Calgary street preacher smells bias in the city’s unwillingness to deal with occupiers

The man at the table is Artur Pawlowski. He is the preacher who runs Calgary’s Street Church. He does this a lot: sermonizing to the city’s scruffier elements — the homeless, the drug addicts, the alcoholics and the drifters. They know him. Four times a week he sets up shop, just across the street, on the steps of City Hall and cooks meals and dispenses clothing, along with sermons, to the needy. Lately he’s been running into a lot of the Occupy Calgary types...

He’s spent hundreds of thousands of dollars, mortgaging his home twice in the process, in legal battles over what he believes is his constitutional right to preach the gospel, and help the needful, on city streets. The city, too, has spent a fortune prosecuting him. He’s long believed the city had a bias against Christians. The fact that the anti-capitalist occupiers have been left to openly flout, for two weeks, many of the same bylaws that he’s been routinely ticketed and arrested for, he says, is proof of it...

The city has requested the self-styled occupiers leave; they’ve refused. They stayed put over the weekend when the city’s Muslim community was forced to hold a cultural festival around them, having booked and paid to legally rent Olympic Plaza. They crashed Mayor Naheed Nenshi’s food truck exhibition there on Monday afternoon, wading in with signs about food justice. The city says they’ve caused $40,000 worth of damage to the park.

This is in Canada, but its double standard is well evidenced here in the US as well. Whether he pushed his "rights" too much i do not know, but it is good to see someone trying to outreach to them with some gospel truth, even if some disagree with his method or message.

What is very clear is this fellow is one person as opposed to the OWS “population” who have taken up “residence” there. Thus there is a fear factor for the city to do anything which would create “mob” retaliation by the OWS, which we know they can and will do.

As for his preaching the gospel and helping the less forunate. Though it is not necessarily something I would do, I think there are people who are called to do just that, but they must abide by the “laws of the land” in doing so. It does not appear he’s broken any of these laws though the city has certainly gone overboard to try to get him to stop.

I’m not certain the comparison between the two can be made though, but I do understand he certainly has a point to argue from his perspective. Even so some would see this type of “evangalism” as offensive and complain to the authorities for various reasons...who have to act on those complaints. Which ties up police, courts, etc. better spent on the welfare of the entire community.

Double standard? Yes, I would agree. But this is not new.

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