Tucson Weekly: Food Fight (November 6

Homeless Advocates And Opponents Clash Over Feeding Sites
By Tim Vanderpool
IT HIT THE papers in late September: A big police crackdown was underway downtown, in the otherwise soothing shade of Armory Park. Under those tall trees, a belligerent troop of transients had begun keeping regular hours, spending their abundant free time guzzling Colt 45, smoking Mexican dope, terrorizing elderly strollers and more or less making a smelly nuisance of themselves.
Across the street, a small crowd of gawkers watched from the Tucson Children's Museum as cops unleashed their dragnet, sweeping up a handful of ne'er-do-wells, some of whom they already knew quite well: One guy boasted more than 100 busts for public boozing.
Meanwhile, noisy hardliners were already sharpening their rhetorical swords, primary among them Mitch Sternberg, a recent California transplant, now an elementary school teacher, whose anti-homeless diatribes had become regular op-ed-page features. A former chairman of the southside Santa Rita neighborhood association, Sternberg is currently a member of the Toole Avenue Task Force, charged by the City Council with finding alternatives to feeding the hungry at a single city-center site.
Currents He and his wife own a showcase house in the Armory Park neighborhood. And in many ways, he's become the growling face of those who want to rid downtown of general-delivery-address dwellers. Over time, he's shown the endless struggle to be as much about mercurial personalities as simple ideology, most apparent in his ongoing battles with the likewise headline-grabbing Brian Flagg, driving force behind the Casa Maria Soup Kitchen on nearby South Third Avenue.
Beyond feeding the poor from ramshackle quarters on property owned by the Tucson Diocese of the Roman Catholic Church, Flagg is perhaps best known as the hell-raiser who once set up a homeless camp at City Hall to demand services. An army brat who found his calling at an evangelical church in Santa Clara, California, he's renowned for juicy sound-bites and his ever-present bullhorn.
In August, a local newspaper politely profiled Flagg, who referred to his antagonists as "forces of greed and profit that want to yuppify downtown neighborhoods." Within days Sternberg had fired off a vitriolic response.
"Any of us downtown yuppies who want to have a sense of pride and community where we live are labeled by Brian Flagg to be 'forces of greed and profit,' " Sternberg wrote. "I invite all to check out Casa Maria Free Kitchen before, during and after food is served to have a sense of the slum mentality that the soup kitchen is promulgating."
But on that hot September day in Armory Park, Flagg was nowhere to be seen. Sternberg, however, was in top form. "Tucson has a soft touch for those guys who are footloose and fancy free," he told The Arizona Daily Star. "The homeless are not the salt of the earth. People just lose their rationality when they are discussing this issue."
Such was the onerous tone when, a few days after the park raid, a turbulent band of neighborhood folks descended upon the Temple of Music and Art to caucus at length. Among them were homeless advocates, charity organizers, plenty of the righteously angry, one city pol and another pol-in-waiting. Notably absent was Brian Flagg.
What followed was much gnashing of teeth and wringing of hands, with tensions flowing thicker than fortified wine between those who'd prefer to boot the homeless to upper Siberia, and others offering bleeding-heart bromides.
Also present were members of the Northwest Community Friends Church, who feed people in Santa Rita Park, located a few blocks south. Their 11-year-long, once-a-month habit particularly irritated some. "After all, we're not Santa Claus County," said Lionel Barnett, a reported Sternberg ally who described himself as a recovering alcoholic and staffer at the Armory Park Senior Citizens Recreation Center.
"We've got people here who won't come out of their doors," Barnett said. "It's a word called fear. F-E-A-R."
For his part, Sternberg aimed a barb at the do-gooders. "First off, I'd like to thank the church groups for catering this event," he said, going on to say, "I'm growing frustrated at seeing my parks becoming unwelcome territory. It's a shame, because parks are a public place."
Afterwards, Sternberg reflected on the seemingly eternal problem. "To me, this is a chance to get out of this going on and on and on, and really have some good things happen," he said, "people of good will, working together. And I think the (Toole Avenue) task force is also a mechanism to make that happen."
But his camaraderie was fleeting. Referring to jousts with Flagg, "When I'm attacked, I'll fight back," he said. "If Brian makes a comment like, 'The downtown yuppies just want to do their thing' as a putdown, I'll fuckin' try to punch him back. Saying shit like calling...Casa Maria a slum...both of us have truth in what we're saying. It's just how it's taken."
Still, he says he and Flagg, a fellow Toole Task Force member, "have so many more things which are likenesses, which we agree upon, about helping people and community."
Sitting on a broken-down couch in the cluttered Casa Maria headquarters, Flagg chuckles at that particular take. Sporting a scruffy look that comes with living on $10 a week, he uncharacteristically pauses to measure his words. "We're active in the (Santa Rita) neighborhood association," he says. "Our basic position is that we represent issues in this neighborhood much more than somebody like Mitch Sternberg or other people who have this burning, this consuming desire to see homeless people not fed their early morning breakfast.
"We serve, at the end of the month, as many as 250 families who live in this general area," he says. "So the issues that they have, be it immigration, lack of affordable housing, lousy wages at whatever jobs they happen to get, healthcare that they aren't getting--things like that are much more pressing issues for the bulk of the population in this area."
Trying to work with Sternberg left a bad taste in his mouth, Flagg says. "We told him straight up, 'Mitch, we don't trust you.' We don't trust him because of our dealings with him in the past."
Flagg says when he first tried to hash out problems with the Santa Rita Association, Sternberg came to Casa Maria with a wish-list for improvements at the kitchen. "We agreed on a few things," Flagg says. "Then there were a few things (such as abbreviated chow times) where we said, 'We're not going to do that, man.' "
"But within a few days of this meeting with Mitch, he had gone to the Roman Catholic Diocese and told them that I was unreasonable. We were highly offended by him sitting in this room, and then going and doing that."
Three weeks later, Flagg says, Sternberg came back with a new list of demands. "He wanted us to do another A, B, C and D. We said, 'Man, get out of here, and don't come back.' So now we just refuse to deal with him."
Through it all, Sternberg never even lived in the Santa Rita Neighborhood, Flagg says.
And so the bad blood flows, even as downtown neighborhoods continue grappling with growing homeless populations in their midst, and city taxpayers annually dole out about $1.5 million for homeless services. People still get drunk in Armory and Santa Rita Parks, many local families still go hungry--and Mitch Sternberg and Brian Flagg still outline a struggle that will probably last until our species draws its final, contentious breath.

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