Flickr.com sample photoAnd so the battle begins.
A Trail of Bread Crumbs
Some years ago, when I was a columnist for the Minnesota Daily, I wrote a series of columns about Aramark; their well-documented ties to organized crime, at least early in their company's history, their shoddy practices, the fact nearly every week somebody, SOMEWHERE is writing an article about yet another Aramark scandal.
I meant those "What's Behind Your Lunch" opinion columns to be a "trail of breadcrumbs" for anybody who needed to battle Aramark on a grand scale. I wanted to document the mob history and have the information be online, to save effort for anybody who needed to retrace the same steps and do the same research. I wrote a series of "Google-fied" articles; showing how easy it was to simply "aggregate" articles about Aramark using a search engine, and document the constant pattern of scandal and consumer outcry which seems to follow this company everywhere; whether it's food on a campus, ball park, or prison.
Those columns, which were online, were meant to "last for the ages" and provide a road map to battling Aramark to anybody who needed to take on such a struggle.
I, personally, didn't feel the need to take on a personal crusade against Aramark because, frankly, I was never hurt by the company...except for getting ripped off by vending machines at the University of Minnesota, or overcharged for food on the campus. But I saw these things as life's little annoyances. Yes, I did work for the company, twice, in Shenandoah National Park in the state of Virginia, back in the 1980s. I saw and heard things that worried me, but I was young and not wise in the ways of the world. I figured rumors of "mob ties" were like ghost stories around the campfire, and maybe somebody was just having fun with me.
Later, I wised up. Later, I did my research. The "mob ties" stories had a firm basis, after all. When you let Aramark into your campus, ball park, hospital, or jail...you are letting in the mob. Of course, these "wise guys" have cleaned up their act in recent decades and I doubt if they even "whack" people anymore. It's probably easier to just spread around expensive gifts to the decision makers who always seem to decide--against common sense, against a hue and cry from consumers--to let Aramark run things.
Here's an example from my own campus of what happens when Aramark runs things, click here.
Sordid Aramark scandals take place not only at the University of Minnesota, but there are constant examples of this all over the country, such as this one, click here.
A "Virtual Slip" Forces My Hand
So I wrote those columns, because it was the right thing to do, but I wasn't ready to run out and register "Aramark Sucks Dot Org" or anything like that because, as I like to phrase it, "I didn't have a dog in the fight." But then something awful happened:
The Minnesota Daily revamped its website. And many old opinion columns were just...gone. Evaporated. Their fingerprints can be seen in deeply-cached pockets of the internet, but just try to FIND those articles. Try to FIND all that work.
MY FRIENDS, a newspaper is not just the articles being pumped out on tomorrow's dead trees, but it is a body of work, research, information which continues to serve researchers, historians, and various individuals ferreting out facts for years, DECADES if everything goes right. But it didn't. It didn't go right. The carefully laid "trail of breadcrumbs" was obscured by today's need for a "neato keen" website with a spiffy new appearance, bah.
I liked the old-fashioned website. WHY DID THEY HAVE TO GO AND CHANGE IT?!!! And who suffers? In this case, it is a guy in Alabama running a business called "The Crimson Cafe."
Aramark Puts The Squeeze On Mom 'N' Pop
Initially, when the owner of the Crimson Cafe contacted me, he had a simple question: what happened to my online columns about Aramark? He had been accessing the information, using it, and then...it disappeared.
I explained the deal with the shiny new website and how it wasn't just my Aramark columns...a lot of my opinion columns had disappeared but, supposedly, would be coming back as the website was improved. Supposedly. I wasn't holding my breath.
We got to talking about Aramark's squeezing his business, click here, and how college students in Alabama are locked into a draconian and unfair "Dining Dollars" system which runs them out of money before the semester is done, and condemns them to eating Aramark chow...a scary proposition in the best of times, if you ask ME.
The Battle Begins Here
I know this terrain. I have fought this battle in my head many times, but I always figured somebody else would fight it, maybe with a little help from my "trail of breadcrumbs" series of columns as a source of inspiration. I have other fish to fry, especially in North Minneapolis on my blog www.johnnynorthside.com.
But duty calls and the "trail of breadcrumbs" is gone. The Crimson Cafe is as good a place as any for a showdown, like Lexington, Massachusetts was a good place to face the British redcoats. As good a place as any.
Here a straw broke the camel's back, and the struggle manifested in the blogosphere with the creation of Aramarksucks.org.
These are my goals. People should have goals.
1.) To aggregate all the info about Aramark scandals and trends into one place, so the info is easily available to those who are struggling to keep Aramark out of their own institutions or need to learn why this is so necessary.
2.) T0 provide a forum--though the posting of comments from readers--for those involved in the struggle, so views can be exchanged, contacts made, and those involved in the battle can network and exchange info effectively. This is a logical manifestation of the global movement toward KEEPING FOOD LOCAL. We can't allow a mega-corporate entity to take over institutional food services (and other services, too) all over the nation and not say a peep. ARAMARK IS EVIL. Tell all your friends.
3.) To create a push for the ultimate goal: Congressional investigation of unseemly Aramark practices which are destroying small local businesses, and using public dollars to do it. Workers are mistreated, institutional standards lowered, and all of this at the hands of a corporation with a rather well-documented early history of mob involvement, plus ongoing bad publicity from virtually every corner of the country.
What You Can Do
1.) Write a letter to your student newspaper (if it involves a campus) or your local newspaper, when it involves hospitals, jails, ball parks, etc. to inform your fellow citizens why ARAMARK IS EVIL and should be shown the door out, or never allowed inside in the first place.
2.) Submit online comments to internet articles about Aramark, adding information to the articles and directing readers to Aramarksucks.org to contribute their own information, make contacts, grow and strengthen the anti-Aramark movement.
3.) Write to relevant public officials about Aramark wrongdoing, especially in your own Congressional district, city, state and neighborhood. When addressing Congresspeople, always bring up the need for CONGRESSIONAL INVESTIGATION OF UNSEEMLY ARAMARK PRACTICES.
Together, we can be the change we desire, and we can change the world. The part of the world under the evil domination of Aramark is the part we need to change.
Do not click "Read More" Read more!
