Drive-Thru Dreams - Adam Chandler Page 0,70

have been at least 95 percent Missouri humidity. About thirty people were inside, a mix of ages, mostly black, but also white, people in Cardinals hats, people talking on phones, people playing Vince Staples and Kendrick Lamar from small speakers at tables. In one corner by the counter sat a computer terminal, which had been set up so people could apply for jobs there. In the men’s room, two twentysomethings were rolling blunts. If the crowd was bigger than normal for the time of day, it had a reason to be; that Sunday was the one-year anniversary of the shooting death of Michael Brown a few blocks away, and a flurry of events, memorials, and protests were happening on the avenue outside.

In the days following the 2014 shooting, the Ferguson McDonald’s had served a different function, as a harborage of sorts for people seeking food or normalcy, for cops on coffee breaks, for reporters needing tables and internet to write and file their dispatches, and for demonstrators escaping the heat of the protests and the clashes with police.*

“When a protestor blasted with tear gas comes moaning through the door,” Matt Pearce of the Los Angeles Times reported at the time, “there are bottles of soothing McDonald’s milk to pour over his or her eyes.” One worker had been a classmate of Michael Brown’s and knew his regular order: a McChicken, medium fries, medium drink.

Some McDonald’s employees had quit to join the demonstrations or had protested in their uniforms before or after their shifts. Despite the extensive damage and tumult around it, the store itself had been spared, becoming a drop-by destination for Jesse Jackson and a mishmash of community and national leaders, media personalities, and celebrities. On this Sunday, the same large-screen television on which observers, rioters, and demonstrators had watched President Obama address the unfolding unrest a year before, a local channel was now showing a documentary on wounded American soldiers returning from the war in Afghanistan. Outside in the parking lot, a group of people held court, smoking cigarettes and drinking booze in the heat, listening to music, watching the crowds and the afternoon pass.

It’s not just that fast-food restaurants are culturally pluralistic social hubs or places for unremarkable meals, meaningful rituals, and uncommon encounters. Or that they act as community centers of first and last resort. They also function as hallowed, neutral territory, where people can set about building connections and performing the work of whatever their interpretation of repairing the world might be.

In the recent, particularly fraught years, law enforcement agencies have (formally and informally) used fast-food restaurants as bases to step up their community outreach efforts. The most highly orchestrated version of this effort is Coffee with a Cop, a national initiative started in California by working police officers to respond to the tension and anxiety between police and the communities they serve. Funded in part by the US Department of Justice, these social outings take place in scattered town halls, churches, and (naturally) coffee shops. Nevertheless, an overwhelming number of these meet-ups happen at fast-food franchises in far-flung places. A Whataburger in northwest Florida; a Burger King in Pasco, Washington; six McDonald’s in New Orleans, three in Rockford, Illinois, and one in Hagåtña, Guam. Chick-fil-As in North Carolina, Tennessee, Indiana, and Maine.

The officers buy the coffee and sometimes work the drive-thru, taking orders, answering questions, dispensing friendly hellos, and startling the bejesus out of any addled customers. In announcing its participation in the initiative, the City of Dayton, Ohio, promised “no speeches or agendas, just a chance to get to know the men and women who patrol your neighborhood.” Responding to a public Facebook comment from an irate citizen who asked why taxpayers are paying for cops to serve drinks instead of preventing crime, the police department of Albany, Oregon, explained, “When our officers engage people in different ways (like serving them coffee), it provides a unique opportunity for connection. It also gives people the chance to talk about issues on their minds which they may not have otherwise called us about.” A mother of two from Kankakee, Illinois, expanded on this sentiment in an interview with the Daily Journal, offering, “My husband and I want to make sure our kids are not afraid to approach a police officer when they need help.”

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Ultimately, fast food succeeds and has succeeded in large part because its appeal transcends nearly all demographic bounds. More than its innovation, imagination, convenience, value, or capacity to decode the