[Congressional Record Volume 144, Number 84 (Wednesday, June 24, 1998)]
[House]
[Page H5070]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                     STANDING UP FOR NEIGHBORHOODS

  (Mr. KUCINICH asked and was given permission to address the House for 
1 minute and to revise and extend his remarks.)
  Mr. KUCINICH. Mr. Speaker, our Nation exists not simply as a 
collection of 50 States. The fabric of America is woven through tens of 
thousands of neighborhoods, the place where we were born, where we grew 
up, where we live, where we hope to spend the rest of our days.
  Those neighborhoods contain familiar landmarks, houses, small 
businesses, a drugstore here, a restaurant there, places where we 
gather, where we socialize, where we meet our friends.
  Recently the Rite Aid Corporation has been acquiring key corner 
properties in the Cleveland area and knocking out homes, small 
businesses, offices and landmarks so that they might become the most 
profitable drugstore chain. Rite Aid clearly does not care about 
neighborhood history, about the quality of communities.
  One site they acquired, a neighborhood crossroads, was left vacant, 
weed-strewn and vandalized and littered with debris for a year and a 
half.
  America must stand up for its neighborhoods. Do not patronize 
businesses which do not respect a neighborhood's history.

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