This is a short interview at the Gainesville farmer's market downtown with Joe Cenker of Coalition to End the Meal Limit Now, held following the conclusion of a protest march. I had a great deal of trouble with audio and will try to correct that next time.
The group had marched in front of the Sun Center buildings owned by McGurn Management, developers who promoted the 130-meal limit at soup kitchens like the St. Francis House, and at the Hippodrome. The meal limit preventing the serving of more than 130 meals in a day at soup kitchens was passed by the city a couple of years ago. Cenker's group, along with other advocates for the homeless like Pat Fitzpatrick (subject of a documentary named "Civil Indigent", to which Cenker refers in the above clip), have been fighting the meal limit for the past two years.
When i got there, the picketers were finishing their last few minutes of protesting at the Hippodrome, and by the time I parked, a few minutes after 5 pm, they had dispersed back to the Farmer's Market, where the Civic Media Center and others had tables with literature on various subjects, including this topic. Most of the grounds were covered with tables focused on selling foods and crafts, however.
Apparently there have been a number of these marches in the past. Before I caught up with the marchers to ask them about the point of the march and what i missed, I first went up to the Hippodrome, where I'd last seen people picketing.
A couple of men were standing near the street there, smirking about how few they claimed the marchers had been, claiming only "five" people had been there, which I know wasn't true because I had passed the march before parking. I mentioned thinking that most cities have had soup kitchens for the poor for decades, at least since the Great Depression, and that I had never heard of people trying to stop charitable feeding of the poor and hungry.
I asked the men what they thought. One answered that because he had "a Catholic background", he disapproved of soup kitchens, telling me that "something needed to be done" about these people going to the soup kitchens and quoting the Bible as saying that "Jesus said, 'teach them to fish'".
I was aghast, having both a Methodist and Catholic background on the various sides of my family, and mentioned that the first soup kitchen was probably run by Jesus, given his dividing up of the fish into enough for all, and I told him to check further on all that was said in the Bible by Jesus on the subject of helping the poor and hungry. (Example - Matthew 5:3 -- Jesus answered, 'If you want to be perfect, go, sell your possessions and give to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven. Then come, follow me.') The only thing I remember in the Bible about Jesus speaking of fish was telling his followers to become "fishers of men". His followers didn't need to be taught "how to fish" because many of them were fishermen.
It seemed odd to hear a person blaming the Catholics or Jesus for his own stingy attitude toward the poor, since some of the most ardent advocates of helping the poor happen to have been Catholics historically. I will assume I didn't accidentally run into one of the "McGurns" at that moment when the man standing in front of the Hippodrome laughing at the picketers who had left was telling me his view of how Catholicism, according to him, favors telling the poor to get a job instead of expecting any aid or charity. (Too bad I did not get these two men on camera.)
I left those two men and caught up with the marchers who were handing out literature at the farmer's market afterward and interviewed the organizer, Joe Cenker, seen above.
Check out the Civil Indigent trailer Mr. Cenker mentions online at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FXAOdGmYCEQ
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St. Francis House in Gainesville, Floridaby bambookoi2,492 views
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