Schutze broke the story a while back about a group of black people in South Dallas picketing the Diamond Shamrock gas station on Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevard. People in the neighborhood claimed the station's Korean owner had called black customers "broke-ass niggers," imposed a $10 minimum on debit card purchases, called black women "bitches" and even killed a black thief, which the store owner has vehemently denied.
The stream of accusations got South Dallas activists, including Joyce Foreman, Rev. Ronald Wright and Rev. Peter Johnson, fired up. These days they're often protesting in front of the gas station.
And they were just getting started.
The activists have since come up with a name for their coalition: Don't Stop Don't Shop. It's Facebook official and everything. And Wright, spurred on by DSDS, is spearheading an effort to buy the gas station -- an effort he says is close to success.
"I've got a guy ready to write a check tomorrow," Wright tells Unfair Park. There are actually two black suitors looking to buy the place, he says. He won't divulge their names, but he says the positives of the transaction would be two-fold: It gets an accused racist out of South Dallas, and it injects a majority-black area with a likely lucrative, black-owned business.
"Whites have businesses, Mexicans have businesses, Koreans have businesses," Wright says. "In South Dallas! But African-Americans don't own any businesses in their own community."
The Dallas NAACP will meet with the suitors and black leaders tonight to try to hash out a deal. According to Wright, the owner is ready to fold; the only hang-up is the price. (The station owner has rebuffed multiple interview requests from the Observer.)
Wright says he just wants everything over as quickly as possible, as nonviolently as possible. He says he doesn't want to see a repeat of Los Angeles's 1992 Koreatown riots. They just want the keys.
