The city of Houston, Texas, has been engaged in nearly a year-long battle with a Food Not Bombs group that has been serving free vegan food to the hungry outside of a library for two decades now.
Starting in March of last year, the city randomly started enforcing a decade-old law making it illegal to feed five or more people in need without permission of the property owner, including on public land — despite the fact that the Food Not Bombs group was given an exemption by the mayor who enacted the ordinance. It is, of course, perfectly fine to feed any number of people who are not “in need” anywhere one pleases.
Since then, cops have doled out at least 90 tickets to anti-hunger activists who insist upon feeding the hungry regardless of what the city says — but the city hasn’t gotten a conviction on a single one. Why? Because people don’t actually want to fine or punish people who are out there doing good deeds.
In the first trial, the jury returned a verdict of not guilty. In the second, charges against eight activists were dismissed after the police officers who were supposed to be witnesses didn’t even show up.
PREVIOUSLY!
Now, the city can’t even find “unbiased jurors.”
Last week, 15 Houstonians were called in for jury duty, in hopes that prosecutors could find just three among them who would be willing to punish a woman for feeding the hungry outside of a library. (It’s a small panel for misdemeanor trials.) They could not. Indeed, too many of the jurors said flat out that even if they thought she was “guilty,” they would not be willing to issue the $500 fine the city attorney was seeking.
Much of the crackdown on groups helping the unhoused and indigent started after the city started funding its own meal program in a police parking lot and determined that if anyone else wanted to feed the hungry, they had to do so in the same lot.
In an emailed statement to the Houston Chronicle, a city official said that “the meal program Houston is funding at the police parking lot is designed to use food to attract people to a place where they can engage with an array of services ‘on a reoccurring basis.’” Or, you know, to arrest them for various crimes. Or to try to turn them into informants.
The government actually also has a history of spying on Food Not Bombs activists, particularly during the Iraq War. The group, despite having no history of violence or of doing anything other than serving donated (not dumpstered, FYI) vegan food to the hungry, has been put on several terrorist lists since its inception in 1980. Why? Because a whole lot of people think that being opposed to bombing — and, indeed, directing resources to feeding and otherwise caring for people — is itself a form of terrorism.
It’s worth noting that the city of Houston is the fifth-worst city in the country for affordable housing for extremely low-income renter households. In the greater Houston metropolitan area, there are only 19 affordable rental homes for every 100 extremely low-income renter households. People, quite literally, have no place to go.
But! Houston actually has been doing a pretty good job (outside of this) in terms of helping the unhoused get homes over the last few years. Wouldn’t the city prefer we admire them for that effort than feel disgusted by the way they are treating anti-hunger activists?
Surely, the fact that they can’t find a jury willing to convict these people is also a pretty big sign that this is not what the community wants to see time and resources spent on.
PREVIOUSLY:
How about we call it the Food Not Bombs Taco truck. No one in H Town, San Antonio or Austin allows anyone to fuck with taco trucks.
Why Not Food AND Bombs?
The left needs to embrace compromise
By David Sensible