As of today, the US officially has a fair trade city: San Francisco! NoCalians are celebrating with San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom at Dolores Park in San Francisco; they’ve timed their announcement to fall on World Fair Trade Day.

San Francisco may be the first fair trade city, but we already have six fair trade towns in the U.S. What’s the diff between a city and a town? That’s what I asked Wikipedia yesterday, but didn’t get a straight answer. Apparently, “the definition of cities (and town, villages, townships, etc.) is a matter of state laws and the definitions vary widely by state.”

I assumed that cities are relatively large, well-known places, while towns are teensy places out in the middle of nowhere. However, I then discovered that Milwaukee — a sort of but not totally way out in the middle of nowhere place — is on the list of 6 towns that received Fair Trade Town status.

So as of now, it’s unclear whether San Francisco will be considered the 7th of Fair Trade Towns, or the first Fair Trade City. In any case, here’s the list of fair trade cities and towns:

>> Media, Penn. (July 2006)
>> Brattleboro, Vermont (June 2007)
>> Milwaukee, Wisconsin (Oct. 2007)
>> Amherst, Mass. (Nov. 2007)
>> Taos, New Mexico (March 2008)
>> Northampton, Mass. (April 2008)
>> San Francisco, Calif. (May 2008)

You’ll notice I actually mentioned the first two towns in posts then sort of lost interest…. But now I’m getting interested again. Fair trade LA’s gotten more active — I wonder if we can either work with that group or create a new Fair Trade Santa Monica group to make the beach city I live in a Fair Trade Town –

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