We played by the rules.
We won.
Then they changed the rules.

The ACLU steps in — and tells the City its demands look like censorship.

We asked the ACLU of Rhode Island for help. On July 31, its Executive Director, Steven Brown, wrote directly to Cranston's Building Official — copying the City Solicitor — and put the City's conduct on the record.

The letter says the email exchanges "suggest that the nature and scope of your responses may be based, at least in part, on the political nature of the signage. That is deeply troubling." It catalogs precisely what we objected to from day one: a demand to remove the signs immediately "without any semblance of due process"; an "unauthorized threat" to have somebody take the signs down before any citation was ever issued; and a failure to cite any specific ordinance — an ultimatum the City withdrew only after conferring with its own solicitor.

On the surveyor demand, the ACLU questions the "onerous, and undoubtedly costly, 'compliance' requirement for an alleged violation of the zoning ordinance that your email did not even confirm actually exists" — noting the City never offered any lesser alternative, like adjusting only the portion of the fence actually claimed to block a sight line.

And on the City's newest theory — that a state permit statute requires permission before posting signs on your own property — the ACLU is blunt: the statute "strikes us as being completely inapplicable," and the notice "seems to formally attempt to apply it in a manner that threatens to suppress political speech protected by the First Amendment."

The letter closes by asking the City to explain its week of demands and threats, and to give assurances that they "are not related to the content of the signage being displayed." That is the whole question, asked by the state's leading civil-liberties organization, in writing, to the officials who made the threats.

ACLU of Rhode Island to the City of Cranston, July 31, 2026 — cc: the City Solicitor.

📄 Read the ACLU's letter

Theory #4: a formal Notice of Violation — and now the signs need a building permit.

The emails became official. On July 24 the City issued a formal Notice of Violation for 1112 Reservoir Avenue, alleging that "multiple signs were installed on structures … without the required permits." It cites R.I.G.L. § 23-27.3-113.1 — a state building-code provision on when a permit is required — together with the corner-visibility ordinance, and warns that failure to comply "may result in prosecution."

Read that plainly: the City's position is now that a citizen needs a permit from the government before hanging a political sign on his own fence. The ACLU called that reading "completely inapplicable." And notice what still isn't in the notice — no measurement, no finding that anything actually blocks a sight line, no explanation of why this address, this week, these signs.

It is the fourth theory in nine days. Too big. Sight lines. Wind loads. Now permits and prosecution. Every excuse changes. The target never does.

The City's Notice of Violation, July 24, 2026.

📄 Read the Notice of Violation

The City backs down on size — then tries two new theories.

One day after we refused to remove the banners and invoked the First Amendment, the City wrote back. Buried in the first sentence is the concession that ends the original threat: after consulting the City solicitor, our banners "may be considered 'political signs'" under Cranston's own code. Which is exactly what we told them: Cranston has no size limit on political signs. The demand to tear them down "immediately" — the threat to send a crew and lien the property — had no legal basis. Theory #1 is dead, in writing.

There was no apology. Instead, two brand-new theories appeared. Now the City says the banners might obstruct "corner visibility" — and demands we hire a surveyor to produce a stamped site plan. (The ordinance it cites covers only obstructions between 2.5 and 10 feet tall within 30 feet of the intersection, and nothing in it lets the City order a citizen to commission surveys. We'll bring our own tape measure.) And now, for the first time, fabric banners supposedly require a building permit with engineer-stamped hurricane wind-load calculations under ASCE 7 — a demand we doubt has ever been made of a single grand-opening banner on Reservoir Avenue. The letter closes, again, with a threat of unspecified "further actions."

See the pattern. When "too big" failed, it became "sight lines." When that fails, it's "wind loads." Each new theory arrives only after the last one collapses, and each one costs more money to answer — surveyors, engineers, stamped drawings. The process is the punishment. They don't need to win; they just need to make speaking cost more than staying silent. We are consulting a licensed engineer, we will verify the sight triangle ourselves, and the banners are staying up.

The City's Second Letter

The City of Cranston demands the banners come down. We refuse.

The banners tell this website's story in letters big enough that nobody can pretend they didn't know. "She did everything right. She won." "The program built to lift her up now locks her out." And the names — the representatives and senators who voted for H8544 — printed on the fence at 1112 Reservoir Avenue, where the voters they answer to drive past every day.

1112 Reservoir Avenue, Cranston. Every name on that fence voted yes.

This one wasn't taken by us. It's the City of Cranston's own photo, timestamped 11:00 a.m., July 22 — attached to the removal demand it sent at 2:13 p.m. the same day. The State took years to act on her license. The City took three hours to go from photographing these banners to demanding their removal.

On July 22, Cranston's Building & Zoning Official emailed our landlord about the banners on our building: "Please advise the tenant to remove them immediately, or the City may send someone out to do it and place a lien on the property." No code section cited. No measurements. No hearing. No court order. Just a demand to erase the message — sent not to us, the speakers, but to our landlord.

Here's what Cranston's own ordinance actually says: the City may summarily remove a sign only when it poses "an immediate danger to the public health or safety." And its only rule for political signs is that they come down after an election — there is no size limit on political speech in Cranston's code. The size tables the City would have to lean on were written for storefronts and shopping plazas, not for citizens criticizing their government. The First Amendment does not permit that switch.

And here's the part that should make every Cranston taxpayer furious. At projected revenue, this dispensary would send the City roughly $300,000 a year in local cannabis excise alone — before a dollar of property or tangible tax. Hold that against the City's own published list of its largest taxpayers: only about a dozen names in the entire city — the power company, the malls, the big-box chains — would pay Cranston more. A business that would rank among the City's fifteen largest taxpayers, on the one site in Cranston zoned and approved to host it, built by Rhode Islanders who did everything right. And City Hall's first official word to us wasn't "welcome." It was a threat to cut our banners down.

This is the Rhode Island disease, and it doesn't stop at the State House door — it flows downhill into the cities. Goliath never gets a code-enforcement letter; David gets one in an afternoon. The insiders never miss. The rest of us play by the rules, win, and get told the rules have changed. Cranston should be standing with a small business that fought for years to open its doors here and bring the city a top-fifteen taxpayer. Instead, political pressure prevails.

We are not taking them down. We responded the same day, and we asked the ACLU of Rhode Island for emergency help. Read every word yourself:

The City's Email  Our Response  Our Request to the ACLU

Documents are reproduced in full; personal information of private individuals has been redacted. The photos in the City's email are the City's own.

The building speaks.

Banners go up at 1112 Reservoir Avenue — the location we earned and the State erased — telling the story and naming the lawmakers who voted for H8544, where their own voters drive past every day.

We expand the lawsuit.

We filed our First Amended Complaint in Ancora Partners, LLC v. Rhode Island Cannabis Control Commission, expanding our claims against the Commission. The Commission has 20 days to respond. Details in The Lawsuit.

One signature finishes the job.

Governor Dan McKee signs H8544 into law, wiping out the licensing process we had already won and ordering regulators to start over from scratch.

We take them to court.

Before the State passed the provision that tries to bar us from suing, we sued — Ancora Partners, LLC d/b/a Flower & Pot v. Rhode Island Cannabis Control Commission, C.A. No. PC‑2026‑02802. Read what we're asking for in The Lawsuit.