What's More Important, The Right To Defend Your Foreclosed Property Or Hot Pizza?

Detroit News- Garden City’s mayor says residents who wanted to plead with the City Council to save their homes weren’t allowed to speak because officials had a pizza party planned after the meeting.

Speaking one day after he and other City Council members walked out of session without taking public comment from at least seven former homeowners facing eviction, Randy Walker said the meeting’s main purpose was to swear in new officials.

Those meetings don’t usually feature public comment — and a party was planned immediately afterward, he said.

“It’s a happy occasion,” Walker said. “We had food waiting. We had pizza coming out of the oven at 7:45 (p.m.).”

The explanation was hard to swallow for Nicholis P. Dunsky, whose home was foreclosed because of back taxes. He faces eviction and brought his family to the council meeting.

“That’s a ... (poor) excuse,” he told The News. “We felt like we didn’t matter.”



I know, I know, it sounds like a silly question, but the fact of the matter is that the answer is even sillier. Hot, crispy pizza is more important than giving citizens a chance to plea on behalf of their foreclosed homes. Not because these people don't matter. They do. It's their opinion that doesn't. Those homes are gone. See ya. Nothing the people that attended the meeting could say would possibly change that. This wasn't a proposal that was still being discussed. The decision already made. The party already planned. The pizza already in the oven. Any rational argument made by a former resident of the property would only have acted as a major buzzkill to the afterparty. Does it feel wrong to say that the temperature of pizza is more important than someone's livelihood? Of course it does, but that livelihood was already well in doubt. No reason to ruin the celebration meal just so people can get things off their chest.

There is only two ways to eat pizza. Eating it fresh out of the oven and burning a layer of skin off the roof of your mouth, or eating it cold. No one wants soggy, lukewarm pizza. Don't get me wrong, they'll definitely take it if that's the only option, but they aren't taking it because a couple of ex-tenants feel like they have some debatable right to speak freely in public. Why should both parties suffer if one party can avoid suffering from imperfect pizza by hitting the other party with the mute button? Really this just boils down to eating pizza being more important than airing grievances, and I dare you to argue differently.

P.S. Poor Detroit. That pizza looks terrible. I wouldn't even decline the invite to that party, I would just refuse to RSVP.