Moore Square in Downtown Raleigh is home to a number of groups that give out food to hungry and homeless people on weekends, when soup kitchens do not operate. This Saturday, one such group, Love Wins Ministries, arrived at Moore Square to give out free breakfast. But for the first time in six years, the group-members were met by police officers and told that they would be arrested if they distributed food. No representative of the Raleigh Police Department was willing to tell them which ordinance specified their actions to be illegal. Human Beans Together was another group that distributes food downtown, which had its permit denied on Saturday.
The Raleigh chapter of Food Not Bombs, which is a network of autonomous collectives serving free food to hungry and homeless people, distributes food at Moore Square on Sundays. Yesterday, Food Not Bombs arrived at its usual location ready to give out food, or at least hoping to. But given the events of the previous day, they were accompanied by Love Wins Ministries and Human Beans Together, along with Occupy Raleigh and many other citizens showing solidarity for these groups and their actions. But whether in anticipation of this support or because of orders from other city officials, no police officers were present yesterday to stop Food Not Bombs from distributing food, though, out of fear of the police officers and potential arrest, the number of homeless people present to collect food was lower than normal.
Mayor Nancy McFarlane was present at Moore Square today, along with many City Council members, all of whom made it clear that the crackdown on Saturday was the city administration’s, and not the City Council’s, doing. McFarlane called Raleigh’s Chief of Police and made sure that no one would be arrested until Councilor Mary-Ann Baldwin’s Law and Public Safety Committee has had a chance to, according to McFarlane’s statement, “bring all the partners together for a transparent discussion to work out a plan to address the questions surrounding this issue.”
The Technician believes that regardless of the “questions” that surround this issue, feeding homeless people should not be illegal. We believe that concerns regarding public safety (regarding potential waste generated at such distributions), or possible unstated ideological concerns that feeding homeless people encourages “mooching,” do not stand up against the sheer good and necessity of feeding people who need to be fed. Thus, we urge the city authorities to do the right thing and encourage all such groups who wish to distribute food to the hungry.
If the city wants to follow a policy of gentrification—i.e., renovating an area so as to have it better conform to middle-class taste, and ridding a place of homeless-people-free is a part of this—this should not come at the cost of homeless people suffering. But as is seen from the revitalization projects at Moore Square, and closer to us, the development along Hillsborough Street, homeless people will suffer. The Technician disapproves of this. As should be unnecessary to state, homeless people are dignified people too, and many (if not most) of them are in their situations through little fault of their own.
Also, if feeding people on a sidewalk—public property—is illegal … then looking back at Gov. Pat McCrory offering cookies to women’s right activists by his mansion last month, it seems like an arrest warrant has been long pending. Or, of course, we can keep on allowing people to give other people food.
