News from this morning is that Loaves & Fishes is ending its malicious program of Collective Punishment, at least in small part.Before the gates were open at 7am today to let people in Friendship Park, Park Director Garren Bratcher stood on a tree stump just inside the park and spoke to the crowd waiting to get in. First, he asserted (or observed) that everyone is an adult. He then told people there would be a new policy: If anyone was caught running when people were given entry to the park, only those who did the running would be punished, rather than closing the park to everybody for the day (or for three hours or for fifteen minutes or by using the indeterminate-sentencing model).
The new policy is that misbehavior in the form of running would result in the fleet being denied services and disallowed being at the Loaves & Fishes compound for the next three days the charity happens to be open.
I understand that the new policy was formulated (or came down from on-high) at a recent staff meeting or other meeting of some sort.
I do not know if this new policy applies to other sorts of homeless misbehavior. In the very many times Loaves & Fishes has imposed its Collective Punishment policy, commonly it is either for running or the result of finding alcohol bottles or drug paraphernalia in the Park bathroom trash barrels.
Finding evidence of drinking or drug use [which would not necessarily mean a person or people were getting high at Loaves & Fishes, only that they discarded waste at the facility] would often result in closure of the park and its and other services for days at a time.
Of course running or getting high would be the conduct of only one person or a few. Under the charity’s Collective Punishment program – or, as I call it, the “Libby Likes to Screw Up People’s Lives Policy” – the day of hundreds of homeless people would be disrupted. People would lose direct access to their lockers, and could be denied their daily shower, and a clothing exchange.
Always, several – and sometimes many – wouldn’t be able to make themselves appropriate for their part-time jobs or scheduled appointments.
It is good news that in small part the administration of the Loaf and Fish is pulling back on its hateful attitude toward homeless people -- probably as a result of my effort and those of allies to publicize L&F's bizarre counterproductive behaviors.
As homeless Oliver Twist said: "More, please." Indeed, let us see some other policy improvements such that homeless people are aided in getting their lives together -- because, heck, ain't that the freaking point, or shouldn't it be?
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Prior posts on Loaves & Fishes’ idiot policy of Collective Punishment:
“Your Time has Value; Your Life has Meaning” 8/17/08: Content of a flier distributed to Friendship Park denizens in the aftermath of a life-disruptive full-day toddlers’-time-out [as I called it] in August, 2008.
“Loaves & Fishes Friendship Park may close until 9AM, Monday” 8/15/09: Park denizens are threatened with a future two-hour delay at opening the park, punishing all in recompense for a few homeless people who ran during the park’s opening minute.
“Odds and Ends” 7/22/10: The bottom half of this blogpost discusses fifteen-minute toddlers’-time-out imposed on everybody for next to nothing that one guy did that ended up disrupting one homeless guy’s need to make it in time for an appointment. [As the reporter at the explosion of the Hindenburg said, I feel a need to repeat: “Oh, the humanity!”]
“Loaves and Fishes’ program of ‘Collective Punishment’” 7/27/10: Explains how Loaves & Fishes’ frequent practices of Collective Punishment are medieval and deplored and how the effects disrupt homeless people’s lives. [btw, for this post, and another I wrote, "Babies are gonna die! Babies are gonna die!" I was ejected and barred from the Loaves & Fishes facility by Libby Fernandez. I remain barred from the compound to this day. "Freedom of speech," just like any kind of freedom from being under the charity's iron boot, is foreign to the totalist politics/thinking that governs Left-of-China Loaves & Fishes.]
"In an act of Collective Punishment, Loaves & Fishes closed its Park in the morning on New Year's Day" 1/3/11: On a holiday, when homeless people had been told the park would be open, and when getting something done is difficult because many don’t have a shelter they can stay at in the daytime, and stores and other places generally aren’t open,the park is cruelly closed to all on a whiff and a whim.
"Update on Loaves & Fishes’ New Year’s Day abrupt closure of Friendship Park" 1/8/11: Park was closed to all for the holiday after a Green Hat smelled marajuana in a park restroom.
"More Turmoil at Loaves & Fishes" 5/26/12: Bottom half of post talks about an instance of park closure the prior month due to something found in the trash.
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