Posted on 06/19/2012 4:41:21 PM PDT by JohnKinAK
A woman from Tulsa, Oklahoma is suing the city’s code enforcement teams after they illegally cut down her entire survival garden. Denise Morrison, who started the garden after becoming unemployed, had over 100 medicinal and edible plants in her front and back yard.
She told local Tulsa reporters that she started her garden, after becoming unemployed, as a way to feed herself and treat a variety of medical issues. Instead of relying on government handouts, this woman took matters into her own hands and decided to become self sufficient. She filled her yard with things like, fruit trees, berries, nut trees, and a wide variety of edible and medicinal herbs. She used these herbs to treat her diabetes, high-blood pressure and arthritis.
Is the Self-Reliant Lifestyle Now a Crime in America?
All her hard work ended when the local code enforcement team showed up to her house and forcibly removed her entire survival garden. Morrison says that she tried to explain how everything in her yard followed the local code enforcement rules. You see, she had problems with these people in the past and this time she was determined to do things by the book.
She obtained the local ordinances and followed every rule to the tee. She made sure that everything in her garden had a purpose, and that her garden looked its best at all times. Local ordinances stated that no plant could be over 12-inches tall unless they were being used for human consumption.
Morrison made sure every plant in her garden could be eaten, but that didn’t matter to the city. They could care less about what the law actually said, they were determined to take out her garden. “Every word out of their mouth was, ‘we don’t care,’” Morrison said.
Over 100 plant varieties were removed by the code enforcement team leaving her with no way to feed or medicate herself. They took almost everything, including a number of her fruit and nut trees. She told local reporters in Tulsa, “I came back three days later, sat in my driveway, cried and left.”
Government Crack Down on Liberty
While this case is extremely sad, it’s also becoming more and more common throughout the country. From “nuisance abatement teams” that have been forcing Off-Griders in California to hook back into the grid, to the heartbreaking story of Andrew Wordes who took his life after code enforcement teams seized his home, this country is making it harder and harder for self-reliant people to live on their own land.
While some dismiss these cases as localized issues, I believe they’re part of a larger movement to control anyone who dares to live a self-reliant lifestyle. I think evidence of this can be seen in the federal governments attempts to regulate small farms out of existence, their use of the EPA to seize private land, the formation of the Department of Homeland Security’s Green Police Force, their attempts to seize control of the Great Lakes, oceans, and waterways, and their use of organizations like The National League of Cities to take control of local governments.
I’d need to see a good picture of the yard. I suspect her nieghbors are saying one thing in public and another when they called to complain. Is there a home owner’s association? Did she live in the burbs? Is there an agreed upon decoration rule for each yard? There’s just too much left out.
Yes. Absolutely. And the taxpayers' beef should be with the malfeasant gubmint a-holes stealing their tax dollars to perpetrate this kind of BS, not the innocent woman trying to defend herself.
Ditto.
Your approach is incredibly subjective. I think that your house is a rat trap, so give me your address and I’ll call the authorities to burn it to the ground. No need to send me a picture, I already know it’s a rat haven.
Forgot to mention, your approach is very authoritarian, like a NAZI.
There were multiple thugs. She needed something with a 30-round mag.
Tulsa has become a libtard mecca in a RED state in my opinion. It is also getting worse. I’ve wondered how long it could hold out. I-44 feeds it just like a river into a depression with no outlet but the mess is spreading.
Gosh. Do you think they could ever have both? I mean, neat lawn or live babies. That’s a tough choice.
Honestly, I never linked one with the other and the Church business. That one just gobsmacked me. I’ll have to think awhile to get my head around that one.
There are always ways to become more self-sufficient and live at lower cost. Starve the B. Start cooking, repairing, studying, designing, building,... The debt regime is losing, BTW.
Yeah you do. A couple of show trials of course but for the most part you are simply not in tune with the problem nor do you want to be.
BTW, that's just the churches that operate under that name. They have dozens more names.
Will Sasquatch stand up and defend this woman?
Despite the fact that the city of Roswell allows chickens to be kept on properties less than 2 acres, Wordes was subjected to a sustained campaign of harassment and intimidation by the state which began in December 2008 when the city issued Wordes with a citation for keeping the chickens after a complaint by a neighbor.
After all the charges against Wordes were dropped, city administrators then re-wrote the ordinance to say that only six or less chickens could be kept on a property of less than 2 acres and hit Wordes with another citation.
Wordes won the case for a second time when the judge concluded that he was “granfathered in” under the previous ordinance that allowed for chickens on less than 2 acres.
Despite Wordes constantly winning legal cases, the city would not let up on their campaign of terror, moving to illegally intimidate the mortgage holder on Wordes house, an 80-year-old woman, to sell the mortgage note to the city for 40 cents on the dollar.
Amidst all this constant harassment, Wordes had to cope with his house flooding numerous times and criminals breaking in and vandalizing his property, including one incident where a third of his birds were poisoned to death, an act likely perpetrated by the neighbor who had sided with the city in targeting Wordes.
Now turning to the argument that Wordes’ activities represented a “nuisance,” the city filed a 55 page civil lawsuit, while simultaneously declaring Wordes’ property to be a “Conservation Area or Greenspace,” representing the final move in seizing the property under the auspices of tyrannical environmental mandates that were clearly manufactured by the state as a tool of harassment.
Although Wordes attempted to sell his land to the city, councilors then slapped a phony foreclosure notice on the property. When Wordes missed a probation check and was jailed for 99 days, the city immediately issued a press release announcing that his property was “vacant,” prompting criminals to break in and steal Wordes’ firearms, valuables and other ammunition. City administrators signaled they were unconcerned about the incident and would do nothing about it.
While he was in jail, the unknown mortgage note holder tried to foreclose on the property and Wordes was prevented from mounting any kind of appeal.
On March 26, Fulton County Marshals arrived at Wordes’ home to follow through on the city’s illegal order to evict him. Shortly afterwards there was an explosion and Wordes’ was subsequently found dead. Although initially declared to be a suicide, circumstances surrounding the incident remain unclear.
What is abundantly clear is the fact that Andrew Wordes was terrorized, harassed and abused to death by a predatory state whose plan all along was to seize the property under the justification of so-called ‘green’ zoning laws.
That is downright evil.
There’s got to be room for people to live who aren’t happy in little boxes... made of ticky tacky...
She obtained the local ordinances and followed every rule to the tee. She made sure that everything in her garden had a purpose, and that her garden looked its best at all times.
This struck me as a case of an offender brazenly violating the spirit of the law by carefully following it "to the letter" while paradoxically claiming the moral high ground.
Reminds me of the deceptive packaging and labeling of products. The manufacturers boast [and their defense is] that there is no deception, because "everything is on the label".
Yeah, like the ice cream box that has a faux (i.e. incomplete) ingredient list on one side beginning with "Contains:" and then in small print below, words that go something like "Full ingredient list on back".
Considering that the images in her defense are of limited scope (and don't look that great at that), it could be that this yard was a heinous rat trap from hell but this woman made sure she was not technically in violation. Any dustup and she becomes the victim.
Just my two pennywort...
Prolly “Ear! Want sum?”
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