From Dave Schwab at Green Party Watch:
Fort Lauderdale, Florida has recently made national news for making it a crime to feed the homeless in public, and repeatedly arresting a 90 year-old WWII veteran for feeding the homeless. Now a young Green named Didier Ortiz is running for Fort Lauderdale City Commission to revoke the “homeless hate laws” and bring progressive reforms like a $15/hour minimum wage, ‘ban the box’ to end job discrimination against ex-convicts, and body cameras for police officers.
From the candidate’s Indiegogo page:
“I want Fort Lauderdale to be a city I can be proud of,” says Didier Ortiz, candidate for City Commission in the city’s District #3. “The primary is next year on February 10 [with a March 10 runoff if no one candidate gets 50% + 1], and I need your support so that we can begin to restore pride to this once beautiful city.”
The renowned tourist mecca —the “yachting and sport fishing capital of the world” — has gained recent notoriety for making it illegal to feed the homeless in public, and then repeatedly arresting a 90-year-old WWII veteran and activist Arnold Abbot for defying this heartless edict. “This is a disgrace,” says Ortiz. “The poverty level in this city of 170,000 is 44.3% greater than the National average and the violent crime rate is nearly double that of the rest of Florida. In a city that is 25% Latino, over 14,000 properties are in foreclosure. So the city drives people from their homes. Then it keeps people from feeding them. 25% of this city’s population is Latino, and this is devastating to us.”
Ortiz grew up in Fort Lauderdale and went to school and university there. As a youth he rode the bus everywhere, getting to know his community. “One constant theme,” he recalls, “was seeing so very many single mothers of color raising 3 to 4 children at a time. I am running now to help the youth in my community.”