I think the headline above would have been a better one for this article from BusinessInsider.com: “Georgia ‘Chicken Man’ Blows Himself Up As Police Arrive To Evict Him”
The following articles describe how the city of Roswell, Georgia harassed Andrew Wordes for three years. It wasn’t just about his chickens. The city allowed unchecked development nearby while failing to upgrade the storm sewers accordingly. As a result, Mr. Wordes’ home was flooded by three to four feet of water every time they got a couple inches of rain. But when Wordes attempted to protect his property by berming it up–with an earth mover loaned to him by the Mayor–the city cited him for illegal grading.
Roswell Chicken Man stands alone against city hall
Roswell ‘Chicken Man’ facing eviction
The Roswell Chicken Man and His Fight For His Constitutionally Protected Rights
The city continually charged this man for doing things that weren’t against the law–like charging him with “Terroristic Threats” for putting up a No Trespassing sign. Courts kept finding in his favor, and a former governor even represented him in court one time. Frustrated, the city just went ahead and changed the laws to target Mr. Wordes, and then made it impossible for Wordes to comply. For example, the city passed a law saying that only six chickens could be kept, and that they must be in an approved enclosure at all times. Since Wordes lived in a flood plain, the city refused to issue a permit for the chicken enclosure.
They jailed this man for three months over code violations. We’re not talking about theft or assault or tax evasion. We’re talking about stuff like “Your grass is too long,” or “The trim on your garage has to be painted the same color as the trim on your house,” or “You can’t leave your garbage can at the curb for more than 12 hours on garbage pickup day.” He also got sentenced to 120 hours of community service. After he did 111 of those hours, the city arrested him again, timing the arrest such that he wouldn’t be able to attend court to prevent the foreclosure of his home.
Officials like this are just plain bullies. I can’t think of a more fitting word for them. They aren’t protecting anyone or improving the lives of the citizens they claim to represent. They’re abusing the power of their positions to push their personal agendas. They hide behind the officious mantra of “the law is the law; it applies equally to everyone,” as though The Law were handed down from Heaven above rather than drafted by a small handful of council members in a private meeting like a clique of mean school children conspiring about how best to torment the nerdy kid.
Now a man is dead. This is as much a story of bullying as any you read about where a child commits suicide because of relentless harassment by classmates.
Agriculture is thought to be about 10,000 years old. It is one of the most basic of human activities and is the foundation of civilization. Cultivation of the land is the only reason humans stopped being nomadic. The whole reason cities were established, nations formed, and armies raised, was because of agriculture. Particularly in hard times, it is inevitable that people will once again revert to growing at least a portion of their own food rather than just relying on “the store” to feed them like clockwork, like a factory-farmed hog that waits for feed to come down a steel tube at the same time every day. The movement is growing like a tidal wave, and no number of efforts by tiny tyrants on the municipal level can hold it back forever. Shame on them for even trying.
Urban agriculture didn’t need a martyr, but now we’ve got one. His name was Andrew Wordes. We can only hope that his death will serve as a wake-up call, an opportunity for the City Hall bullies to get some perspective and ask themselves whether suppressing “weirdness” is really important enough to destroy and end people’s lives. They can think about that as they watch what a flooded, blown-up, vacant house does to surrounding property values. They’re not going to get another penny of property taxes out of Mr. Wordes now.
