The plight of #PermitPatty has been swift. On Saturday, video of a white woman calling the police on an 8-year-old selling water bottles was uploaded to Instagram by the girl’s mother. People on Twitter did what they do best and made the video go viral, quickly identifying the woman as San Francisco resident Alison Ettel.
Not only did she face major backlash online, Ettel has since lost business with at least one dispensary that sold products from her company TreatWell Health—an edibles manufacturer that specializes in cannabis options for pets.
This morning, Ettel went on NBC’s Today Show to share her side of the story. "I tried to be polite but I was stern," Ettel said in the interview. "And I said, 'Please, I'm trying to work. You're screaming. You're yelling, and people have open windows. It's a hot day. Can you please keep it down?'"
But the girl’s mother, Erin Austin, denies that version of the incident. "She never asked us to be quiet. She came out and directly demanded to see a permit to sell water from an 8-year-old," Austin told NBC.
Later in the segment, Ettel revealed that she’s received "all kinds of threats. Horrible, horrible images and death threats. All for something that was an escalated miscommunication between two neighbors."
Since the video went viral, one user on Twitter bought Disneyland tickets for 8-year-old Jordan Rogers. While Ettel said she would like to apologize to Jordan and her mother, the two said they would not accept her apology.
