There's also Love Bags, a project downtown, Love Thy Neighbor and, of course, Food Not Bombs, which are all now subject to $500 fines and 60 days in jail for continuing something that they have been doing, just out of the goodness of their hearts, for years.
Ft. Lauderdale has been targeted by the police now since at least 2010. They had several raids on their home where they were preparing the meals. In fact, while I was visiting with them police surrounded the house, and surrounded my van that I was sleeping in, and claimed that there was a warrant for someone who did not even live there.
I saw the doors were kicked in, the interior doors of the house were broken up and people taken out of their beds while sleeping, and so on, just over the issue of providing free meals in Ft. Lauderdale. But that did not stop them. And they continue to this day. And so the city, I guess, because police intimidation didn't work, has passed this law.
DB: It's sort of hard to imagine. You've got a 90-year-old guy in jail, and somebody comes up to him in the jail cell or wherever they are holding him and "Whatta you in for?"..."I'm in for feeding hungry people." I guess it's a misdemeanor, it could be a felony depending upon how the charges are filed. Why are people so afraid of you and these folks who are determined to feed a growing army of hungry people?
KM: The issue is that our resources, our tax dollars have being diverted to supporting the super rich, that's the billionaires like the Koch brothers and so on, bought the election, the national election, yesterday. And so, it puts a bad face on capitalism if you have all these people out on the streets needing food, families with little children. I've had people come up to me who haven't eaten in five days.
So they are running a whole propaganda machine claiming that this is the greatest, wealthiest country on earth, that our policies are fantastic, that we're defending democracy abroad by bombing people all over the world. So it makes it a lie. It makes it so obvious that what is going on with this political and economic system is failing a majority of the people in the country. And, therefore, they want to hide it.
They have offered, for instance, in Orlando, they said that we could share food underneath this freeway, in this cage, where not a single soul would ever see us or talk to us, that was supposedly the negotiated...the attempt at a negotiated settlement.
But we're seeing the national priorities have gone awry. The local priorities have gone awry. And that's no solution to homelessness. To drive them to the margins of society where no one can see them and no one can find out that's there's an economic and political crisis here. And that's really what they are about. They don't want tax dollars diverted from the military, from profiting on the S35s and all this stuff that they are doing with upgrading the nuclear arsenal, and so on. They want the billions of dollars dumped into that, dumped into the fracking, dumped into coal, into their projects and they don't want any political pressure by the public to change those policies. And they are fearful...they can't figure out how to make a profit on making sure no one is living on the streets, and no one is needing to eat at a place like Food Not Bombs. They just haven't figured out how to maximize that profit.
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