About a week out from Tulsa Food Not Bombs’ court date, dozens of people gathered at Heirloom Rustic Ales Tuesday evening to write letters to city officials.
It marked the group’s latest effort to convince the city to drop charges against four of its members who were arrested during a food and resource distribution event in May.
Tulsa Food Not Bombs (TFNB) describes itself as a mutual aid and anti-war protest organization. The manner of their protest is a weekly food and resource sharing event. Some of the resources include clothes, tents or hygiene products.
However, for the past six years the group has done so without obtaining required city permits. They argue they don’t need to since they consider their work to be protests protected by the First Amendment.
During a May 6 event, police issued citations to the group for obstruction and operating without the necessary documents.
“They started shifting from this event to, we are protesting, so they are shifting to now this is protected First Amendment speech where there is a very fine line between going out there and setting up tables and distributing food or protesting,” Capt. Richard Meulenberg, a spokesman for Tulsa police, told News on 6 following the arrests.
The Eagle reached out to TPD this week to learn more about the arrests and the reasons why but Meulenberg declined to comment. He instead pointed us to other statements he’s given to the media about the situation.
In the months since, the group has encouraged supporters to contact the city attorney, councilors, mayor and other officials and ask for the charges to be dropped.
While he’s aware of what’s going on, Mayor Monroe Nichols told The Eagle he doesn’t have the power to drop any charges.
“I’ve gotten the emails, and you know I can appreciate where people are coming from thinking that’s something that I can do,” Nichols said. “There are reasons why we have these checks and balances. I don’t think anybody wants the mayor deciding who’s guilty and who’s innocent, or the mayor deciding who goes to court and who doesn’t.”
He said the city is still open to finding an avenue for the Food Not Bombs group to operate.
“Our focus is going to continue to be building good partnerships with every community member who wants to help serve this community in a variety of ways,” he said.
Nichols added he’s met with the group in the past and his team “is still working with them and every other group that is trying their hardest to help us address a really important issue in this community.”
But more than two months after the arrests, Randy — who uses an alias and works with TFNB — said the organization doesn’t plan to apply for a permit to continue their resource sharing.
That’s in part because of the $242 fee for the permit, Randy said, and because the information the application asks for is counter to the way that the organization functions. Randy was hesitant to cede any ground “that there is a right way to protest.”
“It would require collaboration with the police, which is never something we are going to do,” Randy told The Eagle, noting the group doesn’t have any official spokesperson. “It would require basically putting together a safety plan that is sent to the police and effectively approved by them. We’re not going to do that.”
And there isn’t much interest in partnering with the city.
“That would necessarily require them imposing some vision of their will as to how this should be done on us,” Randy said. “We look at a history of failure from the city, and we say why would we want any part of that?”
Along with asking for the charges to be dropped, TFNB is also asking the city to let them continue to “share food in peace, free from the threat of law enforcement” and to provide “water for all” people experiencing homelessness.
As the group awaits its day in court July 22, Randy said the operation, which regularly serves more than 400 meals each week, will continue as usual.
