Selby Five Points Park and the Case of the Missing Benches

Recently Sarasota officials, vexed by the rallying bitching of downtown condo owners, removed the benches from the Five Points Park which is right across the public library and the Starbucks. Seemed to me like the park was a popular place to enjoy an afternoon lunch with a good book and coffee but apparently the park harbored a far darker element....the homeless! To solve the homeless situation (the homeless have an annoying tendency to want to sit and be treated like humans and believe that they ought to have the right to sit on public benches) city officials yanked out all the benches.

In protest a few citizens gathered yesterday with lawn chairs to sit and chat and to generally show support to the homeless and to demonstrate to the city how ridiculous it is to remove park benches. Seriously, sweeping social change does not start with park benches.

The turn out included a nice mixture of college kids, everyday shmoes, rich ladies, and even some of Sarasota's homeless showed up. Keeping my earlier post about being fearful of strangers in mind I made it a point to talk to a few people. I met four really great people at the park who let me snap a bunch of photos of them. Their photos and my impressions of them will be in a later post.

When Harlock and I arrived at the park we saw a few news crews, I'm not sure who or where they hailed from but the reporters all seemed a little annoyed at having to be out in the heat.

I'm not sure how much publicity this lunacy will receive or what good it will ultimately do but the fact is this, Sarasota has a reputation for being just down right nasty to the homeless and poor and the actions in Five Points Park is just an extension of that fact. 

There is a petition to reinstall the benches in Five Points Park. While park benches will not solve the situation of poverty and homelessness it is a point, a start and besides it's just stupidity.

The petition ---> http://www.change.org/petitions/stop-sarasota-from-pulling-the-chair-out-from-under-homeless-people-2

I'll be posting more pictures from the lawn chair event including portraits of the four I met pretty soon.