Eight-year-old Jordan no longer has to worry about selling water bottles to get money for tickets to go to Disneyland.
Jordan’s mother Erin Austin shared an Instagram video Saturday in which she confronted a woman who she said threatened to call San Francisco police on her daughter for the crime of selling water bottles without a permit.
Austin had previously told her daughter that the family could go to Disneyland if she helped raise money for the trip.
On Sunday, Jordan received a pleasant surprise — four tickets to Disneyland courtesy musician Jonathon Brannon, who decided to fund her dream after hearing about the story on social media.
Jordan’s gleeful reaction was captured in this Twitter video shared by her cousin.
“I want to wish 8-year-old Jordan and her family all the best, and I hope they have a magical time at Disneyland,” Brannon said on Instagram.
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The video that sparked the controversy shows a white woman, identified as Alison Ettel, with a phone up to her ears as she appears to try to crouch behind a wall to escape the attentions of Austin’s video.
“This woman don’t want to let a little girl sell some water; she be calling police on an 8-year-old little girl,” Austin is heard saying. “You can hide all you want; the whole world gonna see you, boo.”
Ettel, retorted, “Yeah, and illegally selling water without a permit?”
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Ettel later told the San Francisco Chronicle that she only pretended to call police, and that Jordan and her mother were being noisy, which disturbed her as she was trying to work.
“I was completely stressed out at work and that’s not an excuse,” she said.
However, Ettel’s outburst is already starting to have a detrimental impact on her work as CEO of Treatwell Health, a company that makes cannabis tinctures.
At least three cannabis retailers, Magnolia Oakland, SPARC and Barbary Coast, announced that they will no longer carry Treatwell products.
“Treatwell was one our best-selling products but to us, integrity is always before profits,” Magnolia Oakland said in its statement.
“We support our diverse San Francisco community,” Barbary Coast said in a Facebook post.
The hashtag #PermitPatty, which accompanied the initial video, has since gone viral, with many on social media using it to complain about what they say is a growing problem of white people needlessly calling police on people of colour.
Some recent incidents include a Yale University graduate student who called police on a black student who fell asleep in the common area of a campus residence, and a Colorado parent who called police on a pair of Native American brothers who arrived late for a college tour.
— With a file from The Associated Press
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