Thursday, July 31, 2008

Would you like condescension with that?

A group that promotes "community" vegetable gardens on vacant lots along North Ave. is going to ask the Board of Zoning Appeals tonight to bar a fried-chicken franchise from moving into a vacant restaurant at 17th and North.

I read this as "fascist--possibly racist--assholes would rather a building remain empty than let a business move in, hire people from the neighborhood, and start paying city taxes."

I'm guessing this group is not comprised of conservatives, or even those rare liberals who realize that low-income adults (of color) aren't children.

2 comments:

jhaas said...

What's bad about using a vacant lot on the north side (of which there are many) for a community garden? I would rather have a community garden beautifying the neighborhood, giving its residents a point of pride, and more importantly, healthy food, than yet another fast food joint. What's remotely facist about that?

I'm a part of a community garden in Bay View, and they're great resources. They do bring people together, and ours has produced over twenty pounds of super-high quality food this summer alone. That seems especially valuable in poorer communities given the ever-rising cost of food.

HeatherRadish said...

The fascist part would be using the government to eliminate all options except the one you want to force on people instead of letting them choose how they want to live and eat.

Good for you for enjoying your super-high quality food for a few months out of the year, but your personal preferences don't give you the right to tell everyone else (especially people who don't have the hundreds of man hours necessary to grow and store 20 pounds of produce) what they can and can't eat and how they should and shouldn't be spending their time. The "healthy food" is just a bullshit excuse to give you more control over people's lives.

Now, if you were putting your money where your mouth is, and bought a vacant lot, had the concrete removed, brought in some topsoil, paid the property taxes, hired some local residents to do some digging--instead of bitching about other people's businesses--I'd respect that. It'll never happen, though.