TAKOMA PARK, MD – After surviving multiple boycott attempts and persistent online harassment on social media and local listservs, several Takoma Park small businesses have used Facebook’s disaster response feature to mark themselves “safe” from Takoma Park Residents.
“We’re still recovering from the impact but we feel very relieved to have survived and to have found necessary support,” said a local butcher shop that found itself the victim of meat-shaming on the Takoma Park Facebook page. “We’re so grateful that this community rallied together to save us from this community.”
A liberal stronghold, Takoma Park prides itself on holding businesses to the highest ethical standards, whether that means calling for a boycott on a restaurant for daring to support a local Democratic gubernatorial candidate, or blasting a neighborhood family physician for trying to make a living as a neighborhood family physician. But with heated rhetoric on the rise in this “shop local” community that claims to support local, small businesses, local, small businesses are now on high alert.
“I just worry that I could be next,” said community children’s performer Mr. Gabe. “The last thing I need is an angry mob showing up at my kids’ concerts to attack me for not accepting a senior citizen’s discount on my admission price.”
Although catastrophic damage has been avoided thus far, every butcher, baker, and candlestick maker in the city has been put on notice to make sure they pass the test of pleasing every single one of Takoma Park’s 18,000 residents or face the wrath of a local keyboard warrior with three Twitter followers.
“We certainly believe that small business is the backbone of our community,” said resident Anna Johnson. “But don’t think for a second we won’t rip out their spine if we feel they aren’t meeting our impossible, completely hypocritical and sometimes contradictory ethical standards.”
