Compassion is NOT a Crime - Food is a Right

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/wires/ap/article-2857935/Judge-suspends-Florida-citys-homeless-feeding-ban.html

Judge suspends Florida city's homeless feeding ban

By Associated Press

Published: 13:35 EST, 2 December 2014 | Updated: 13:35 EST, 2 December 2014

FORT LAUDERDALE, Fla. (AP) — A judge has suspended enforcement of a South Florida city's law that restricts the public feeding of homeless people for 30 days and ordered mediation on the issue.

The ordinance is aimed at keeping people from feeding the homeless in parks and other public places in Fort Lauderdale. Nationwide, people have objected to the ordinance and on Monday, hackers with the Anonymous group shut down the city Internet sites temporarily in response.

The decision Tuesday by Broward Circuit Judge Thomas Lynch came in a challenge to the ordinance by 90-year-old homeless advocate Arnold Abbott, who has been arrested after defying it repeatedly. Lynch wants the dispute resolved through mediation or trial by the end of the year.

City attorneys indicated they may appeal Lynch's ruling. More lawsuits are challenging whether the ordinance is constitutional.

In 33 U.S. Cities, It’s Illegal to Do the One Thing That Helps the Homeless Most
By Tom McKay June 12, 2014

The news: In case the United States' problem with homelessness wasn't bad enough, a forthcoming National Coalition for the Homeless (NCH) report says that 33 U.S. cities now ban or are considering banning the practice of sharing food with homeless people. Four municipalities (Raleigh, N.C.; Myrtle Beach, S.C.; Birmingham, Ala.; and Daytona Beach, Fla.) have recently gone as far as to fine, remove or threaten to throw in jail private groups that work to serve food to the needy instead of letting government-run services do the job.

Why it's happening: The bans are officially instituted to prevent government-run anti-homelessness programs from being diluted. But in practice, many of the same places that are banning food-sharing are the same ones that have criminalized homelessness with harsh and punitive measures. Essentially, they're designed to make being homeless within city limits so unpleasant that the downtrodden have no choice but to leave. Tampa, for example, criminalizes sleeping or storing property in public. Columbia, South Carolina, passed a measure that essentially would have empowered police to ship all homeless people out of town. Detroit PD officers have been accused of illegally taking the homeless and driving them out of the city.

The U.N. even went so far as to single the United States out in a report on human rights, saying criminalization of homelessness in the United States "raises concerns of discrimination and cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment."

"I'm just simply baffled by the idea that people can be without shelter in a country, and then be treated as criminals for being without shelter," said human rights lawyer Sir Nigel Rodley, chairman of the U.N. committee. "The idea of criminalizing people who don't have shelter is something that I think many of my colleagues might find as difficult as I do to even begin to comprehend."

Meanwhile, the programs in place to support the homeless are typically inadequate, making claims that ending food-sharing is for their own good specious at best. According to government data, about 600,000 people are homeless on any given night. Some 20 states bucked a nationally declining homeless rate from the height of the recession, increasing in measures of homelessness from 2012-2013. According to the NCH, one survey of homelessness found 62,619 veterans were homeless in January 2012. Other at-risk groups for homelessness include the seriously ill, battered women and people suffering from drug addictions or mental illness. The economy isn't helping. More Americans live in poverty than before the recession began in 2008 and the number of households living under the poverty line has reached levels unseen since the 1960s.

Some city officials, like Houston's Mayor Annise Parker, claim that "making it easier for someone to stay on the streets is not humane" and say that uncoordinated charity efforts "keep them on the street longer, which is what happens when you feed them." A local Food Not Bombs activist told VICE that the actual effect was to intimidate local residents from giving out food. Other cities are harsher. In 2011, more than 20 members of Food Not Bombs were arrested in Orlando for sharing food. Love Wins Ministries in Raleigh was threatened with arrest for providing biscuits to the homeless. Daytona Beach fined, harassed and threatened jail time for Debbie and Chico Jimenez, who run a ministry called "Spreading the Word Without Saying a Word."

"Homeless people are visible in downtown America. And cities think by cutting off the food source it will make the homeless go away. It doesn't, of course," NCH community organizing director Michael Stoops told NBC News. "We want to get cities to quit doing this. We support the right of all people to share food."

"Nobody would suggest that the ideal situation for a homeless person to be in is living on the street, but the reality is people are living there and they will die there if they don't receive food," National Law Center on Homelessness and Poverty policy director Jeremy Rosen told VICE.

Why you should care. This is cruelty at its basest and most pointless. The homeless are real people who deserve to be treated like human beings. And if a city bans sharing the necessities of life with them, it doesn't bode well for other ways they treat the homeless.

Meanwhile, successful programs have demonstrated that systematically providing housing and food for the homeless costs society less than leaving them on the street.

Image Credit: ThinkProgress

Laws that criminalize charity do nothing at best and are horribly counter-productive and dehumanizing at worst. This country could do with more people who care about feeding the homeless, not fewer.

More photos, charts, and comments at: http://mic.com/articles/91055/in-33-u-s-cities-it-s-illegal-to-do-the-one-thing-that-helps-the-homeless-most

Fort Lauderdale websites down, apparently hacked
Monday December 1, 2014 9:30 PM

FORT LAUDERDALE, Fla. (AP) — At least two of Fort Lauderdale's official websites were down temporarily after threats from the hacker group Anonymous over the city's ban on feeding the homeless.

The sites FortLauderdale.gov and FLPD.gov were offline for several hours Monday but back up later that evening. In a video claimed to be posted by Anonymous earlier Monday, an unidentified person wearing a mask and speaking with a digitally altered voice threatened to crash the sites if the city didn't lift bans on panhandling at intersections, sleeping in public downtown and feeding the homeless.

Fort Lauderdale drew national attention last month after police cited a 90-year-old man and two pastors for feeding homeless people at Fort Lauderdale Beach.

City Manager Lee Feldman told The Associated Press Monday evening that officials were discussing the issue.




HACKERS GROUP ANONYMOUS ATTACKS FLORIDA WEBSITE OVER HOMELESS FEEDING LAW
December 02, 2014
Comments and futher video/photos at: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2856750/Fort-Lauderdale-websites-apparently-hacked.html?ito=embedded

(FORT LAUDERDALE, FLA.) -- At least two Fort Lauderdale government websites appear to have been shut down by the hacker group Anonymous in retaliation against a controversial homeless feeding ordinance.

Anonymous has claimed responsibility for shutting down FortLauderdale.gov and FLPD.gov, although city leaders said that is not totally true, according to a report by Florida's WSVN-TV which also reported that both websites displayed error messages Monday, and later that evening only FortLauderdale.gov was back online.

Anonymous posted a video on YouTube that said, "You have 24 hours or less -- depending on if this reaches you or Mayor John Seiler -- 24 hours to comply with our demands or the site will be shut down, along with other sites belonging to Fort Lauderdale. Operation 'Lift the Bans' engaged. We are Anonymous. We are legion. We do not forgive. We do not forget. You should have expected us."

WSVN reported that Mayor Jack Seiler has been under fire since a 90-year-old man and two pastors were cited several times for feeding the homeless in public. The city says such feedings violate a city ordinance because there are no bathrooms or cleaning areas nearby.

Seiler refuted Anonymous' claims to WSVN indicating that Fort Lauderdale's database was not hacked and that the city's Internet provider shut the website down in order to prevent the group's attacks. Seiler told the station from what he can tell, "There's been no damage done at all...there's no really harm done other than the fact that it disrupted a couple hours of service here at the city of Fort Lauderdale," Seiler said.

Anonymous has threatened to target more websites if "anti-homeless" ordinances were not repealed.

ANONYMOUS VIDEO AND DEMANDS: http://www.bing.com/videos/search?q=Ft.%20Lauderdale%20homeless%20tv%20anonymous&qs=n&form=QBVR&pq=ft.%20lauderdale%20homeless%20tv%20anonymous&sc=0-0&sp=-1&sk=#view=detail&mid=CF5075890172C06F8F07CF5075890172C06F8F07

The demands of Operation Lift the Bans: Lift the following ordinances: C-14-38 making Panhandling illegal on medians for homeless and charities C-14-41: illegal to sleep outside in downtown areas C-14-42 prohibits citizens to hand out free food unless certain requirements are met