I've been a part of initiating and maintaining a number of food not bombs groups in my time. I think everyone should check one out at some point, but keep in mind it's a protest not a charity. If some one or something is preventing you from getting you basic human needs met, you have no obligation to follow their rules or laws; and I believe that to be true regardless of whether is the right to food and nutrition, the right to sleep or exist, the right to shelter. If some one or something is preventing you (or others) from accessing those rights, you have the moral imperative to break those systems down.
this post was submitted on 11 Sep 2024
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I fucking love food not bombs. It’s probably one of my favorite forms of praxis, and it has a huge boon on people’s lives.
If you are someone who only votes or protests, please try FNB, it’s a good introduction to how direct action and mutual aid networks work, and you will meet some lovely people. You might provide the only meal someone has that day or maybe even a few days.
Have to agree, FnB is the #1 thing I've ever done. It's an amazing community building night, I've had nothing but good experiences.
Recently, I was invited to board game night at the local synagogue. I’m not jewish, but they love that chapter, and invited everyone who was at that serve, as well as the rest of the group. If I wasn’t busy, I’d 100% attend because I love that feeling of being involved in the community. I’m just sad I live half an hour away, otherwise I’d be able to be more involved.
I'm sure most of what they do is great. My only experience with them is a really unfortunate beef they took up with a bakery I worked at. Before they started their theatrics, we had a row of clean bins behind the bakery where expired bread that had been returned from grocery stores was placed before being sold to a pig farm. People could quietly go get what ever they wanted, whenever they wanted. We put them there to be discreet.
So the FNB folks show up and start, like an anti (our bakery) campaign, putting up signs all over the place about how we throw away edible food because the government pays us to(?) and everyone should storm the dumpster area and liberate the bread.
This caused a much less discreet situation (people showing up and screaming at us and the neighbors while filling vehicles with bread that they would then "distribute" to homeless camps and full loaves of packaged bread became a ubiquitous litter item in the area) which of course attracted the attention of the health department who made us move the bins to a secure area and install individual locks on each one (a huge pain in the ass for the workers).
The reason for all the extra bread is another story, to do with grocery stores insisting on planned over buying to maintain "bountiful shelves" and then forcing companies to buy back what didn't sell in the allotted time. Trader Joes having empty bread shelves at the end of the day is a really good thing.