Blogs

Recently the ACLU announced the settlement of a dispute involving day laborers in the Orange County, California community of Lake Forest. That community had attempted, with the assistance of county law enforcement, to drastically to limit the ability of day laborers to solicit work on public sidewalks. Day laborers there are right to be encouraged by the settlement of their lawsuit, but celebration may be premature. While the settlement affirms laborer’s 1st Amendment right to solicit work from sidewalks, it also leaves county defendants with full authority to enforce laws regulating conduct, including those prohibiting jaywalking, double parking, and littering.

It remains to be seen whether Lake Forest will attempt to find another way to exclude day laborers, such as by simply lengthening the list of laws “regulating conduct.” This has been a favorite tactic of other U.S. communities who are hostile to street side solicitation by day workers. The City of Orange earlier this year made it illegal to solicit for work from sidewalks next to streets without parking lanes, medians or driveways on a public right of way. Marietta, Georgia, an Atlanta suburb, put the squeeze on day labor employers, changing the traffic rules to prohibit stopping a vehicle where day laborers congregate. These tactics are of questionable legality. They are certainly bad policy.

My Markets and Food Systems class traveled to Milwaukee WI from Madison for this conference over the weekend of September 19-21. You can learn about it here:

https://www.growingfoodandjustice.org/Home_Page.html

The conference was useful in learning about the variety of ways farmer's markets are organized around the country.

One purpose of this webpage is to provide examples of market organization - feel free to post what you learn in your particular place. We will post examples of market organization from time to time.

About 3 weeks ago I blogged about a Taco Truck Triumph, where an LA county ordinance imposing prohibitions on taco truck operations was held to be invalid. http://www.openair.org/node/439. Not content to let justice prevail, the County made a motion for reconsideration. In support of its motion, the County submitted declarations from sheriff deputies purporting to justify the prohibitions on taco trucks. It was not clear that the declarations would even be considered by the court. The ordinance had been invalidated on a demurrer. Demurrers are generally based only on legal pleadings and the laws themselves. Generally they do not involve consideration of declarations, affidavits, or other evidence.

Today hearing was heard on the County's motion for reconsideration. Attorney for the taco truck operators, Phillip Greenwald, moved to strike the deputies' declarations, citing well-settled authority that evidence is not to be considered on a demurrer. While the court acknowledged this general practice, it decided to deny the motion to strike and admit the deputies' declarations.

In New York, and around the country, street vendors are asked to comply with various regulations about their businesses, health, food safety, merchandise, and even cart or stall design.

Standards are important, but in New York there are complaints about over standardization, including problems like inadequate locks and the boring similarity of the stalls.

Street Vendors help make places unique, we cannot hobble them with unrealistic design goals. Not everyone will approve of the "street furniture" merchants use to market their wares, but context matters and if cities INSIST on design standards then cities should also CONSULT with merchants on how to make the standards serve the goals of the city, the public, and the merchant.

Together cities and merchants can identify desirable and important features of vending stalls, features that enhance the business and the neighborhood, both of which are important goals merchants serve when they do business on the street.

Good Day Folks,

The following is adopted from the work of Sean Basinski, the Executive Director of the Street Vending Project in New York City.

Last week Mayor Bloomberg signed into law Intro. 777, legislation spearheaded by the Street Vendor Project in NYC. The SVP was organized to give vendors a voice in that great city.

The new law requires the city to provide interpreters for vendors and other small business owners at the Environmental Control Board, where vendors fight tickets issued by various regulatory authorities. A recent article in Crains New York discusses the bill and the case of Cheikh Fall, a vendor and SVP board member.

For a "Kafka meets John Belushi" look at the what happened before Intro. 777, was signed into law take a look at this transcript http://streetvendor.org/media/pdfs/Munnu%20Dewan%20hearing.pdf of SVP member Munnu Dewan trying to represent himself in a hearing, without an interpreter and with little success. Munnu was ordered to pay a $300 fine.

In short, our diverse society benefits from vendors and merchants, the "third places" they help create, the eyes on the street that they are, but these benefits to the public are not without some costs, costs that are entirely reasonable and commonly born: equal standing before a court.