Rochester Food Not Bombs:
Part of a Nationwide Movement that Provides Direct Service, while pushing for Systematic Change
While networking and meeting other activists involved with the progressive movment, I often hear people remark that we're "just feeding people." I find it frustrating that other social justice organizations think of us as strictly a charity group; when societal injustices create hungry and poor people, we just put a band-aid on the problem without challenging the forces that create the problem. However, nothing could be further from reality! Conducting our program in a downtown park works as well, if not better than any demonstration as far as making a statement about the government's need to spend more money on social services and less on the military. Giving out free food to the people in a highly visible downtown park makes city officials really uncomfortable and compels them to act irrationally and unprofessionally, as the following story demonstrates.
We showed up at about quarter till two on Sunday, July 8th at St. Joseph's Park, ready to give out groceries and hot meals, as we normally do. Some of the people waiting for food told us that the police had been there earlier and that they'd be back. So sure enough, two police cars, one of which drove into the middle of the park, showed up later and told us they had orders from the SUNY Educational Outreach Center to arrest us for trespassing! St. Joseph's Park borders on a SUNY Education Outreach Center; the City owns part of the park, while the SUNY EOC owns the other part with the dumpsters and the parking lot. We were confused, as this was the first we heard of any problems, and gave the officers our contact information and talked them out of arresting us. One of the SUNY maintenance people showed up later and we also exchanged contact info.
On the following Monday, I had a phone conversation with a SUNY EOC representative. Apparently, they didn't want us to use their dumpsters for trash disposal any longer and had a few minor problems with people throwing their trash on SUNY property and other similar problems. We now have a written contract with the SUNY EOC expressing their explicit consent of our use of their property and a better understanding of their expectations for the use of their property. On the Thursday of that week, I talked with a police officer from the Downtown Police Department, who seemed satisfied that we'd worked out the issue with the SUNY EOC, but asked us to call one of the officials of the City Parks and Recreation Department. So upon talking to the City Parks person on the same day, he told me that we couldn't give out free food in a city park, as doing such would be an "inappropriate" activity. When I asked the man what an appropriate activity would be, he told me that "sitting on benches" is an appropriate thing to do in a park and that he was not willing to work any kind of arrangement for us.
After getting off the phone, I sent out letters to a couple different people in the department, the first of which told me when I called him that it wasn't a matter of the department employees' discretion, but that our program violated law codes for the public's use of the parks. So I checked into the law codes. The only code we violate is our failure to have a permit for putting on an event involving over fifty people. I also talked to the Police Department regarding laws about distributing food in a public place; the Officer I talked to told me that the City only regulated the selling of food and told me that if people we giving me trouble for giving out free food that I should send them to him! So I figured that I may as well just apply for a permit and see what happens. So upon contacting the City Parks and Recreation Department to get an application for St. Joseph's Park, I found out that the City doesn't even oversee St. Joseph's Park. A private organization, The Landmark Society, takes care of St. Joseph's Park. Apparently the official who had originally forbade us from serving in St. Joseph's Park had no authority to instruct us what to do in relation to St. Joseph's Park. The Landmark Society hasn't returned the phone call regarding the matter and the City hasn't pressed charges against us. So we're back to where we started and still serving free food in St. Joseph's Park.
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Rochester Food Not Bombs PO Box 39618 Rochester, NY 14604 [email protected] 585-234-0884 |