Big Mac To Eat Nickels House
You deserve a break today, but McDonalds isn't where you'll find it. By the time you read this, construction of the Republican-backed restaurant on Maynard St., between Liberty and Williams, will have begun, as plasticity replaces the historic old and wooden Nichol's House.
Community outcries against the McDonald's construction project surfaced earlier this year when the project was placed before City Council. Numerous speakers harangued Council not to approve the building of the restaurant, and a two-week petition drive against the opening of the franchise easily collected 7000 Ann Arbor signatures. But the Republican majority on council, concerned only with turning the city into a giant shopping center, quickly succeeded in getting the construction resolution passed.
Though most recently objecting to the litter left by a three-day music festival, the Republicans gleefully condoned a permanent eye-sore which will contribute a perpetual supply of plastic and paper litter to the Maynard area, as well as creating crowded traffic situations (unless the Republicans vote to tear down a city block for extra Big Mac parking space).
Concern has also grown over the awesome transformation of the State St. - Maynard area into a triangle of fast-food processing factories. Just recently, Gino's began the takeover, and after Ronald McDonald, the Big-Whopper Burger King is slated for a third site, at Liberty and Maynard.
Besides their odiferous contribution to the air pollution problem, other objections have been reaised over the new McDonalds, including the low nutritional value of their food, the unfair hiring practices of the McDonald's corporation, the low wages the company provides its student workers, the sum of money the restaurant will be extracting from the community, the small restaurants that will be driving out of business by the franchise...
Meanwhile, some persons are apparently planning to obstruct the Maynard Street bulldozers for as long as possible to create a symbolic protest. But the anarchistic urban sprawl spread by our unnecessarily Republican-dominated Council can only truly be stopped next April, when the city election will offer Ann Arbor residents the opportunity to vote in a much more responsive Council dominated by the Democrats and HRP. It's not a joke.
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Freeing John Sinclair
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Ann Arbor Sun