Liberate Providence Place Mall !

This headline caught my attention yesterday : " Mall employees want to put brakes on new parking fees ".

Most of those new employees at Providence Place mall - capitalism's latest gift to Rhode Island - are wretched wage slaves. And they must pay $1000 a year just to park there ! Of course many of the mall workers would be eager to sign a petition against this outrage. But property rights, it seems ,have precedence over HUMAN RIGHTS : "No solicitation on mall property ".

This reminds me of my 60s high school days. " None of my students can protest the war. Go to the vice-principal's office and here is a PINK SLIP for you ! "

I say UNIONIZE every employee at Providence Place. I recommend the new and nasty Teamsters Union . Organized workers can shut down the whole damm place for Christmas !

On a more moderate note : RIPTA is failing to meet the needs of blue collar Rhode Islanders. Better bus service would ameliorate the parking problem at the Providence Place mall.

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comment from Dave Brusat:

 Ron - Your last point tends to destroy your first point. That is,
    nobody is forced to drive to PP to work. Everybody can take the bus,
    even if they must drive to the bus stop (RIPTA has strategically placed
    park & ride centers where parking is, I believe, free). Granted, RIPTA
    isn't what it ought to be (we editorialize frequently for its upgrade).
    But it is enough to do that job, anyway. If PP were in the burbs, it
    would probably not be, since burb-to-burb connections are too rough to
    inflict on a worker as a necessity. But then if PP were in the burbs, it
    would have free parking and wouldn't need to charge because it would be
    in a former corn field or something. Oh well. - Dave 

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Ron's response to comment from Dave:

Dave, a huge traffic jam might shut down the Providence Place Mall - before the Son of Jimmy. But as for buses, How could I get back to Warwick  after 7:30 ?  Bus service for 2nd shift workers is nothing less than contemptuous. BUT I still appreciate the service I do get from RIPTA .
Thanks -Ron

 NOTE : In architecture I myself am nothing less than an incorrigible reactionary - and you seem a cut above your critics here.

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another response from Dave Brusat:

Ron - You have a strong point, possibly, about the night shift. Are
    there indeed buses they can take, or not? Very possibly there are not,
    in which case I would argue that Commonwealth Development should dip
    into the sum they said they'd give and offer them parking at the rate
    they'd have to pay to ride RIPTA - $2.50 a day, $12.50 a week x 50 weeks
    is, omigod!, $725 a year, or not all that much less than the mall's
    already charging ($80 per month, or $960 per year). Living downtown
    seems to look better and better, yes? Years ago, in a 1992 column
    headlined "Postcard from Providence, 1997," I suggested that the mall
    offer employees some sort of monetary incentive to live downtown so as
    to reduce the amount of employee parking it would need to provide - so
    as to increase the amount of customer parking available. I still think
    they should do that. Maybe I'll mention it again. Only one problem -
    partly because of the mayor's apparent disinterest, there's almost no
    place downtown for them to live!!
        - Dave