By Jeremy Morrison
The arrest of a Pensacola homeless advocate triggered by an organization representing downtown businesses has led to a boycott of those same businesses. Specifically, the boycott takes aim at downtown businesses associated with the Downtown Improvement Board’s board of directors.
According to a release issued by the so-called Downtown Deterioration Board, the boycott is the result of the DIB’s decision to press charges against Michael Kimberl, a leading homeless advocate in the community, for allegedly breaking the lock off of a portable restroom so that a homeless woman could use the facility. The group behind the boycott also lists a general mistreatment of the downtown homeless community and gentrification among its concerns.
The DIB is a quasi-taxing organization that represents downtown businesses. The organization, governed by a board of directors, operates a portable toilet during the weekend Palafox market, locking the facility during other times. Kimberl, who is associated with numerous groups serving the homeless community and serves as the director of the Alfred Washburn Center, is alleged to have broken the facility’s lock during a Food Not Bombs food delivery to the site.
Kimberl has declined to speak with the press, following the advice of his attorney. Representatives from the local chapter of Food Not Bombs have also declined to talk to Inweekly for this story.
A Gofundme campaign has been launched to assist with Kimberl’s legal fees, but the homeless advocate has redirected any contributions to a separate legal defense fund — this one launched by Food Not Bombs — to assist Demon Blackmon, a local homeless man recently accused of lighting a police vehicle on fire.
While Food Not Bombs declined to comment for this article, the group’s statement attached to the Michael Kimberl’s Solidarity Legal Defense For Demon Blackmon Gofundme campaign pretty much lays out a philosophical opposition to the DIB: “The DIB’s mission statement claims they aim to improve the district’s quality of life and economic success, and create safer, cleaner areas, yet their actions say otherwise. We are left to assume their mission is not meant for the general public, or they have significantly failed their mission.”
One local activist, member of the hip-hop duo Cookies & Cake, Ashley Faulkner, said she supports the DIB boycott and feels that the group’s board members have brought it upon themselves with the perusal of Kimberl — “that’s just bad business” — instead of working with the advocate to facilitate better treatment of the downtown homeless community.
“At the end of the day, the DIB can wax on about how much they supposedly do for downtown,” Faulkner said, “but they do not get to decide who is worthy of being there and who is not based on the size of bank accounts.”
Among the list of requests attached to the boycott of the DIB are that the charges against any activist assisting the homeless be dropped; that a free ADA-accessible public restroom facility be provided downtown; that the city of Pensacola return benches to MLK Plaza; that Escambia County return tables and benches to the downtown public library; to stop the “community policing” of the downtown homeless community; and a stop to any effort to criminalize panhandling.