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Dear Aberdeen City Council,
You have done your best to create instability and truly life threatening conditions for those on the streets for many years now. When will this stop? When you have eradicated the unhoused and the poor to make way for your plans for gentrification? Well we are getting organized too. We have no plans of stopping our work, you can threaten us however you like, but if you pass this ordinance we will resist it thoroughly.
Whoever is elected this next election, we foresee an even further shift to the right in terms of public policy regarding the unhoused. After 5 meetings of this newest iteration of your Homeless Committee, the best you have come up with is to punish the people feeding the unhoused. Great work.
We have the inalienable right to assemble in public and being able to eat food together is a ritual act as old as time. This attempt to shut down a crucial line of support for people on the streets will not go unanswered. The following is our initial answer to your newest cold-hearted and blatant attempt to punish the poor for existing. Our responses are in purple, like this:
Sign Chehalis River Mutual Aid Network’s Change.org petition to the City at linktr.ee/crmutualaidnet
Now, reader, let’s take a look at what the Aberdeen City Council has planned…
23 – DRAFT [2023-XX-XX]
ORDINANCE NO._________
AN ORDINANCE AMENDING TITLE 8 OF THE ABERDEEN MUNICIPAL CODE, TITLED HEALTH AND SAFETY BY CREATING A NEW CHAPTER 8.15 GROUP FEEDINGS, TO CREATE REGULATIONS FOR THE USE OF CITY OF ABERDEEN STREETS, RIGHT-OF-WAYS AND PUBLIC SPACES FOR GROUP FEEDINGS.
WHEREAS, the City of Aberdeen (“City”) acknowledges and appreciates those who take part in the charitable act of providing food to the unsheltered and other in need; and
The act we are engaged in not charity, charity is hierarchical and top down. We are engaged in radical solidarity within our own community. This method of power sharing works horizontally and promotes grassroots and collective solutions to problems.
The City of Aberdeen has never acknowledged or shown anything but disdain for us and our community for years.
WHEREAS, on a daily basis, various groups visit the city to distribute free food to unsheltered individuals in areas with no available water for handwashing, no restrooms, and with the meals being provided using disposable containers that are later discarded on the public streets and sidewalks; and
We DO NOT visit Aberdeen, we occupy this stolen land along with the vulnerable unhoused within our community. We live here. We provide our own handwashing station, trash can, and hand sanitizer for our meals. If the City is concerned about the problem they have created in regards to the sanitation situation at camp then they have no one to blame but themselves. They have removed all the restrooms, handwashing stations, replaced all the downtown garbage cans with smaller ones, and removed the dumpster from camp numerous times, in an attempt to manufacture these very problems.
The next problem they seek to manufacture is the increase in theft at grocery stores that will follow any limitations on the free food being made accessible to those in need. It is people’s right to feed themselves, we simply do it for free.
WHEREAS, the food is typically distributed out of illegally parked vehicles parked in the public right-of-way and served under questionable sanitary conditions; and
In our years of operation we have received but one ticket for obstructing a roadway that was thrown out in court, if this ordinance is being written to address something already illegal than it seems to be redundant. Let the officers cite us if we are supposedly illegally parked while feeding.
WHEREAS, groups of unsheltered individuals tend to gather, live, and sleep in the areas where these daily food distributions take place, resulting in an increase in unsanitary conditions and breeding conditions for outbreaks of communicable diseases, which negatively impact the health, safety and welfare of surrounding businesses and residents; and
The area where people camp was determined by the Mayor himself, when the City evicted people from the Temporary Alternative Shelter Location behind City Hall, where people had been forced to camp after an even earlier eviction from their long-term River Camp in 2019. They were told to relocate to the area under the bridge after TASL, again under the transparent veil of Health & Safety, providing cover for the same eliminationist ideology that the authors of this draft ordinance have imposed on it.
We conducted our meals at the central location of the Aberdeen Public Library, before the carport we used for sheltering our Sunday meals was ripped out and replaced with a fence designed to keep us out. This was due to the complaints of city council members such as Debi Ann Pieraccini. This, plus the other recent changes and sweeps regarding the library, has effectively removed the library from the dwindling list of public spaces the unhoused can spend their days in and utilize resources to improve their lives and get off the street.
It was only after being forced out of the library that we decided to move our meals to the camp which clearly already existed at that time. So again, no, if the city was so concerned with the “Health & Safety” of this population they would have directed more funding towards low income housing, treatment and harm reduction services, mental and behavioral health services, free health clinics, food access and nutrition programs, education programs, and a plethora of other social services that are desperately needed in our area such as the ones proposed by The Blackflower Collective. Instead they focus on the eradication of the homeless, not homelessness, they could care less about the root of these problems and meaningful solutions to them so long as they can sweep the problem under the rug and out of the public eye, such is the root of these eradication politics.
WHEREAS, the Aberdeen City Council desires to balance the rights of those well-intentioned individuals and groups who distribute food to the unsheltered with the property rights of businesses and residents in the City, such that the areas of the City that are the location of daily food distributions are not permitted to become a sanitary nuisance; and
The ONLY thing the City of Aberdeen has EVER been concerned with since the collapse of the lumber industry is continuing to gentrify this town into a tourist trap, pushing the poor and vulnerable out however they can, unhoused or not. There is no one who believes that the rights of the mutual aid volunteers or the unhoused is at the top of the priority list for the City of Aberdeen. They have received multiple lawsuits for their cruel treatment of this community already for their attempts to make legislation just like this like they had done in 2019.
WHEREAS, it is the intent of the City Council in enacting this Ordinance to improve the public’s quality of life including the quality of life of the City’s unsheltered population, to maintain and further expand the economic vitality of the city and to ensure the general health, safety and welfare of the public; and
Nothing in this ordinance can be construed to improve the resident’s quality of life. It is not designed to add to the health & safety of the unhoused but to take away from it, it is a proposition that seeks not to preserve health and safety but to dictate who has access to it. This ordinance would make our lives harder and more expensive. It would effectively shut down all group feedings including ours and would deprive us and our community of invaluable gatherings and nutrition as well as removing a critical support structure for those actively trying to get off the streets.
WHEREAS, the City has conducted 5 community meetings, have received approximately 1,000 written responses from the community in order to discuss issues that the City needs to address on refuse, feces, food waste, etc. within the City of Aberdeen; and
Where is any of your supporting data? This is the exact list of problems the City has been deliberately manufacturing for several years. Stop blaming the entirety of our impoverished population, houseless or not, for every problem that happens in this town.
If there are written comments then publish them publicly. Show your work. 1,000 anonymous responses does not make up a community or even a majority, we have received far more than 1,000 comments commending our work. What about the content of those responses, are the people who explicitly state that they wish the city would execute drug addicts counted in these comments, what arguments do they make for their cases? Let us read these comments.
NOW, THEREFORE, BE IT ORDAINED BY THE MAYOR AND CITY COUNCIL OF THE CITY OF ABERDEEN:
SECTION 1. NEW CODE SECTION ADOPTED. The following section 8.15 is hereby added to the Aberdeen Municipal Code:
[NEW] 8.15.010 –
Purpose. The City of Aberdeen is committed to balancing the rights of those well-intentioned individuals and groups who distribute food to the unsheltered with the property rights of businesses and residents in the City, such that the areas of the City that are the location of daily food distributions are not permitted to become a sanitary nuisance.
What rights are being infringed upon by our community meals? Again, a lack of any supporting data makes this ordinance hard to analyze.
The City speaks here of rights and intentions. Our intention is to continue feeding the unhoused and providing them with community regardless of the ordinances or laws you pass. You will never stop us from doing this work, not with all the fines in the world. You will always protect to status quo we seek to end. You will always prioritize capital and business over the lives of real people in this community. We will always show up to protect our friends and family in the streets, however that looks.
[NEW] 8.15.020 – Definitions. The following words, terms, and phrases, when used in this Section, shall have the meanings ascribed to them except where the context clearly indicates a different meaning;
A. Director means the Director of Community Development including his/her designee.
The Grays Harbor Public Health Department already exists to protect the health and well-being of this County, if this is truly a Public Health issue, than this is not a City issue. Excuses of public health and safety have been used extensively to target the unhoused population, especially when organizing the sweeps of homeless encampments. Pray tell, how it is in the best of interest of the “Health & Safety” of the houseless to consistently rob them of their only means of shelter from the elements and of their personal belongings? It serves no other purpose than to kill off this population by doing everything possible to prevent the impoverished from obtaining the means to support themselves be it through mutual aid, social services, or personal betterment.
B. Group Feeding means an event intended to attract, attracting or likely to attract people, including distributors and servers for the delivery or service of food in a public space, excluded from this definition are activities of City permitted, licenses or contracted concessionaires, lessees, or licensees.
This bans any event likely to attract people? Does the City of Aberdeen think it can regulate the ability of the people to assemble? It is our right to do so by the very constitution they supposedly worship.
This is meant to punish an activity as old as humanity itself, the act of gathering over a meal with your friends in public. A picnic, a cookout, grilling in the park, will these need permits now too, How about meals on wheels programs or the summer lunch program for kids? The City does not possess the power to regulate this activity nor should it. Why should the right to assemble be vetted by a arbiter who’s primary goal is to restrict those rights?
C. Public Space means any dedicated or undedicated public street, highway, sidewalk, park, parkway, right-of-way, alley, public ways, or any other public places within the City, including city-owned buildings or city-property. Public Space shall also include the buildings of any governmental agency within the City including federal, state and county owned buildings.
The Council and Mayor do not OWN this City. Public spaces are ours, and coming together to eat food in them is our ritual.
D. Street or Streets means the surface, the air space above the surface and the area below the surface of any public street, highway, road, boulevard, concourse, driveway, freeway, thoroughfare, parkway, sidewalk, bridge, tunnel, park, waterway, dock, bulkhead, wharf, pier, court, lane, path, alleyway, drive, circle, easement, or any other public right-of-way or public place, including public utility easements dedicated for compatible uses, or any other property in which the city holds any kind of property interest or over which the city exercises any type of lawful control and any temporary or permanent fixtures or improvements located thereon including city-owned buildings or city property.
To make an act such as eating in public a permitted and regulated activity is to deny the very existence of the unhoused to feed themselves. As the decision made in the 9th circuit court of appeals, Martin V Boise clearly states, it is unconstitutional to PUNISH people for conducting the activities of living in public when there are no meaningful alternatives. This includes preparing, cooking, and eating food. Whether you do it as a group or not makes no difference.
[NEW] 8.15.030 – Permit Criteria
A. Except for activities of governmental agency within the scope of its governmental authority or unless specifically permitted to do so by a permit or approval issued pursuant to this Section by the City Council or the City Administrator, as applicable, it shall be unlawful to undertake group feedings in public spaces unless the person(s) serving the food:
(Would your next outdoor food-based event be subject to such a permit process or is this just for the unhoused?)
1. Obtains a group feeding permit issued by the director. Not going to happen. The director shall issue a group feeding permit based upon the following criteria:
a. The application must be submitted at least two (2) business days prior to the planned group feeding event. Nope
b. The application must contain the following information: Never
i. the name of the individual(s) or organizations that will be serving or distributing food;
ii. the date(s) when food is anticipated to be served or distributed;
iii. the times of day when food service and distribution is anticipated to be served or distributed on each date listed in the notice;
iv. identification of the location of where the food will be distributed; and
v. the approximate or expected number of food preparers and servers on the site where the food is anticipated to be served or distributed and the approximate or expected number of individuals that will be served.
This is where the true intentions of the City are shown, the intent is to identify us and our volunteers, something the City if Aberdeen has been overly concerned with for years.This is their latest attempt to make us identify ourselves to them. Nothing in this permitting process is designed to assist a group in keeping a clean and safe environment for feeding, or to ensure that they do so. All they want is this identifying information in order to legally harass volunteers with fines and arrests made possible by this ordinance and pass that information on to those who would harass us by other means. As seen below, if this information is not provided or “improperly” submitted then you can be banned from receiving a permit for up to one year. Who does this help? How does the City having this information help keep anyone at camp safer?
2. Organizations who submit applications for a group feeding permit through individuals without those individuals disclosing their association with the organization will be subject to being precluded from receiving a group feeding permit for a period of up to twelve (12) months. 3. The permit holder shall remove or cause the removal of substantially all trash or debris from the feeding site that was generated by the service or distribution of food and deposit the trash or debris in the provided dumpster. 4. The city will designate the area where group feedings will be permitted. a. The City Administrator is authorized to amend the feeding location(s) from time to time and as needed, within the City Administrator’s sole discretion, to best balance the needs of all parties involved in group feedings.
The needs of “all parties involved” could never be determined by a sole individual, certainly not one employed by the City. We operate based on consensus, not by fiat. Any location determined by the City would likely serve to make our work more difficult and harder for people in need to attend as well as intentionally generate more problems for the wider public. We ALREADY remove the trash from our meals and dispose of it properly. You CANNOT simply look at the trash around town, deposited by all manner of people housed and unhoused alike, and blame it on us. This pattern of casting blame on us where none is deserved would not end because we applied for a permit and would only exclude us from receiving such permits for a full year.
[NEW] 8.15.040 – Penalties. A violation of this Section shall be enforced against the individual or organization by the issuance of a civil code enforcement fine in the amount of $250.00 for a first occurrence and a civil fine in the amount of $500.00 for each subsequent occurrence. Repeat violations in any, one (1) calendar year may also subject the repeat violator to being precluded from receiving group feeding permits for a period of up to twelve (12) months.
Chehalis River Mutual Aid Network is not a legal entity or a formal organization in any sense. It is a loose collection of individuals who choose to operate on a shared set of values and principles to achieve a common goal. Our individual volunteers should not be made to identify themselves to the City or face this sort of monetary punishment or public shaming. The intent of this ordinance is clear, to punish our group for feeding the people who the City wants so badly to eradicate.
SECTION 2. SEVERABILITY. Should any section, subsection, paragraph, sentence, clause or phrase of this ordinance or its application to any person or situation be declared unconstitutional or invalid for any reason, such decision shall not affect the validity of the remaining portions of this ordinance or its application to any other person or situation.
The City of Aberdeen knows all about unconstitutional ordinances.
SECTION 3. PUBLICATION BY SUMMARY. The Finance Director is authorized and directed to publish the attached summary in lieu of this ordinance.
SECTION 4. EFFECTIVE DATE. This ordinance shall take effect thirty (30) days after its passage, signing, and publication.
COME AT US!
PASSED and APPROVED this ____ day of _______________________, 2020. Better Not.
Pete Schave, Mayor
1407 Pacific Ave
Cell: 360-580-3776
City Hall: 360-537-3227
mayor@aberdeenwa.gov
Write or call Mayor Pete and tell him to vote against this draconian ordinance and to stop harassing us and the unhoused community in Aberdeen.
Sign Chehalis River Mutual Aid Network’s Change.org petition to the City at linktr.ee/crmutualaidnet
ATTEST:
Patricia Soule, Finance Director
In closing, we would like those of you who have solidarity with the struggles of the working poor to search your hearts and ask yourself if this ordinance really helps to solve any of the current problems facing our area. Does forcing the residents of Aberdeen to apply for permits to cook food in public really help to crack down on the levels of littering? Do the small possible benefits outweigh the serious harms to the unhoused community? The target of this ordinance couldn’t be clearer, Chehalis River Mutual Aid Network and Food Not Bombs do nothing but offer free food to those in need. No one rights are infringed upon, this is a callous attempt to shut down a vital support network in this community. We have no intention of informing you about our identities or asking permission to conduct our community meals. We also have no intention of paying your fees or fines in regards to failure to ask for a permit. If you cant find it within yourselves to stop this harassment then know that we intend to fight this ordinance by any means necessary.
To those who wrote and advocate for this ordinance, you can fuck off. Your actions towards eliminating our friends and family will not stand. We will out organize and out mobilize you in this fight, as our values such as solidarity, compassion, and mutual aid hold our community together while yours fractures over and over again, consuming itself from within. Your hollow values of exclusion, wealth, and authority will never tide you over in the long term. You punch down and offer false solution to manufactured problems. We punch up, at those in power, and offer real visions of a new and better world. You seek power and control over others. We seek the true liberation of desire and self-determination. Our revolution is based in riotous joy, while yours stagnates in fear. You will never win.
And now we would like to speak to those reading this who are not a part of the institution known as The City of Aberdeen, and find themselves in opposition to it’s malicious machinations:
“Maybe you missed this, but you’re not in a dialogue. Your views are beside the point. Argue all you want—your adversaries are glad to see you waste your breath. Better yet if you protest: they’d rather you carry a sign than do anything. They’ll keep you talking as long as they can, just to tire you out—to buy time.
They intend to force their agenda on you. That’s what all the guns are for, what the police and drones and surveillance cameras are for, what the FBI and CIA and NSA are for, what all those laws and courts and executive orders are for. It’s what their church is for, what those racist memes are for, what online harassment and bullying are for. It’s what gay bashings and church burnings are for.
This is not a dialogue. How could you be so naïve? A dialogue—from which some of the participants can be deported at any time? A dialogue—in which one side keeps shooting and incarcerating the other side? A dialogue—in which a few people own all the networks and radio stations and printing presses, while the rest have to make do with markers and cardboard signs? A dialogue, really?
You’re not in a dialogue. You’re in a power struggle. All that matters is how much force you can bring to bear on your adversaries to defend yourself from them. You can bet that if you succeed, they will accuse you of breaking off the dialogue, of violating their free speech. They will try to lure you back into conversation, playing for time until they need no more stratagems to keep you passive while they put the pieces in place for tyranny.
This isn’t a dialogue—it’s a war. They’re gambling that you won’t realize this until it’s too late. If freedom is important to you, if you care about all the people marked for death and deportation, start taking action.”