The Occupy D.C. encampment at McPherson Square and the Occupy Washington D.C. protest at Freedom Plaza received notices today that inspectors from the D.C. Health Department will be dropping by later this week to check over the cleanliness of their makeshift kitchens.
In preparation, the kitchen at McPherson Square shut down today for some intense scrubbing as Occupiers try to get it up to code.
Our food tent will be shut down for the next few days as we get things cleaned up and up to code. We’ve done it before! #occupydc
— OccupyKSt (@OccupyKSt) January 3, 2012
Kelly Canavan, an Occupy member working the information tent, said the encampment will rely on fully prepared donated meals while it cannot do any on-site cooking.
“Very recently the cleanliness has slipped a bit,” she said.
A chef at Freedom Plaza, whose kitchen remained open today at noon, told us that his colleagues at McPherson Square weren’t up on the particulars of running a kitchen. He said that he wasn’t concerned about any inspections, because he had formerly worked as an executive chef and understood health and safety standards for kitchens.
DOH staffers will be reviewing the Occupy kitchens Thursday “to determine the exact condition of kitchen and will provide formal recommendations for improvement (if needed),” a department official wrote in an email to DCist. (In the past, DOH officials have monitored medical tents at the encampments.)
Of course, the question remains: what would happen if health officials ruled that either of the two kitchens were violating city health standards? The District has no jurisdiction over McPherson Square or Freedom Plaza, after all. The National Park Service and Park Police will likely defer to city officials on health issues, though, as they did when protesters at McPherson Square built a barn that was ruled out of code by a city inspector.
The scene at McPherson about noon was quiet and mostly empty, not surprising considering the cold, blustery weather. But there was a flurry of activity near the encampment’s food tents in the northwest corner of the square with members of the protest movement rummaging about to tidy up the place.
Earlier today, though, U.S. Park Police officers took down a large tent near the center of McPherson that had been the living quarters for Occupiers affiliated with the hacker group Anonymous (the protesters who sport Guy Fawkes masks and sometimes tag buildings housing hamburger shops). The large blue tent had featured a porch and was decorated with items such as a one-sheet poster for the 1997 gangster film Hoodlum.
