Carne Asada Is Not A Crime*

The city of Los Angeles is trying to get rid of Taco Trucks: Those awesome little trucks on every corner smelling dreamily of blackened meat 'till the wee hours of the morning. Apparently the "stationary restaurants" have a difficult time competing and feel that the competition is "unfair."

Bowing to such pressure, the L.A. Board of Supervisors has passed a law that requires taco truck purveyors to move every hour or else be fined $1,000 fine or go to jail.

What dicks.

It's unconscionable. No, not just because I love Mexican food but, because Taco Truck purveyors are typically Latino, this law disproportionately targets an already marginalized and disadvantaged group, one that contributes so much to the character of Los Angeles.

To raise awareness, Thursday, May 1 has been designated Taco Truck Night. Go out and get your taco on in the tastiest political protest ever! Sign the petition! Help defend our local entrepreneurs and protect the spirit of L.A.!

* Title borrowed from saveourtacotrucks.org.

Comments

[sparkandy]

Well, they need to come to Oklahoma. People eat at those places, but not so much at the sit down restaurants. The main intersection nearest my house has 5 restaurants run by Mexicans and no one eats there, except for one, where the Mexicans go in the late night and early morning to do stuff in the back room. However, the little taco stand set up in a parking lot is busy from open to close. And the food is GOOD! People drive from all over to eat there.

[NABNYC]

It's a little microcosm of the problems being caused in and around L.A. because of the radical influx of illegal immigrants from Mexico. Housing is overcrowded and unaffordable, police, fire, roads, schools, hospitals are overburdened and unable to do their job properly, gangs have taken over much of the area and terrorize the residents, and no one has any good proposals about how to solve these problems.

Now we have people who have overhead and employees, in restaurants, competing against probably poorer people without overhead but with little trucks, cheaper operation, stealing the work. It's just like the contractor who hires all illegal immigrants underbidding the guy who pays prevailing wages. The logical thing to do would be to require a license and compliance with sanitation and location standards, but I'll bet that would also be opposed.

The fact that poor people are resilient and find a way to survive despite the obstacles is laudable on some level, but does not create the best living environment. People in Tijuana work hard all the time, but the city is a dump, crime-ridden, saturated with guns and drugs, a hard and dangerous place. L.A. is becoming the same. The bucket is overflowing, and the illegal immigrant advocates never stop to worry about the effect this is having on the hispanic citizens of this country.

[Pyrrhus]

LA is BECOMING a hard and dangerous place?

I guess the Crips and Bloods thing back in the 80s was a rivalry between two curling teams in Saskatchewan. And the 68 and Rodney King riots were just a misunderstanding.

It's nice to see you laud poor people who survive by being resilient. It's almost as if they have a right to live, albeit in a much inferior state to you.

And if your nice little middle class neighborhood is becoming a haven for drugs and thugs, perhaps you should scold the white kids buying all the drugs and wearing those ridiculously baggy jeans.