The grassroots campaign to stop a new franchise Down Under makes international headlines.
Let’s say you found out that McDonald’s planned to raze some historic buildings in your town and build a 24-hour franchise across the street from a kindergarten, and you didn’t want that to happen. What do you think you’d have to do to get that message across to McDonald’s?
Band together with your neighbors, no doubt. OK, let’s say in your town of, oh, about 2,000 residents, you find out that almost 90 percent of them don’t want the McDonald’s setting up shop either, and you deluge your local town council with more than a thousand written objections to the plan. Your town council unanimously votes to reject the McDonald’s proposal—hooray! Democracy reigns, and everyone lives fatty fast-food free ever after, right?
Not by a longshot.
That's at least when it comes to Tecoma, Australia, by all accounts a picturesque place far on the outskirts of Melbourne and one of the gateways to the natural splendor that is the Dandenong Ranges, a lushly forested bank of low mountains.
Rather than back down, McDonald’s appealed the town council’s decision—and won! (I won’t bog down the story with how that happened.) So town residents banded together to “Reclaim Tecoma,” according to the website protesters set up, and 600 descended on the proposed building site and planted (how awesome is this?) a community garden! Then they maintained a monthlong, 24-hour-a-day peaceful vigil.
Mickey D’s has gotta throw up its hands then, right? I mean, after all, do they really want a viral YouTube video out there of bulldozers plowing under, of all things, a community garden in the name of Big Macs and fries?
I guess so, because McDonald’s then went on to sue a number of the protesters for damages, including legal fees.
http://www.takepart.com/article/small-town-picks-big-fight-effort-stop-mcdonalds-bullying
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