Politics
Why Street Vendors Are Upset About a Ballot Measure
Proposition 2, which gives the Sanitation Department more authority to conduct sweeps of vendors, will hit immigrant vendors hard, an advocacy group said.
Good morning. It’s Monday. Today we’ll look at some concerns from street vendors about Proposition 2, one of the ballot measures approved by New York City voters last month.
Credit…Juan Arredondo for The New York Times
It was a busy Sunday afternoon in November on Roosevelt Avenue in Corona, Queens. An unmarked car pulled up, and several police officers got out. Some of the food vendors on the block scattered, or tried to.
One of them, a woman named Johanna, said she ran, leaving behind what she was selling — colada morada (a spicy drink made with fruits and flour) and a pan of arroz con pollo (chicken with rice). Johanna, who said she arrived in New York from Ecuador in 2014, asked that she be identified only by her given name because she feared reprisals from officers who might recognize her in future enforcement actions, and because she is undocumented.
She said that one officer chased her for a couple of blocks, walked her back to the stall she had abandoned and wrote two summonses.
The sweep in November was carried out by the police, but advocates for vendors fear that when Proposition 2, the ballot initiative approved last month, takes effect, such scenes may become more common. Proposition 2 would give enforcement officers from another city agency, the Sanitation Department, the authority to issue summonses in places they have previously not been able to do so.
