Denver
Since when is feeding the homeless in Denver’s Civic Center an unacceptable idea? Can the heart of the city be that heartless?
Recently, The Denver Post wrote that Denver’s Parks and Recreation Department would soon prohibit the feeding of the homeless in the park. Their rationale seems to stem from a legal concept that is basically non-American: Everything not permitted is prohibited.
But that’s contrary to our American common law. Based on English common law, our system holds, in general, that everything not prohibited is permitted. Its opposite, based on the Napoleonic Code, says “prohibited unless permitted.”
That, of course, puts a lot of power in the hands of the few: those who grant permission, and their bureaucratic cohorts. Once something is on the books, no matter how well-intentioned or seemingly insipid, it can be abused – simply by being upheld.
That seems to be the case with feeding the homeless in Civic Center Park. According to reporter Dave Migoya of The Denver Post, the safety manager for Denver’s Department of Parks and Recreation, Ron Sanders, says there is no city regulation dealing with the mass feeding of people at a public park. Further, Migoya wrote that Sanders said, “Since there’s no allowance for it, then it can’t be done.”
If it is not permitted, it is prohibited.
Not coincidentally, that kind of Napoleonic thinking was derived from Roman law. I’m sure it must have been hard to buck the system way back then, too. But there are some provocative precedents. Like Jesus, and his feeding of the poor.
The stereotypical bureaucrat’s statement that “Sorry, but that’s the regulation,” can be a stifling gag to creativity, community progress, and, as in this case, compassion.
New, very creative ideas are traditionally scorned. That’s why science historian Thomas Kuhn wrote that most new scientific paradigms depend, for their acceptance, on the next generation. But it helps if a contemporary “mover and shaker” can accept and promote the new, if often incomplete, theory.
Sometimes, on a social or political scale, this paradigmatic process can take very little time. A guillotine, a bullet or ice pick to the brain, or explosives set on prime targets. Remember when, in Afghanistan in 2001, the Taliban blew up those two centuries-old enormous statues of the Buddha? Despite world protest, a mullah said that the Buddhas contravened the tenets of Islam, and must go. His minions made it so.
Minions can be deadly – whether with C-4 packed with ball bearings in Baghdad, killing the innocent, or with bureaucratese, choking the human spirit by creating, or simply upholding, unnecessary – sometimes plainly stupid – regulations.
What happened to “permitted unless prohibited”? That’s the American way, I think. Otherwise, you end up time-traveling back to 1933 Germany. Or tripping sideways to a parallel universe like North Korea.
There, it’s all about control.
And that’s what I think the prospective ban on feeding the poor in Civic Center is all about. If you view the homeless as a threat, you might naturally want to control that “problem.” And that’s what Sanders, from the Parks and Recreation Department, wants to do. He said, “Feeding them is not the issue. The concerns for Civic Center … go way beyond this; there are drug problems there.”
To those for whom homelessness is a threat equivalent to an illegal drug problem, I’d recommend spending some quality time with the bright, caring staff at the Colorado Coalition for the Homeless. And as a member of the Denver Commission to End Homelessness, I know its staff is at the leading edge of homeless information and accommodation.
I also know Denver’s Road Home is in a tight spot about feeding the homeless in the public places. They want to do what’s right, but they’re city employees. They do quite well at getting people together. However, they can’t recommend as though truly independent.
But I can.
Just as movers and shakers can facilitate a paradigm shift, so can the Parks and Rec’s anti-homeless interpretation be changed. Jeanne Robb, in whose City Council district the Civic Center resides, and Doug Linkhart, councilman at-large, are both members of the Denver Commission to End Homelessness. They know more, and care more, about homelessness than most.
Can’t they urge the City Council to somehow accommodate feeding the homeless in accessible public places, like Civic Center?
Can’t they keep the “heart” in the heart of the city?
Stephen Terence Gould (stgould@peoplepc.com) is an independent scholar in Denver.
