by Dennis Mobley
Although the media attention is long gone, San Francisco Mayor Jordan has kept up his all-out attack on the right of Food Not Bombs to serve free food to the hungry in Civic Center Plaza. Food Not Bombs has been distributing free lunches and dinners in front of San Francisco's City Hall for six years. But beginning last August, SFPD began arresting and harassing members of the organization on a daily basis, on the charge that they do not have a permit to serve food. (The permitting process was abolished a few years ago, specifically in order to move Food Not Bombs and the homeless out of the publicity-attracting Plaza.)
In its effort to continue feeding the hungry every day, Food Not Bombs has reached out to grassroots organizations, church leaders, and individual activists, asking them to support their cause. COPWATCH is one of the groups who accepted their challenge, agreeing to serve lunch in Civic Center Plaza once a month.
On a spring afternoon in early April, members of COPWATCH distributed soup, bagels, and fruit for fifteen to twenty minutes without incident. Then two cops on horses observed us giving away cups of soup and they radioed for backup. Within thirty seconds a patrol car drove into the park where we were serving. An SFPD sergeant got out of the car, forcibly took two buckets of soup from COPWATCH, carried it to a nearby sewer, and poured gallons of hot soup down the drain.
In his callousness, the officer did not ask us if we had a permit to serve, nor did he inform us that we were breaking the law and give us so many minutes to stop serving. He did not give us a receipt for the property of ours that he confiscated and destroyed, a violation of police procedure. The officer did not care at all that both COPWATCH and Food Not Bombs were videotaping the incident, or that several bystanders on their lunch breaks witnessed this transgression. He just angrily came and took the food and poured it in the sewer. Picture a cop in full uniform, with handgun, nightstick, mace, handcuffs, and a shotgun in his car, forcibly taking hot food from hungry people who might not have any other means of getting food that day.
In COPWATCH's experience at Civic Center Plaza, it has mostly been African-American officers who confiscate food and arrest those serving it. Members of Food Not Bombs confirmed that while white male officers may be in the park or observe from a distance, it is virtually always Black or female cops who make the arrests and take the soup. Is this by design on the part of the SFPD or the Mayor's office?
If you would like to help S.F. Food Not Bombs give free food to the hungry, call them at (415) 330-5030. Your assistance is desperately needed!