Fruit, flowers, and flamingos are fine in a Miami Shores front yard, but a veggie garden is “inconsistent with the city’s aesthetic character.” That’s why Hermine Ricketts and Tom Carroll were ordered to ax the vegetable garden they’d had for 17 years or pay a daily $50 fine. (Judging by its reputation for tacky tropical print shirts, I’m not sure how much “aesthetic character” Miami actually has, but whatever, city officials.) Here’s Ricketts’ and Carroll’s story in a cutely animated nutshell:
Sadly, this is no isolated case. A Michigan woman faced 93 days in jail for planting a garden in her front yard, a Tennessee man’s sunflowers and veggies were deemed a “nuisance,” and an Oklahoma woman’s strawberries, mint, and fruit trees were bulldozed because they were too tall.
Now The Institute for Justice’s Food Freedom Initiative, which created the video above, is trying to protect Americans’ rights to grow our own food. In the same vein, the libertarian nonprofit also created a video lobbying for Oregon raw milk farmers’ right to advertise, as well as one on behalf of Minnesota small business owners. When local governments get so riled up by this stuff, it just helps reinforce that growing your own food is indeed a revolutionary act.
