State stomps on the common good
by Zoe Romanowsky
5/04/09
Here's a story I couldn't resist posting. A Christian, home-schooling family in Ohio was raided back in early December by the state Department of Agriculture, the county health department, and the police.
Swat teams surrounded their house, entered, and forced 10 children and their mother into a room and held them for six hours while the house was searched and their personal items confiscated.
Their crime? Running a food co-op for local families. State officials claim Jim and Mary Stower are operating a retail business without a license. The Stower family says they run a members-only co-op, which does not sell to the public and therefore does not require a licence.
The Stowers started ordering wholefoods in bulk for their family of 12 many years ago. Local families asked to do the same and eventually this led to the Stowers putting a co-op together called Manna Storehouse for families to buy food orders in bulk. They purchase mostly from local farms.
Even if the Stowers violated a law, it's amazing to me the way state and local officials chose to act. Imagine rural home-schooled kids being held at gunpoint for six hours by police with automatic rifles. The cops took the families' personal food, and confiscated their cell phones and computer.
The Stowers son-in-law is a soldier stationed in Iraq, by the way. That one computer was their main way of communicating with him.
http://insidecatholic.com/Joomla/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=5925&Itemid=80#jreactions
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