The Friday Night Feed and its spinoff Saturday Night Feed have brought food, faith and camaraderie to downtown Tacoma for 15 years. Over that time, the Feed and the city have evolved together.
Now it’s time for the Feed to take a new form.
In the beginning, the Feed was a blessing, pure and simple.
Pastor Ed Wren and the faithful in his Christian Biker Tabernacle church brought their ministry, and sandwiches and hot cocoa, to homeless people. They served in vacant lots where most people feared to tread.
As the downtown improved and prospered, blighted space became vibrant.
The Feed moved into a parking lot on 25th Street under I-705 near the Tacoma Dome. Pastor Ed and his bikers brought a band that played Christian rock. Congregations and individuals brought food to cook and serve. Ministers offered the peace of faith to hopeless people. Outreach workers brought connections to social services. Preteen girls gave away hats they had knitted. Even Wendy Stricherz’s sixth-grade class at Mason Middle School trundled down there with sandwiches once a month.
Stricherz loved the joy of the event. Her students benefitted from it as much as the people who accepted sandwiches from them. She joked that it was the most organized unorganized event in Tacoma. It worked because so many people on the giving and receiving sides wanted it to.
When new businesses objected to the Feed, those who loved it fought to keep it under the shelter of the highway. They won once, temporarily.
Then Tacoma and social services agencies adopted Housing First programs to get chronically homeless people into safe apartments.
The encampments have been cleaned out of the area, said Tacoma Police Sector One commander Shawn Gustason. Now the Feed draws troublemakers from out of the area. They’re a bad mix with the families and very low-income people who came for the music, food and friendship.
Stricherz’s current students had to leave when a brawl broke out on their first trip to the feed in October. Instead of going back, they decided to sponsor a young person aging out of the foster care system.
On Jan. 26, there was another, more serious fight.
“Security for the Feed reported a fight involving at least eight males which escalated to over 15 persons. Security also reported that at least two of the males had guns,” Tacoma’s Human Rights & Human Services director, John Briehl, wrote in a memo to City Manager Eric Anderson.
On top of that, the Feed has been operating for more than a year without the required permit.
The city is closing the site to the Feed and has let organizers know, said Debbie Bergthold, manager of the city’s Human Services Division.
It is time for the Feed to evolve again.
Bergthold would like to see people who have given and received at the event work out a way to preserve the best of it.
“There was music, camaraderie, a sense of community and a place to go for people who do not have resources,” she said.
She’d like to see the Feed evolve into a secure indoor gathering in a neighborhood that welcomes it.
Stricherz harbors the same wish. Her students dove into their foster care project. But once the work was done, they were ready for more.
The closure of the Feed was not a surprise. Police have been hearing complaints from nearby businesses, Gustason said. Police have seen a rise in calls. They’ve tried to work with the people in charge and believe the Feed organizers are operating in good faith, the best of faith. But the Feed is no longer viable in its old form.
Those who gave Tacoma the Feed have worked hard to improve lives. They’ve been part of the success story for many, many people.
That should be their impetus to evolve into a stronger, safer form.
Kathleen Merryman: 253-597-8677
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