homeless feeding

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.
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.

"Call me a stiff-necked Jew, but it's tyranny and I'm not going to give into tyranny," he says.
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.
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."

In fact, shaking up the power brokers has been his life's work.
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.

"I'm a born liberal," says the former jewelry sales representative who lives in Pompano Beach. "I'm an eclectic iconoclast."
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.

"It would become a lesson in comparative religion," he says. "It would teach children about different religions."
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.

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.
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.

"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.
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.

"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.
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.

"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.
"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?"

Mayor Jim Naugle says there's good reason to stop Abbott's feeding program.
"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."

"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."
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.
"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.

"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."
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.

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.
"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.

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."
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.

"I hope they give me a field somewhere where I can feed people," he says.
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.

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