Community Corner

Supporting Black Businesses: A Candid Chat with Wine Styles' Ron Frieson

The closing of Wine Styles is a big blow to Cascade Heights and evidence, again, that African-Americans do not invest in their own community. Frieson is trying; What about the rest of us?

Former BellSouth Georgia President Ron Frieson has invested time, money and sweat equity into our community.

But, like so many before him, he is closing one of his businesses—Wine Styles on Cascade—on Dec. 31st because so few people supported his enterprise.

You all know the spiel by now: Go to another other neighbhorhood—white, Asian, Latino, East Indian—and you see thriving businesses owned by people who live there. Drive through the business districts of most African-American neighborhoods and you see boarded up storefronts, vacant lots, blight.

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Why?

Cascade Patch put Frieson on the spot and asked him to share his view.

Find out what's happening in Cascadewith free, real-time updates from Patch.

Watch the video clip here and, if you care about this issue, tell us why—in 2011—we spend so much money in other communities but do not back our own, even when they are well—stocked and well-managed.

Frieson has tried and is still trying, with Landon's Restaurant and Bar. But he cannot do it alone.

Tell us what you think about this serious black business issue in comments.


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