Don't feed the homeless
Call me a stiff-necked Jew, but it's tyranny and I'm not going to give into tyranny."
by Jane Musgrave
Arnold Abbott is
barely over 5-feet-5, weighs less than 150 pounds and is 73 years
old.
"Call me a stiff-necked Jew,
but it's tyranny and I'm not going to give into tyranny," he
says.
But despite his age and diminutive
appearance, the polite, well-spoken and neatly dressed retiree is
a dangerous man in the eyes of Fort Lauderdale city officials and
business leaders.
Last week, after he once again
refused to listen to reason, they threatened to put an end to his
lawlessness. Do it again, they warned, and we'll arrest you.
His offense?
Feeding the homeless.
And not just feeding them any old
place, but inviting them to gather in the shadows of beachfront
hotels, condominiums, restaurants and trendy tourist hangouts
property that constitutes some of the priciest real estate in the
city.
But more important than the price
of the real estate are the wads of bills stuffed in the pockets
of out-of-towners who might inadvertently stumble upon the
unwashed masses gathered for Abbott's once-a-week spreads at
South Beach Park across from Bahia Mar.
"We have people spending $200
to $300 a day to be here," says Jack Moss, president of the
Greater Fort Lauderdale Lodging and Hospitality Association.
"They shouldn't have to be exposed to people panhandling.
They shouldn't have to be exposed to people looking for handouts.
They shouldn't have to be exposed to people urinating in the
bushes. They shouldn't have to be exposed to those types of
activities when they're here to have a good time."
Luckily for Moss and members of his
association who are fed up with Abbott's feedings, the city has
laws against such things.
"We've just asked the city to
enforce its own laws," he says.
And city officials say they are
more than willing to do so.
Although they called off the cops
last week and let Abbott serve his Wednesday meal as planned,
they say his days of feeding the homeless at the beach are
numbered.
"The city has park rules that
say there can be no delivery of social services without a
permit," explains Assistant City Manager Bud Bentley.
While Bentley says he's willing to
work with Abbott to help him find some other place to set up his
traveling soup kitchen, Abbott is equally adamant that no
compromise will be reached.
If the city wants a fight, he says
he'll give it to them. In fact, he says, he relishes the
opportunity.
"I hope they arrest me,"
he says. "I'd love to test that law in court. It's blatantly
unconstitutional."
He may not be big, powerful or
well-connected, but he has one attribute that city officials may
have overlooked.
"I'm a scrappy old
geezer," he says.
A history of civil disobedience
When police
handed him a slip of paper alerting him of the nearly 2-year-old
law that prohibits people from providing services for the
homeless in city parks, Abbott looked at it and shrugged.
In fact, shaking up the power
brokers has been his life's work.
"I'm a born liberal,"
says the former jewelry sales representative who lives in Pompano
Beach. "I'm an eclectic iconoclast."
"It would become a lesson in
comparative religion," he says. "It would teach
children about different religions."
Last year, with the help of 200
volunteers and a budget of $38,000, the organization served
60,000 meals and gave bus fares to 100 people to send them back
home to be reunited with their families.
"I believe we're keeping them
strong and healthy, and by keeping them strong and healthy, they
don't have to knock over little old ladies for their purses to
get money to eat," he says.
"I told them I'll stop feeding
people on the beach when they stop everyone from eating on the
beach," he says. Until then, he says, he'll continue his
weekly trips to the oceanfront park.
"This is about the city saying
this is for tourists," says Andre Scott, 34, who has lived
on and off the streets for 10 years. "I appreciate the
tourists coming in here. But everyone has to be treated with
respect. The same respect they give to the tourists, they should
give to us.
Mayor Jim Naugle says there's good
reason to stop Abbott's feeding program.
"Look at this place," he
says on Wednesday after feeding 120 men and women. "They
clean up after themselves. They don't leave a lot of litter
around."
After all, it's not the first time
he's had run-ins with people in power who thought they could push
him around.
"I'm not intimidated," he
says. "I'm not intimidated in the least. I've beenOB
confronted by the KKK when I was registering blacks to vote in
Jackson, Miss. They tried to intimidate me. I wasn't intimidated
by them, either."
He fought for fair housing in the
1950s in suburban Philadelphia, exposing white landlords who
refused to rent homes to blacks. As the civil rights movement
grew, he traveled throughout the South campaigning for racial
equality.
A delegate to the Democratic
National Convention in 1964, he launched a protest against
segregation by sitting with a group of black delegates from
Mississippi who were denied seats on the convention floor. When
Chicago Mayor Richard Daley ordered cops to attack Vietnam War
protesters at the 1968 Democratic National Convention, Abbott was
in the thick of it, registering his protest against the
tyrannical use of power.
Long ago, he says he came up with
the perfect solution to silence the unending debate over school
prayer. He proposed requiring teachers to read from different
religious texts each day. One day it would be the Bible, the next
day the Torah, the next day the Koran and so on, he explains.
His proposal went all the way to
the Pennsylvania Legislature, where it was defeated.
When he moved to South Florida in
1970, his political activism became more personal. He and his
wife, Maureen, began a campaign to help the homeless.
"She could spot a homeless
person a mile away," he says. "She'd say, 'There's one.
Turn the car around.' Then she'd ask me, 'What's the biggest bill
you have in your wallet Ñ a 10 or a 20?' I'd give her whatever I
had and she would drop it on the ground and then tap the person
on the shoulder and say, 'I think you dropped this.'
"That's what I called the
Maureen method," he says.
When she died unexpectedly six
years ago, he decided to continue her legacy. He founded Love Thy
Neighbor and began gathering food and donations and serving up
meals to the homeless.
Abbott insists he isn't trying to
anger city officials. He just believes homeless people should
have the same rights as anyone else.
Though city officials see his
once-a-week feedings at South Beach Park as putting the
proverbial fox in the hen house by introducing a criminal element
into an area filled with happy, hapless and well-heeled tourists,
he says keeping the bellies of the homeless full keeps tourists
safe.
City officials say he could fortify
the homeless by delivering meals to them at a more appropriate
location, like Tent City.
He says he and other charitable
groups he helps coordinate make sure meals are delivered to the
homeless encampment in downtown Fort Lauderdale twice a day,
seven days a week.
But, he says, at least once a week
homeless people deserve the opportunity to enjoy a meal in
pleasant surroundings instead of the urban jungle that surrounds
Tent City.
While they call it serving meals to
the homeless, he sees it differently.
"I'm just inviting 120 of my
closest friends to dinner," he says.
Hungry stomachs vs. clean bathrooms
After delivering meals to the
homeless for six years, friendships have been forged.
By 5 p.m. - a half hour before his
white van filled with foil-covered trays of hot and cold food
arrives - small groups of very untouristy-looking men and women
begin gathering in the park.
"He's heaven-sent," says
Mike Schlaack, a homeless man who has been coming to the park
each Wednesday night for the last couple of years.
"He comes and feeds us, and I
appreciate it very much," agrees Brian Gray, another
regular.
Many in the group of about 120 who
line up quietly as Abbott sets up card tables and begins dishing
out plates of food have heard that the city is trying to drive
him ,and them , out of the park.
"It's political," he
says, turning to help Abbott serve food. "It's all
political."
Another homeless man says he's
heard rumors that the city is thinking about arresting Abbott.
"It's pathetic," says the
man who calls himself Ron the Baptist. "How can they arrest
someone for feeding the homeless?"
"Have you seen the
bathrooms?" he asks. "They trash them."
If the homeless would just learn to
clean up after themselves, he says there wouldn't be a problem.
But, Naugle says, they break the toilet seats, bathe in the
sinks, urinate on the floor and leave the bathrooms a mess.
"People want to take their
families to the parks and playgrounds," he says. "They
don't want to deal with that kind of mess and they shouldn't have
to."
Moss, of the hotel association,
says the problems are more serious.
"Thefts from the hotel gift
shops increase dramatically when the feeding programs take
place," he says.
Abbott has one word for the two:
"Malarkey."
He's equally disdainful of claims
that shoplifting increases on Wednesday nights at the beach.
"It's just another case of
blaming the victim," he says. "The victim gets blamed
for everything. The truth is that the homeless are more likely to
be victimized than anyone else. They're the ones that get beaten
up and robbed."
And, he says, tourists are more
compassionate than city officials and business leaders give them
credit for.
"A lot of times they'll stop
and ask us what's going on," he says. "When we tell
them, they'll say, 'Isn't that wonderful,' and give us an
unsolicited donation on the spot."
On Wednesday, a man wearing a
telltale blue Banlon shirt with a camera dangling around his neck
stopped to watch as the homeless lined up for food.
"I'm happy to see this is
going on," he said. "People need help."
While he declined to give his name,
he said he was a boat captain from Holland who had been visiting
Fort Lauderdale for 20 years. He said he couldn't imagine anyone
being offended by the gathering.
"Not European tourists,"
he said. "We have the same systems in our country. As a boat
captain, I travel all over the world and we have problems like
this in countries all over the world."
Though he said he'd read about
homelessness in the United States, he'd never seen anyone
offering help.
"It's good," he said. He
snapped a picture and moved on.
Unwilling to bend
Andrew Kayton,
legal director of the American Civil Liberties Union in Miami,
says if nothing else, the city's threats to arrest Abbott are
innovative.
"Legalities aside, why would
any government seek to criminalize feeding the homeless?" he
says. "The notion that a municipality would arrest someone
for doing nothing more than providing food for people in need is
very disturbing. It's appalling that the city would devote its
resources to this instead of devoting its resources to feeding
the hungry themselves."
When county and city officials in
September broke ground for a $7.7 million shelter for the
homeless on Sunrise Boulevard, many hoped the fighting was over.
He says he understands the city's
concerns. "They want to protect the city," he says.
"It's a beautiful city. They have legitimate concerns."
"I hope they give me a field
somewhere where I can feed people," he says.
"In Miami they used to arrest
people for being homeless," he says. "It seems to be a
variation on that theme."
Recognizing that the courts take a
dim view of arresting people just because they don't have a place
to live, the city apparently is going after those who serve them.
Though he says he's still
researching the legalities of the city law, from a moral
standpoint it's appalling.
Still, as ACLU attorneys decide
whether the city law violates constitutional rights of freedom of
assembly, freedom of association and equal protection, homeless
advocates in Broward say the confrontation comes at an
unfortunate time.
After years of being at each
other's throats, it seemed homeless advocates and government
officials had finally declared a truce and were working together.
"Unfortunately, the community
right now is polarized," says Steve Werthman, who was
director of the less than year-old homeless shelter in Hollywood
before being hired to oversee the county's homeless assistance
program.
He says he's familiar with Abbott's
feeding program and countless others in the county.
"My feeling is that we need to
find a place for feeding programs but public property may not be
the best location for them," he says. "Hopefully, we
can work out some kind of consensus."
Abbott's program, after all, isn't
the only one affected by the city's crackdown.
John Nyce is a lawyer and a member
of a Christian evangelical group that has been ministering to the
homeless at South Beach Park for 10 years. Each Sunday at 7 a.m.,
the group comes to the park with food, Bibles, clothing and
medical supplies, he says.
But, he adds, the homeless have
legitimate problems that need to be addressed.
"They are human beings,"
he says. "They're not dogs."
He says he's willing to meet with
Bentley and is hopeful a compromise can be reached.
But while Abbott says he, too, will
meet with Bentley, he's not nearly as optimistic. In his view,
Fort Lauderdale officials don't want to address the needs of the
homeless, they just want to sweep them out of public view.
The new 200-bed shelter won't solve
the area's homeless problem, he says. Most of those now on the
streets won't use it. But, he says, they'll still need help.
He says he wants assurances that he
and other groups will be able to continue feeding programs that
will be needed long after the shelter is opened.
Bentley, who came to the park last
Wednesday and grabbed a spoon to help Abbott serve up food, says
he wants to reach a compromise. But, he acknowledges, it won't be
easy if Abbott is unwilling to bend.
And, Abbott says, bending isn't
part of his nature.
"My wife called me her Don
Quixote," he says. "She says I was always tilting
windmills."
Others, he says, have taken a less
romantic view of his work.
"I used to be called an angry
young man. Now I'm called an angry old man. And I was angry in
between, too."
But, he says, people have to stand
up and fight for what they believe. And he believes the homeless
are being wronged. Homelessness isn't a crime. It's a condition
and with compassion it can be addressed.
"The homeless have become our
lepers," he says. "I want to teach them all skills and
put them back in the workforce and turn them into productive
citizens."
But, he says, first they have to be
fed.