NEWSHUNGER

It took more than a year of organizing.

15,000 people signed a Change.org petition demanding that Gainesville feed all who are hungry.

Dozens of local demonstrations were held, many organized by local college students and the Coalition to End the Meal Limits NOW.

Change.org members even phone-banked the City Commission, demanding to know when a vote would be scheduled.

And finally, on August 18th, the City Commission voted unanimously to end the limit.

Instead,  soup kitchens will be allowed to serve food for a 3-hour period each day, a compromise suggested by Kent Vann, Executive Director of the St. Francis House soup kitchen, which was at the center of this debate.  The city attorney's office will now have to draft a new ordinance and the commission will have to approve it. At long last, Gainesville can move past the ill-conceived meal limit.

Gainesville isn't the only Florida city stopping those trying to help the hungry. Orlando has a city ordinance on the books that requires permits for groups distributing food to large groups in parks within two miles of City Hall. Any one group is limited to 2 permits per year. The city arrested more than two dozen Food Not Bombs activists during their twice weekly food sharing in Lake Eola park. Since the arrests, the group has begun sharing food outside city hall as a compromise of sorts. "However, we still haven't gotten the ordinance repealed," says Thomas Adriaan Hellinger, Secretary of Orlando Food Not Bombs. You can help with this campaign, too, by signing this petition demanding the Mayor repeal the city ordinance.

Photo Credit: bsabarnowl

It has taken some time, but after close to 8,000 of you signed the petition, Gainesville officials are finally listening!

As we have written, Gainesville officials have enforced a meal limit ordinance to area soup kitchens. The rule states that soup kitchens can provide meals to only 130 people each day. If you are number 131, you do not eat that day. No exceptions.

We also wrote that Kent Vann, Executive Director of the St. Francis House soup kitchen at the heart of this debate, recently made an appeal to officials. His goal was to change the wording of the ordinance to reflect a limit on the time the soup kitchen can serve food, not a limit on number of people.

It looks like Mr. Vann's creative activism has proven successful!

The battle continues in Gainesville, Florida to overturn an inhumane 130-meal-limit at local soup kitchens. Advocates have been fighting for months and show no signs of backing down until this ordinance is abolished.

One local group that has been very active in this cause is the Coalition to End the Meal Limit Now! They recently organized a protest outside the mayor's annual State-of-the-City speech event and they presented city officials with a mock-Oscar award for "Best Fantasy." Now that's creative activism!

Change.org members have also come out in large numbers in support of this cause. We continue to tell Gainesville officials that this is inhumane and just plain wrong. To date, the petition has close to 6,000 signatures.

While the meal limit remains in place, it seems some local political hopefuls are gaining sympathy for the cause. Three city commission seats are up for grabs in a March 15 election. Thirteen people are vying for the positions, and four of them have spoken out against the meal limit.

The city of Gainesville, Florida recently served up a 130-meals-a-day limit to area soup kitchens, forcing providers to cease offering food to the hungry once the facility has reached the absurdly inhumane cut-off.

Fortunately, some of the candidates running in the upcoming Gainesville City Commission elections are voicing their opposition to the restriction, an encouraging sign that this cruel and unjust rule is headed for a change.

To find out where they stood on important local issues, including the soup kitchen meal limit, The Gainesville Sun posed a series of questions to the City Commission candidates. Of the thirteen candidates aiming for the three available positions on the March 15th elections, four of them spoke out against the meal limit, while five believe it should remain (the rest are presumably playing safe politics).

The heated debate in Gainesville, Florida continues.

As this cause has reported, Gainesville officials have enforced a meal limit ordinance to area soup kitchens. The rule states that soup kitchens can provide meals to only 130 people. If you are number 131, you do not eat. It is as simple and crude as that.

This story has garnered attention from activists and media around the country. There is collective outrage and disgust at this petty and inhumane limit. Yet, the rule remains. There has been little to no movement from Gainesville officials.

In the hope of making some positive movement in eradicating the limit, Kent Vann, Executive Director of the St. Francis House soup kitchen at the heart of this debate, recently made an appeal to officials.

Eating an apple a day to help keep the doctor away is sound advice for all of us, but following the old adage is particularly crucial for those who are living without a home.

A new study from Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH), one of the nations top hospitals, reveals that homeless individuals without enough to eat have a much higher risk of being hospitalized and are more likely to require treatment from an emergency room than those who receive adequate nourishment.

The importance of eating well to maintain good health may seem fairly straightforward, but unfortunately there are some people, particularly in Gainesville, Florida, who need to be reminded of how vital hunger relief programs can be for those struggling with poverty.

The tall, neatly dressed thin man could have been a poster child for the Sunshine State with his bright yellow tank top and spotless white pants. Instead he was the target of local police. The issue? Drying his clothes on the Gainesville dog park fence across from the St. Francis Shelter and Soup Kitchen.

Pat LaMarche and I are into the 2nd week of our Southern (Dis)Comfort tour. Yesterday after our presentation hosted by the Big Bend Homeless Coalition in Tallahassee,  Pat and I stopped in at a laundromat to clear out our week's worth of dirty clothing and managed to spend about $10. I'd suspect this man didn't have the 10-spot to invest in looking respectable, but that didn't stop him from drying his clothes the old-fashioned way on a sunny, warm day. I watched as the police officer walked from the "offender," who then deliberately and neatly folded his wash, placing it in his carry-all satchel. He disappeared around the fence that supported his habit: hygiene.

Mayor Terry Bellamy (Asheville, NC) is far from the enemy in my books when it comes to compassion for homeless persons.

Meeting with her today, my southern (dis)comfort cohort Pat LaMarche and I heard sincere concern for people who are hungry and homeless in America, the topic of the annual U.S. Conference of Mayors hunger and homelessness report.

The report in question appears right before the Christmas holidays, attempting, I don't know, to prick consciences of those slipping into ultra-consumerism? It mumbles, "Pssst. People across the country are hungry and homeless." And that's about it. Ho hum. The media scrape crumbs from this content-deficient report and toss a few anemic stories our way.

Some of us seasoned advocates long for a more comprehensive picture of what cities and towns of all sizes are seeing with regards to hunger and homelessness. This doesn't need to be another report of HUD-statistics-lite, but a reflection of the desperation (or prosperity!) of America's forgotten impoverished folks. It will be a snapshot of a nation's coping with horrendous fiscal challenges and might inspire outrage and action from the immobilized masses and attention-deficit-disordered lawmakers.

There are numerous things for low-income elementary and middle school kids in southeast Washington, DC to do at the City Gate Merrick Center after-school program.

They can unwind with a basketball game or musical chairs, enjoy a wholesome snack in a safe atmosphere, volunteer at an assisted-living center, talk to college students about college life and how important it is to stay in school, or even play a game of 'Math Bingo', which was shown in a recent study to improve the math proficiency of 94 percent of participants by 50 percent or more.

But lately, the options for these kids have changed, after the Merrick Center had to close because DC’s Office of the State Superintendent of Education has failed to pay CityGate the $60,000 it was promised a year ago as well as an additional $15,000 more recently.

"Not in my backyard!" Yes, NIMBYism has struck again. Last time we wrote about this issue, the neighborhood was Chelsea in Manhattan. This time, it's the northeast Bronx.

Shelters in New York City are full. More beds are necessary for the extreme need occurring during this recession. There is an Army Reserve Center in the Bronx that will soon be vacant. Mayor Bloomberg is proposing to turn this space into a homeless shelter. But Bronx leaders are saying no way.

The charge is being led by Bronx Borough President Ruben Diaz Jr. "Mayor Bloomberg, you and your deputy mayors who are trying to make this decision and you don't live in our borough, you need to stop. Enough is enough," he said at a recent rally at City Hall.

These NIMBY situations always start the same: "Oh, we believe in helping people, but ..." Borough President Diaz stepped on the NIMBYism bandwagon by starting out the first quote in his press release with: “We understand that we must help the least fortunate among us. With that said, ..." Blah, blah, blah. We've all heard it before, and we'll hear it again and again unless something changes. Community leaders have to stand up and say: "We want to help those in our community who need it. We want to empower our residents. We want our residents to feel welcomed, and not be ashamed for what they are going through!"

What makes this so incredible is that some Bronx residents are only one paycheck away from homelessness. Don't they see the irony? Anyone can become homeless. You can't fight for a cause only when it's convenient to you.

Join us in calling on Bronx Borough President Ruben Diaz, Jr. to turn NIMBYism into empathy and help the homeless, not shun them away!

Photo Credit: Rich Lombino