Miami Commissioner Marc Sarnoff has created regulations around giving food to the homeless that few could meet and that would apply a fine and imprisonment to anyone trying to do so in the old fashioned way: “Here is a little something to tide you over. We wish you the best.� Try to be generous again, and the fine goes up and the jail sentence gets longer.
Commissioner Sarnoff is using “food safety� as a cover for criminalizing donating food to the homeless.
The ordinance must be put in context, for Commissioner Sarnoff is not alone in what he is doing to shut down rights around food. The City of Orlando recently won an appeal in federal court allowing it to criminalize feeding groups of 25 or more homeless people. The Miami ordinance goes further, banning all free food distribution without a government license.
“Food Safety,� in fact, is the chosen weapon in the next major corporate assault on this country, after Goldman Sach’s destruction of the economy, and its food speculation that drove up prices and the number of starving people.
This time the corporations and banks want control over all food. They have not finished making money off misery.
But to gain full control over food, it is necessary to break all normal interactions and our natural generous connections around it, and to come up with a phony reason that would “sound� caring but would allow only corporations to handle food.
Miami Commissioner Marc Sarnoff Proposes Jail for Feeding Homeless Under the Guise of Food Safety
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By Meryl Williamson
Food Freedom, July 11, 2010
Straight to the Source
