To the editor — Whaddya think would happen if you took a shopping cart, attached political signs, along with signs protesting inflation and food costs, and pushed the cart down Yakima Avenue?
Best guess: YPD’s finest would leave you alone. Your action is protected political speech.
Now, instead, put all your earthly possessions in that same shopping cart and push it down “The Ave.”
What happens?
Yakima’s newest ordinance allows cops to seize your cart, fine the person pushing the cart $50, and impound the cart.
The presumption is that you, a homeless citizen, stole the cart. So the city can now take it without due process and fine you $50.
They will then charge the store to get the cart back.
We have a City Council that is one cloudless night away from baying at the moon. They plow right past the constitutional problems with unequal treatment, unproved assumptions and seizure of private property without due process.
The compassionless and brain-dead ordinance, as written, cannot touch homeless citizens pushing baby carriages, rolling luggage, bicycles with trailers, hand trucks, dollies and inventory carts. You’ve seen all those before.
Banning umbrellas in public won’t stop rain, council members.
We need real solutions, not smoke and mirrors.
WARD MURROW
Yakima