Food cluster-truck: Raid on Spanish-speaking food vendors outrages Latin American labor council

Spanish-speaking food vendors posted near Southside Park had their carts confiscated and their products trashed last week by city and county officials.

The April 23 episode unfolded outside the Our Lady of Guadalupe Church and kicked up a storm on social media, where a cellphone video viewed more than 46,000 times showed burly men in flak vests and dark sunglasses rousting the unlicensed operators.

County spokeswoman Brenda Bongiorno said the operation was necessitated after the vendors ignored a previous warning that they needed both city vending and county health permits to sell their food and beverage products outdoors. In an email, she added that there had been “multiple complaints about unpermitted food vendors regularly selling food in the area of 7th and T streets in Sacramento.”

The raid was conducted by city code enforcement personnel, county park rangers and officials with the county’s Environmental Management Department.

The video, recorded by Fatima Garcia, shows city and county workers loading ice chests, a standing barbecue, propane tank and other materials into a flatbed truck as rangers post up near the curb. In the video, a man in a vest labeled “Code Enforcement” explains the reasoning behind the raid to individuals asking them to stop.

“I’m a manager for code enforcement. I came and I personally talked to each of them, months ago, and I told them, ‘If you don’t comply, if you don’t [inaudible], you’re gonna be in violation and they’re gonna confiscate your product,'” the man says. “And you know what they did? They laughed. They thought we were playing.”

Desiree Bates-Rojas, of the Labor Council for Latin American Advancement, protests that logic, rushing to the flat-bed truck and telling the public servants, “You don’t understand. This is their livelihood. This is their livelihood.”

Members of the labor council told SN&R they would be protesting the action at Tuesday’s meeting of the Sacramento City Council, which occurred past deadline.

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