the health board, the PICNIC and a bunch of nutters. [guest starring valerie luthor king jnr] part II

[let me disclaim this post and say that nothing mentioned here is official ‘The Simple Way’ stance on these issues but rather my personal reflections and experiences]

so yesterday there was a public meeting for the board of health who were commenting on a 14 page document relating to the serving of food outside to homeless people… which is linked to a recent order brought in by the mayor of Philadelphia [the previously-ascertained unfortunately-named mayor Nutter] to specifically ban the serving of food to people in two specific parks [big touristy attraction places] ALTHO it was very clearly stated that this would not affect family picnics…

and this is where i go and say that my beautiful wife Valerie came up with the very brilliant idea of throwing a picnic outside the place where they were going to have the meeting, and then inviting anyone who was nearby [including the homeless] to join us for our family picnic [because after all they are our brothers and sisters] – even the name Philadelphia which comes from the greek word ‘Phileo’ meaning brotherly love…

so it was a symbolic gesture [would have been a form of civil disobedience had we done it in the actual parks where it is possibly going to be banned if that goes through as is, although that is a bit of a harder one for us to work as getting arrested, as romantic as the notion is when connected to reaching out to ‘the least of these’ can have serious consequences to visa bearing south africans] and it worked amazingly.

we spread the word to our web of subversive friends and through facebook statuses [stati?] and other connections and arrived with picnic blankets and set up outside of the meeting place and invited people to join us – one guy drove an hour to come and be part of the fun and our friend cody made a coolbox full of ham sandwiches and had another one full of bottled water.

occupy philly set up some tables near us and also engaged in feeding the public and so it was free food and sharing happening all around – other groups that are involved in feeding the hungry and members of the public, including some homeless people joined us and we sat eating food, literally breaking bread together and having conversation about life, the universe and a bunch of related things.

one of the things shane spoke about, when i accompanied him to a conference in Canada recently, was how in many cases, the church has lost its imagination and this group open picnic was just something small, although hopefully also something huge in helping ignite that in peoples minds and kickstart their imaginations for future work and protest and creative solutioning that can and needs to be done.

so yay for my wife [the real yay for my wife comes in part III] for the idea and for running with it and getting so many other people involved and thank you to everyone who came and was a part of the fun and feast.

for the third part and the one where all the action happens and ‘the christian’ swears, spits and calls people the antichrist, click here…

the HEALTH BOARD, the picnic and a bunch of nutters. [guest starring valerie luthor king jnr] part I

[let me disclaim this post and say that nothing mentioned here is official ‘The Simple Way’ stance on these issues but rather my personal reflections and experiences]

so the situation is a little complex for those outside of the loop but in a nut shell, very simplistically as i see it, there are two issues [and you can see our well worded response, as The Simple Way, here.]:

the first was yesterday which was the health department passing some new regulation(s) related to serving food to people on the streets and the second was mayor Nutter of Philadelphia [actual name, somewhat unfortunate, unless you’re a nearby journalist or angry activist] advocating the banning of public feeding specifically in two places [which coincidentally just happen to be two major tourist spots as we head into tourist season, one of which is the site of a new museum which is about to open] [and by ‘coincidentally’ i mean ‘not coincidentally’]

now my beautiful wife Valerie was at the public meeting last week which was open to the public to receive comment on the health board stuff and it seems like that is where the mess happened because they only let 40 people in at a time and she waited 2 and a half hours and didn’t get in – so a lot of people clearly were not able to be heard the way they were expecting to.

but, as i understood it from the explanation given at the beginning of yesterday’s meeting, this meeting was public in terms of the public being able to sit in, but there was not space for comment from them – this was simply a board meeting where they looked over the proposed changes to the regulations based on public comment.

and [until the meeting was horribly interrupted and then pretty much shut down by the eloquence of the occupy philly members – see part III] from what i heard [realising that what they say and put into regulation and how those regulations are acted out can be two very different things] a lot of it made sense to me and seemed to be a really good thing.

the gist of the regulations are not about stopping outside feeding of people [as green shirt man shouted at one point] but rather trying to ensure that all food served to people on the streets of Philadelphia is prepared and served in a healthy fashion. there were one or two small things i wasn’t sure about in terms of what they shared, but for the most part it really seemed like they were doing what they could to make it easy enough and cost effective enough to serve food well to people on the streets.

for example, they are wanting one certified trained person to be there every time food is given out, but they are offering the training free of charge, at their venue or at the organisation/group’s venue that is giving out the food and even offered to train trainers so groups/organisations can train their own people. they asked for food to be prepared within four hours of being handed out. they backed off on the previous regulation which basically didn’t allow for someone to prepare food in their own kitchen and take it out. and some other stuff.

they worked through a 14 page document and i really didn’t hear any huge alarm bells in terms of things they were trying to pass that would make it specifically harder to serve food to the homeless and call me a traditionalist, but i don’t think it is the worst thing in the world to put things in place to try and make food given out regularly more safe and healthy for those receiving it.

as mentioned, the meeting was interrupted and so we never got to hear the end of it as the board [after putting up with a LOT of disturbance, some really rude and offensive, to me at least] left and continued somewhere else, which was a pity for those of us who were trying to hear what they were deciding upon.

for the part about the picnic, read here…