In conjunction with a mayoral task force and the Health Department, the Department of Homeless Services recently started enforcing new nutritional rules for food served at city shelters. Since DHS can’t assess the nutritional content of donated food, shelters have to turn away good Samaritans.
I will share something that I have learned over the course of three decades of ministry: Ignore the dang government. It wasn't our idea as practicing Christians to allow a stray remark made in one of Jefferson's letters to become this inflated fetish called "separation of Church and state" [Which ignorant students think is in the Constitution. Of the United States, that is. Yeah, I know, a $250,000 education doesn't buy much in the way of smarts these days.] But, if this separation is to be, then let us by all means embrace it by separating ourselves from government programming and oversight. It is just as easy to hand out food, guerrilla-style, to the homeless and the starving. By the time any round-rumped official hears of it, the food is already disseminated and, likely, the evidence has vanished.
Here's the thinking from a bureaucratic microbe: "DHS Commissioner Seth Diamond says the ban on food donations is consistent with Mayor Bloomberg’s emphasis on improving nutrition for all New Yorkers."
Yep, nothing says "nutrition" like denying nutrition to the starving. Well done, Seth. You make me want to read Orwell's 1984 again, just for laughs.