Cops arrest 1 during Occupy demonstration
Occupy Philly protesters took to the plaza at the Municipal Services Building and testified during a hearing about Mayor Nutter's ban on outdoor food distribution.
Cops arrest 1 during Occupy demonstration
This post has been updated.
Occupy Philly is at it again. This time, they’re taking on Mayor Nutter’s ban on outdoor food distribution.
On Thursday afternoon, leaders of the group said, about 200 of their members and protesters from various other groups held a rally and distributed food at Thomas Paine Plaza outside the Municipal Services Building, before several members of the group worked their way into a public Board of Health hearing about Mayor Nutter’s regulation to ban the feeding of the homeless in parks.
Nutter’s ban, aimed to move feeding indoors and encourage safer, healthy eating, is set to take effect in 30 days. The Board of Health, Deputy Mayor for Health and Opportunity Donald Schwarz told protesters who took to the hearing room to testify against the measure, will likely render its decision related to the measure next week.
One protester, a 28-year-old woman who Occupy members said is a doctoral student at the University of Pennsylvania, was arrested outside the front door of the MSB after a handful of bicycle police were called in for crowd control. Julia Alford-Fowler, of the group's legal collective, said she was being held at the 9th District, 20th Street and Pennsylvania Avenue, and was expected to be released early in the morning.
Officials were letting Occupiers and other protesters inside to testify – but only 40 at a time, as the hearing room was too small to accommodate more.
A few Occupiers staged a sit-in during protesters’ testimonies inside the hearing, and police said they could potentially face arrest, but all eventually decided to get up, and no other arrests were made.
The hearing, which began at 5:30 p.m., eventually let out around 9:30 p.m. after several Occupiers testified. Click here for Twitter coverage from the street and from inside the hearing during the last batch of testimonies.
Deputy Mayor for Public Safety and Nutter’s Chief of Staff Everett Gillison, who was in attendance during the hearing, said the measure to limit outdoor food distribution is a move to give people more dignity by feeding them inside.
“The best use of government is to transform people’s lives,” Gillison said after the hearing, adding that he understands people can be apprehensive about change.
“There’s got to be a dignity,” he said. “No one wants to eat in the cold. That’s not really what we’re about.”
These young protesters have a noblesse oblige sense of street politics that is little more than a trendy bourgeosie adventure aka slumming. Feeding the homeless on the street like pidgeons in the park is a degrading display of pseudo radical posturing. Like the pseudo radical ideas that generate this seemingly bold practice, there is no theory of social change that can justify the public picnic of poor, homeless, mentally ill, substance abusing, and otherwise marginalized people of the larger community of Philadelphia. Occupy Philadelphia needs to come up with something for dealing with actual problems of disempowered people that is different than the street tactics against a system and the ideas that uphold. Socializing political activists to make gestures when for decades, various successful programs to feed, shelter, medically care for and as best as possible socialized the poor, the hungry and the homeless to fend for themselves inside buildings, where the rest of the working populace as well as the affluent get to live their lives is to disregard valiant efforts that have come before Occupy set their eyes on street feedings. It is not enough to have the poor and hungry migrate into the Center City as some sort of show of despair, as if no else before them saw this situation and took action to turn around the oppressive disinvestment in the neighborhoods which led to impoverishment. The overwhelming nature of the problem will not be solved because Occupy thinks they are the only left wing advocates of the poor and every one else has sold out and been coopted because they have jobs or got elected to public office. More good has been done by the City government and preceding generations than by these simpleton displays of public demonstration. Put the poor and homeless in to proper structures like human beings, not feral creatures on display for political theater.
Fernando08, Do you care about this story or did you just feel like using rampant unnecessary vocabulary?— K Rock Rizzle- no one wants to eat in the cold???? how about sleeping in the cold? where are some bold initiatives for the homeless issue? wait, they're not from chestnut hill or university city so they don't count.— wiredalot
- I suppose the new $30 picnic permit Parks and Recreation requires of everyone is all about dignity and safety too. And the new permit fees that will force any community gathering to get corporate sponsors for the thousands of dollars of new costs will make parks into a paradise. Other cities have already brought dignity to those feeding the homeless by cuffing them and taking them to jail. These NID forces have been trying to privatize parks for over a decade with this attack of permit rules, and cleansing the parkway of homeless is simply an additional bonus. This is what a police state looks like even if they call it dignity!— glennm7
- glenn...maybe we could take some funding from education to pay for the parks? Remember, 1 pot of money. I actually woudl like to see a private/ public arrangement for parks....whereby a company would "adopt" a park and have their employees donate time to maintain & be responsible for it, in return for naming rights. That would actually generate a seperate pot of money (sort of).— kelprod2
- Hey,
I was part of that sit in last night, and listening to the homeless members gather the courage to testify and speak was inspiring. I heard about 20 homeless people speak. A few were American war vets who said they will be reduced to picking trash at the bottom of a dumpster to eat a half eaten burger. One person was a business man who feel on hard times, and was screwed on a business decision. He was from the main line area and is now living in Philadelphia. The business decision he was screwed on would have had him inside his home with his family for 10 years without working. The next time we decide to talk about these people as fiends, then maybe you should go pick trash at the bottom of a can 7 days a week because this is what that law will force these people to do.— flyersfan89 - And that quote about the homeless gaining dignity? Where are they going to eat when Philadelphia has been closing homeless shelters? Philadelphia is trying to clean up an image problem so center city can become a lame excuse of a tourist attraction. This has everything to do with Barnes Foundation opening up. The city is sweeping these people under the rug, without offering any real solutions to the problem. Philadelphia has over 4,000 homeless people through the county, and they think a couple of shelters is going to handle that? No the people who handle this are the people who feed them. It's the Catholic Organizations, Community Churches and Synagogues and citizen groups like Food Not Bombs and Food is a Human Right WG who feed the homeless and who take care of the problem.— flyersfan89
- Oh, Daily News. Your coverage of last night's public hearing proves that you weren't there-- as you told me when I made a press phone call to you earlier yesterday. This is NOT about Occupy Philly. This is about Philadelphians (many of whom are not Occupiers) outraged that the Mayor would shut down outdoor food servings that so many homeless and hungry Philadelphians rely on. If you HAD been there, maybe you would have reported on the testimony from homeless Philadelphians against Mayor Nutter's ban and the proposed Health Department regulations. But again, you weren't.
And just to let you know-- The arrest was due to a tense situation created by the Philly Police Department. Apparently, it's business-as-usual to allow folks up to a public hearing in groups of 40 at a time. And also to guard the doors of the building with lines of bike cops. And just to let you know-- the walls of the room the hearing took place in were retractable. Captain Fischer himself admitted that this was about crowd control, not room size.
Do your job. Report the news. And in order to do that, you have to be there.— nik1988 - Out of a four hour meeting, the only quote came from a city official...go back to the high school news paper— flyersfan89
- When did anyone from Occupy give anyone outside their cult so much as a crumb from one of their pizza?
That said, Nutter should be deeply embarrassed by this policy. These people are fed in the parks because his government has manifestly failed to deal with the problem of homeless vagrancy that has become rampant throughout Center City during his tenure. If not for these private organizations there would be no safety net for these citizens. Certainly the Nutter adminstration is only inclined to shovel money at unions and other radical allies, and the misfortune of the homeless is that they have nothing to provide the mayor in exchange for his largess in this disgraceful quid pro quo administration.— InquiringMindz - First of all, Occupy Philly fed anyone who showed up. Second of all, where is Nutter shoveling money at unions and "radical allies?" He has been a very conservative, corporate Mayor who has fought the unions repeatedly. The members of DC 33 still don't have a contract because of Nutter!— Workerpower
- Also, the people who were involved with the sit-in did not just "get up". They were put in handcuffs and "arrested" until the police didn't feel like doing any paper work and let them go.
How do you call this research? It really is infuriating that amateurs like you have the attention of the public and you do NOTHING to inform people about the issues that affect their lives. Shame on you for not making time to REPORT and for slanting this story in the Mayor's favor because he can put on a nice facade like saying he wants the houseless and hungry to be more "dignified". Let me put it this way, if there were already actions being made to shelter and feed the people of Philadelphia (I mean there are 40,000 vacant buildings in this city), then Occupy Philly and other groups would not need to intervene.
You also didn't mention that the woman arrested had to miss her award ceremony the next day (because she was in jail) where Nutter and the city were supposed to present her and award for her community outreach and humanitarian efforts...you know the same stuff she was arrested for by his orders. (HTML deleted)— ikysitn6
