Local Meal Provider Cutting Back Due To Funding Cuts In Jacksonville, Florida

10/5/2007 6:30am report By Grayson Kamm
First Coast News

JACKSONVILLE, FL -- Not long after sunrise, folks ate what may be the final Friday breakfast ever served at the Clara White Mission.

You'll remember property tax cuts ordered by the Florida Legislature impacted Jacksonville's city budget -- and forced local leaders to make cuts. A lot of organizations are now feeling the pinch.

One of them is the Clara White Mission in LaVilla. It has been serving meals to the hungry for more than 100 years. Workers and volunteers there now feed about 500 people a day.

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In my earlier days of advocating, I personally went inside Clara White with a hidden camera to get pictures of what was going on inside. I'm glad I did, because it was a chance to show what a great, clean, and wonderful group of people and facility they've got there.

Local word is that they'll still feed three days a week, Monday through Wedsnesday. What this means for both unsheltered and sheltered residents of Jacksonville is they'll have to head to either the City Rescue Mission's evening meal line, or to The Sulzbacher Center.

Both of these options have in the past actually run out of food serving 'outside' people, and with local legal battles over the feeding of homeless without a permit having caused fire on both sides of the fence...this looks like a battle coming up, especially in dealing with the most basic survival instinct of all, hunger.

Not that I care. My daughters yesterday were part of an outreach that took food to the streets in Jacksonville. They did it in a responsible group, they did it without trash being thrown around, and they did it without being seen by...

pricks who beat their chests online in local forums, and fingerpoint at people they see as not as good as them.

Jacksonville, here's your sign. Many of you vented about feeding the homeless. Many of you vented about taxes. If you don't let people do charitable work...

...don't bitch when you're kitchen larder is broken in to while you're out.

Let the people who want to help, do that. You don't really want a mob of 2000 hungry starving people being pointed in your local block's direction...

...do you?

Then shut up.