Food not Bombs

Last night:

Food not Bombs coordinator Keith McHenry spoke here. Uncharacteristically, I did not take notes but I am fascinated by the strength of the community and by the networking that his organization has to work through and the dedication with which supporters carry out their objectives which are to serve people in the most basic of ways - something that they consider the government is not doing well enough.

They use surplus food from stores, donations, or dumpstering to cook free food for anyone who wants it. So so so so much perfectly good food gets thrown away every day and at the same time there are so so so so many hungry people. And YES - grocery stores CAN donate food without worrying about anyone getting sick from eating it thanks to the Good Samaritan Act.

According to Keith, Food not Bombs was able to provide food for the victims of Hurricane Katrina when the Red Cross was unable to enter the city. This is a very interesting claim.

For some reason, the actions of FnB are generally seen as subversive, they have been labeled as possibly having terrorist connections, and they often get arrested. Partially as a response, many chapters are springing up all over the world.

They also started a Homes not Jails program in which they identified abandoned houses that banks were fighting over, broke in, fixed the place up, and invited homeless people to live in them. They had hundreds of these places going by the time anyone noticed.

And despite all the trouble that they've run into, the persistent, creative, active, single-mindedess (at least, the way Keith makes it sound) of their group in serving peoples' basic needs of food and shelter wherever it can be gotten is just incredible.

When radio stations could no longer announce their serving times for fear of legal enforcement against FnB, they simply started their own radio news channel.

Most of the things they do are illegal in that they don't follow the paperwork or procedures that you're supposed to but man, .. they are effective.



And they're so intent. They just don't let anything stop them from serving the people. All their actions are means to this end.