Gainesville Soup Kitchen Hopes to Change Meal Limit

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.

He is seeking 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. Kent is hoping that by altering the ordinance to reflect a three-hour time limit, it will allow for some guidelines that could satisfy the city officials, while not keeping a head count.

Perhaps this could be a more inclusive ordinance. Perhaps this is all just political nonsense.

Many activists involved in this battle feel this ordinance is outright inhumane and unnecessary. Of course it seems clear that no such ordinance should exist at all (at least to the over 5,400 people who have signed the petition). Yet clearly Gainesville city officials are rigid in their stance of keeping some sort of strict guideline in place.

Mr. Vann seems mindful of this and has been creative in his thinking and advocacy. Sometimes creative thinking is an advocate's best tool.

Please continue to join us in voicing your outrage of this inhumane rule! If you have already signed the petition, please pass it along to someone who has not. Together, we can move one step closer to ensuring that not one more person goes hungry in Gainesville.

Photo Credit: Tanzania