[Wheelchair bound Former Customer] Matt Gard claims that the owner of Gary’s Chicaros restaurant, Gary James, banned him from the restaurant because of his wheelchair. James, however, says otherwise: “He created an issue. You only have one time here. You create an issue, you’re out forever.”
...
James doesn’t deny that he thinks some people shouldn’t patronize his restaurant. “Well if you work, you own a business, pay your taxes, you’re more than welcome here,” he told KFOR. “If you’re on welfare, stay at home and spend my money, there. I don’t deal with these people walking down the street with no jobs on welfare.”
Gard also claims that James has routinely turned away customers for decades. “He doesn’t like certain people of race, color, ethnicity,” Gard said of James.
James told KFOR that he’s owned Gary’s Chicaros for 44 years, so he “think[s] I can spot a freak or a f*ggot.”
The restaurant’s official t-shirt ["Where Great Whites Gather"] makes it clear that a “f*ggot” isn’t welcome in James’s establishment. It features that word, the N-word ["Nigger Free Zone"] , and threatens violence against Muslims, Democrats, and members of many minority groups.
What an amazing surprise it is to find out that this guy is a REPUBLICAN? Wow, who knew? That is so unexpected. What a Shocker!?
Yeah, because openly advertising that your establishment is for "Great Whites Only" and openly threatening the safety of patrons of a race and religion and political party you don't like just couldn't continue to happen in 21st Century America could it? I mean, that's so Bull Connor 1965!
Right?
Seems here we have exactly the situation that Senator Rand Paul said he couldn't imagine or support. A situation that John Stossel figured that the magical mystical free market would have long ago "self-corrected". Yet this guy Gary has been running this restaurant with an Official T-Shirt that says "Nigger Free Zone", where he openly discriminates against people racially and even on basis of disability seems to have no problem at all surviving the cold hard justice of the market, for the last Forty Four Years.
http://www.dailykos.com/...
According to people like Rand Paul and Stossel, a restaurant's like Gary's - Can't Possible Exist. But it does.
KELLY: Rand Paul is a libertarian. You are a libertarian. He is getting excoriated for suggesting that the Civil Rights act -- what he said was, "Look it's got 10 parts, essentially; I favor nine. It's the last part that mandated no discrimination in places of public accommodation that I have a problem with, because you should let businesses decide for themselves whether they are going to be racist or not racist. Because once the government gets involved, it's a slippery slope." Do you agree with that?
STOSSEL: Totally. I'm in total agreement with Rand Paul. You can call it public accommodation, and it is, but it's a private business. Are we going to say to the black students' association they have to take white people, or the gay softball association they have to take straight people? We should have freedom of association in America.
...
STOSSEL: Because eventually they would have lost business. The free market competition would have cleaned the clocks of the people who didn't serve most customers.
KELLY: How do you know that, John?
STOSSEL: I don't. You can't know for sure.
Yeah, you can know that. You can know for sure. You can see that in a Oklahoma town of 50,000 people which has a growing latino population but is majority white, and Republican, you can do just fine without getting your clock cleaned by simply pandering to RACISTS, and you can keep doing that for Forty Four Years with hardly anyone even noticing. Gary's happens to be six years younger than the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which means - if this has been an example of Gary's business practices the entire time - that he's been Violating the Law for the entire history of his restaurant.
If the magical marvelous free market were going to miraculously fix this without government intervention, I think it would have done it already.
Even the handicapped guy in this report would go there regularly knowing that doing so was endorsing and enabling the views of the owner - at least until he himself got kicked out and he finally realized what it felt like to be discriminated against!
First they came for the Socialist, but I did not speak out because I was not a Socialist. And when they finally came for me, there was no one left to speak out.
Yeah, welcome to the party pal, nice to have you finally on the reality stings when it slaps you in the face side of things.
On top of the Racism and Open Religious Bigotry, what really gets me is how blatantly this Gary guy doesn't understand things like the Public Accommodations Section of the American Disabilities Act.
http://www.ada.gov/...
A public accommodation is a private entity that owns, operates, leases, or leases to, a place of public accommodation. Places of public accommodation include a wide range of entities, such as restaurants, hotels, theaters, doctors' offices, pharmacies, retail stores, museums, libraries, parks, private schools, and day care centers. Private clubs and religious organizations are exempt from the ADA's title III requirements for public accommodations.
If a criterion screens out or tends to screen out individuals with disabilities, it may only be used if necessary for the provision of the services. For instance, it would be a violation for a retail store to have a rule excluding all deaf persons from entering the premises, or for a movie theater to exclude all individuals with cerebral palsy.
The problem that keeps Gary's going is that someone who has actually been discriminated against personally has to file a complaint. For example two decades ago when Denny's was caught secretly discriminating against their black patrons nothing was truly done about it until it happened to a group of African-American Secret Service Agents.
http://articles.philly.com/...
The entire group, all wearing black uniforms, badges and guns, entered Denny's together and were seated about 7:30 a.m. at several different tables in the same section of the restaurant, the lawsuit said.
The six black agents, seated at one table, still had not been served when the entire group began to leave about 8:25 a.m. The waitress then brought meals to some of the six, but they had no time to eat and left after complaining to the manager.
The company's initial investigation found evidence of "slow service and not racial bias," said Coleman Sullivan, a vice president of TW Services, which owns Denny's.
...
At yesterday's news conference, the black agents said they were ''humiliated" and felt "less of a person" than fellow agents who were served.
Usually bigots are far less blatant about what their doing than someone like Gary. Usually it's more like the Denny's situation where it's a "we said, they said" situation. Oh, we were just glacially slow to provide service accidentally, it wasn't deliberate or - heaven for fend - Racial.
Well, at Gary's Chicaros it's pretty clear that if they don't serve you or simply decide to throw you out - it just might have nothing to do with anything you've done, it probably has to do with What Gary Thinks you Are!.
Which besides being fairly jerkish, is Hella Illegal. Stossel would claim that it's "Gary's Right", but the Law says it's not - that Gary's Business doesn't have "Rights" - People Do. His patrons do, not a public business. It he wants to have a Private Club for White Bigoted Fuckerheads Only he can do whatever he wants, like the Boy Scouts, but when he's providing a service to the public - he can't exclude classes of people from his business without specific reason or cause.
After a thorough investigation showing that the experience of those African-American Secret Services agents was far from an isolated incident and that it instead had happened to thousands of customers Denny's eventually paid a settlement of $54 Million Dollars.
Denny's, a national restaurant chain, agreed today to pay more than $54 million to settle lawsuits filed by thousands of black customers who had been refused service or had been forced to wait longer or pay more than white customers.
The new head of the civil rights division of the Justice Department, Deval L. Patrick, said it was the largest and broadest settlement under the Federal public-accommodation laws. Those laws were adopted more than 30 years ago to end segregation in restaurants and other places that serve the public.
All it would then take is for a few of those people to report their treatment to the Civil Rights Division of the DOJ for something to finally happen at Gary's that hasn't for 44 years.
For him to finally get what's coming to him.
TLDR: For the past 44 years some batshit crazy restaurant in Oklahoma has only let "proper" straight, white, rich, non-disabled, Christian patrons into his private establishment. Somehow he wasn't sued out of his fucking mind two seconds after he unlocked his door forty-four years ago. He's also, apparently, threatened violence against any Islamic customers that enter his Civil Rights Act-compliant establishment. Which, according to Rand Paul, won't ever happen because them free marketz.
Slightly longer TLDR excerpted from the article:
James doesn’t deny that he thinks some people shouldn’t patronize his restaurant. “Well if you work, you own a business, pay your taxes, you’re more than welcome here,” he told KFOR. “If you’re on welfare, stay at home and spend my money, there. I don’t deal with these people walking down the street with no jobs on welfare.”
Gard also claims that James has routinely turned away customers for decades. “He doesn’t like certain people of race, color, ethnicity,” Gard said of James.
James told KFOR that he’s owned Gary’s Chicaros for 44 years, so he “think[s] I can spot a freak or a f*ggot.”
The restaurant’s official t-shirt ["Where Great Whites Gather"] makes it clear that a “f*ggot” isn’t welcome in James’s establishment. It features that word, the N-word ["Nigger Free Zone"] , and threatens violence against Muslims, Democrats, and members of many minority groups.
That pretty much sums it up.
So, NSG, what do you think?
1: Do you think that James is justified in turning away "impurities"?
2: Should businesses be able to basically tell anyone who isn't with their specific social pocket to go fuck themselves?
3: Should this business specifically be shut down?
4: Do you agree with Rand Paul's statements about the free market, even though they've been proven wrong in this very article?
Me:
1: No.
2: No.
3: Yes.
4: No.
Really?