"Our job is to enforce the rules," said Orlando police spokeswoman Sgt. Barbara Jones, following the first arrest under the city's homeless-feeding law.
Sgt. Jones didn't elaborate, didn't attempt to defend "the rules" in this case. Probably wise on her part:
Eric Montanez, 21, is the first to be arrested under the city's controversial ordinance that bars feeding large groups of people in downtown parks without a special permit.
The rule was approved last summer after residents and businesses in Orlando's gentrifying downtown complained that parks were being used as soup kitchens. …
Homeless advocates and city officials have butted heads since the passage of the ordinance in July. The law bars groups from feeding more than 25 people without a special permit. Groups may have two permits per year. …
Activists skirted the rule by having several organizations host the weekly Lake Eola meals, and making sure no one group served more than 25 people.
Police kept close tabs, sometimes taking photos and ticketing volunteers' cars. …
Undercover officers filmed the food line, meticulously counting Montanez serving "30 unidentified persons food from a large pot utilizing a ladle," according to an arrest affidavit.
Police approached Montanez and asked for his identification. They considered issuing him a summons on the misdemeanor count, but when he tossed his ID, police took him into custody, the affidavit says.
Jonathan Giralt, 16, a Boone High School junior who was near Montanez, disagreed with the police account. He and other volunteers said the activist showed his ID and complied with police orders.
"I was like, OK, this guy [Montanez] is going to be arrested for absolutely nothing," Jonathan said. "It makes me feel unsafe."
Police also collected a vial of stew as evidence.
Let me repeat that last sentence:
Police also collected a vial of stew as evidence.
A vial of stew.
If you find yourself, as a police officer, surreptitiously filming the feeding of hungry people and collecting vials of stew as "evidence," then you're not likely to offer much more of a defense of your actions than "hey, we don't make the rules."
This is an absurd embarrassment for the City of Orlando. "Embarrassment" is the exact word that Rabbi Aaron D. Rubinger uses in response:
it was with great embarrassment that I read about individuals who were arrested for the "crime" of feeding the hungry — a.k.a. transients — in Lake Eola Park. Mind you, I have no support whatsoever for such groups as Food Not Bombs, CodePink and the Young Communist League. Still, as a member of the clergy, I am ashamed that my city would prohibit anyone from acting as his "brother's keeper," as our scriptures command of us. …
I would urge all people of faith, but especially my fellow clergy, to join together to help Orlando regain its moral bearings and not turn its back upon the Lord's needy. In my humble opinion, our community's civic leaders, well intentioned as they may be, would appear to be in need of spiritual guidance on this matter.
A public, peaceful gathering outside City Hall, led by the religious leadership of Orlando to dissuade our city from enforcing city ordinances that seek to forbid feeding the homeless, would be in keeping with the highest values of our religious traditions and the teachings of our prophets. Those who wish to be part of helping to plan such a religious convocation, I would welcome to contact me so that we may jointly, in a true ecumenical fashion, respond as, I believe, our God would expect from us.
I share Rabbi Rubinger's dislike for being forced to side with often-counterproductive groups like these, but in this case they're doing the right thing. This is a dumb law, and one way to oppose a dumb law is to make lawmakers look dumb by forcing them to enforce it. This is what civil disobedience means.
The idea of civil disobedience has suffered lately from misappropriation. It does not mean getting arrested as a way of getting attention.
This has been an ongoing point of contention for me with some of my former bosses in the so-called "evangelical left." Every couple of years or so they would participate in carefully orchestrated protests in the U.S. Capitol. You're not allowed to conduct public prayer services in the Capitol, so after explaining the subject of the protest — usually something commendable — the protesters would begin a prayer service, getting politely arrested before the cameras.
This may once have been an effective strategy for publicizing your cause (although I think that effectiveness has greatly diminished due to overuse), but it's not civil disobedience because the point of the protest has nothing to do with the law that is actually being broken. If you're opposed to the law forbidding prayer services in the Capitol, then conduct such a service, get arrested, and force officials to enforce the law you oppose. That would be civil disobedience — although in that case I doubt it would be very effective, since the law seems like a smart and just one and your punishment for violating it would be unlikely to be perceived as an injustice.
But Orlando's law forbidding the feeding of the homeless seems neither wise nor just, making it a prime candidate for civil disobedience. This was a case in which the rabble needed to be roused, and the rabble-rousers were up to the task. That alone might not be enough to change the law, so Rabbi Rubinger's called for "a public, peaceful gathering outside City Hall, led by the religious leadership of Orlando" seems like a smart, and necessary, next step.
Rubinger is also wise, and gracious, not to question the intention of the city officials who passed this law. It makes sense, after all, that they needed some kind of response to a situation in which large groups of hungry homeless people were regularly gathering in downtown parks. Simply attempting to outlaw such gatherings is foolishly beside the point, but the status quo — relying on scholarship-commies as a social safety net — isn't much of a solution either.
Here's hoping that Rubinger's delegation can come up with a plan that finds a better way to feed the hungry and that Orlando's finest will be allowed to get back to protecting and serving instead of skulking around stew pots and confiscating soup ladles as "evidence."
Until then, I'd suggest it's time for some of Orlando's Christian churches to begin celebrating the Lord's Supper in Lake Eola Park, preferably in groups of larger than 25.
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