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Orlando Man Becomes First Arrested in City for Sharing Food with the Homeless


Eric Montanez is led away by the Orlando police after being arrested for the "crime" of sharing food with the homeless. photo by RAYMA JENKINS

Update: A plea of "Not Guilty" was entered for Eric on May 4, and a pre-trial hearing was held on Thurs., June 7. About 30 comrades, friends, family members and homeless people came to the courthouse to show their support for Eric. Eric's trial will be held on Oct. 8 and 9. Orlando Food Not Bombs, including Eric, continues to share food inside Lake Eola Park every week.


Orlando Food Not Bombs shared food outside the Orange County Courthouse on May 4. Eric Montanez is in the center (in the blue shirt).

Eric Montanez, a member of Orlando Food Not Bombs (FNB), became on Wed., April 4 the first person and the first member of Orlando FNB arrested for violating the City of Orlando's "large group feedings" ordinance. This measure, essentially, bans sharing food with homeless people in 42 parks in downtown Orlando within a two-mile radius of Orlando City Hall. It's driven by bigotry against the homeless and the desire for profits and gentrification by downtown developers and business interests. The ordinance's main proponents are Orlando Mayor Buddy Dyer and City Commissioner Patty Sheehan (whose district includes Lake Eola Park where Orlando FNB shares).

Eric's arrest contradicts a statement the Orlando police made to the Orlando Sentinel (March 22) –"police say an ordinance adopted last summer to end feeding the homeless in city parks is NOT being enforced until a court rules on its legality." (Emphasis added by us) Of course, Orlando FNB and other groups concerned with helping the homeless have learned through hard experience that they can't trust Orlando's public officials, employees, lawyers or cops. They say one thing to lawyers for FNB, homeless advocates such as S.T.O.P.–Stop the Ordinance Partnership and the media, and then their actions contradict their promises. The March 22 article was about a news conference that the Central Florida ACLU, ACORN, Orlando FNB and others held outside Orlando police headquarters to denounce Orlando police harassment in the African-American community and Orlando police harassment of FNB. The harassment experienced by FNB has included parking tickets received by three FNB members on March 14 while food was being unloaded from their cars, coupled with videotaping of the drivers and their vehicles and license plates. (The videotaping reoccurred on March 28.) Lawyers from the ACLU posted $250 bond for Eric and he was able to sleep in his own bed the night he was arrested.

Below our links to articles from the Orlando Sentinel and a report from a local TV station about Eric's arrest. Lawyers for the ACLU are going to pursue legal remedies to the harassment of and surveillance of Orlando Food Not Bombs and enforcement of the ordinance–pending the federal court trial in June of 2008 on the lawsuit. (That lawsuit was filed in October of 2006 by Orlando FNB and the First Vagabonds Church of God.) Orlando FNB started sharing at Lake Eola Park in May of 2005; however, between Aug. 2006 and Jan. 2007 the group shared on a street corner (Osceola and Pine) about a block from the park. The group decided to go back into the park because of police harassment at the street corner location and based upon our and our legal team's assessment of the provisions of the ordinance. Since being back in the park Orlando FNB has been been sharing with multiple groups, including Orlando CodePink Women for Peace and the Orlando chapter of the Young Communist League– allies who are group members of S.T.O.P. If the number of groups sharing food is divided by the number of people with whom food is being shared, the City is wrong in its apparent belief that the number of people being shared with by Eric or anyone else has risen to the level necessary to trigger the permitting requirements of the "large group feedings" ordinance.

Orlando had a record-setting 49 murders last year and more than a dozen so far this year, but the OPD could spare the police resources necessary to surveil Orlando Food Not Bombs and its allies, to harass and to try to intimidate them and to arrest Eric for the "crime" of sharing food with hungry and homeless people. His arrest involved the use of at least a dozen OPD officers: 2 undercover cops videotaping, 8 to arrest Eric and 2 supervisors--at a time when it has been proposed that the OPD should hire 75 more officers to help it cope with a spiraling violent crime rate. That says volumes about the City of Orlando's callous attitude toward the homeless, its bias in favor of the affluent and well connected, and its misplaced priorities. Orlando FNB and its allies will not be intimidated, and will be back in the park every week to share food with the people who need it.

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