Victory Declared in Decades-long Food Fight

At 5:00 p.m. on Monday, West Fourth Street is mostly quiet, except the dogs barking in Washington Square Park. Inside the Judson Memorial Church though, it isn’t cold enough to stop the Street Vendor Project from celebrating what it’s calling “historic” legislation. On January 29, New York’s City Council overrode former Mayor Eric Adams’ veto and passed a package of bills reforming the city’s street vending laws. It’s a victory that took years and years of organizing. Some people, the SVP’s managing director Mohammed Attia says, “have been in this fight for decades.”