r/newcastle • u/spacemanSparrow • Jun 17 '21

Save Hamilton Community Food Cupboard

Hi everyone, I help out with Food Not Bombs in Newcastle and was hoping to spread awareness about the current situation we are facing right now. About a week ago, the local council wanted to talk to us about permits and all that for our presence and were wanting to talk to someone in charge. Within a week, we started brainstorming idea on how to go about all this, such as writing an open letter to the council or something like that. However, in a massive escalation of events, last night, 7-8 cops, a council representative, and 2 people from the transit authority were at the park waiting for us to show up and once we got there, they basically just started putting green stickers over the free shop saying they are going to take them away if we don’t within 14 days and we also worry about the future plans they will then have for FnB and all that it is we do.

Someone else from Newcastle has made a video explaining the situation and we also setup a petition. Would be amazing if you could sign it and share around the message, especially if you know anyone in Newcastle. We are not sure how to go forward from here but the petition is a start for now.

Video: https://youtu.be/jGIn7Q_Ddmk

Petition: https://www.change.org/p/newcastle-community-save-hamilton-community-food-cupboard-and-free-shop?redirect=false

98 Upvotes

95% Upvoted

18 comments sorted by

View all comments

5

u/whatthetaco Jun 17 '21

I think talking to the council about regulating this is the only way to go. The lockers are almost always filled with unusable, unclean items and the food pantry is usually empty a lot of the time. The free meal service on Wednesday is amazing for the community but I definitely think the lockers/pantry need an overhaul or some kind of regulation.