Keeping the poor disadvantaged by stagnation.

Mau-mauing Trader Joe's

The Left: Grocer Trader Joe's has pulled out of a planned expansion to a poor area in Portland, Ore., after a community organizing group objected. The organizers can now take a bow for the neighborhood's loss.

Hectoring the private chain with racially tinged language, wealthy poverty-racketeers from a foundation-funded group called the Portland African American Leadership Forum claimed that a $2.4 million store on a vacant lot in a run-down part of northeast Portland would gentrify the area, driving up retail prices and driving out the local black community.

"This is a people's movement for African Americans and other communities for self-determination," declared PAALF's Avel Gordly, the Oregonian reported.

All that was missing was the pounding of the tiki sticks, as Tom Wolfe wrote in his scathing 1970 book, "Radical Chic & Mau-Mauing the Flak Catchers."

Much to their surprise, Trader Joe's didn't want to be the flak catcher. The retailer said goodbye, adding it didn't want to be anyplace where it wasn't welcome.

As Trader Joe's announced its decision, the community organizers were left to hold a press conference on an empty lot (see Google maps for proof) to explain to angry residents that they had nothing against the grocery. They just wanted to bring back jobs as well as blacks to the neighborhood.

As if keeping it a wasteland devoid of investment was the way to draw them back.

"This is not what the neighborhood people want," resident Kymberly Jeka told the Oregonian. Added another disgusted resident, Tran Nghi: "They (the community organizers) don't (even) live here anymore. They don't come to neighborhood cleanups."

Now, thanks to the self-appointed environmental stewards, the vacant lot will remain vacant, housing occupancy will remain depressingly low and the nearest grocery store will still be 12 blocks away.

Like-minded activists have yelled for years about "food deserts" and nobody wanting to invest in bad areas. Then a knight in shining armor comes forward to bring jobs, atmosphere, food choices and development. And all the poverty pimps could do was chase them out.

The one conclusion that can be drawn is that poverty rackets are entrenched and defend their interests. Their No. 1 priority isn't the welfare of the locals; it was, and is, to ensure that poverty persists.

Whether these activists know it or not, Trader Joe's isn't the enemy of the poor in Portland; they are.