by Ryan
Orlando, FL

In Orlando, as you may well know, there has been an ordinance enacted that effectively bans the actions of Food Not Bombs. It specifically prohibits the feeding of 25 or more people (including servers, which, on occasion, top that number alone) in city parks within a 2-mile radius of City Hall [for more information about this, see "Lake Eola is a Lake" in this issue of BRUSHFIRE!]. Among the ordinance's most vocal supporters, Democrat Buddy Dyer, the mayor of Orlando, was up for re-election, and to make matters even more dire (get it?), he was running unopposed.

Orlando Food Not Bombs and the newly-formed "Cruddy Dyer-rhea Drum Corps" decided to give him the hardest time possible if he intended to just let his involvement in the ordinance and his history of punitive homeless policies put him back in office.

Our first demonstration [in May]–outside a trendy bookstore in the affluent downtown neighborhood and shopping district, Thornton Park, where our buddy was having a campaign fund-raiser–was a huge success. It consisted of between 50-70 people (depending on who you asked) surrounding the storefront and outdoor dining area, much to the chagrin of the Democrats and "progressives" who fund this politician. There were banners, signs, ladles (an allusion to the police report of OFNB member Eric Montanez, in which the arrest affidavit said something like "unlawfully distributed soup to 30 unidentified individuals utilizing a ladle"), etc.

"Serve Rice, Not the Rich" became our war cry as nearly a dozen police arrived at the scene and, quite surprisingly, confirmed our right to be there to the press and to the store. They even shut down the street (an action that would've taken much more gall on our part if we were to do it ourselves) for us. We lingered past the scheduled end of the fundraiser, signs held up against the windows of the shop, waiting for "Whose buddy? Not ours!" to show his bloated face. He, instead, snuck out the backdoor early, abandoning his supporters and his own fundraiser!

The next fundraiser was in the same neighborhood at an upscale restaurant, street level to one of the most expensive condo buildings downtown. It was decided at a strategy session that we'd increase the pressure, making causing discomfort and sending a message that those who fund Buddy Dyer will be held accountable for his actions a priority–that each of their dollars take food out of the mouths of the hungry. We thought making the event itself unbearable would nicely wedge the body from its head, so to speak.

We proposed a "Muddy Dyer-rhea Drum Corps" (the change to "Cruddy" would happen post-event–it was an illusion to more cop language on the arrest affidavit), and then, on Wednesday, got to work making makeshift marching harnesses for 2-1/5 drum sets we designated for that day. We opted out of the usual bucket approach for a broader diversity of sound and to make the whole thing louder.

The foolish thing, so far, for these fundraisers has been that they've both been on the day we serve, immediately following the serving, not more than two blocks away. This left us with an extremely opportune scheduling advantage that we wouldn't have otherwise have had with our work/life schedules and this gave us a perfect medium to include those we serve as well.

After the serving on June 27, we all walked to our van and staged our march to the event. Our drummers fiddled with the drums in anticipation as others took up signs, banners and a pair of custom "ladle-chucks," the creation of our pal Mike.

When we crested the hill of Eola Street, passing Central on the way, we could see the police had already assembled in front of the façade. They were physically illustrating Dyer's dire (zing!) need to protect himself from his constituency. We assembled and the drumming began. Our line consisted of two large bass drums, several floor toms, three or so snare drums and mounted cymbals, converted to marching crash cymbals with the aid of some bike tube handles. It was loud. The drums even needed to take breaks to allow for the chanting to cut through the mix.

"Muddy Dyer-rhea–What¹s the Idea?!" was a good example of our preference for goofiness. The police had apparently warned us to stop (who could hear them though?) several times before the police van showed up. Six of the drummers were arrested–Eric, Will, Brian, Brett, Jono and myself–although at the time we had stopped drumming due to fatigue and were just chanting. Only one of those arrested even had a drum on their person at the time of the arrest–conversely, several other drummers were left alone. The ride to the police station in the back of the van was a smelly one rife with bad renditions of classic Journey and Kansas songs. As we were led out of the vehicle, one arrestee asked the cop if he liked Journey.

"Hell yeah," he replied. Fucking liar.

Before departing the substation and heading off to jail, the police finally did the math and figured out our comrade, Jono, was, as we had stated, a minor. Out of the jail-van he went and into a cop car to be shipped off to juvee, where he probably played video games and drank soda pop. He was picked up and released around 9:30 p.m.

The rest of the jail experience was silly and only slightly better than high school. Our first cellmate was arrested for being black on a sidewalk and eating a cupcake–or as the police wanted to call it a "gun." The corrections officers all were nice to us and got us through processing in record time.

"Wait, you're here for violating a noise ordinance?! What are those OPD idiots going to do next?!" one said.

Central booking was way more comfortable when our flexcuffs were removed. We all had sore shoulders and red, stinging wrists from our two-and-a-half hour experience with them. The rest of our stay was just filled with stupid jokes, cracking up with crack dealers, parole violators, payment non-makers and the domestically violent. In a broader sense to take the arrest seriously would give validity to what was, in our views, an irrevocably invalid system–but the jokes and lightheartedness were just from a lack of stimulus, boredom and our silly personalities.

To amplify matters, Eric was wearing cutoff daisy-duke overalls with no shirt or skivvies, sandals and a big straw hat.

"You'll make lots of boyfriends in here!" one cop taunted.

"I got 'em all here with me–these are my boyfriends," Eric replied, referring to us–the CDDC6.

After about eight hours the first of us were released–Will and myself. After receiving my wallet and jewelry we were off to the final waiting room. I had to force the stud through my new bridge piercing to compensate for the eight hours or so the piercing was left open.

Sweet.

When Will and I exited the facility, around 2:30 a.m. we assumed the others would be quick to follow so we benched it and were crooned by a blind man who had a knack for nailing each and every note to each and every Motown song. By the time 6 a.m. rolled around a third friend was released, Brian. We checked on the status of the others to find that Eric and Brett wouldn't be released for awhile–Eric, because at the time of arrest he was already out on bail for feeding the homeless, and Brett, for sheer incompetence of the finger-printer.

We arranged a ride from our SHARP friend, Josh, who, with his trademark chipper "OK!" hastily agreed to get up at 6 a.m. to come get us from jail. What a pal.

Eric, after a first appearance was bailed out later that day. Brett went through several more finger-printings before being the last to be released around midnight–after a 30-hour stay at the 33rd Street jail for a non-arrestable offense, outside the usual hours of enforcement.

At the date of this writing, all but the Jono's case have been arraigned and are awaiting pretrial on October 10, 2007–Jono's charges having been dismissed. Actions including a "March of Mimes"–essentially a mocking silent marching band–are planned for the day of the pretrial.

Note: At the time of the publication of this issue of BRUSHFIRE!, the pretrial has been postponed and a motion-to-dismiss has been filed on the grounds that the noise ordinance we were charged with violating only applies in residential areas, whereas the "scene of the crime" was zoned MXD2 or "mixed use."