While we’re on the subject of food and the nanny-state, check this one out.
One thing you’re often struck by as you wander the lush and fertile streets of the Bay Area is the amount of fruit that’s lying around on the sidewalks. (My son does his part to remedy this by picking it up and eating it, two handfuls at a time.) Many yards have trees that produce far more fruit than the residents are able to eat, and it very often goes to waste – squashed underfoot; infested by bugs; swept into nasty, sticky piles next to the sidewalk. And the same goes, of course, for vegetable gardens, where zucchini and tomatoes grow like weeds in the summertime and outstrip the growers’ capacity to consume them. Wouldn’t it be great, one finds oneself thinking, if there were a way to make sure that this stuff got eaten?
Well, there is at least one such way, which is to sell it, and that is what a couple of little girls in nearby Clayton decided to do. Each Saturday morning, they’d set up a table in front of their house and sell the excess produce from their family’s garden: melons, tomatoes, radishes, the always-overabundant zucchini, and so on. People would buy it, they’d make a few bucks, and everyone was happy.
And then the mayor showed up:
“They said traffic was being stopped and then they came up with we can’t have a roadside stand and then they said it was a commercial enterprise,” said [eleven-year-old] Katie Lewis, former produce seller.
No, really:
“They may start out with a little card-table and selling a couple of things, but then who is to say what else they have. Is all the produce made there, do they make it themselves? Are they going to have eggs and chickens for sale next,” said [Clayton mayor Gregg] Manning.
Yes, because we simply COULDN’T have people selling their own damn eggs and chickens on their own damn property, now could we? I mean, that would just be … well, it would be something, and it sure wouldn’t be American!
But what could be more American, you may ask, then the entrepreneurial spirit behind the front-yard lemonade stand? And if the Lewises’ homegrown produce business is outlawed, does the neighborhood lemonade industry have to go along with it? Let’s ask the mayor:
“Lemonade stands are technically illegal, but they don’t last long enough to do anything about,” said Manning.
And that, friends, is the price of liberty. You can buy your imported blueberries and Alaskan salmon year-round at Walmart, but if your neighbor’s daughter wants to take in any money in exchange for sharing with you the bounty of her backyard, then she’s going to need a PERMIT, dammit, and we’ll get back to her about that next summer. And quit your whining:
“I wish everyone would follow the rules and not be just self-centered,” said Manning.
Yes, follow them. Follow them like the good little plebes you are. Follow those rules and they will lead you right on to your corporatized, globalized, we’ve-got-agribusiness-so-who-needs-initiative future. There are people starving in Africa, and help from Monsanto is the only thing that’s going to save them, so shut your mouth and keep in line. Only in the U. S. of A.!!
I’m sorry; I’m bitter. Whole story here.
(Image via Flickrer adwriter. Scoop via my lovely wife Angela.)
Filed under: food, government/law
This is effing absurd. Were I Mike Lewis, I should challenge Manning in the next election, running on the “I’m not an over-bearing nanny-state d-bag” ticket.
[...] until proven innocent, huh? The story at issue is this one, of course, which – with thanks due to KMW! – apparently has become something of a hit among the [...]
[...] Small scale sales stomped on. « Arrant about (agricultural) biodiversity Natural = fashionable = good » [...]
there is alot more to this story than what is being reported. this is not just two littlte girls with a stand. this is really being run by their parents. Only after the city told them to stop was it “just 2 little girls”. they were not the ones driving the the tractor that is parked out front, or the ones outside selling produce every weekend. Sure the girls were outside occasionally but they were not the ones operating the stand. Their father must figure if he says it is just a lemonade and then has people from the newspaper come and take picture of his kids in the yard with american flags on their shirts everyone will think it is just the “big bad city” picking on some kids. The farmers market is litteraly 2 blocks from their house and has been suggested as a better place from them to go instead of the intersection where police routinely sit and wait for people to run the stop signs. Many neighbors have been interviewed by various news group but none of them have been shown so far. Mostly likely because they would like to see this done some where more apropriate.
Boy, that DOES sound completely different. You mean there were ADULTS involved in making money by selling stuff on their own property? Can’t be doing that without a permit …
[...] Sign the petition to reinstate the Lewis sisters’ (”All-American”!) vegetable stand, and let the mayor have it: We the undersigned demand that Katie and Sabrina Lewis’ veggie [...]
[...] August 27, 2008, 12:10 pm Filed under: food, government The Lewis sisters’ veggie stand is reopening. No Comments so far Leave a comment RSS feed for comments on this post. [...]