Craig Watts is a minister friend of mine who lives in Florida. He wants to get arrested.
I suppose that’s a bit strong. I should say he is willing to get arrested if that is what it takes to continue feeding the homeless in Fort Lauderdale.
It’s all because of city ordinances initiated by Mayor Jack Seiler who is trying to make the homeless there invisible, perhaps in hopes they will somehow go away.
The ordinances are what you would expect, such as prohibiting panhandling, sleeping on public property, and allowing police to confiscate the few possessions the homeless temporarily store under a bush or park benches.
But there is also a new ordinance prohibiting the serving of food to the homeless in public. That’s how Craig got involved.
Churches and groups have had outside food lines for the homeless (this is Florida, remember) for years, but now this act of compassion is illegal. Some genuine Christians and other compassionate people have chosen to defy the ordinance. In several instances police have shut them down and issued citations to volunteer workers that carry a fine and up to six months in jail.
Craig has not been cited yet, but it is probably only a matter of time.
As expected, the Mayor’s office says his efforts are “actually trying to promote the safety and well-being of the homeless.” Of course, and the moon is made of cream cheese.
I was thinking about Craig’s courage on behalf of the homeless when I read in the paper that a report just released by the National Center for Family Homelessness says that at some point during 2013 there were 2.5 million children living on the streets of America.
In America, the land of opportunity, one out of every thirty children were homeless.
Why? Because their parents are homeless. Why? Because they are lazy, don’t want to work, are looking for a handout, enjoy the insecurity of not knowing where they will spend the night or get their next meal? Hardly.
It’s because they have spent one, two, and even three years looking for a job, have run out of unemployment compensation, and in the process lost their home and now have nowhere permanent to live.
These are the chronic unemployed for whom Congress refused to extend unemployment benefits earlier this year. Conservatives said they didn’t want to encourage people not to look for work. Maybe that is where Fort Lauderdale Mayor Jack Seiler got his cue?
The truth is, the unemployed want to work, continue to look for work, but every day face the harsh reality that the jobs are not there, and when they are they seldom pay better than minimum wage, making it impossible for them to remain financially independent.
These are the people Congress cut off, adults who once had good jobs and a home but are now living on the street at various times during the year, along with their children.
I couldn’t help but wonder about how frightened and scared our two six year old twin grandchildren would be if they lived on the street, or their eight year old sister, or their nine year old cousin.
Just thinking about it made me want to scream at all of us in this country for letting such a thing exist.
In states politicians are trying to ban abortion, gay marriage, and make voting harder, and in Washington there is talk of another government shutdown, all the while 2.5 million of our nation’s children are sleeping in parks, under bridges, on sidewalk grates, in dangerous shelters, and standing in line for food given to them by Craig Watts and others like him across the country.
Maybe this doesn’t bother you, but it sure bothers me. And it makes me wonder just what kind of country have we become.
