What would you do if a police officer threatened to arrest you for trying to share a sandwich with a desperately hungry homeless woman that really needed it? Such a notion sounds absolutely bizarre, but this is actually happening in major cities all over the United States. More than 50 large U.S. cities have adopted “anti-camping” or “anti-food sharing” laws in recent years, and in many of these cities the police are strictly enforcing these laws. Sometimes the goal appears to be to get the homeless people to go away. Apparently the heartless politicians that are passing these laws believe that if the homeless can’t get any more free food and if they keep getting thrown into prison for “illegal camping” they will eventually decide to go somewhere else where they won’t be hassled so much. This is yet another example of how heartless our society is becoming. The middle class is being absolutely shredded and poverty is absolutely exploding, but meanwhile the hearts of many Americans are growing very cold. If this continues, what is the future of America going to look like?
An organization called Love Wins Ministries made national headlines recently when police in Raleigh, North Carolina threatened to arrest them if they distributed sausage biscuits and coffee to homeless people living in the heart of the city. Love Wins Ministries had been doing this for years, but now it is apparently illegal. The following is from someone who was actually there…
We used to go once a month to Moore square and have quit servicing this location. It has become a place where a dozen or so NFP’s show up and try to “outperform” one another with charitable offerings. The waste that is occurring is nuts, and the trash left behind as approx. 80 people get fed 5 meals each (or more,) and given cash, gift cards, bought food from stores, etc….is just sickening and overkill.
Of course “false news” is the news of the day, so I was quite public with my concerns and comments nearly a year ago with the waste, and as much as it pains me to say it, the city or someone needs to put some controls over how many providers are setting up there, and limit it to a reasonable number of folks. I wont go back there just because it is such a huge waste of resources to feed people that don’t really need it. There are so many other places that have no one helping them and no one stepping up. Perhaps one of the churches would be willing to set up a public forum that could essentially allow non-governmental involvement and would allow us to self regulate all these charitable offerings and also post new sites where some of these overindulgent services bestowed to one location, could be relocated to reach others who are in dire need and are going asleep hungry.
Many of these groups that serve the needy have huge church buildings, vast financial resources available, and loads of good intentions, but no way to validate, make judgements based on actual needs and then dole out their charity proportional to the actual needs of the people they are attempting to serve.
I served lunch one time at Moore Square. The line of people was “canvassed” by a man signing them up for free Obamaphones. I limited the servings to one hot dog until everyone was served. I was called a racist for this and the man who wanted two hot dogs said that I was giving two out to white people. Another chimed in and said that was true. There must be a better way to help our fellow man.