Orlando Food Not Bombs group feeds homeless people.
Posted on 07/26/2006 9:57:21 AM PDT by Cagey
ORLANDO, Fla. -- Another American city has made it a crime to feed the homeless in certain areas.
Last week, Las Vegas outlawed feeding homeless people at city parks. Now, Orlando is following suit.
Orlando is trying to keep charitable groups from feeding the homeless in downtown parks.
Officials said transients gathering for weekly meals create safety and sanitary problems for businesses.
The City Council voted to prohibit serving meals to groups of 25 or more people in parks and other public property within two miles of City Hall without a special permit.
A group called Food Not Bombs, which has served weekly vegetarian meals for the homeless for more than a year, said it will continue illegally.
The American Civil Liberties Union vows to sue, saying it's a superficial fix that ignores the city's homeless problem.
Two of the city's five commissioners voted against the ordinance, including Commissioners Robert Stuart, who runs the homeless shelter Christian Service Center, and Sam Ings, a retired police officer.
Stuart told The Orlando Sentinel that Orlando is taking a step to "criminalize good-hearted people" who he says are trying to help. He went on to tell the paper that group feedings in the parks had not become unwieldy to the city, as some had claimed.
He said the ordinance says, "Orlando doesn't care," the Sentinel reported.
Ings said that although the commissioners are casting the ordinance as a public-safety issue, it is really an issue of the city wanting to "cover up" the homeless problem.
"We're putting a Band-Aid on a critical problem," he said.
The commissioner who pushed for the ordinance, Patty Sheehan, said it was not an "easy day" for her at all. She said the new ordinance against feeding homeless people has been "wrongly cast" as anti-homeless.
"I've been an advocate [for the homeless]," she said. "Even though you'll call me an enemy, I'll still be your friend."
The Sentinel reported that about a dozen downtown residents and business owners spoke in favor of the rule.
But more than three times that amount of people spoke against it. There were 45 speakers from various groups, including a formal declaration from the University of Central Florida's student senate, who opposed outlawing feeding homeless people.
Mayor Buddy Dyer supported the ordinance.
Food Not Bombs said on its Web site that chapters in Venice, Calif.; Las Vegas, Nev.; Orlando, and Fredericton, New Brunswick, Canada have been told that their programs should stop or move out of sight.
Orlando Food Not Bombs group feeds homeless people.
Sam Kinison was right:
"MOVE TO WHERE THE FOOD IS!"
And the professional bums always know where that is.
Misleading headline of the day...
As a frequent visitor to Orlando, I am amazed that such a city could be relatively conservative. So many transients and tourists..
That one in pink behind the BABY CARRIAGE is not exactly starving..........
It applies to public property. Those who want to feed the homeless are free to do so on their own private property, but they are not the public and have no inherent right to even be on public land.
How many people opposed to outlawing feeding the homeless actually live near these parks?
She probably had to go a week without food to get down to that size, she looks a little slimmer than normal for that type.
There kinda like pigeons....
Don't feed them in the park or they will flock.....
Nobody is stopping the Food Not Bombs organization from gathering the homeless and taking them to houses and apartments of the Food Not Bombs members and feeding them there.
So, there are skinny fat people and fat fat people?.......I must be a medium fat person.........
Authorize more shelters away from the parks--would that help the homeless/transient problem?
I can't believe that they are trying to hide the homeless problem! We need to drop everything and fix the problem right now! In this 3% unemployment environment the HUGE homeless problem here in Orlando just keeps getting worse. If that unemployment rate continues to drop or hold steady people might start to see that those without jobs and income have chosen crack, meth and mad dog 20/20 over working to pay rent or a mortgage.
How dare the city keep mobs of pleasantly smelling, polite, upstanding citizens from standing around to await thier well deserved free meal in the park, right in the heart of the down town business district. These people never, ever harrass anyone or go off begging for money, toss trash in the grass or crap and pee in the elevator of the parking garage right across from the park.
HAVE WE GONE MAD?
The average person I see is much much heavier than back in the fifties and sixties. Apparently the average weight goes up in direct proportion to the sales of diet foods and weight loss programs. Or is it the other way around?
I am sure of one thing, back then I would have stopped traffic (six four and two hundred and fifty five pounds) nowadays few people even seem to notice my size.
They arrested a little girl just for trying to give a drink to a helpless individual in Fl.
Is this kind of like the don't feed the bears rule in Yellowstone?
Wow, that's just one notch below a UN resolution...
I forgot to mention how this move is going to hurt the children.
WHAT ABOUT THE CHILDREN?
There would have to be more to this story that the simple line you have thrown out.
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