Being Homeless in Orlando, Florida
June 3, 2011 at 4:18 PM 2 comments
Having just gotten home from a five-hour stint volunteering at my local food bank, this story made my jaw drop:
Members of Orlando Food Not Bombs were arrested Wednesday when police said they violated a city ordinance by feeding the homeless in Lake Eola Park.
Jessica Cross, 24, Benjamin Markeson, 49, and Jonathan “Keith” McHenry, 54, were arrested at 6:10 p.m. on a charge of violating the ordinance restricting group feedings in public parks. McHenry is a co-founder of the international Food Not Bombs movement, which began in the early 1980s.
The group lost a court battle in April, clearing the way for the city to enforce the ordinance. It requires groups to obtain a permit and limits each group to two permits per year for each park within a 2-mile radius of City Hall.
Arrest papers state that Cross, Markeson and McHenry helped feed 40 people Wednesday night. The ordinance applies to feedings of more than 25 people.
“They intentionally violated the statute,” said Lt. Barbara Jones, an Orlando police spokeswoman.
Police waited until everyone was served to make the arrests, said Douglas Coleman, speaking for Orlando Food Not Bombs.
“They basically carted them off to jail for feeding hungry people,” said Coleman, who was not present. “For them to regulate a time and place for free speech and to share food, that is unacceptable.”
Orlando Food Not Bombs has been feeding the homeless breakfast on Mondays for several years and dinner on Wednesdays for five years.
Police had not enforced the ordinance while the court battle continued. The U.S. District Court of Appeals for the 11th Circuit in Atlanta ruled that city rules regulating how often large groups of people can be fed in a park do not violate the Constitution.
The law is the law and if there is a law banning feeding groups of 25-or-more people then the cops were right to enforce it, but that damn law has got to be changed.
How assbackward is it that a law banning feeding homeless people is enacted and enforced but what the banksters did to crash the economy goes without a single indictment and George W. Bush & Co. lie us into a war that kills hundreds of thousands of people (including 4,000+ of our kids) and everyone looks the other way?
What a country.
Entry filed under: At the Food Bank, Corporatocracy, Dumbed Down, Fascist America, Financial Crisis, Food, Laws / Judiciary, Repression, We the People. Tags: .
1.
M. Douglas Wray | June 4, 2011 at 10:23 AM
This is idiotic and sounds like a law for another purpose is being misused just to attack these people. Need more details but something tells me a better lawyer would not have lost this.
2.
Burkey | June 6, 2011 at 7:48 PM
Asshats.