High profile figures have lobbied council members to vote against ordinances designed to place limitations on the city’s homeless population.
Rev. Jesse Jackson of the Rainbow Push Coalition; author and historian Howard Zinn; and former city attorney Robert Myers have all written passionate pleas to city council members to reconsider ordinances that would place barriers to public feedings and enact stricter trespassing laws for downtown businesses.
Jackson urged the council to postpone taking a vote on the proposed ordinances and find a better way to approach the issue.
“Private efforts to aid the poor and those less fortunate should be encouraged, not made illegal,” he wrote. “Homelessness and hunger are human rights issues.”
“Private efforts to aid the poor and those less fortunate should be encouraged, not made illegal.” — — REV. JESSE JACKSON Rainbow Push Coalition
Jackson, who lives in Atlanta, wrote that when he travels abroad to protest human rights abuses, he is reminded of how poorly the chronically homeless are treated in the U.S.
“At one time Santa Monica was synonymous with progressive politics and the decency with which the city treated its citizenry,” Jackson wrote. “You should continue that tradition by voting against the proposal to criminalize food distribution.”
Zinn, who wrote “A People’s History of the United States: 1492 to Present,’”said in his letter that he was deeply troubled by the council’s proposed actions.
“This is a human rights issue, in which the profits of merchants should not come before the feeding of people who are hungry,” he wrote.
Zinn, who lives in Boston, said the ordinances would violate a clause in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights that states everyone has a right to a standard of living adequate for health food, clothing, and housing.
“It would be a shame if the City of Santa Monica could not live up to this principle,” he wrote.
Myers wrote that council members seeking re-election are pandering to business interests. Myers was fired by the city council in 1992 for refusing to write ordinances that prohibited camping in public and limit public food distribution.
In his letter, Myers wrote that the city was reacting to outside church groups that run the food programs for no other reason than the groups are not from Santa Monica.
“This ordinance attempts to criminal-ize those who answer their religious, political or moral call to feed the hungry,” he wrote.
Originally published in the Santa Monica Daily Press print edition on September 24, 2002. Read the original PDF.