By Ben Joravsky
Over the summer of 2001 Jeff created a Web site that listed local soup kitchens and shelters that needed food, and he and his father hooked up with Plant a Row for the Hungry, a national organization that encourages gardeners to donate some of their produce to the hungry. On September 2 the Grabowskis got a write-up in the Sun-Times headlined “Gardeners donate produce to help feed the hungry.”
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Jeff returned to the market on September 30. “I filled up my car with three or four big bags of food and took them to Saint Pius, a church in Pilsen,” he says. “I talked to someone in the back and just said, ‘Hey, I have some food.’ It was nothing formal. They needed food, and I had some to give.”
So Jeff called Margo. “She couldn’t have been more pleasant or helpful. She said, ‘Oh, my boss, assistant commissioner Connie Buscemi, would love to hear about what you’re doing. Why don’t you write everything in a fax, so she knows?’ I thought, ‘This is awesome. The city actually wants to help–they actually want to get involved.’”
Grabowski says Buscemi called again a little while later. “This time she demanded that I show up in City Hall in two days, on Thursday, with proof that what I’m doing is humanitarian and that I’m not doing it for profit. She said she wanted proof that I had actually dropped off this food. I said, ‘But I don’t have proof. I didn’t bother getting receipts. I just dropped off the food.’ She said, ‘I don’t care. Get the proof and bring it to my office on Thursday.’ I said, ‘I can’t make it on Thursday. I work.’ She said something like, ‘If you don’t show up in my office on Thursday you will sorely regret it.’ In other words, get your ass in here or there will be hell to pay.”
Jeff says Buscemi closed the meeting by giving him another ultimatum. “She told me to find adequate proof of having made the deliveries to Pacific Garden,” he says. “She said, ‘Fax us your defense by November 1.’ She said, ‘If you don’t come up with adequate proof of those deliveries we’ll have to move forward.’”
The Grabowskis debated the deal. “I had mixed feelings about taking the guilty plea,” says Larry. “I didn’t want to admit to doing anything wrong. But my wife and I were going out of town on vacation soon, and part of me just wanted to get this over. So we took the deal. Jeff pled guilty and paid his fine. It still makes me sick thinking about it.”
