Matt Houston, a UCF student and a member of Orlando Food Not Bombs (OFNB), was trespassed for one year from Lake Eola Park in downtown Orlando on May 9, 2007 (OFNB's regular Wednesday afternoon food sharing). Matt became the second OFNB member to be sanctioned by the police in recent weeks. The first was Eric Montanez, arrested under the City's "large group feedings"/anti-homeless food-sharing ordinance on April 4. (On the right: Houston poses in a photo taken outside the park on May 16.)

Matt's heinous offense? Civil disobedience to the City's injustice and oppression towards the dispossessed. He dared to share food with hungry and homeless people. And he did this despite the City of Orlando's efforts to stop groups such as OFNB from doing that and to make homeless individuals feel unwelcome in downtown Orlando's rapidly gentrifying, condo-choked Thornton Park neighborhood (where Lake Eola is located). For this "crime," OPD Officer Vo gave Matt a trespass warning. The reason given on the warning? "Does not belong." Something clearly is wrong with a city government when it cavalierly decides that a citizen "does not belong" in a park. What is really being said "does not belong" in that park is compassion, community, the poor and the hungry, and any efforts by the public to use public spaces to address the social conditions among certain members of the public that make groups such as OFNB necessary.

The May 9 confrontation between the City and OFNB, provoked by the actions of the police, represented an escalation in the tactics they are willing to use. It began when a park ranger called the police because OFNB dared to share food with more than 25 homeless people–despite the fact that City has criminalized this act and has decided to grudgingly dole out only two measly "large group feeding" permits per group or person per park per 12-month period. (Our guess is that City leaders such as Mayor Buddy Dyer and City Commissioner Patty Sheehan haven't the least bit of concern about how the homeless will eat the other 363 days a year.)

When the homeless and their OFNB allies didn't vacate the park fast enough to suit Officer Vo, she recklessly drove her patrol vehicle around the park's picnic area while flashing her emergency lights and blaring, at an ear-piercing volume, a crowd-control noise. This action shows a complete disregard for the safety of the public whom she is supposed to serve and to protect. At least 70 innocent people could have been injured by her vehicle or in their rush to get out of her way. Many homeless people, owing to their deplorable living conditions and challenging personal problems, suffer from physical or mental disabilities that make it difficult for them to respond quickly to a sudden threat such as a motor vehicle being driven by an annoyed cop in an area that obviously is not a roadway.

The police, at the instigation of the park ranger and the City, also took an unprecedented step on May 9 when they threatened to trespass not just the members of OFNB and allied groups present at the food sharing, but the homeless people there merely to get what, for many of them, was their one hot, decent meal of the day. It should be noted that while the ordinance forbids serving food inside the park without a permit, it does not outlaw consumption of food inside the park. So clearly the City now is attempting to intimidate the homeless into not coming to the weekly food sharings that OFNB has conducted at Lake Eola for the last two years and once again to send them a clear message: "You DO NOT BELONG for any reason in any part of Lake Eola Park and in Thornton Park. The sight of the those far less privileged than them makes the residents uncomfortable."

The ACLU lawyers assisting S.T.O.P. and OFNB in their on-going legal and political struggles against the "large group feedings" ordinance and other Orlando measures that seek to criminalize homelessness, rather than address its underlying causes, have begun exploring various legal avenues for challenging Matt's trespass warning.

Update: Matt was informed by a Lake Eola Park ranger on May 23 that the tresspass warning had been rescinded because it was felt that "Does not belong" was an invalid reason for trespassing someone.