Last fall, the City Council and mayor passed Ordinance 12039. This ordinance is unconstitutional, unethical and insulting to the people of Chattanooga.

According to this ordinance, it is now illegal for fifteen or more people to gather together in any public park in the city without obtaining a $25 permit. The language of the ordinance includes “parades, meetings, weddings, rallies, special events, shows, races, or other events’’ held in a public park, which belongs by definition to the public, as now being illegal without a $25 permit.

According to this ordinance, pick-up Frisbee games in Coolidge Park involving 15 or more individuals are now illegal without first obtaining a $25 permit from the city.

According to this ordinance, birthday parties in Coolidge Park are now illegal without first obtaining a $25 permit from the city. Children, parents, cousins and grandparents taking coolers and sandwiches and picnic blankets with kites and footballs and cold Coca-Colas on a hot summer day are now, technically, criminals.

According to this ordinance, downtown employees wishing to eat lunch together in Miller Park are now breaking the law anytime they do so without first obtaining a $25 permit from the city.

According to this ordinance, school groups of children and teachers wanting to field trip to Coolidge Park or Miller Park for a lesson on the river, or downtown architecture, or a morning snack, or fun in the fountains, are now breaking the law without first obtaining a $25 permit from the city. (Do they pass this information out at the Visitor’s Center to out-of-town groups?)

According to this ordinance, a church group wanting to go to the park to read the gospels, or practice the gospels by feeding or ministering or listening or talking with anyone there must first obtain a $25 permit from the city.

According to this ordinance, Christ himself would have been arrested for the loaves and fish feeding of masses without first obtaining a $25 permit from the city.

According to this ordinance, if you gather 14 of your friends and go to any public park in Chattanooga to sit together and smile at each other, or hold hands, or work origami, or whistle softly, or play poker, or read copies of the Constitution out loud, you are now a criminal breaking the law unless you first obtained a $25 permit from the city.

The First Amendment declares that all citizens have the right to assembly publicly, free from governmental interference. Chattanooga’s Ordinance 12039 refutes the Bill of Rights by requiring citizens pay for the right to enjoy what is already theirs: the public park system. It is economic discrimination: people without the wherewithal to afford the $25 are now unable to gather together in a public park. It is a violation of rights: human beings have the right to gather and assemble together.

The city will respond that the intent of the law is simply one of maintenance. If many groups want to come to our parks, a reservation system will prevent conflicts over space. Of course, a main calendar is necessary so that conflicts don’t arise between several different groups wanting to host events at the park on the same day, but the language of this ordinance betrays its motives as having nothing to do with innocuous calendar concerns.

If it did, the language would read 200 people instead of 15.

If it did, the language would be absent any fee charged for a permit.

If it did, our jails would be full of violators.

Instead, the ordinance targets the good citizens among us who take their lives seriously enough to donate leftover goods and distribute them among those who have little. From the research I have done, the vast majority of permit-payers fall into the category of social justice Christians who pass out bread, prayers and helping hands with the homeless poor at Miller Park. One minister can no longer afford to take home-cooked meals to Miller Park as frequently as was done in the past, thanks to the $100 a week permit costs her church could not afford. These people are the ones paying this outrageously immoral fine as a sacrifice for their good deeds. Why doesn’t the city pay them for their good work instead of fine them?

Why don’t we help support them by calling city council, visit their website, or attend city council meetings every Tuesday at 6 p.m. on Lindsay Street and demand to any and all of the council members that this ordinance be deleted from this city of ours, which we call compassionate.

Technically, the police should be making arrest after arrest at Miller and Coolidge parks, for so many people who go there are permit-less and in large crowds. But the ordinance was not designed for them. It was designed to limit the amount of help the good Samaritans among us can do for our homeless poor. The city, which has promised a homeless campus for years, continues to do obscenely little to help the poor, except of course, take up money from those who feed, care for and love them.

(David Cook can be reached at dcook7@gmail.com)