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Vendors, Farmers Seek Peace
April 28, however, Abdul stayed on Cedar Street with his cart through the night, worried that he could lose his spot. By morning, the sidewalk was crowded. Other vendor carts had joined Abdul in their regular places on the sidewalk, stretching east to the corner of Broadway. To the west, the tents of the Zuccotti Park Greenmarket sheltered tables of produce and baked goods. The crowded sidewalk on this first day of the Greenmarket season marked the culmination of a year of controversy, and efforts to prevent another.
But no one had consulted Ali Abdul and the half dozen other food vendors who have set up their carts on the same stretch of sidewalk for more than a decade. The vendors struggled over the space with Greenmarket officials regularly last summer, and the police were called more than once. In one instance, vendor Muhammed Ali had his cart and supplies confiscated. “Why should I go? I have four kids. I have a big family,” said Ali. “My job is hard, but I take care of my family.” For their part, some Greenmarket farmers say the vendors aren’t the only ones whose livelihood is at stake. “We’re a third-generation farm, and we would not be in business if it weren’t for the Greenmarkets,” said Ken Migliorelli, a Hudson Valley farmer who sells at the Zuccotti Park Greenmarket as well as several others throughout the city. “The vast majority of our income is through the Greenmarkets.”
The meeting seemed to do little to resolve the issue. Greenmarket director Michael Hurwitz said the market had cut down its requested space from 102 feet of sidewalk to 72 feet. Vendors said there still wasn’t room for everybody. Both sides asked that the city open up the sidewalk on the other side of the park for their use, but Pauline Yu of the Community Affairs Office declared that option untenable because Brookfield Properties opposed it. Instead, Yu said she would grant the Greenmarket’s application for the same stretch of sidewalk that had caused problems the previous year. She urged the vendors to make room. The vendors argued that if they were to maintain the lawful distance between carts, at least four of them would have to relocate, losing their faithful clientele. Committee members were unmoved. “I understand that it’s your livelihood, but it’s two days a week,” committee chairwoman Pat Moore told the vendors. “There is some other way that you can figure out to be in the area and still make money.” Sean Basinsky, a vendors’ rights activist, argued that if the farmer’s market would agree to shrink by 20 or 30 feet, everyone could fit on the sidewalk. “[The Greenmarket] won’t cut down their space, but they want the vendors to give up their space,” he said. “There aren’t any other streets open to these vendors or they wouldn’t be here.” Basinsky told the committee it couldn’t claim to be sympathetic to the vendors if it wouldn’t stand up for them. “Just be clear with these vendors that you are telling them that they can’t be here,” he said.
The Greenmarket’s license was approved a few days later. On the morning of the Greenmarket’s opening, everything seemed to be working out. Ali Abdul, after his night on the street, was all smiles. “So far everything is good. There are no problems,” he said. “I wish it will be okay all year.” Whether Abdul’s optimistic evaluation will be borne out remains to be seen. On May 1 the Greenmarket farmers and the vendors had worked out a way to fit every cart and tent on the allotted sidewalk space — but only by cramming the carts together cheek by jowl, far closer than the minimum 10-foot clearance required by law. “Maybe this can work,” said vendor Harouna Bousso, “if we don’t get tickets.”
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