This is fascinating. A lot of you know that I was, for years, ADID's social impact director. I helped formulate ADID's formal policies on public food distribution. I have strong feelings about this stuff. But this situation is ... complicated.

A thread. 1/ https://twitter.com/AtlantaJustice/status/1355543544023425027

Let's start here: Atlanta is desperately, horrifyingly unequal, leaving thousands of people in Dickensian poverty while we get all worked up about Ludacris' car getting stolen or metal detectors at Phipps Plaza. /2

Poverty here is crushing in ways that people who grew up in middle-class families -- in working-class families -- simply cannot understand without direct contact. And direct contact doesn't happen here any more. Morningside may as well be Mars for a kid in Lakewood Heights. /3

At least 25,000 in Atlanta are living in substandard housing -- that is, an illegal rooming house, in someone's garage or squatting on abandoned property. About 50,000 children attend APS. About 3,000 are homeless. Meanwhile at least 6,000 children attend private schools. /4

Before the pandemic, we had multiple catastrophes of mental health and substance abuse failure compounding the problem and driving homelessness here. The people experiencing homelessness in and around Woodruff Park are, generally, victims of this institutional failure. /5

But institutional failures, in my view, generally aren't fixed with outdoor soup kitchens. I get where ADID is coming from here. I would have been delivering this message forthrightly myself, if I were still working there.

I would also expect to be told to go fuck myself. /6

Here's where it gets complicated. I don't think what Food Not Bombs is doing in Woodruff Park is intended to solve the problem. It's a protest. It is a public shaming. And an effective shaming, frankly. /7

Food Not Bombs is also utterly consistent in ways that other groups dropping food on Downtown Atlanta are not. They're there every week, same place and time. That allows for state-funded mental health teams to build long-term relationships.

Except, those teams are AWOL. /8

Consistency distinguishes Food Not Bombs from the drop-in church groups who serve food irregularly, committing to nothing for the community, acting largely in service to their own spiritual fulfilment (and social media) while ignoring real need. Performative charity. /9

Food Not Bombs is also EXPLICITLY covered by a federal appellate court decision rendered in a courthouse not 300 yards from Woodruff Park. Enforcing the feeding permit on them would cost Fulton County $100K+ in legal fees and probably lose.
https://media.ca11.uscourts.gov/opinions/pub/files/201616808.pdf
/10

ADID runs Woodruff Park. It also needs to be responsive to business owners downtown and its residents, many of whom are justifiably freaked out because @AtlantaJustice is shielding Food Not Bombs with armed guards after far-right militias called it "antifa" and threatened it. /11

The way to resolve that problem would be for @FaniWillisForDA to charge Chris Hill of the III% Georgia Security Force with aggravated assault and violating the state militia statute, and alleviate the threat.

Alas.

/12

I worry about heavy-handedness here. But if ADID didn't lay down a marker here with Food Not Bombs, it would damage its ability to have more substantive, difficult, conversations with other fly-by-night feeding groups that are much more problematic. I get it.

/13

ADID funds a position at HOPE Atlanta. Janika Robinson at HOPE works closely with people experiencing homelessness in Woodruff Park. She clears more cases in a month herself than a lot of agencies in Atlanta clear in a year.

https://www.facebook.com/HOPEatlanta/posts/our-outreach-team-member-janika-robinson-was-recognized-today-at-georgia-state-u/1101080960100742/

/14

Food Not Bombs is a condition that the social services agencies of Georgia need to adapt to, not the other way around. The way to get rid of Food Not Bombs is for the agencies to aggressively partner with this protest to render it irrelevant, not the other way around. /15

I will fight toxic charity until I die.

I don't think Food Not Bombs qualifies.

Knowing people on both sides of this argument, I think I can say that everyone's intentions and character are honorable, and that the difference of opinion is genuine and reasonable. Do good. /end

An addendum.

@AtlantaJustice is directly organizing the food distribution here, not Food Not Bombs. The point stands.