8 November 28 - December 4, 2024 dallasobserver.com DALLAS OBSERVER Classified | MusiC | dish | Culture | unfair Park | Contents cans, the Oak Cliff resident cast a vote for Pres- ident-elect Donald Trump; the price of groceries was the leading reason behind her vote. Escamilla is not alone in believing that Trump could remedy the economic strug- gles affecting working-class Americans. A Gallup Poll published one month before the election found that of 22 issues that influ- enced voters’ choice for president, the econ- omy was the leading issue. Nine out of 10 voters ranked the economy as “extremely” or “very” important, and Trump was over- whelmingly perceived as the candidate bet- ter equipped to handle rising prices. For other Dallasites, economic strife was not reason enough to cast a vote for Trump. Another Oak Cliff dweller, Rick Walters, said that while he has noticed a change in his weekly grocery bill, prices have not risen dra- matically enough to sway his political leaning. “It’s not worth the results of the election we just had,” Walters said. “I’d rather pay more for eggs than have RFK Jr. as the head of the Health and Human Services [Depart- ment].” In the lead-up to the election, Demo- cratic politicians touted the strength of the U.S. economy. Unemployment is down, and the latest data on Gross Domestic Product (GDP) proves that business is back, baby. On Oct. 30, a White House brief bragged that, under the Biden administration, the GDP was up 12.6% and “compared to other crises, the pandemic recovery has been rapid, ush- ering in a robust, ongoing expansion.” Clearly, voters disagree, and one look at grocery prices over the past four years sug- gests why. The average American spent more than 11% of their income on food last year, the USDA reports. Data from 2023 — which in- cludes meals eaten at home and away from home — plateaued from that of 2022, but it’s still the most that Americans have spent on food in three decades. Simply put, when it comes to your pock- etbook, things may no longer be getting worse, but they certainly haven’t gotten back to the pre-pandemic normal. Grocery prices have crept downward over the past year, but they’re still significantly higher than they were in January 2020. Data released last week by the Bureau of Labor Statistics shows that the cost of groceries, like the percentage of income being spent on food, is at least plateauing from last year’s numbers, but the odds of ever seeing prices return to pre-pandemic numbers are low. Labor shortages caused by the pandemic, ongoing supply chain issues, extreme weather and corporate profit margins have all contributed to stores’ maintaining a high price for basic groceries. “There have been supply chain pres- sures, and there have been commodity cost increases. But [companies] have, I think, taken price increases that exceed that,” Mark Lang, an associate professor at the University of Tampa who specializes in food marketing, told CNN. “They are, to me, ab- solutely profit taking.” Particularly problematic grocery items could also be adding to the strain on shoppers’ bill totals; egg prices have been especially vola- tile over the last few years, primarily because of disease. More than 100 million birds have died since 2022 because of a contagious strain of bird flu, the CDC reports, and as U.S. poultry farms are wiped out by contagion, egg supply plummets and prices go up. According to the Bureau of Labor Statis- tics, the cost of eggs currently sits 30.4% higher than it did a year ago — although a 6.4% decrease in October is the largest month-to-month decrease eggs have had since April of this year. Even as the cost of eggs has slowly come down, the average shopper is still paying $2 more per dozen than they were before the pandemic. “The [shoppers] who are looking a little further back [to pre-pandemic grocery prices] are the ones who are most frus- trated,” Joanne Hsu, director of the Univer- sity of Michigan’s Surveys of Consumers, told USA Today earlier this year. “The ones who are using a year ago, two years ago as a reference point – they will often tell us, ‘It’s not as bad as it used to be, as painful as it is right now.’” The fresh fruit section of the grocery store is one that has yet to see any price roll- backs this year. BLS data shows that fruit in- creased in price 1.5% in October, adding to the 2.2% price raise recorded for the year. Not all fruit is getting more expensive though; bananas, in fact, are one of the rare grocery items that costs roughly the same as they did pre-COVID. Like eggs, the price of oranges tends to fluctuate because of unpredictable weather and disease impacts; the citrus now costs 5% more than it did this time last year. The or- ange juice market is particularly squeezed right now thanks to severe weather in Flor- ida and crop disease in Brazil, whose harvest supplies 70% of the world’s orange juice. If percentage points leave your head spinning, here are the pre- and post-COVID prices of several common grocery items in U.S. dollars. All data is from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. Navel Oranges, 1 lb.: Jan. 2020: $1.24 Oct. 2024: $1.81 Large Eggs, Dozen: Jan. 2020: $1.46 Oct. 2024: $3.37 White Bread, Loaf: Jan. 2020: $1.35 Oct. 2024: $1.94 White Milk, Gallon: Jan. 2020: $3.25 Oct. 2024: $4.04 Chicken, 1 lb.: Jan. 2020: $1.41 Oct. 2024: $1.99 Ground Beef, 1 lb.: Jan 2020: $4.10 Oct. 2024: $5.59 If you’re in the market for a pound of or- anges, a dozen eggs, a loaf of bread, a gallon of milk and a pound each of chicken and ground beef, we did the math for you. Your basket in 2024 will cost 46% more than it would have four years ago. SPEECH FREE THE (STUDENT) PRESS FIRST AMENDMENT GROUPS SET SIGHTS ON UT DALLAS AMID STUDENT NEWSPAPER STRIFE. BY EMMA RUBY T he University of Texas at Dallas re- cently received a firm mandate from two civil liberties organizations: stop interfering with the First Amendment rights of student journalists. The Student Press Law Center and the Foundation for Individual Rights and Ex- pression (FIRE) sent the university a six- page letter on Nov. 12 that detailed what they believe to be a pattern of retaliatory ac- tions taken against student journalists fol- lowing the coverage of a Pro-Palestine encampment set up on campus in May. The organizations wrote they are “concerned about the state of free expression, including freedom of the press” at UT Dallas, and urged the university to cease ignoring “its constitutional obligations” to maintain an independent newspaper. Gregorio Olivares Gutierrez, former edi- tor-in-chief of the student newspaper the Mercury and an occasional Observer con- tributor, said that he has heard of “panic” among administrators who were surprised by the letter. “It was something that the university can’t really just brush under the rug,” Gutier- rez said. “These are groups that are dedicated to the exact thing they’re criticizing the uni- versity about, so we see that as something that’s a boost to the struggle we’ve had this semester against campus administrators.” Student journalists involved with the Mercury have been on strike for two months following the removal of Gutierrez as editor- in-chief by administrators. Gutierrez ap- pealed his removal, but administators refused him the opportunity to pursue the appeals process outlined in the Student Me- dia Operating Board bylaws. “UTD’s removal of Gutierrez and the de- nial of his appeal are antithetical to basic conceptions of a free student press and in- congruous with the public university’s bind- ing legal obligations to uphold Gutierrez’s and other students’ First Amendment rights,” the letter states. In addition to Gutierrez’s removal, the letter lists the demotion of the Mercury’s former staff adviser, the removal of papers from newsstands and interference with “other operational decisions” as evidence of administrators’ retaliatory pattern. The letter outlines a list of “bonafide de- mands” that could help de-escalate the con- tentious relationship between UTD administrators and student journalists, said Jonathan Gaston-Falk, a staff attorney with the Student Press Law Center. Those demands include reinstating Gutierrez and amending the student media bylaws to prevent adminis- trative control over published content. The letter also demands that future elec- tions of the editor-in-chief be conducted by members of the student media instead of ad- ministrators. “Sometimes, instead of just hearing from a student … It’s best to hear from the attor- neys from whom this advice came in the first place,” Gaston-Falk said. “This might just be the first step in making the demands that we did in our letter. I think that there’s a lot more at play, perhaps institutionally, that needs to be addressed.” Because UT Dallas is a public institution, there is a “possibility” that the university could face a Section 1983 claim — the provi- sion that gives individuals the right to sue government entities for civil rights violations — if positive action is not taken to reinstate an independent press, Gaston-Falk said. University officials did not respond to the Observer’s request for their reaction to the letter. Instead, a spokesperson sent the Observer a copy of a student government resolution that will create an ad hoc com- mittee tasked with rewriting the student media bylaws. Gutierrez said he believes the formation of the committee, even if well intentioned, has been stalled by bureaucratic red tape. “While we appreciate the efforts that’s be- ing put in, it’s also a thing where the campus administrators in that working group haven’t done much to expedite the process,” Gutier- rez said. “We’re over two months into it, and we’re still debating who we want to consider to advise the working group. It hasn’t even started doing anything substantial.” How We Got Here Gutierrez’s first day as editor-in-chief of the Mercury was May 1, the same day that a pro- Palestine encampment was set up on UTD’s Chess Plaza. Student, faculty and community protesters dubbed the site the “Gaza Unfair Park from p6 Emma Ruby Student journalists say that retaliation from campus administrators began after they published coverage of a pro-Palestine encampment on campus. >> p10
