Loren Spivack’s kiosk at the Concord Mills mall, Free Market Warrior, sells conservative bumper stickers and posters saying such things as “Impeach Obama”, “Work Harder. Obama needs the money” and "Al Qaeda's favorite days: 9/11/01 and 11/04/08." And until recently, Spicack said, the mall management seemed fine with his kiosk.
That is, until one liberal decided she didn’t like it. After writing a letter to editor in the Charlotte Observer complaining about the kiosk, the Concord Mills mall decided to not let Spivack renew his lease after it’s up this Friday.
Spivack said, “This apparently got the attention of the national management. They came down with a decision that we had to leave and that our lease would not be renewed when it expired.”
The mall group’s owner, Mel Simon, coincidently has given generously to democratic candidates, including Obama. Spivack believes this decision was politically motivated, and we here at the Source agree.
While the mall has the right to not renew the lease, it’s obviously stifling Spivack’s right to free speech. No one was punished for the “Impeach Bush” stickers, so why now? It’s understandable that they ask their tenants merchandise to be neutral, but when they fail to apply this rule to both sides of the aisle, they made their intentions very clear. This is just another example of the socialism taking hold of our country.
"Nobody in that mall is selling anything from a conservative perspective. Plenty of people are selling things with a liberal perspective, with a pro-Obama perspective," Spivack said, "Given that we are in America and not North Korea, we probably should have some stuff on the other side."
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