Fighting Crier with Ire, Anti-Panhandler Parades Own Sign: Keep Your Change!
Angered by what apparently struck him as blatant hypocrisy—a panhandler claiming in a sign, day after day, that he needed another $18 to afford a bus ticket to Mesa, Ariz.—John Fisher struck back.
The 49-year-old Washington state man paid for his own double-sided sign—“Stop the Panhandlers Keep Your Change”—and began shadowing some of the Spokane Valley locals seeking money from passing motorists. Fisher says he’s lobbied against handouts dozens of times during the past two months and he plans to ask the Spokane Valley City Council to enact tougher anti-begging laws, the Spokesman-Review reports.
“I hope I’m not tilting at windmills,” he tells the newspaper.
The bus-ticket seeker wasn’t at hand when a Spokesman-Review reporter went out to take a look, but another panhandler and self-described convicted felon was. Dubbed Cry Baby by Fisher because of a teardrop tattoo below one eye, the man said he couldn’t catch a break.
At least one other anti-panhandling activist spoke at a city council meeting last week, saying that money given to beggars would be better spent funding a nonprofit to help down-on-their-luck individuals get a handle on their problems, KXLY4 reports.
The city council is looking at the issue.
