Libertarians arrested for feeding the hungry

[Seth]

The problem is that they organized as a "group." What they need to do is "flash mob" the park with INDIVIDUALS, each carrying a single meal that they give to someone else. When asked if they are part of a group, they should exercise their right to remain silent or deny it. When the police show up to question one person, everyone else should just walk away.

This is the same tactic that people should use to evade the permitting requirements for "group" activities on public lands. Never advertise an event, never admit to being part of a group, never acknowledge a group leader, and if one person is stopped by a ranger, everybody else should just drift on.

The Rainbow Family has gotten away with this tactic for decades for their annual "meetings" on forest lands. Nobody organizes anything, nobody is with anybody else, everybody just shows up at one place at the same time. The FS tears its hair out every year because they can't stop it. Legally, it's the same thing as 500 individuals showing up at a Yellowstone campground on the same day. The FS can't blame one person or require everyone to get a permit.

The same rationale applies to Orlando. Each individual can serve up to 25 people without violating the ordinance, and if they simply deny being affiliated or part of an organization and claim that they are acting on their own as private citizens, they can accomplish the task without violating the law.

[irretating]

^ that makes good sense, Seth.

[Atheist-Lite]

^ that makes good sense, Seth.

Seth is a good guy, he's just shit hard.

[Seth]

^ that makes good sense, Seth.

Seth is a good guy, he's just shit hard.

That's the thing about Libertarians, sometimes we're slightly to the right of Atilla the Hun, and sometimes we're slightly to the left of Karl Marx. Depends on which stance best serves the interests of individual liberty and small, carefully controlled and weak government.

[nellikin]

Why should anyone be disturbed by homeless people being fed in a park? And how do you judge the impetus of the people doing the serving? Can't they want to feed the homeless and be political at the same time? And would the homeless feel like they're 'being used', and even care, if they're getting free food?

[sandinista]

Why should anyone be disturbed by homeless people being fed in a park? And how do you judge the impetus of the people doing the serving? Can't they want to feed the homeless and be political at the same time? And would the homeless feel like they're 'being used', and even care, if they're getting free food?

[Atheist-Lite]

[JimC]

Sometimes, councils and police forces act for reasons which are about protecting their ability to control, rather than anything rationally defensible...

This seems to be one of those times...

[Hermit]

It's actually a political statement when it's Food not Bombs.

Libertarians with political statements? Well, I'd nevah...

[laklak]

Why should anyone be disturbed by homeless people being fed in a park? And how do you judge the impetus of the people doing the serving? Can't they want to feed the homeless and be political at the same time? And would the homeless feel like they're 'being used', and even care, if they're getting free food?

Because of complaints about aggressive panhandling, shitting in bushes, etc. by local businesses (you know, the kind that pay taxes and employ people and stuff).

[Robert_S]

Why should anyone be disturbed by homeless people being fed in a park? And how do you judge the impetus of the people doing the serving? Can't they want to feed the homeless and be political at the same time? And would the homeless feel like they're 'being used', and even care, if they're getting free food?

People are disturbed because there was a problem with them "creating a nuisance in the area — aggressively panhandling, littering, using bushes as toilets, etc." Also, if a town has a reputation for being unkind to the homeless, then the homeless from other towns will be less likely to migrate there.

You can feed the homeless and be political, but what sometimes happens is that political act of making the homeless problem more visible can stir up resentment against the homeless.

[Atheist-Lite]

Why should anyone be disturbed by homeless people being fed in a park? And how do you judge the impetus of the people doing the serving? Can't they want to feed the homeless and be political at the same time? And would the homeless feel like they're 'being used', and even care, if they're getting free food?

People are disturbed because there was a problem with them "creating a nuisance in the area — aggressively panhandling, littering, using bushes as toilets, etc." Also, if a town has a reputation for being unkind to the homeless, then the homeless from other towns will be less likely to migrate there.

You can feed the homeless and be political, but what sometimes happens is that political act of making the homeless problem more visible can stir up resentment against the homeless.

Like pigeons if you feed them they'll breed. I've seen it all before. Let's sort the ju's out in the same town since they made things difficult for honest businessmen too? There are numerous reasons people become homeless - their not all deadbeats with massive self inflicted debts like many small businesses.

[Seth]

Why should anyone be disturbed by homeless people being fed in a park? And how do you judge the impetus of the people doing the serving? Can't they want to feed the homeless and be political at the same time? And would the homeless feel like they're 'being used', and even care, if they're getting free food?

People are disturbed because there was a problem with them "creating a nuisance in the area — aggressively panhandling, littering, using bushes as toilets, etc." Also, if a town has a reputation for being unkind to the homeless, then the homeless from other towns will be less likely to migrate there.

You can feed the homeless and be political, but what sometimes happens is that political act of making the homeless problem more visible can stir up resentment against the homeless.

Like pigeons if you feed them they'll breed. I've seen it all before. Let's sort the ju's out in the same town since they made things difficult for honest businessmen too? There are numerous reasons people become homeless - their not all deadbeats with massive self inflicted debts like many small businesses.

This is a problem faced by most big cities in salubrious climates, and some not so salubrious, and no city has really figured out what to do with the hard-core homeless who are homeless and indigent by choice and who resist all efforts to clean them up and put them to work.

There is a core contingent of people, mostly mentally ill, who simply cannot live within the boundaries that society has set up for on reason or another, usually having to do with drug and alcohol abuse. They are unable or unwilling to live within the rules of society and actually prefer the freedom of living rough, or at least are acutely uncomfortable with the prospect of having to obey rules to the point that they prefer homelessness.

They don't do well in shelters because shelters usually require the most essential behavior that they cannot perform: sobriety, or the second most important requirement: the ability to get along with others.

There are other categories of homelessness as well, but it is generally the hard-core, habitual homeless by choice who cause the aesthetic problems cities face in their parks.

It's a difficult conundrum for the cities, because the same laws that allow taxpayers to use and enjoy the parks also allow the indigent to hang out there as well. Under our Constitution, they are entitled to equal protection of the law, and so they learn to stay just a gnat's whisker inside the law when they are being watched, and they scoff at it when they aren't.

Many tactics have been tried to get the indigents and bums to move along, and few if any have worked very well. All they usually do is just displace the problem somewhere else. Boulder, Colorado for example passed an ordinance saying that using any form of "shelter" when sleeping in a public park is illegal, and this includes sleeping bags. They couldn't outlaw sleeping itself without angering the public, but they tried to keep the homeless from setting up camps or "camping" in parks. Colorado Springs did something similar by passing a strict "no camping on public property" ordinance that even affects Joe Average citizen in order to move the homeless out of a large tent-city along a local creek.

But this just drove the homeless to the mid-town park, where it's so infested with drug and alcohol abusers that the public doesn't go there anymore.

The "no feeding the hungry" law is just another attempt to make the indigent uncomfortable in their poverty, but it doesn't really work for either side because the people the groups are feeding are scavengers to begin with and they always manage to find food somewhere because they've been doing it for years. The truly needy newly-homeless don't hang out with the hard-core homeless much, and they (the families and others who have fallen on hard times) generally go to shelters and are fed at soup kitchens.

The feeding of the hard core homeless by these folks is, as has been noted, a POLITICAL act intended to prod the city into "doing something" about poverty and homelessness, but the proponents fail to realize that most of the folks they serve are homeless and indigent by choice, to at least some degree or other. So, they are in effect pawns being used by both sides of the dispute to generate press.

My objection is to the government's attempt to sweep these people under the carpet by trying to induce them to find someplace else to hang out. My Libertarian streak tells me that they have a right to infest the park that is every bit as protected as a family picnic is, and "aesthetic" regulations intended to conceal, but not resolve the dirty underbelly of society are more about protecting the "image" of the town than serving the people who live there. I find that such regulations are usually indicative of a left-wing Progressive "we want to control everything" mindset. I prefer a degree of individual liberty that makes other people uncomfortable, including the liberty of mentally ill indigent alcoholics to hang out in public parks on an equal basis with every other citizen. If I don't like the scenery because of their exercise of their liberties, I avert my eyes or find another venue rather than try to oppress them and make them move just because I don't like looking at them. On the other hand, I have no compunctions or complaints about the police arresting them if they break the law by being violent or abusing the facilities of the park, since I'm under the same constraints in that regard.

If you try to conceal the hard-core mentally-ill homeless from view, all it does is perpetuate the power of the government and the ignorance of the public about their real needs, which is for charitable assistance and treatment. Having them right in your face lets you know how your community is doing when it comes to helping the mentally ill, who by the way were kicked out of institutions where they were being cared for by the liberals and Progressives in the ACLU, so thank them for the infestation.

[sandinista]

It's actually a political statement when it's Food not Bombs.

Libertarians with political statements? Well, I'd nevah...

Where do you get that FNB are "libertarians"?

[nellikin]

Man - I forgot homeless people aren't really humans, or even like pigeons or ducks some people like to feed, but something closer to rats - certainly classed as vermin. So yeah, starve em to death before they breed, I say, so that we can pretend they don't exist and the local businesses - those shrines to capitalism at whose feet we all pay penance - can sell more goods made by the slaves in China/India/Bangladesh we can't see...