90 Year Old Florida Man Facing Jail Time For Breaking The Law By Feeding The Homeless

Fox – Fort Lauderdale police say Arnold Abbott violated a new city law, but the 90-year-old homeless advocate says his only crime was to “love thy neighbor.” Abbott was charged Sunday along with two local pastors with violating the city’s new ordinance that effectively bans giving out food in public. He faces 60 days in jail and a $500 fine, and he intends to get cited again Wednesday night, when he sets out to feed some of the Florida city’s estimated 10,000 homeless on a public beach. “I know that I will be arrested again, and I am prepared for that,” Abbott said by phone from his office at Love Thy Neighbor, Inc., a nonprofit he established in honor of his wife, Maureen, after her death in a car accident 23 years ago. “I am my brother’s keeper, and what they are doing is just heartless.” Fort Lauderdale passed an ordinance late last month that included a slate of new regulations on where and how groups can provide food to homeless people. The vote made the city the 13th in the nation since 2012 to pass restrictions on where people can feed the homeless, according to a report by the National Coalition for the Homeless. “The homeless people come here for the weather,” he said. “They know they won’t freeze to death in Fort Lauderdale.” Abbott, a World War II veteran who won two Purple Hearts as an infantryman, said he won’t stop the fight he has dedicated to his wife.

I love Ft. Lauderdale putting up signs that are like “don’t feed the homeless people” and gramps is out there tossing out bread to them like they are damn birds. And what happens when you feed the birds? They forget how to feed themselves and then they die when the weird old guy strokes out and dies. So he’s actually hurting the birds..I mean homeless people, by doing this. And that’s all Fort Lauderdale is trying to tell him. But then he’s all like hallelujah, Jesus wants me to feed these people, and it’s kind of hard to argue with that. I mean, who are you to tell him what Jesus did or didn’t tell him? And he has not one, but two Purple Hearts from WW2? I mean, maybe just let the guy pass out food to the great unwashed, shit. I guess he’s earned that right? But at the same time, sometimes the birds are best left unfed so they’ll go earn their own food. And the ones that don’t weren’t meant to be birds anyway.

All I think I learned is homeless people and birds are synonymous with each other. I love that the smart homeless people go South for the Winter. Makes me wonder why all homeless people don’t do that. And there has to be a way to profit off them, right? Take a bus into downtown DC in December. Trade the homeless people a trip to Florida for some labor on an orange farm once they get there. Give them a place to live and food to eat. Put money in their little Starbucks cup if they do a good job. Everyone wins.