The governing Councils of the City of Alexandria and the County of Arlington in the Commonwealth of Virginia today announced that the portion of U.S. Route 1 running through the two jurisdictions; currently known as Jefferson Davis Highway; will be renamed "Martin Luther King Junior Memorial Highway" pending approval of the State legislature, which is needed for the change to proceed in Arlington.
We interviewed some residences and businesses along the route of the proposed change. Surprisingly, although the corridor voted overwhelmingly for Obama in 2008 and 2012 and for Clinton in 2016, the residents and business owners were largely not pleased by the development.
Shopkeeper after shopkeeper told our investigators that they were pleased to have their shop located on a route named after such an important icon, but that the costs of changing letterhead and signage would be burdensome. At several of these locations corrugated steel rolldown doors were being installed, having just that day been ordered. Only one merchant was deliriously happy: Harvey's Custom Signs; whose owner Harvey Smithers told us he had been cranking out "FOR SALE BY OWNER" signs as fast as he could print them. Smithers, who is African American, told the ADP:
"See, I ain't no fool. I know all these liberal white folks in Del Ray and Crystal City can't stand th' notion of having to tell folks to take a right or a left off of Martin fuckin' Luther King t' get t' they house. So I found out about this yesterday and set up to print out these signs. They cost me a dollar to make and I sell 'em for twenty bucks. So far today I made fifty thousand dollars. And my brother owns a moving company, so I steer people to him.'
'Talk about affordable housing. The politicians gonna have lotsa affordable housing within days of that name change taking effect. My brother and me gonna buy a bunch of it. Then we gonna rent 'em out. Then, when the City realizes that the tax assessments is way down, they greedy asses gonna change the name back and give some lame excuse, and all the whiteys gonna wanna move back an' my brother an' me are gonna like buy houses at $25 thou each and sell 'em back to the whiteys for the three or four hundred grand they paid in the first place. Then we gonna move to someplace where white folks ain't so goddamn crazy."
Mayor Silberberg and the City Manager and Council did not respond to the ADP's request for comments.
Note: ONCE AGAIN THIS IS A SATIRE! However, in this case the possibility of it coming true is all too real.
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