that the bikes themselves would need to be free of logos to be at the market, which would mean that all bikes would need to be logo free.

The Pronto exec says that they want to put the stop by the entrance of Pike Place; why can't it go across the street on the east side of First Avenue? Or is that still part of the historic district?
13
@ 7, it's hard to say. Why? Because there is a push from social cons to insist that were're beyind all that already. And we're not even close yet. Things are better than they were but much worse than they should be. The progress of recent decades has been incremental at best. Institutional racism is still quite alive and well, and will remain so as long as there are many people who look at its results as evidence that their prejudices are correct. Optimism is a bit hard to fathom in this light sometimes.
14
yeah, Ansel, fuck those Yazidis! saving their asses would be too much like 1991, so let's not bother.
15
I saw a couple and small child walking Green Lake today.
It was fairly warm.
He was in shorts, t-shirt.
She was in full Moslem covering; you could see nothing of her -- she was totally covered with just a narrow slit where I assume she could see out.

I found it extremely disturbing. Sickening.

Is it legal?
Should it be allowed?
Should social sanction be applied?
Should Seattle allow such behavior in public?

16
Update to #15: I _assume_ that she was in Moslem dress. That might not be accurate but it is irrelevant. I wouldn't want to see any woman (assuming it was a woman) dressed like that.
Does anyone else feel that way?
Is there anything which could or should be done?
Call the cops?
17
@15, 16: So, you want to have a woman arrested because you think she was dressed inappropriately. Hm.

I really do hope you're trolling. If not, what exactly is the difference between you and the sort of youth militias that harass women in Western dress in Iran?
18
@17
Not in least trolling.
You think that the way she is treated is ok?

No,the idea is not to arrest the woman but to stop the practice & arrest the man who was acting very comfortably while this woman is suffering in the heat. It was horrible to see.

19
@raindrop, Danielle Henderson has a piece in the Guardian you may find illuminating (or not):

http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree…

@15, 16, 18: I don't pretend to have the answers on the Islamic dress code question, which many countries around the world are wrestling with. But free secular societies do need to carefully consider the effects of making laws that impinge on religious practice. Detaining women (or the men with them) because they are wearing full-body coverings is too much like profiling Ć  la driving while black. My eyes were opened some years ago by a non-religious Iranian colleague when I was railing against the chador and hijabā€”though she eschewed it herself, she vociferously defended the right to wear it as a refuge of privacy in that society, illusory and in-the-tank as that may seem to us. Here's another thought experiment: if the loose, voluminous Islamic garments are seen as potential concealment for terrorists, given the high number of overweight people in the world, why not assume that all non-skinny-appearing people are terrorists wearing suicide belts plus extra padding, and stop/search them accordingly? When you move from a minority to a near-majority, the intrusion and violation become obvious. Finally, you can't even assume that a woman is overheated in Islamic dress; the physics are more complicated than that.
20
@19
There is law and there is social sanction.

You conflate them.

21
@20: You're projecting.
22
@21
That's a fair criticism.

It may be legal (under current law) for people to wear masks (or equivalent) in public. So we are required to tolerate the practice.

But it doesn't mean we have to like it or respect it. We can disapprove of something and yet acknowledge that we have allow it because that's the law.

I don't approve of women in burqa.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Burqa
But I don't have to approve of the burqa.

I agree with you that it is tough to determine a principled way to make the burqa illegal in all public circumstances, (though there are many situations in which it is easy to prohibit it such in court, receiving a driving infraction, use of a credit card which has photo ID or which requires additional photo ID, etc etc.

But we can also use informal social sanction to get across the idea that we disfavor the practice which are both legal and which are effective.

We acknowledge local practice when liberal Americans visit some foreign countries e.g. no male/female embracing in public, women wear a head covering.

So why should we not expect foreigners visiting USA (or even living here) to follow American custom such as not enslaving women?

Do you favor enslaving women, Rob!?
23
@22: You assume that women who wear a hijab or niqab or burka do so because they're being coerced. There are women for whom modest dress is a source of pride and self-respect. Telling a woman she CAN'T wear them is no better than telling her she MUST wear them.
24
"You assume that women who wear a hijab or niqab or burka do so because they're being coerced."

Enjoying your patriarchy?
25
Don't knock it, C&D. A hijab provides a relaxing break from street harassment. They are also surprisingly comfortable as far as temperature regulation.

If you can't handle seeing something like that (among people who are actually doing nothing wrong), just LOOK AWAY.

Please wait...

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