A group of business owners in St. Paul have filed a civil rights complaint with the Federal Transit Administration against a proposed light rail system which they say will have a disparaging impact on the 30 plus businesses, many of them Asian American owned.
"They cover, they hide all the negatives that comes with it," said Lysa Bui, who owns the Vietnamese restaurant Saigon and is a spokeswoman for the business group. Bui has been lobbying the Met Council and the city to provide loans or other forms of financial assistance for small businesses like hers so they have a better chance of surviving construction [...]Connecting people with cheap transit is good.
Gen Fujioka of Oakland, Calif., is with the group National Coalition for Asian Pacific American Community Development. His organization provided an analysis for the Asian business group's complaint. Fujioka said the Met Council's analysis fell short on several levels. "It's hard to conceive of an economic analysis that doesn't even count the number of minority businesses in the neighborhood," Fujioka said. "What you have is a whitewash of the potential impacts on minority businesses."
Pushing out all the Asian American owned businesses to get it done?
That's not so good.
