Gumbo: “The same company that owned Red Lobster owned Olive Garden, which has a location in this very same mall. But only one of those two restaurants got spun off to a foreign investor that ran it into the ground. And it wasn’t the one with unlimited breadsticks. It was the one with unlimited shrimp. It’s violence against black bellies, pure and simple.”

“La Mesa just won’t learn,” says Black Lives Matter organizer Oliver Gumbo. “In the days after George Floyd’s murder, they invited chaos when they let a white cop falsely arrest a black man. The righteous wrath that followed left two banks and an architectural firm burned, and many stores looted. One of those stores was the BevMo! just down the street from where we are now. And here we are, just four years later, and the whirlwind is circling again.” Gumbo is speaking from his spot in front of the recently shuttered Red Lobster restaurant on Murray Drive, just outside of Grossmont Center. “If you’re familiar with the work of Dr. Jason Johnson, then you know of his groundbreaking work Red Lobster and the Continuing Demise of the Black Middle Class. You know that he has written, ‘The role that restaurant plays, both symbolically and financially in the lives of African American families can’t be understated.’ You know that black folk love Red Lobster. You know about cheddar biscuits. And now they think they can just shut this shit down, and blame blacks for taking too much advantage of the endless shrimp deal?” (The deal, which had been seasonal, was made permanent last summer in an effort to increase business; the move cost the company an estimated $11 million, and it is now facing bankruptcy.) “That’s racism, pure and simple. And we’re not going to take it sitting down. Not until we’re sitting down at our place at the table, inside this restaurant.”