New York Mayor Zohran Mamdani has vowed to have five municipal grocery stores up and running by 2029.
The mayor is reviving an old idea: using government-owned property and public money to make groceries cheaper. His proposed municipal grocery stores have historical precedents, including New York City's La Marqueta, a city-owned public market launched during the Depression.
The current plan would have the city own the properties and subsidize costs while private operators run the stores and offer certain groceries at discounted prices. Historical examples of government-supported food retail, from Soviet-era state stores to more recent U.S. efforts in Kansas City and Atlanta, show mixed results. Public investment can expand access to affordable groceries, but maintaining reliable supplies, quality, variety and financial sustainability can be challenging.
Grocery costs have risen 33% nationwide since 2019, but Mamdani claims these city-owned stores will save New Yorkers an average of $90 a month or roughly $1,000 a year.
Members of the Project 21 Black Leadership Network beg to differ with that assessment. They argue that the answer to society's ills lies not in more government ownership, but greater private ownership, entrepreneurship and economic independence.
"There's no logic to trying to reinstitute things that we know have failed and have resulted in the last century and a hundred million people being killed," says ambassador Will Archer. "The advance of socialism, which is just a precursor to communism, is not just bad for business, it's bad for the fabric of our community."
Archer, who used to live in the Bronx, says the way forward for the black community is through greater private ownership, entrepreneurship and economic independence.
"It is honestly the height of insanity to get in the way of incredibly hardworking folks, many of them from immigrant communities like my family comes from, that open bodegas, that open different stores," he contends. "The idea that the government would use government money to replace hardworking entrepreneurs and subsidize that effort in such a way that it would make it impossible for anybody to compete is absolutely insane."
Census data showed 7,191 black-owned employer businesses in New York City in 2017, the latest city-specific figure, while the city says black entrepreneurs account for about 3.5% of NYC businesses.
Black-owned businesses are an established and growing part of New York City's economy, but city data show that they remain disproportionately small and concentrated in lower-wage industries, with black entrepreneurs continuing to report significant barriers to capital, customers and affordable commercial space.
Project 21 contends that rather than teaching the next generation to depend on City Hall for the necessities of life, we should be creating the conditions for black Americans to own the businesses that provide them.
