January 7, 2017

"As I talked to people about inclusiveness, and having a place for a variety of cultures and ethnicities to come together, people got more and more interested in the project."

Oh, really?

Either they got more and more interested or they became conscious of the need to look interested. I would expect people, here in Madison, Wisconsin, to be aware of the importance of not looking bored or uncaring when someone comes at you with talk of "inclusiveness" and the "com[ing] together" of "cultures and ethnicities."

The quote comes from Amanda White, a "fundraising consultant" hired by the city's Public Market Development Committee. The city seems to have already allocated $13 million to this project but is trying to figure out how much additional funds it can raise through donations.

This "public market" project has been going on since at least 2012. (It's now projected to open in 2019, but there's still a dispute over whether they've got the right site.)  I've never been able to understand it. Here's Progressive Dane's presentation of the idea, which says it's a way to "address racial disparities." Here's the Facebook page for Friends of the Madison Public Market. Here's the City's page on the project, where I found a report analyzing the market as a "Racial Equity & Social Justice Tool." ("Deploying strategies that can make opportunities in the food sector into pathways to a careers [sic] and businesses and transform the food economy a ladder [sic] to the middle class is critical to Madison making progress on racial economic equity.")

115 comments:

J. Farmer said...

Diversity is not a strength. Pay it forward.

The Cracker Emcee Refulgent said...

What a pile of dogshit. A Farmer's Market and craft bazaar for the usual White, middle-class liberals. It'll be as racially inclusive as a Stormfront wedding. As with bike lanes, the diversity jive is just a smokescreen for hoovering public money for the convenience and amusement of the usual privileged group of White folks.

zipity said...

Looks like a prime vehicle for funneling tax dollars to Liberals and their cronies...

Win-win.

Seeing Red said...

$13 million?

Wouldn't it be easier and cheaper to give out gift cards?

gspencer said...

"fundraising consultant," aka shakedown artist,

They trade in guilt. On one of the rare, and last, times that I might have answered the phone without knowing* the caller, I was asked, "Would you be willing to help us prevent 8-year little girls from being beaten by their white, heterosexual, Christian fathers?" When I answered, "No, I wouldn't," there was shocked silence for a good 5-10 seconds before the shakedown artist / guilt-instiller recovered. By then, I was gone.

My caller ID is amazing. It lets me know that I have friends and well-wishers all over the United States. Who knew that so many cared for me!

tcrosse said...

There must be a Microsoft Word template for writing this sort of boilerplate. I imagine a macro that would install "addressing the needs of the community" or "celebrating a diversity of cultures and ethnicities" at the touch of a key.

Rae said...

Why does it take so much money and time to set up a farmer's market? Is this just a money sink?

mockturtle said...

Most areas of the country where different ethnic groups interact on a daily basis--like here in southern Arizona--discussion of 'inclusiveness' would seem redundant. I suspect it is in highly segregated--by class as well as ethnicity--communities that feel the need to have panel discussions or classes on 'diversity'. My admittedly limited experience in the South has shown me that blacks and whites are much more socially integrated than in northern cities and towns.

PB said...

Zero measurable, tangible objectives and benefits.

It's just a group grope.

F said...

Now that you no longer have job ties to Madison, Ann, I presume you'll be moving out of your racially insensitive town for somewhere that doesn't need to hire someone to achieve inclusiveness. And assuage white guilt.

Original Mike said...

We already have a Farmer's Market. In fact, more than one. Is this new one needed because the others are racist?

TWW said...

Thanks for the clarification.

I read it quickly, and when she talked of 'inclusiveness', I assumed she was referring to the produce.

rhhardin said...

Valuable ethnic cultures should be respected and encouraged in the country where that culture is native, not here.

Assimilation is the way to go here, softened by the discovery of actual demand for this or that innovation.

They like our country but not our culture is not the immigrant we want.

Titus said...

Madison has like no people of color. Not much in terms of ethnicity either.

Just fat white people and students who pass through.

tits

Sprezzatura said...

"As with bike lanes, the diversity jive is just a smokescreen for hoovering public money for the convenience and amusement of the usual privileged group of White folks."

That's what I thought, too. Another gov paid for thing for Meadehoue to do in and around town.

Oh, and they, w/o a hint of irony, get to complain while enjoying what they're complaining about.

Carry on, boomers.

ga6 said...

Featuring gluten free, GMO free, and racists free fruits and vegetables...

oops was I bad using the word fruits???

Sebastian said...

This couldn't be another prog redistribution scheme, could it? If it is, whose money will be redistributed to whom, after the consultant and various public officials take their cut?

Rick said...

So they're flooding a food service workplace with left wing pablum so the workers don't notice the work sucks? This seems an obvious fail. So more likely they're combining food with left wing pablum because the opportunity to virtue signal while eating is a premium product.

Susan said...

Maybe the other farmers markets aren't halal.

Make it halal and you'll have diversity I bet.

khesanh0802 said...

No bullshit tag on this?!? This kind of stuff is the ultimate in bullshit. Say all the right words, show concern, spend someone else's money, accomplish nothing!

rhhardin said...

I don't suppose one of the diverse vendors has dried powdered banana flakes. That used to come in a can and was wonderful on hot breakfast cereals.

No longer made.

rhhardin said...

If they're going inclusiveness, bring up Russell's paradox.

rhhardin said...

Does an inclusive culture like ours include itself.

I assume it already includes non-inclusive cultures as part of its inclusiveness.

Paco Wové said...

After wading through the SJW bullshit, I still don't know what the "Public Market" is. It sounds kind of like a flea market, but for food. Isn't that what a farmers' market is already? How is this different?

Sprezzatura said...

Too bad Althouse couldn't tie-in an NYT teardown as part of this post.

Irony is fun.

CWJ said...

"Market," eh? Well atleast they've got word salad.

Sprezzatura said...

MMM

Make Madison Mississippi.

n.n said...

So, the goal is not assimilation and integration, but rather equitably distributed ghettos?

Americans, to the credit of our character, have discovered common principles despite the sincere efforts of class diversitists and anti-nativists to denigrate individual dignity and sow division.

chuck said...

The downside of being a university town is a governing class that writes and thinks in empty banalities.

n.n said...

Isn't that what a farmers' market is already? How is this different?

It's not. Progressives and liberals have a weird predisposition to caste things, and people, too, as exotic, which creates an artificial barrier to human relationships. It's a peculiar, but probably not unique, aspect of Western cosmopolitanism. They need to get out more, drop the class diversity outlook, and perceive people as more than colorful clumps of cells.

Christopher said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
Gusty Winds said...

So it's a food court?

Christopher said...

Blogger Christopher said...
"The Public Market Development Committee, formerly known as the Local Food Committee, is the city force behind organizing a year-round, indoor public market on First Street in between East Washington and Johnson Street. The market plans to include homegrown food from small-sale farmers, speciality gifts, wholesale opportunities, culturally diverse food and community events."


Assuming that their predicted schedule is correct (which is unlikely) they'll have taken seven years and over $13 million to build a farmers' market.

I imagine that roughly four or five years from now we'll be reading think pieces on what went wrong.

Original Mike said...

"White liberals can't buy anything from different ethnicities, that would be cultural appropriation."

They're allowed to buy it, just not enjoy it.

Roughcoat said...

I'm a the "melting pot" guy not a "diversity" guy. When I was a kid the idea of America as melting pot was extolled, and rightly so. The underlying assumption being that the melting pot promoted unity. Diversity, on the other hand, promotes disunity. It's okay to have your Chinatowns and Ukrainian Villages and Irish Southside and suchlike, and to be just all ethnic as hell in your homes and at holiday gatherings, but in the larger world we want to be Americans with all the shared values that being an American entails. Diversity is the enemy of unity. It is a pernicious force.

Original Mike said...

So this would be indoor and year around. I can see the value of that. Why do we need to sell it with the appeal to "diversity"?

Paco Wové said...

A little bit of research found this report, which may be the inspiration for this bit of virtue signalling on the public dime. The report includes the following:

What distinguish public markets from other types of related retail activity are the following three characteristics:

Most important, public markets must have public goals. Public goals give a defined civic purpose to the market activity. Typically, these goals have included attracting shoppers to a downtown or neighborhood commercial district, providing affordable retailing opportunities to small businesses, preserving farming or farmland in the region, activating an underused public space, or displacing an undesirable use of a public space.

Second, public markets are located in and/or create a public space in the community. This is the visible aspect of a market – the creation of an inviting, safe, and lively place that attracts a wide range of people. As an effective place where people mix, public markets can become the heart and soul of a community, its common ground, a place where people interact easily, and a setting where other community activities take place.

Finally, public markets are made up of locally owned, independent businesses operated by their owners, unlike the ubiquitous franchises that dominate retailing today. This helps account for the local flavor of public markets and the uniqueness of the shopping experience. Public markets consciously seek out local entrepreneurs and businesses and therefore offer an alternative to common retail practices.


So, it still sounds a lot like the usual farmer's market to me. The only real differences I see are: the "Public" market will deliver an extra-heaping helping of leftist hectoring on top of your vegetables (via approved "community activities"), it will apparently try to dissuade too many of the wrong type of customer (well-off whites) and it will probably end up being a big unprofitable money sink (in part because they don't want that dirty dirty honky money).

Original Mike said...

I could not agree more, Roughcoat.

Chuck said...

Every time I hear about a "public-private partnership," I know it is going to be a bad idea.

(Yeah, I know all about the exceptions that prove the rule. The intercontinental railway. Nuclear power. The human genome project. I'm not changing my mind.)

mccullough said...

Need more dagoes and polacks in Madison. Too many krauts.

rhhardin said...

Moo goo gai pan.

Curry fried rice.

rhhardin said...

From the 50s American school cafeteria menu, chow mein.

Mattman26 said...

("Deploying strategies that can make opportunities in the food sector into pathways to a careers [sic] and businesses and transform the food economy a ladder [sic] to the middle class is critical to Madison making progress on racial economic equity.")

Oh, how I love a pithy quote!

traditionalguy said...

Just wait until PETA hears about what a cultural mix means among street vendors : Vietnamese Cat tails, Kosher Southern Pork chitlins, Coney Island stray dogs, and rounded up Arizona mustangs. And no one will ever figure out why it attracts no one and closes down the first year.

rhhardin said...

Cartons marked Homo Milk.

LordSomber said...

Do they have Platitudinal Aioli at the market?
I heard it goes well on Word Salad.

tcrosse said...

All very Kumbaya. If you ever want to see a real public market, visit the Great Market Hall in Budapest. It's not very multi-ethnic, since the collapse of the Austro-Hungarian Empire and since the Germans killed off all their Jews, but it's great fun. And the Hungarians have no illusions about Collectivism, thank you very much.

eddie willers said...

They's do better with a Publix.

Best grocery store I ever saw.

Fred Drinkwater said...

Obviously some folks have visited the Mercato Centrale in Florence.

Fred Drinkwater said...

Except of course the Mercato is too Italian.

rehajm said...

..it will probably end up being a big unprofitable money sink (in part because they don't want that dirty dirty honky money).

Oh no. They're happy to take the honky money...Proposed Budget: city capital $4.25 million; state/federal grant support $3 million; New Markets Tax Credit equity $3.25 million; private foundation support $2 million; local individual donors $500,000; total $14 million.

There's a modest benefit to offering year round space for a farmers market but these things are essentially a wealth transfer/subsidy program. You need the leftie edge to help sell justifying public dollars for supermarket services.

Here's the one many communities are trying to emulate. It literally sits across the street from Haymarket, the unsubsidized option that's been operating successfully for centuries.

Rusty said...

Original Mike said...
"We already have a Farmer's Market. In fact, more than one. Is this new one needed because the others are racist?"

Honest to god. I did not know cabbages were racist. In the future I shall purchase my produce in a more racially sensetive manner.
Thank you.

rehajm said...

The greedy capitalist version. It's really the one everybody wants.

buwaya said...

To be properly inclusive it should include such elements as an irrintzi contest, a caganer gallery, and ambelopoulia cook-off. A procession of the local hermandades (they would have to be organized of course) would also suit, probably for your local patron saints day - Saint Raphael, after your cathedral?

Europe is much weirder than they realize. And thats just some of the nicer bits.

Diversity isnt what these idiots think it is. Real diversity is learning to live with genuine cultural/psychological stress, how to deal with being upset. This is not pleasant medicine.

walter said...

"I'm not sure about this."
You're not racist, are you?"


Blogger Original Mike said...So this would be indoor and year around. I can see the value of that. Why do we need to sell it with the appeal to "diversity"?

Makes folks feel better about their "privilege".
Betting prices at this setup will limit the $$ "diversity".

but it is refreshing to see folks in this viewing entry level service sector jobs as a ladder to better paying jobs as opposed to a family raising career to be artificially inflated....oh..must have missed it.

Eric said...

This looks like a jobs program for Outrage Identification Studies majors who aspire to something greater than barista.

Your tax dollars at work.

Lyle said...

And Trump is the con artiste?

Marc in Eugene said...

There's not already some venue that can be used for this purpose in Madison? Eugene has outdoor produce/artisans markets in the downtown parks blocks April through October, and then those folks who choose to do so re-locate to one of the buildings at the county fairgrounds (a ten or twelve minute walk away from the downtown location) for the winter (and 'holiday') season. I'm not quite sure how much public monies are used to indirectly subsidise this but certainly nothing anyway near the range of the millions indicated for the Madison project.

Kevin said...

To be more inclusive it shouldn't be called the Public Market, but the People's Market.

That makes it more inclusive than the current Farmer's Markets, and ensures anyone who fails to donate is a people-hater who wants others to starve.

Should that fail, it should be further rebranded as the Inclusive People's Market for Racial Equality, or some such goofiness until the city council is forced to fully fund it or be branded Trump-loving Nazis.

It works for Berkeley.

Alex said...

Interesting that liberal lunatics talk about diversity of skin color as the most important thing. Yet the most diversity of thought is not in "POC". I usually find the most diverse opinions are from white & Asian people. So what is this 'diversity' they talk about?

Roughcoat said...

For progressives who use the term, "diversity" is protean in its meaning. But anyone with half a brain knows that it's a euphemism for a racialist dynamic pitting people of color against people of European ancestry in a Hobbesian war for racial supremacy. It's not about tolerance or getting along or people of different races, ethnicities, and cultures living in harmony. It's about machtgelust, pure and simple: about who has power and who doesn't.

Paraphrasing Hanns Johst: "Wenn ich 'Diversity' höre ... entsichere ich meinen Browning."

Yeah, I know the context of the quote. It's still a good quote.

buwaya said...

I have fantasies about starting a Filipino "diversity" stand at one of these things. We would have balut, dilis, bagoong, dinuguan and various other things.
Done right, the food alone should clear out a couple of city blocks. The EPA may have to be called in.

David Begley said...

Trading Oscar Meyer weiners for kale. Bad trade.

ccscientist said...

Progressive Dane can't spell or use grammar.
It is exactly true that the lowest rungs of the economic ladder have been chopped off, often by the very type of progressives pushing this market idea (like raising the minimum wage). By giving it a new name and a hip aura, they think they are inventing something new, but it sure sounds like a farmer's market to me. The farmer's market in my town cost about $0 to set up: it is in a large parking lot on Sundays when others aren't using the lot. It does indeed enable people to have jobs. However, virtually all of the sellers are hobbiest white people. A few, like the bee-keeper there, have it as their sole business. Where would the "diversity" come in?
A lesson from Chicago: the Maxwell Street Market was a big flea market near downtown that operated for decades. Very heavily minority. Because stolen goods were also sold there and the U. Ill. at chicago wanted the land, it is gone. Chicago has also waged war on street vendors and food trucks for many years. So much for encouraging people to get a leg up.

Laslo Spatula said...

"Racial Equity & Social Justice Tool."

Belongs in the same toolkit as:

“Patriarchy Plunger”

“Male Privilege Pruning Scissors”

“Capitalist Monkey Wrench”

“Rape-Culture Screwdriver”

“Heteronormative Sledgehammer”

and the

“Free Speech-Inhibiting Duct Tape”

Don’t leave your Safe Space without them.


I am Laslo.

Earnest Prole said...

I’m certain the food-service workers will add some degree of diversity; otherwise Madison's public market will look like Portland, Oregon -- not that there's anything wrong with that.

Roughcoat said...

Europe is much weirder than they realize. And thats just some of the nicer bits.

True dat. But Asia, IMO, is weirder by far, and much more dangerous in its weirdness. Asian overall are nakedly, virulently racist. The Han, Japanese, Khmer, etc., look down on everyone who isn't, respectively, Han, Japanese, Khmer, etc. And everyone despises the Koreans. The notion of diversity as a societal virtue, and in the sense that progressive use the term, is laughable to them -- unless it provides you with a business advantage of some sort.

I remember in the 60s and early 70s how leftist antiwar activists gushed on and on about how the Khmer/Cambodians were a peace-loving people -- gentle, kind, pacifistic. Now that was a laughable notion, as events were to prove.

ALP said...

Unknown: "However, virtually all of the sellers are hobbiest white people."

THIS. I am most familiar with farmer's markets as sales outlets for crafts/hobbies. I thought about jumping into this when I was laid off. But hours with a calculator (which I suspect most don't do) brought me to the same place: busting my hump for a nickel and dime income less than minimum wage - a high school student doing babysitting would earn more.

I would bet my writing hand that liberal advocates of "living wage" and $15/hr think nothing about how much income per hour is really realized by craftspeople they buy from. The vast majority of sellers at these markets do it for something to do, to break even in terms of their hobby, or they make a few grand a year for some luxuries. To imply farmer's markets are a wellspring of jobs one can support a family on is just plain dishonest.

Fernandinande said...

These guys are deploying strategies.

These guys are making opportunities in the food sector into pathways.

These guys are making progress on racial economic equity.

buwaya said...

True dat, ditto Roughcoat.
Real education would require, at minimum, learning many of the, er, disconcerting bits of various cultures. Real history is a good way of doing this, barring an extended stay in various unfashionable parts of Asia while knowing the language.

Fernandinande said...

Seeing Red said...
$13 million?
Wouldn't it be easier and cheaper to give out gift cards?


$13million in gift cards would cost around $39million after you include the equity procurement, diversity consulting and regulatory compliance analysis deployment costs. And that doesn't even include the overhead.

Paco Wové said...

I'm beginning to see why this thing will cost so much. Take a look at that architect's sketch... well, I guess the architect community has to wet its beak too.

mockturtle said...

I agree that there is a lot of animosity between the various Asian societies. Diversity is neither sought nor desired. Nor even, for the most part, allowed. But when you have a population density like that of Japan, you can't really afford diversity. Japan is very homogeneous but has a lovely culture, IMO.

buwaya said...

Fernandinande,

They look a lot like normal life at home, the equivalent of Safeway. And neater/less crowded too, than the usual thing. Someone chose less messy shots of real public markets.
The real thing can be off-putting for Americans, to say the least. A Hong Kong butcher for instance, and thats in a "rich" place.

Btw, there are ubiquitous Asian/Mexican groceries and street markets in San Francisco, LA, etc. that look just like that. No need to go far for that kind of shot. And the patrons are rarely "white".

Anne in Rockwall, TX said...

Regarding, Amazon has Napa Flakes. Beven sure to use the Althouse portal.

Anne in Rockwall, TX said...

Stupid autocorrect on my phone That was nana flakes for Rhhardin.

Anonymous said...

Stuff like this can all be filed under "phoney baloney jobs, keeping". The country is awash in otherwise unemployable people, lacking any real skills, "educated" way beyond their intelligence, but with a confidence in their own superior smarts matched only by their confidence in their moral superiority. (If that description seems off, just follow the links provided.) They occupy every rung at gummint agencies and non-profits all over the country.

Projects like this aren't supposed to improve anything - these publicly-funded SJW joints are ends in themselves, and proposing, writing grants for, and running such projects serve no other purpose but to serve that end. Think of these positions as "workfare" (or make-work) for sociology M.A.s.

Btw, actual "public markets" that flourish, serving as centers of real community (not "community") life, arise organically, and are marked by cultural homogeneity, not "diversity". You'd think progs would understand this "organic" stuff.

Original Mike said...

"Take a look at that architect's sketch..."

I didn't realize this thing is so far from downtown. Wonder why?

Original Mike said...

Not that it's a problem if you own a car...

Sam L. said...

The grammar and misspellings give me a negative impression.

Roughcoat said...

Japan is very homogeneous but has a lovely culture, IMO.

Aspects of Japanese culture are indeed lovely. But what's lovely about Japanese culture, and about Asian cultures in general, does not travel well. When it goes beyond Japanese borders, or beyond Japanese legation walls, it inevitably becomes quite the opposite of lovely. I give you, as a case in point, the Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere. Asian cultures are not exportable, i.e. they are not workable for ethnicities other than their own, the ones that produced them. And anyway, I'm not so sure Japanese culture is all that lovely for all Japanese, such as the Eta, or Japanese citizen of non-Nihhon descent such ethnic Koreans or the Ainu.

lemondog said...

Chicago’s Maxwell Street developed organically enveloping many ethnicities until it was destroyed.

Pity..

Anonymous said...

Roughcoat: True dat. But Asia, IMO, is weirder by far, and much more dangerous in its weirdness. Asian overall are nakedly, virulently racist.

I take it you're not Asian. I doubt it's weirder to Asians. More dangerous? Than what? As for "naked, virulent", well, one man's "naked, virulent" is another man's "honest, unapologetic". Is contemporary Asian racism really worse than what was excepted as normal in Europe and the U.S. until very, very, recently? Contemporary Western "anti-racism" is the anomaly, not the norm among human societies.

I think the mindless "anti-racism" of Europeans, which is assuming the form of a lethal auto-immune disorder, is a lot more dangerous - to Europeans themselves, at any rate. (And I include diaspora Europeans like American whites in that evaluation.) Yes, Asians are hugely racist - but that's their business, isn't it? I'm grateful for having been exposed to honest, unapologetic Asian racism when living and working there in my younger days. It certainly washed away any Nice White Lady progressive illusions I may have accreted during my (culturally and racially homogeneous) middle-class American upbringing. My (genuine) "diversity training" left me 100% immunized against "white guilt". And for that, I am sincerely grateful to my Asian friends and colleagues. (Even those among the latter who were real assholes.)

stever said...

There are lots of otherwise unemployable degreed SJW needing jobs.

Roughcoat said...

Four of the most destructive wars in history were fought by Asians against Asia. The Mongol conquest of China killed probably in excess of 100 million inhabitants of East Asia; one scholar whom I respect puts the figure as high as 180 million. Plus the Mongol conquest unleashed the bubonic plague on the world, which killed another 200 million people in Eurasia and Europe. The Taiping Rebellion killed in excess of 100 million and the combined death toll for the Second Sino-Japanese War and Chinese Civil War tops 100 million. The Great Leap Forward, which comprised a form of war between Chinese Communist elites against the Chinese citizenry, and which often saw armed conflict between various groups, killed a comparatively paltry 55 million.

That's diversity, Asian-style.

By contrast, World War II in Europe probably killed about 30-35 million, mostly in the so-called Bloodlands of Eastern Europe.

Anonymous said...

buwaya: Diversity isnt what these idiots think it is. Real diversity is learning to live with genuine cultural/psychological stress...

And few want to live their lives in this state of chronic stress. Even if it's eu-stress, which exposure to genuine diversity can be: travel from which one will eventually return home, living and working as an alien, when one knows one will eventually repatriate home. Great (and best experienced while young and resilient), but psychologically very stressful.

A good life requires that there exists a place one can call home, where one is at one's ease, culturally, where one isn't constantly trying to interpret alien ways and walking on eggshells. (Something we know even the diversitards understand, as can be seen from their own housing choices and social behavior.) The exile, the dispossessed, is a tragic figure always.

David said...

I'm sure the refugees to the Sanctuary will help make this a reality. My guess is that state and federal funds will be a little tight for this boondoggle.

isthmus legend said...

In Madison "talking" about racial disparities is a way to poison discourse, control discourse, divert time away from what people really want to know, and avoid bringing up important facts that will easily kill support for this pet project: a Festival Foods recently opened in the vicinity where this Public Market was supposed to go and the fact that Willy CO-OP East was already there before the Festival Foods arrived. That's why they're stalling until 2019. In so doing, they can direct more money to their crony "study" consultants.

The Public Market is a way to steal. Nothing more. We're already "talking" about diversity. We don't need a 3rd grocery store in that area to talk about diversity. Stop the lies. There is 0 economic need for it. It's yet another "cool" capitol project (to quote old Mayor "Trolley" Dave). A fun new amenity someone else (west siders) will end up paying for. It's not like the cycle of "It's the new IN thing" won't repeat itself. These are liberals we're talking about here, they'll get bored of it, eventually. Then what? When they do, the Public Market will require more subsidies and bureaucrats to account for and allocate those subsidies! See how that works?

Progressive Dane. Pffft. When they chime in you know it's a scam. Remember Inclusionary Zoning? Guess who got those city mandated discounted condo units in those $350,000+ condo developments? City employees, county employees, and UW employees mostly. It helps to know insiders.

Jersey Fled said...

We have a place like this in Philadelphia. It's called the Reading Terminal Market.

Here is its mission statement:

Mission Statement

To preserve the architectural and historical character, and function, of the Reading Terminal Market as an urban farmers' market.

To provide a wide variety of produce, meat, fish, bakery and dairy products, and other raw and prepared food, brought to a public market in the center of the city by farmers, growers, producers and chefs

To maintain an environment that recognizes and celebrates the diversity of our citizens and fosters their interaction

To strengthen the historic link and mutual dependency of our rural and urban communities; and

To achieve this, while preserving the financial viability and achieving self-sufficiency for the Market.

It was established in 1892 as a profit seeking enterprise.

It is one of the coolest places I know.

Fabi said...

From Paco's link -- "...$1.2 million for design and $11.8 million in mostly Federal money for construction."

Nothing left to cut!

Big Mike said...

"Inclusiveness"? How about I show up there in a "Make America Great Again" cap and wearing a Trump/Pence t-shirt? Or maybe better yet, that bowling shirt with the guns and girls pattern that Rosetta scientist Matt Taylor wore?

What do you think, Meade? Would I be included? Or is their inclusiveness pretty exclusive?

Known Unknown said...

It's spelled B-O-O-N-D-O-G-G-L-E.

mockturtle said...

Anglelyne writes: Projects like this aren't supposed to improve anything - these publicly-funded SJW joints are ends in themselves, and proposing, writing grants for, and running such projects serve no other purpose but to serve that end. Think of these positions as "workfare" (or make-work) for sociology M.A.s.

Much like the inner city federal programs. One could be a 'community organizer' and get paid by the feds [by the taxpayers, that is]. And how effective have these programs been? About as effective as D.A.R.E. Not at all.

Josephbleau said...

rhhardin said...
If they're going inclusiveness, bring up Russell's paradox.

1/7/17, 1:12 PM

Very clever, Godel could have proven a Farmers Market to be impossible.

Phil 314 said...

"The projects aims to create a multi-use destination featuring a mix of retail, wholesale, and processing
of locally-made products, as well as potentially hand-crafted local art and other goods"

I can get it cheaper at Walmart.

isthmus legend said...

"The projects aims to create a multi-use destination featuring a mix of retail, wholesale, and processing of locally-made products, as well as potentially hand-crafted local art and other goods"

All of that is already available at the nearby Festival Foods and East-Side COOP. When it's warm out, throw in 3 more weekly farmers markets.

iowan2 said...

Already $13 million?
Madison must be the only city in the Union that has current sewer, and water systems. Not to mention fully funded pensions plans.

This is not the purpose of government.

SukieTawdry said...

$13 million to set up a farmer's market? And it isn't enough??

isthmus legend said...

Check out Amanda White's background. She's never been involved in enterprise development, sales, management, or R and D... No surprises there, that stuff involves risk. She's been in non-profit, foundation, or government bureaucracy her entire career. It seems she has lots of experience in setting up government financed space for boutique farming clients. I can see why she was brought into the fold here.

http://amandawhiteconsulting.com/

She's a member of Madison's privileged caste. This woman is the face of white privilege. Diversity!

Check this out, she's into naked bike rides. She was quoted and tagged:

http://host.madison.com/wsj/news/local/naked-bike-ride-in-madison-looking-good/article_419a32c0-6068-11df-9409-001cc4c002e0.html

Jupiter said...

Roughcoat said...

"For progressives who use the term, "diversity" is protean in its meaning. But anyone with half a brain knows that it's a euphemism for a racialist dynamic pitting people of color against people of European ancestry in a Hobbesian war for racial supremacy."

Well, remember, the "people of color" can't possibly win. Even if they had the skills, which they don't, there aren't nearly enough of them. So I think it is safe to assume that it is not really about them at all. They were a convenient pretext for the subjugation of the South in 1861, and for the seizure of all property used in commerce in 1961. Progressives keep giving themselves more and more power so they can help people of color, and yet somehow the only people who get helped are the Progressives. It's almost like the whole "diversity" thing is a scam, perpetrated by one group of white people to gain power over other white people.

Kurt Bermuda said...

People of color will never go to this "Public" Market. It's not designed for them. It's designed for people who don't cook for themselves. This place is so unabashedly SWPL white, they wouldn't want to go. It's not their kind of place, but I repeat myself.

steve uhr said...

Madison has the best farmers market in the country. This one is bound to look like a failure by comparison.

Who will the city leaders blame when it does fail to meet projections?

JeanE said...

Does this mean they are opening a new McDonalds? MickieD's has been "Deploying strategies that can make opportunities in the food sector into pathways to a careers [sic] and businesses and transform the food economy a ladder [sic] to the middle class" for a diverse group of employees, assistant managers and managers for a couple of decades.

Meade said...

@Big Mike, I don't know but you could probably get away with it. If I were you though, if anyone gave me a hard time, I'd just flash them a friendly smile and explain that it's all part of my personal political demonstration in favor of clean green energy interdependence, transnormative intersectional freedom, and social democratic sociable-ness.

To be safe, I'd have my Packers cap tucked into my back pocket, ready for the old switcheroo.

Big Mike said...

@Meade, a navy & orange Bears cap won't do, huh?

Meade said...

You'd need a super extra friendly smile.

Birkel said...

Meanwhile, all that talk of inclusiveness and so forth is bull shit.

http://legalinsurrection.com/2017/01/young-americans-for-freedom-labeled-hate-group-at-uw-madison/#comments

Apparently they are guilty of WrongThink. The university system is devouring itself.

buwaya said...

Angelyne,
Its not all bad, or rather, its not impossible to adapt.
In my case its a cultural norm. Our clan is a gang of colonials, expats, wanderers, Europeans living somewhere else. We are used to being minorities, foreigners our whole lives. We have not been "home" in generations.
Culture shock wasnt shocking, because it was a given. For the likes of us culture can't shock. But also from birth one learns to be wary. You learn to deal with all these others, but they are others indeed.
There are entire subcultures like that of course, Jews, naturally, overseas Chinese, Parsis, Indians of various sorts. V.S.Naipaul and Joseph Conrad are interesting in large part because they were these people too, expats, minorities, wanderers, they were always strangers in strange lands. Naipaul was famously foreign in India.
Personally, Manila is the closest to a hometown I've got, but even there, strictly speaking, I'm a foreigner. Its how a Frenchman native to Algiers would have thought of it.

buwaya said...

There are whole literatures of strangers in strange lands naturally, byproducts of European empires. These are some of my favorite things.
Kipling for instance, another colonial brat and professional expat. He had no "home" really.
"Mandalay" captures a lot of the feeling and ethos of the expat, but the way of the East, its parallel cultures that don't mix, is the DNA of "Kim".
Thats a man who could not be annoyed by the foreign.

Big Mike said...

@Meade, I don't have one. Guess I'll have to stay out of Madison. Your loss. ;-)

lemondog said...

We have a place like this in Philadelphia. It's called the Reading Terminal Market.

Yesssss

lemondog said...

re: Philadelphia, on weekends in Rittenhouse Square and Fitler Square, numerous booths are setup where one can walk around to buy locally grown fruits, veggies as well as a variety of homemade breads, sweets and foods.

Anonymous said...

buwaya:

Angelyne,
Its not all bad, or rather, its not impossible to adapt.
In my case its a cultural norm.


Of course that's true (that and the content of the rest of your comments). But "eternal expats" are a small minority, and their experience not the human norm. I don't think we're disagreeing about anything here.

The problem, of course, is when members of the "global expat class" want to impose the considerably less interesting and considerably more unpleasant downmarket version of being eternal "strangers in a strange land" on large swathes of society. (Being bereft of rooted social capital is a lot more fun when you have lots of the more fungible kind of capital.) Proponents of non-stop mass migration can be quite explicit about wanting this to be the norm, and it's insane. It produces dysfunctional societies and psychologically damaged people.

Over the years I've noticed an interesting common feature among the people who function as mouthpieces and useful idiots for this ideology - the SWPL propagandists for "diversity" who, as you say, don't know what real diversity is. Not that they themselves will live in the least "diverse" cities, or neighborhoods of cities, that they can afford, which everybody and his brother has already noticed and remarked. It's that when they travel they are always seeking out and gushing on about the places that still have "a there, there". (A long-rooted, distilled local culture.) They go on "exotic", "authentic" tours to see "real" places, with histories and rooted communities and cultures, that haven't been homogenized to the global strip-mall standard. They love, and buy second homes in, the still-viable villages in the nicer parts of western Europe, because they are emotionally drawn to the old culture still extant there. (And then complain about these places becoming "Disneyfied", which they are.) And yet every one of their political opinions, and every vote they cast, is for the destruction of that experience for people further down the SE scale, and eventually, for themselves.

MadisonMan said...

I like how the scope of this project is fluid enough that it can now reference Oscar Mayer.

JamesB.BKK said...

I live in a place and often visit other places where actual markets spontaneously exist routinely despite government efforts to tamp them down. On sidewalks and roads and also in places that are called "markets" where owners let vendors use space and lighting / electric service and water for some charge in order to engage freely in commerce. These places are packed with products, vendors, and customers, every day. Such places used to exist in the US. Why don't people in the US nowadays set up and go to markets except (in vanishingly few numbers) to places set up at the point of a gun in some hollowed out downtown area? Three reasons: (1) People don't want that crap anymore. It's messy, smelly, and costly relative to industrial scale growing, processing, and transport. (2) People don't really trust each other anymore because of too much stupid government crap in the US over decades designed and carried out for just that purpose but always couched in terms of "inclusiveness." So thorough has been the destruction that many Americans apparently trust each other less than the Chinese trust one another. That is a very low bar. (NB: the Chinese buy whole animals from vendors to verify what they are getting and vendors oblige (generally); Americans instead have billion dollar "regulation" and liability enforcement corps. and for some dumb reason blindly rely on the morons running those operations, including the mindless lawyers in front and back of house (so to speak).) (3) People don't want to buy products outside of sterile looking stores and fancy $75,000 minimum starting upfit restaurants due to chicken littles on the local (and national) news telling them they are one bite away from being poisoned if they buy something not wrapped in clear plastic or eat from a plate that has not reached 120 degrees F in a $6,000 dishwasher, and also because people with guns directed by nannies elected to office won't allow to happen what people might really want, usually to protect some restaurant or retail lobby.