Think there's nothing you can do about neighborhood blight? Think again!
Great article.You also took on the local liquor stores. Why?
I got that idea from Charles Sheldon's In His Steps, the book about people who asked, "What Would Jesus Do?" They tried to get the local bars closed because they had lots of problems with town drunks, and they thought that's what Jesus would do. But in the book they don't succeed.After reading that book, I was driving down a street in our area and counted 26 liquor stores in 19 blocks. I thought, They don't have that kind of proliferation in the suburbs.
I got our attorneys to research what it takes to vote a community dry. In Chicago, we learned, you can vote a whole precinct dry.
So I preached a sermon (everything is connected to a sermon, by the way), "The Real Truth Behind the Liquor Industry." I talked about how it's destroying communities. I talked about how affluent communities don't have four liquor stores to each block, and it's something that keeps impoverished people in poverty. I told the church we had to go out and get 10 percent of the registered voters to sign a petition to put the issue on the ballot.
We accomplished that. Then, the Sunday before the election I preached a sermon called, "Let's Get Ready To Rumble." It was about Jehoshaphat going out to battle, and he takes the choir with him. They do all this singing. So we took our choir, and put them in front of this great, big march.
We had a band on the back of a truck and music and our church marched through the community. And as people came out on their porches, we reminded them that this was the week that we vote our community dry.
It worked. All those stores in our district are gone. Then to anyone who lost a job working in one of those liquor stores, we offered to send them through job training and we would pay their salary until they got another job.
Then we put a Christian bookstore in the building where the largest liquor store used to be.
Woohoo! Anybody feel the "call of God" on their life right now?
Labels: In the fight
posted by Matt Friedeman @ 5:02 PM
4 comments
4 Comments:
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I was always under the impression that "conservatives" were supposed to be defenders of the the free market. I must have been confused...
I see where they offered help to those who lost their jobs because of the prohibition. That's good. It's the least they could do. What did they do for the business people (the liquor store OWNERS) who lost not only the source of their daily bread, but also a considerable investment.
How would you feel if you invested your hard earned money in a business, only to have the local government make your business illegal?
Anyone care to discuss? Anyone?
Not Thinking In Ohio,
If you think prohibition actually works, I suggest you do a little research on the Prohibition Era. It did work out pretty well for the Mafia though. If you think it will actually promote sobriety, you need your head examined.
How can any freedom loving American NOT defend the owners of the liqour stores? They were in a LEGAL business. Comparing a LEGAL operation (liqour store) to an ILLEGAL operation (drugs and prostitution) is like comparing apples to oranges.
You can't put religious rhetoric before economics.
So the call of God is equal to one's own biases? Interesting.
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