Numerous street vendors — including many immigrants looking to build their own American success stories — meant business on Thursday when they marched through the streets of Lower Manhattan demanding that City Hall give them opportunities to grow.
Hundreds of fuming vendors assembled in Union Square on Aug. 15 brandishing banners and signs urging the City Council to finally reform the vending license system, a frequent topic of controversy in recent years.
Organized in part by the Street Vendor Justice Coalition, the demonstrators say that, as vendors, they have experienced hardship because the city’s licensing program is, in their words, broken. Tens of thousands of prospective vendors are on a wait list for licenses which remain capped at levels that have not increased since the 1980s.
“Vendors want a fundamental system that gives them the opportunity to strive and provide for their families like anyone else. Enforcement is not policy,” said Calvin Baker, a vendor who sells his wares along Harlem’s 125th Street. “[Some] 20,000 people right now are on a waitlist, waiting for a path to legalization and a license that is unjust, that is broken, and that is leading to more systematic issues.”
The marchers hope that change will come with the passage of the “Street Vendor Reform Platform,” a package of bills aimed at assisting street vendors by ensuring vendor access to business licensing; reducing criminal liability for general and mobile food vendors; and creating a division of street vendor assistance within NYC’s Department of Small Business Services.
“No one should live in fear of their livelihood,” said Shawn Garcia, director of Advocacy Alternatives. “We are talking about a system that is broken, that is not serving vendors, that is not serving folks who are buying goods and food from vendors — and is not serving our community as a whole, and our local officials have a responsibility to fix this system.”
Taking off from Union Square under the steely gaze of the NYPD, the group slowly marched downtown. Supporters used their bodies to block traffic to ensure the marchers had safe passage.
After a long, heat-worn walk crowd settled outside of City Hall where they continued to make their demands known.
“I am the daughter and the granddaughter of street vendors,” Bronx Council Member Pierina Sanchez said. “These bills together represent the future for New York City, a future that has our streets organized, a future in which we can all share our sidewalks, a future in which there is a just treatment for our street vendors.”
