GOVERNMENT WATCH
Dyer could get competition in mayoral race
October 25, 2007
ORLANDO - A member of Orange County's Soil and Water Conservation District board announced his intention to run for mayor of Orlando late Monday.
Tim Adams -- who ran against the incumbent mayor, Buddy Dyer, in a race for state Senate in 1992 -- said in his announcement that he wants the community venues put to a public vote, and he opposes the ban on feeding the homeless at Lake Eola Park that was enacted by the Dyer administration.
Adams would seem a long-shot candidate, with the Jan. 29 election just three months away. Dyer had raised more than $350,000 in campaign contributions as of Sept. 30, reports show. Adams said he supported businessman Ken Mulvaney in the past mayoral election. Mulvaney also has said he might run again, but neither he nor Adams has yet filed papers to formally launch a candidacy.
Friday, October 26, 2007
Thursday, October 11, 2007
Feeding the Hungry is a Crime
http://www.inthesetimes.com/article/3358/feeding_the_hungry_is_a_crim/
October 10, 2007
Feeding the Hungry is a Crime
City councils are cracking down on charity groups that feed the homeless without a permit
By Megan Tady
The stake-out was almost comical in its absurdity: On April 4, 2007, undercover police counted how many times Eric Montanez, a 22-year-old volunteer with Food Not Bombs, dipped a serving ladle into a pot and handed stew to hungry people.
Once Montanez had dished up 30 bowls, the police moved in, collecting a vial of the stew for evidence as they arrested him for violating an Orlando, Fla., city ordinance: feeding a large group. Two days into his trial yesterday, Montanez was acquitted by a jury of the misdemeanor charge, but was cautioned to obey the law.
As activists celebrate the verdict, the Orlando Police Department has said it will continue to ordinance, making the fight for the free flow of food in the city far from over.
"He is on trial for the crime of feeding the homeless--literally," says George Crossley, a member of the Stop the Ordinance Partnership (S.T.O.P.), an alliance of 19 advocacy groups, including Orlando branches of Code Pink, the NAACP, and the National Organization for Women.
What Crossley and others are trying to stop is a "large group feeding[s]" ordinance passed in July 2006 by the Orlando City Council that essentially bans groups from providing food to more than 25 people in downtown parks without a permit.
Under the ordinance, groups can only obtain two permits a year per park for the purpose of sharing food with a large group. Although the ordinance does not explicitly target the homeless, the guillotine falls on their heads, as they are largely the benefactors of churches, charities and activist groups serving free food in easily accessible parks.
"Eric's arrest shows both the heartlessness of Orlando towards the destitute and those who aid them," the Orlando Food Not Bombs (FNB) chapter said in a statement in April.
Just as Orlando is cracking down on free meals that make life more bearable for homeless people, so too are other cities. This month, West Palm Beach, Fla., passed a similar ordinance that criminalizes feeding the homeless in public places, and last week officials in Cleveland, Ohio, prohibited groups from sharing food in the city's Public Square. In February, a man in Jacksonville, Fla., was given a citation for handing out food to the homeless without a permit, though it was later thrown out. And FNB says fear is spreading in Albuquerque, N.M., that city officials may pass a similar ordinance, which has long been an avenue used to force out homeless people.
Volunteers and activists are decrying the laws, calling any measure that keeps free food out of the hands of the needy inhumane.
"It's essentially saying that homeless people are not worthy of attention or respect and they’re nothing more than pigeons who should be fed some place else so they’re not a bother to mainstream society," says FNB Co-founder Keith McHenry.
McHenry says feeding the homeless is part of a larger social justice agenda.
"There's a broader principle in America that we're trying to address, and that is, food is a human right, not to be relegated to being a commodity," McHenry says. "People who are hungry in this country deserve good, nutritious food without having to go through a lot of bureaucratic hurdles to get that food, and without having to be demeaned."
As with the other city ordinances, Orlando designated a specific area away from downtown businesses where groups could offer food without a permit. But McHenry says the purpose of visibly feeding homeless people is to draw attention to the problem, and that FNB rejects hiding a situation that the city refuses to confront compassionately.
"They say, 'If you want to feed people, why don't you do it out of sight?'" McHenry says. "That's not our goal. Our goal is... to change society."
The designated area in Orlando, however, is gated and groups must notify the authorities to unlock the space before every food sharing.
Brian Davis, director of the Northeast Ohio Coalition for the Homeless, says Cleveland police notified the group on October 3 that groups and churches could no longer provide food in the Public Square because of health hazards. Davis was told the city had discovered rat holes at the park. The Cleveland City Council did not return calls seeking comment.
According to a recent blog post by Davis, "The Chief of Police and the entire command staff stopped a group from unloading their food on the Square. Then they tried to move to another park and that did not work because law enforcement stopped them. The group was told that if they unload that they would be arrested."
The groups were also given an alternate site for food sharing, but Davis told In These Times, "It couldn't be a worse place to go."
Shawn, an FNB volunteer in Cleveland reluctant to give his last name, says the regulation on feedings in the park is taking a toll. "What [the ordinance] has accomplished is probably diminished the amount of people getting fed when you're forced to move to a location that's too far for people to walk to," he says.
Shawn says FNB would return to serving food in the Public Square. "It hasn't stopped us," he says. "There should be no law against feeding people."
But feeding people, says McHenry, is bad for business. As tables of free food attract a larger than usual number of homeless people to city parks, nearby businesses fear their revenue streams may suffer.
"[Business owners] believe that people won't shop in those neighborhoods. They're not attractive," McHenry says.
He also says cities fear the presence of readily available food will bring more homeless people into their community, and "they'll have to raise tax money to provide affordable housing and public assistance and shelters."
Heather Allebaugh, constituent correspondent for the City of Orlando, says the city council enacted the ordinance in response to "complaints from residents and businesses immediately following the feedings of activity and drug use around the area."
Allebaugh also says the ordinance was designed to help maintain the parks. "It's a balance between the residents and their safety when they come to the park when the feedings are taking place," she says.
In response to criticisms that an ordinance curtailing the availability of free food is inhumane, Allebaugh says the measure is "not a ban, but a regulation."
"It's just about maintaining a regulation just as we do for parades and garage sales so we have an idea of what’s happening at public parks," Allebaugh says. "Maybe there's extra security needed for the people attending. Maybe they need extra trash receptacles. It's just to help us manage events that are happening within our city. I don’t think it was targeted at any group. It was more about the proper location to feed, rather than whether to ban feeding."
The city did not enact any provisions to feed the homeless people who relied on the routinely accessible free food. Allebaugh says such services do not fall within the jurisdiction of the city.
The crackdown on food sharings follows other policies designed to penalize and ostracize homeless people. Orlando's estimated 9,000 homeless people are subject to laws that prevent them from lying on benches and from panhandling during certain hours. Cleveland recently enacted a law that sets a 10 pm curfew at the city's Public Square, intending to stop people from sleeping in the park.
"[The City Council] is brutal about this," says Crossley of S.T.O.P. "This is not a game to these people. They're not trying to find a solution to why these people are out there."
Allebaugh count[er]s, however, that the Council is addressing homelessness through a regional commission expected to issue "findings and suggestions" in February on how to "address homelessness and hopefully come up with a 10-year plan to end homelessness."
The harsh treatment of homeless people also comes as the number of displaced people rises. On Monday, the Associated Press reported that there are an estimated 750,000 homeless people in the United States, although the figure is difficult to pinpoint.
"The criminalization of homeless people shows that there's no political will by our society to deal with the crisis in a humane and logical way," McHenry says. "The reality is that homeless people are regular Americans who lost their jobs due to all the different policies that are happening, like outsourcing, and the huge redirection of our infrastructure toward the military and away from things like education and health care."
Despite the ordinances, and the recent arrest of Montanez, activists are refusing to back down. Coinciding with Montanez’ trial, Orlando FNB has been holding a three-day event [Lake Eola Ladle Fest] with multiple food sharings that violate the ordinance. Crossley says more than 100 people were served breakfast on Monday. As of press time, no other arrests have been made.
The American Civil Liberties Union of Florida, representing the First Vagabonds Church of God and FNB, filed suit against the Council last October, calling the ordinance unconstitutional. In 2006, a federal court judge issued an injunction on a Las Vegas measure that prohibited "providing food or meals to the indigent for free or for a nominal fee."
McHenry says he thinks the ordinances will spur a new wave of activism. "People are already going to Orlando to risk arrest because they're so outraged," he says.
Crossley says volunteers already in Orlando have no plans to back down.
"Are we going to keep the fight up? You bet," he says. "There's not going to be any give on the part of the progressive community. The only way that S.T.O.P. would disband would be if the ordinance was repealed or defeated."
Megan Tady is a National Political Reporter for InTheseTimes.com. Previously, she worked as a reporter for the NewStandard, where she published nearly 100 articles in one year. Megan has also written for Clamor, CommonDreams, E Magazine, Maisonneuve, PopandPolitics, and Reuters.
October 10, 2007
Feeding the Hungry is a Crime
City councils are cracking down on charity groups that feed the homeless without a permit
By Megan Tady
The stake-out was almost comical in its absurdity: On April 4, 2007, undercover police counted how many times Eric Montanez, a 22-year-old volunteer with Food Not Bombs, dipped a serving ladle into a pot and handed stew to hungry people.
Once Montanez had dished up 30 bowls, the police moved in, collecting a vial of the stew for evidence as they arrested him for violating an Orlando, Fla., city ordinance: feeding a large group. Two days into his trial yesterday, Montanez was acquitted by a jury of the misdemeanor charge, but was cautioned to obey the law.
As activists celebrate the verdict, the Orlando Police Department has said it will continue to ordinance, making the fight for the free flow of food in the city far from over.
"He is on trial for the crime of feeding the homeless--literally," says George Crossley, a member of the Stop the Ordinance Partnership (S.T.O.P.), an alliance of 19 advocacy groups, including Orlando branches of Code Pink, the NAACP, and the National Organization for Women.
What Crossley and others are trying to stop is a "large group feeding[s]" ordinance passed in July 2006 by the Orlando City Council that essentially bans groups from providing food to more than 25 people in downtown parks without a permit.
Under the ordinance, groups can only obtain two permits a year per park for the purpose of sharing food with a large group. Although the ordinance does not explicitly target the homeless, the guillotine falls on their heads, as they are largely the benefactors of churches, charities and activist groups serving free food in easily accessible parks.
"Eric's arrest shows both the heartlessness of Orlando towards the destitute and those who aid them," the Orlando Food Not Bombs (FNB) chapter said in a statement in April.
Just as Orlando is cracking down on free meals that make life more bearable for homeless people, so too are other cities. This month, West Palm Beach, Fla., passed a similar ordinance that criminalizes feeding the homeless in public places, and last week officials in Cleveland, Ohio, prohibited groups from sharing food in the city's Public Square. In February, a man in Jacksonville, Fla., was given a citation for handing out food to the homeless without a permit, though it was later thrown out. And FNB says fear is spreading in Albuquerque, N.M., that city officials may pass a similar ordinance, which has long been an avenue used to force out homeless people.
Volunteers and activists are decrying the laws, calling any measure that keeps free food out of the hands of the needy inhumane.
"It's essentially saying that homeless people are not worthy of attention or respect and they’re nothing more than pigeons who should be fed some place else so they’re not a bother to mainstream society," says FNB Co-founder Keith McHenry.
McHenry says feeding the homeless is part of a larger social justice agenda.
"There's a broader principle in America that we're trying to address, and that is, food is a human right, not to be relegated to being a commodity," McHenry says. "People who are hungry in this country deserve good, nutritious food without having to go through a lot of bureaucratic hurdles to get that food, and without having to be demeaned."
As with the other city ordinances, Orlando designated a specific area away from downtown businesses where groups could offer food without a permit. But McHenry says the purpose of visibly feeding homeless people is to draw attention to the problem, and that FNB rejects hiding a situation that the city refuses to confront compassionately.
"They say, 'If you want to feed people, why don't you do it out of sight?'" McHenry says. "That's not our goal. Our goal is... to change society."
The designated area in Orlando, however, is gated and groups must notify the authorities to unlock the space before every food sharing.
Brian Davis, director of the Northeast Ohio Coalition for the Homeless, says Cleveland police notified the group on October 3 that groups and churches could no longer provide food in the Public Square because of health hazards. Davis was told the city had discovered rat holes at the park. The Cleveland City Council did not return calls seeking comment.
According to a recent blog post by Davis, "The Chief of Police and the entire command staff stopped a group from unloading their food on the Square. Then they tried to move to another park and that did not work because law enforcement stopped them. The group was told that if they unload that they would be arrested."
The groups were also given an alternate site for food sharing, but Davis told In These Times, "It couldn't be a worse place to go."
Shawn, an FNB volunteer in Cleveland reluctant to give his last name, says the regulation on feedings in the park is taking a toll. "What [the ordinance] has accomplished is probably diminished the amount of people getting fed when you're forced to move to a location that's too far for people to walk to," he says.
Shawn says FNB would return to serving food in the Public Square. "It hasn't stopped us," he says. "There should be no law against feeding people."
But feeding people, says McHenry, is bad for business. As tables of free food attract a larger than usual number of homeless people to city parks, nearby businesses fear their revenue streams may suffer.
"[Business owners] believe that people won't shop in those neighborhoods. They're not attractive," McHenry says.
He also says cities fear the presence of readily available food will bring more homeless people into their community, and "they'll have to raise tax money to provide affordable housing and public assistance and shelters."
Heather Allebaugh, constituent correspondent for the City of Orlando, says the city council enacted the ordinance in response to "complaints from residents and businesses immediately following the feedings of activity and drug use around the area."
Allebaugh also says the ordinance was designed to help maintain the parks. "It's a balance between the residents and their safety when they come to the park when the feedings are taking place," she says.
In response to criticisms that an ordinance curtailing the availability of free food is inhumane, Allebaugh says the measure is "not a ban, but a regulation."
"It's just about maintaining a regulation just as we do for parades and garage sales so we have an idea of what’s happening at public parks," Allebaugh says. "Maybe there's extra security needed for the people attending. Maybe they need extra trash receptacles. It's just to help us manage events that are happening within our city. I don’t think it was targeted at any group. It was more about the proper location to feed, rather than whether to ban feeding."
The city did not enact any provisions to feed the homeless people who relied on the routinely accessible free food. Allebaugh says such services do not fall within the jurisdiction of the city.
The crackdown on food sharings follows other policies designed to penalize and ostracize homeless people. Orlando's estimated 9,000 homeless people are subject to laws that prevent them from lying on benches and from panhandling during certain hours. Cleveland recently enacted a law that sets a 10 pm curfew at the city's Public Square, intending to stop people from sleeping in the park.
"[The City Council] is brutal about this," says Crossley of S.T.O.P. "This is not a game to these people. They're not trying to find a solution to why these people are out there."
Allebaugh count[er]s, however, that the Council is addressing homelessness through a regional commission expected to issue "findings and suggestions" in February on how to "address homelessness and hopefully come up with a 10-year plan to end homelessness."
The harsh treatment of homeless people also comes as the number of displaced people rises. On Monday, the Associated Press reported that there are an estimated 750,000 homeless people in the United States, although the figure is difficult to pinpoint.
"The criminalization of homeless people shows that there's no political will by our society to deal with the crisis in a humane and logical way," McHenry says. "The reality is that homeless people are regular Americans who lost their jobs due to all the different policies that are happening, like outsourcing, and the huge redirection of our infrastructure toward the military and away from things like education and health care."
Despite the ordinances, and the recent arrest of Montanez, activists are refusing to back down. Coinciding with Montanez’ trial, Orlando FNB has been holding a three-day event [Lake Eola Ladle Fest] with multiple food sharings that violate the ordinance. Crossley says more than 100 people were served breakfast on Monday. As of press time, no other arrests have been made.
The American Civil Liberties Union of Florida, representing the First Vagabonds Church of God and FNB, filed suit against the Council last October, calling the ordinance unconstitutional. In 2006, a federal court judge issued an injunction on a Las Vegas measure that prohibited "providing food or meals to the indigent for free or for a nominal fee."
McHenry says he thinks the ordinances will spur a new wave of activism. "People are already going to Orlando to risk arrest because they're so outraged," he says.
Crossley says volunteers already in Orlando have no plans to back down.
"Are we going to keep the fight up? You bet," he says. "There's not going to be any give on the part of the progressive community. The only way that S.T.O.P. would disband would be if the ordinance was repealed or defeated."
Megan Tady is a National Political Reporter for InTheseTimes.com. Previously, she worked as a reporter for the NewStandard, where she published nearly 100 articles in one year. Megan has also written for Clamor, CommonDreams, E Magazine, Maisonneuve, PopandPolitics, and Reuters.
Monday, October 1, 2007
Orlando: Home of Unenforceable Laws
Commentary
http://www.palmbeachpost.com/opinion/content/opinion/epaper/2007/09/30/a2e_moffettcol_0930.html
Orlando: Home of unenforceable laws
By Dan Moffett
Palm Beach Post Editorial Writer
Sunday, September 30, 2007
A government can get full of itself from time to time and think that it can solve a complicated problem by holding a meeting and passing a new law.
Hubris and frustration form a lethal combination in the hands of power.
So it was in West Palm Beach last week, when Mayor Lois Frankel used her vote to break a deadlocked city commission and push through a new ordinance that bans the feeding of homeless people near the library and amphitheater downtown.
The law is intended to satisfy Clematis Street merchants who have complained that gatherings of homeless people are driving away business. Church groups and political activists henceforth will be prohibited from handing out food in the public places.
Before diving headfirst into what figures to be a sinkhole of constitutional quicksand, Mayor Frankel should have studied closer the experiences of her old pal Buddy Dyer, the mayor of Orlando. The two served together as ranking Democrats in the Legislature.
Mayor Dyer has one of the worst homeless problems in the state. Estimates put the population around Orlando at more than 8,000.
Last year, he heard the same complaints from business and tourism officials that Mayor Frankel is hearing. With Mayor Dyer's blessing, the Orlando city commission passed an ordinance regulating the feeding of large groups in downtown parks. Within weeks, the Central Florida ACLU filed suit in federal court arguing that the law is unconstitutional.
But forget about constitutionality for a moment. Let's look at enforcement.
In April, Orlando police actually sent a team of undercover officers to shut down a coalition of groups - antiwar activists such as [Orlando] Food Not Bombs, [Orlando] CodePink [Women for Peace] and [the] Young Communist [League] - who were trying to circumvent the law on a technicality: It prohibited feeding more than 25 people, so each group purported to serve only 24.
According to the Orlando Sentinel, plainclothes police shot photos from the bushes and counted how many ladles of vegetable stew the activists served. When the 30th homeless person walked off with a full plate, the police moved in and arrested [Eric Montanez,] a 21-year-old [member of Orlando Food Not Bombs] and put him in jail.
Then police collected a vial of the stew as evidence. It wasn't exactly the kind of duty they had in mind back when they entered the academy.
But the city has all sorts of homeless laws that must be enforced.
It is illegal to be caught in a horizontal position on a park bench in Orlando. Bathing or shaving in a public restroom is prohibited. It is illegal to wash clothes in the downtown park. And don't even think about sleeping in the shrubs and bushes.
Panhandling has been a chronic problem, and Orlando has tried all sorts of laws to restrict it after the courts rejected an outright ban - including issuing ID cards to panhandlers, limiting them to daytime hours, and, seven years ago, restricting beggars to 36, 3-by-15-foot blue squares painted on downtown sidewalks.
Now, how well do you think that blue-square idea has worked?
Orlando has proved conclusively that government cannot solve the homeless problem by writing new laws. Ask the city police who have to enforce them or the city attorneys who have to defend them in court. Or, ask the downtown merchants who see no improvements and still are complaining.
The best chance government has of making gains against this complex social problem is to work harder with charitable groups who do not come with political or overtly religious agendas - groups that want to help chronically homeless people with their underlying physical, mental and substance-abuse problems.
In West Palm Beach, that means the United Way, the Salvation Army, the Lord's Place and dozens of churches that provide services to poor people for the right reasons.
Mayor Frankel has her new ordinance. Soon, she will have the new problems that go with it. Orlando knows what's coming.
http://www.palmbeachpost.com/opinion/content/opinion/epaper/2007/09/30/a2e_moffettcol_0930.html
Orlando: Home of unenforceable laws
By Dan Moffett
Palm Beach Post Editorial Writer
Sunday, September 30, 2007
A government can get full of itself from time to time and think that it can solve a complicated problem by holding a meeting and passing a new law.
Hubris and frustration form a lethal combination in the hands of power.
So it was in West Palm Beach last week, when Mayor Lois Frankel used her vote to break a deadlocked city commission and push through a new ordinance that bans the feeding of homeless people near the library and amphitheater downtown.
The law is intended to satisfy Clematis Street merchants who have complained that gatherings of homeless people are driving away business. Church groups and political activists henceforth will be prohibited from handing out food in the public places.
Before diving headfirst into what figures to be a sinkhole of constitutional quicksand, Mayor Frankel should have studied closer the experiences of her old pal Buddy Dyer, the mayor of Orlando. The two served together as ranking Democrats in the Legislature.
Mayor Dyer has one of the worst homeless problems in the state. Estimates put the population around Orlando at more than 8,000.
Last year, he heard the same complaints from business and tourism officials that Mayor Frankel is hearing. With Mayor Dyer's blessing, the Orlando city commission passed an ordinance regulating the feeding of large groups in downtown parks. Within weeks, the Central Florida ACLU filed suit in federal court arguing that the law is unconstitutional.
But forget about constitutionality for a moment. Let's look at enforcement.
In April, Orlando police actually sent a team of undercover officers to shut down a coalition of groups - antiwar activists such as [Orlando] Food Not Bombs, [Orlando] CodePink [Women for Peace] and [the] Young Communist [League] - who were trying to circumvent the law on a technicality: It prohibited feeding more than 25 people, so each group purported to serve only 24.
According to the Orlando Sentinel, plainclothes police shot photos from the bushes and counted how many ladles of vegetable stew the activists served. When the 30th homeless person walked off with a full plate, the police moved in and arrested [Eric Montanez,] a 21-year-old [member of Orlando Food Not Bombs] and put him in jail.
Then police collected a vial of the stew as evidence. It wasn't exactly the kind of duty they had in mind back when they entered the academy.
But the city has all sorts of homeless laws that must be enforced.
It is illegal to be caught in a horizontal position on a park bench in Orlando. Bathing or shaving in a public restroom is prohibited. It is illegal to wash clothes in the downtown park. And don't even think about sleeping in the shrubs and bushes.
Panhandling has been a chronic problem, and Orlando has tried all sorts of laws to restrict it after the courts rejected an outright ban - including issuing ID cards to panhandlers, limiting them to daytime hours, and, seven years ago, restricting beggars to 36, 3-by-15-foot blue squares painted on downtown sidewalks.
Now, how well do you think that blue-square idea has worked?
Orlando has proved conclusively that government cannot solve the homeless problem by writing new laws. Ask the city police who have to enforce them or the city attorneys who have to defend them in court. Or, ask the downtown merchants who see no improvements and still are complaining.
The best chance government has of making gains against this complex social problem is to work harder with charitable groups who do not come with political or overtly religious agendas - groups that want to help chronically homeless people with their underlying physical, mental and substance-abuse problems.
In West Palm Beach, that means the United Way, the Salvation Army, the Lord's Place and dozens of churches that provide services to poor people for the right reasons.
Mayor Frankel has her new ordinance. Soon, she will have the new problems that go with it. Orlando knows what's coming.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)