And so three people have been detained so far for sharing free food in Fort Lauderdale. They are facing fines of $500 and 60 days in jail for each case of them sharing food. And so this is getting to be pretty dramatic, that this kind of thing is happening. So 60 days in jail...this one man, who's 90 years old, he's been providing food in the streets of Fort Lauderdale for over 20 years.
And Food Not Bombs itself just got arrested yesterday. They were waiting in a lobby to have a meeting with one of the city officials involved in promoting this legislation...and just as soon as they had sat down to wait for this meeting, Fort Lauderdale police arrived and arrested a number of them and took them away. So we're waiting to see if they can get out of jail now. Maybe by this broadcast they will have been released. But that's the kind of thing that we're facing there.
And then most recently, I went to speak in Indianapolis, to the Food Not Bombs chapter there. When I arrived they were busy scanning in documents from Environmental Health, claiming that they needed to get permits and go through this huge regulatory process. And it seems pretty clear...
DB: This process to give out...to be allowed to give out free food to hungry people.
KM: Correct, yes. That's exactly what they are doing. And we...you know this is a gift, these are people that are on their own time, going out and sharing free food, and it's also a first amendment right because when Food Not Bombs started in 1980, it was estimated roughly 100,000 homeless Americans, then after the election of Reagan and eight years of his rule, the census for homeless people went up to 750,000. And today it's estimated there's at least 3,000,000 homeless Americans, and almost half of America is living at or below the poverty level.
So, see conditions with Republicans in power in 1980 got dramatically worse. We can only imagine what will happen in the next two years with already failing economies throughout the world, and what is going on with wider wars against the Islamic state, and across Asia, Africa, and the Middle East.
So the amount of money being dumped into the wars while people in America are going hungry and now having to face the fact that their food can be confiscated from them and their meal programs criminalized is really outrageous.
DB: I want to come back to Florida, for a moment. You said that a 90-year-old man was arrested for giving out food?
KM: Yes, a 90-year-old man, Arnold Abbott. And he'd been handing out food...there's a number of these really...like kind of, really sweet organizations, or just not even organizations. One is a peanut butter and jelly project, and they've been getting harassed. It's really incredible that so many people are being told that they are not allowed to do it. There was also two ministers who were arrested with him from the Sanctuary Church of Ft. Lauderdale. And another minister, or one minister from the Sanctuary Church of Ft. Lauderdale, and his name is Dwayne Black, and then Mark Sims from Saint Mary Magdalene, Episcopal Church in Coral Springs. And it's really tragic that people are seeing all this poverty in their streets and yet they are being told that they cannot share food.
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