Break The Ban: El Cajon's ban on feeding homeless in parks

We learned from Martin Luther King, that if a law is unjust, it must be challenged and overturned. The original injustice here is how the cities in San Diego County treat the homeless. In an attempt to make the homeless go away and attract more businesses, authorities put rocks under bridges and installed benches that are hard to lie down on, as preparation for the 2016 Major League Baseball All-Star Game. In El Cajon, the city banned panhandling, then banned "camping"  then sent the police to raid the parks nightly to kick out the homeless. They even passed a law against sleeping in you car. They then closed or took away restrooms and hand washing stations in both cities. Closing restrooms doesn't stop mother nature however, and so without adequate places to clean up, disease spread and the cities county-wide, caused a hepatitis-A outbreak, which killed about 20 people.  However, the most blatant example of callousness against the homeless began shortly after the outbreak, when the city of El Cajon decided to make it illegal to feed the homeless in parks, pretending there was a link between the feeding homeless and hepatitis.

Text of the unjust ban "food sharing" events in city parks. (Urgency Ordinance 5066)

However, they also added a number of exemptions to the law, such as birthdays, family reunions, and field trips. This makes the law discriminatory in nature and so it wasn't long before activists started non-violent, non-compliant feedings in direct defiance of the law. The protest was dubbed "Break the Ban", organized by Shane Parmely and Mark Lane as well as Food Not Bombs, and took place at Wells Park in El Cajon. A week before the first event, the organizers went to the city council meeting to announce the event, when Shane got into a debate with the Mayor of El Cajon over things like the exceptions to the ban. Here is the video of that. 

Also of note was that Mayor Wells had to have the exemptions explained to him, showing he obviously never read the ordinance he helped pass. The following week, the first protest feeding happened in the shadow of the City's annual Mother Goose Parade, which turned part of Wells Park into a horse stable.

Here is a close up of one of the signs they put up to warn against feeding the homeless:

 Health and safety was obviously a guise to discriminate against the homeless, otherwise, they would not have all of these exemptions, and they would have treated the situation with the horse manure with more urgency. The Mayor didn't seem to like this protest and sent an ominous threat of "escalation" over the news. The following week was Thanksgiving and another feeding event took place that I didn't attend or witness. The day after that was the third feeding.  The video for that is here.

There was a little bit of a pause after this feeding, but the next one was scheduled for 12/22/2017 and organized by Food Not Bombs. On 12/13/2017, Shane Parmely again addressed the city council, announcing the event.

Sometime before the feeding, we learned that the city had put up a new trailer in the park. A hose and a power line connected water and electricity to it from the closed restroom facilities and it is very possible there is a clean toilet in the trailer that nobody in the park can use.

The event took place as planned, except El Cajon police officers did arrive to pass out warnings and stayed to observe the start of the feedings. Unfortunately, media didn't arrive to cover the event. My video for that event is here.

These are what the warnings say, in case you're wondering.

So these threats weren't going to sway us. Good people were going to keep organizing and feeding the homeless in defiance of the law until the City, or a judge overturned it. These laws were discriminatory, by the nature if its exemptions, and has the effect of giving the homeless a false sense of inferiority.

These food events are not an escalation of anything, as the Mayor suggested - the only escalation was on his part as he continued to attack the homeless and those who wished to help them, by passing unjust laws - rather it's a continuation of charitable services that they had already been getting before the City intervened. Most importantly, as a person who has been lucky enough to have a home, I know that it could all change in an instant. People who are blessed want to give back to the community, especially to our most vulnerable, because it is the right thing to do.

The next town hall meeting was January 9th, 2018. Citizen after citizen pleaded to work with the city council for a solution, but their wishes were all ignored. When you don't see in the video was a lady pleading to legalize keeping ferrets as pets. While I have no problem with that, I have a problem with the city council agreeing to meet with them and not with our group.

The next feeding was January 14, 2018, which was the day before Martin Luther King's birthday, so that theme was in us when we went to El Cajon once again, believing that this time, they would enforce the laws.

The following day, part of the group that got arrested gave a press conference with their lawyers.

The next feeding is January 27, 2018 at Wells Park in El Cajon, Ca. Come get arrested with us!

For more context, please check out this other blog entry by someone much more analytical than I.