Announcing Anaheim’s “Summer of the People!” (Weekend Open Thread)

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by Daniel Robbins

20 years ago, Disney embarked on an ambitious mission to forever change the landscape of Anaheim’s economy. Over the course of the past two decades they have succeeded in securing hundreds of millions of dollars in giveaways that inevitably serve to benefit nothing beyond their own bottom line.

Anaheim’s reward for participating in these magnificent acts of largesse has been nothing beyond a slew of low-paying jobs that serve to only worsen the economic divide that has come to define Anaheim, even Orange County as a whole.

While Orange County’s largest employer, the Walt Disney Corporation, accumulates further wealth at the expense of local taxpayers, the community has been left underserved and impoverished as a result.

Thus we, the residents of Anaheim, who have for far too long been suffering in the shadow of the “Happiest Place on Earth”, have decided that our time has arrived. Our planned acts of protest outside of the Disneyland Resort will serve as a flare to a City Council that must take immediate action to right the wrongs that have been committed against the Anaheim residents.

No longer can the Resort Area continue to pay poverty wages while simultaneously accepting hundreds of millions of dollars in taxpayer funded giveaways. No longer can our city continue to approve the construction of “market rate” housing, while simultaneously failing to address the irrefutable need for affordable housing within our borders. No longer can the residents of this city look the other way while our city’s coffers are pillaged by those seeking to enrich others at the top 1% of the income bracket.

While our county’s homeless problem worsens, and people literally die in the streets, Anaheim’s Resort area flaunts its incomparable wealth, preserving its own “city on a shining hill” image while shirking away from its duty to work hand-in-hand with the community to solve our issues.

The Walt Disney Corporation and their collaborators have played an outsized role in local politics, always to their own advantage. And now, we are asking them to return some of their accumulated wealth to the community that has long been forgotten. “Money talks” in Anaheim politics, and unfortunately the community here has been left with none. Thus, we must make it clear that we can not do this alone. The Resort Area has long shirked away from their duties to preserve and assist the community, those days are over.

We will make our demands clear to those with the finances, and political sway, to change things in Anaheim. And thus the Resort Area, as the largest recipient of taxpayer funds, is our first target. We seek change. The “Happiest Place on Earth” must be extended beyond the guarded gates at Disneyland, and encompass Anaheim as a whole. That is our goal.

For more info, go to the Summer of the People’s Facebook Page.

This is your (lovingly transplanted) Weekend Open Thread.  Talk about that, or whatever else you’d like, within reasonable bounds of discretion and decorum.

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"Admin" is just editors Vern Nelson, Greg Diamond, or Ryan Cantor sharing something that they mostly didn't write themselves, but think you should see. Before December 2010, "Admin" may have been former blog owner Art Pedroza.