Hi everyone!
The socialist grocery store in Kansas City, Missouri has shut down. The store, which was city-funded and run by a non-profit, was full of empty shelves, rotting produce, and the deli section was not open for business. Local residents said they couldn't shop there because there was nothing worth buying.
The shopping center in which Sun Fresh Market was housed was city-owned and was part of a revitalization project for Kansas City's east side. But the only thing that was borne of this vision was blight. The store was funded with tens of millions of dollars. It lost nearly a million over the last few years. And still, residents weren't shopping there.
Incessant crime was a factor, as well as the lack of things to buy. Other local markets were not crime-plagued like Sun Fresh was.Now, the gravy train that served no one is coming to an end. “Unfortunately, due to unforeseen circumstances beyond our control, we are no longer, at this time, able to serve the residents of this community," said a sign outside the store.
"It has always been our dream and passion to provide quality products and services in a safe, family environment. At this time, unfortunately, we are unable to do that," the sign went on. The non-profit, which ran the store into the ground offered their own statement, saying "As of Aug. 12, 2025, CBKC is no longer able to serve the residents from this Midtown Sun Fresh location." They had "no other comments" at the time.
The store smelled bad, and the shelves that didn't have rotting produce were bare. And this is the kind of undertaking socialist NYC mayoral candidate Zohran Mamdani wants to launch in all five boroughs of the city. In each borough, Mamdani wants the city to spend a bunch of money to create community, city-run grocery stores.
Mamdani is one of a growing cohort of mayoral hopefuls across the country who want to remake our greatest cities into some kind of socialist utopias where police don't patrol the streets, government fills all the gaps, and the rich pay for everything. Maybe that sounds great, maybe it sounds entitled, short-sighted, and stupid, but either way it doesn't work.
Cities need cops. Cities need industry that is driven toward profit. Cities need grocery stores that aren't disgusting. Cities need order. There's no way around it. New York City, the city with which I am most familiar and best love, works best when officers are paying attention, when homeless crazy people aren't roaming around hurting people, when subways are clean and safe, when people can walk to dinner and home again or out into the night without constant safety concerns.
Keep your wits about you, sure, as my step-mother used to say, but police presence and the norms that presence creates, not civilians with cans of mace, should be the first line of defense. There's no success in a socialist city, only decline.