Fort Lauderdale, FL: Another Sharing Ban, Another Food Fight

At about 1 am on August 23rd, the City of Fort Lauderdale passed a revised version of its sharing ban law. The new sharing ban now sits in wait for 30 days until enforcement occurs, while the majority of the church groups, media, and general public that made the 2014 sharing ban an international sensation remain almost totally silent. (For those not familiar with the long story of Fort Lauderdale’s homeless hate laws, and sharing ban v1, homelesshatelaws.blogspot.com usually does the job).

The new sharing ban comes after months of cruel and unusual anti-homeless measures enforced on homeless people around the area of the downtown library in Fort Lauderdale and Stranahan Park. Earlier in the summer, the City raided the homeless camp it had allowed to grow over the past 8 months. It followed up by pruning overhead trees to reduce shade, fencing off and adding bushes in areas where people had set up shelters, and continuing to find reasons to throw out people’s possessions.

As it stands now, enforcement, and in all probability, a top-level media-circus shitstorm is expected the weekend of 9.22.2017.

Fort Lauderdale Food Not Bombs

 

For the past 10 years or so (group shots from 2007 and 2017 at right), the Fort Lauderdale chapter of the FNB movement has shared at Stranahan Park in downtown Fort Lauderdale. Over the years, the group has become a lot more than a thorn in the side of the City. Time after time FTLFNB has engaged in demonstrations, direct actions, blockades, really really free markets, puppet shows,  sit-ins, fundraisers, jail support, educational workshops, trainings, and so on. Today it is one of the most enduring and wide-ranging anarchist grassroots groups in South Florida.

In 2017, FTLFNB has also increasingly focused on the radical struggles around queer and trans liberation, of which so many of our volunteers are already a part of, supporting a new level of dialogue around rejecting white liberal gay rights in a County where there’s not much else in the spectrum. FNB has worked together with groups like Black Lives Matter Alliance Broward and Broward Chapter of Women’s March to confront events such as the 2017 Stonewall Pride Parade, and to confront the Mayor and other Fort Lauderdale Commissioners where-ever they are touting their phony tolerance  This synthesis is best described by FNB’s current chant/catch-phrase of choice: “We’re here! We’re queer! We’re gonna eat the Mayor!”

Upcoming Conflict

Again, we expect enforcement of the new sharing ban law in Fort Lauderdale the weekend of September 22nd, which also happens to be a Friday, the day of FNB’s weekly sharing.

And again, finally, due to the great secrecy in which these laws have been carried out (all anti-homeless laws are always discussed at public commission meetings…but not until well after midnight), we encourage and thank anyone on the grassroots that can spread the word of this coming conflict. We’ve only got each other.