➡ The article discusses the issue of cities passing laws that prevent people from sharing food with the homeless. It highlights the arrest of an Arizona grandmother for feeding the homeless in a park without a permit, and the arrest of volunteers in Tampa for doing the same. The article criticizes these laws as tyranny and encourages people to resist them. It also introduces the organization Food Not Bombs, which has been sharing free vegetarian food with the hungry and protesting war and poverty for over 30 years.
➡ Food Not Bombs is a global organization that provides free vegan or vegetarian meals to anyone, regardless of their circumstances. It operates without formal leaders or headquarters, and each group is independent, making decisions through consensus. The organization is committed to nonviolent action and social change. It was founded by Keith McHenry, who was inspired by the waste he saw while working at a grocery store and the need he saw in his community. He began by distributing surplus produce to public housing and later expanded the initiative into a movement for social change.
➡ Food Not Bombs, a global movement that provides free vegan or vegetarian food to anyone, was born out of a need to help those living on the streets. The organization, which is not a charity but a form of mutual aid, operates on principles of non-violent direct action to change society and divert funds from military spending to community aid. Despite numerous arrests and challenges, the organization has thrived for nearly half a century, largely due to its decentralized, do-it-yourself approach and strong community connections. The group’s success is also attributed to its philosophy of sharing and its commitment to making a difference in society.
➡ The speaker was involved in a group called Food Not Bombs, which used to broadcast news and music through pirate radio. However, after being labeled a terrorist group by the FBI, the speaker lost several jobs and had to find alternative ways to earn a living. Despite these challenges, the group continued to operate under a decentralized model, with each chapter adhering to three main principles and having the freedom to interpret them as they saw fit. The group also built strong relationships with grocery stores and other organizations, and has been involved in relief work, providing food during disasters and crises.
➡ Food Not Bombs is a global movement that provides food to those in need and promotes non-violence. It started in Cambridge and has grown to hundreds of chapters worldwide, including in former Warsaw Pact countries and Russia. The movement encourages anyone interested to start their own chapter by gathering friends, finding a food source, and serving meals regularly in a visible location. They also advise being consistent and building trust with those they serve, and to be prepared for potential legal challenges.
➡ Nine friends were charged and convicted for a noise protest outside a detention center in Texas. One of them was sentenced to 20 years for possessing fanzines, small booklets, which he was moving from one house to another. The FBI has been targeting activists, framing them as terrorists, and suppressing their First Amendment rights. Despite these challenges, the activists continue their work, believing that their resistance signifies their impact and success.
➡ This text emphasizes the importance of creating a fun, engaging community for social change, rather than a charity. It suggests that mutual aid organizations, which focus on solidarity and nonviolent resistance, can be more effective and less legally complicated than charities. The author encourages readers to start their own groups, using these principles, to inspire change and community involvement.

Now, I don’t mean to alarm anyone, but there are a growing number of radicals in our midst, and they won’t stop until they meet their objectives. IRGC sleeper cells waiting to launch the next deadly terror attack? No, of course not. Al Cieta? Mossad terror cells waiting to launch the next false flag terror attack? Well, probably, but that’s not who I’m referring to. No, I’m talking about that growing gaggle of dastardly homeless feeders. Here’s the bad news. Uh oh. You’re under arrest. Startling police body camera footage edited and shared by nonprofit Institute for Justice shows the moment an Arizona grandmother was arrested for feeding the homeless in a park back in March.

Technically, I’m supposed to be handcuffing you and everything, too. Bullhead City officers sparing the cuffs. I’m not out to hurt anybody. But not the backlash. I think this is a PR nightmare, but okay. Bullhead City says Thornton is the first and only person to be arrested since the city created an ordinance last year banning food sharing events in public parks without a permit. And that’s what Desiree Lynn’s group, Tampa Food Not Bombs, does. Twice a week in Gaslight park, they feed about 30 homeless people. But Saturday afternoon’s feeding was different. Police were surrounding us, telling us we had three minutes to pack up and leave.

The group didn’t take the table down or these folks will go to jail. This cell phone video shows Tampa officers stopping the meal. Seven volunteers were cuffed and arrested for trespassing in Gaslight park, just a block from the Playlist live concert. This fresh meal for people who are homeless in Houston is a lifeline that comes with a symbolic $40,000 price tag. Let me do the tortillas. The nonprofit dishing up the meals is currently in a standoff with the city because it’s offering its services at the central library. Sharing food with someone because they’re hungry. It’s elemental to our Christian traditions.

And for the city government to come down and saying that we need their permission is totally wrong. Yes. What better sign could you possibly ask for, let alone receive, that you are a tax slave living on the tax plantation being stewarded over by a bunch of bloodthirsty, maniacal psychopaths than the fact that there are multiple municipalities passing ordinances preventing people from sharing food with others and multiple law enforcement agencies and officers who are willing to enforce such ridiculous mandates? It is disgusting. It is stupid. It is on its face, tyranny. And there’s only one thing to do in the face of such tyranny defy it.

All right. Easier said than done. But James, there’s no one in my area who cares, or there’s no one in my area who knows how to do this, or there’s no one in my area who Yes, I understand. So in that situation where you are the only person in your geographical vicinity who recognizes the ludicrous nature of the situation and is willing to do anything about it, there is only one thing to do. Look in the mirror. That is who’s going to solve the problem in this case? All right, but realistically, James, I’ve never done this before.

How does one go about even attempting to tackle a problem like this to attempting to stand up to the law and attempting to do something in the face of tyranny? And whether that is sharing food with people who need food or any other thing, that is clearly standing up for human rights in the face of tyranny. How do I organize a movement to do that? Well, today on Solutions Watch, you’re going to get a twofer. One, we’re going to look specifically at this particular question about how to share food with others and how to stand up to the law if it is required to do so in defense of that aim.

But secondarily, for any type of movement, how do you create a movement of widespread nonviolent resistance to tyranny that can actually not only survive but thrive? Not just for a few months, not just for a year or two, not just during the scamdemic, until everyone forgets about that and moves on to the next big thing? No, not just for years, but decades. For half a century. How do you create a movement like that? Well, good question. And I have provided some thoughts about this in the past. For example, I have talked about leadership lessons from Dancing Gu.

I’ve talked about that a few times actually, but most recently in the Escaping the Madhouse episode of Solutions Watch. So please go back to that edition of Solutions Watch if you need a refresher on that. I’ve also discussed Swarmwise, the Tactical Guide to Changing the World by Rick Falkvinch. I talked about that in interview 1429 on James Corbett and Liberty Weekly Recommend Books. And this is a step by step guide toward creating a leaderless, decentralized resistance movement and from somebody who actually made that happen. And I have talked about the anti ganda efforts of people like Ernest Hancock, who you may or may not know helped to launch the Ron Paul Loveolution back in 2008 with creating and then widespread dispersal of the Love Elution logo that campaign, that, that that logo itself was invented and spread by Ernest Hancock.

Most people don’t know about that, but it is true. And it was a great example of how an entire movement can arise in a leaderless, decentralized fashion. So there are a few things in the archives that you might want to consult on that. And those notes, those links will be in the show notes for today’s episode of Solutions Watch. But today we’re going to highlight another example and one specifically about this feeding and sharing food with others concept. And you will have noticed in those short clips that we just played, the name Food Not Bombs came up more than a couple of times.

And that is because that is in the United States and around the world. One of the organizations that is best known for this practice of setting up sharing food sharing operations in various cities, not just across the US but around the world. So if you want to know more about Food Not Bombs, you can go to a site like foodnotbombs.net it’s not the only place to go for information about this because this is not a centralized organization with a center, central leadership that dictates things to all of the various branches. This is an autonomous organization of decentralized, local, autonomous people who have decided to adopt the Food Not Bombs label, or some of them maybe don’t decide to adopt that label.

But at any rate, it is an idea that was started not just a year or two ago, not just a decade or two ago, nearly half a century ago, and is still thriving and surviving in cities all across the US and around the world. So for more on that, go to foodnotbombs.net, you can find their Our Story page which will inform you that Food Not Bombs is gaining momentum throughout the world with hundreds of autonomous chapters sharing free vegetarian food with hungry people and protesting war and poverty. But Food Not Bombs is not a charity. This energetic all volunteer grassroots movement is active throughout the Americas, Europe, Africa, the Middle East, Asia and Australia.

What do they got against Antarctica for over 30 years and that is underselling it. The movement has worked to end hunger and has supported actions to stop the globalization of the economy, restrictions on to the movements of people and exploitation and the destruction of Earth and its beings. The first group was formed in Cambridge, Massachusetts in 1980 by anti nuclear activists. So for those keeping track at home, that is 46 years ago and counting. And it’s an organization with no formal leaders. Each group recovers food that would otherwise be thrown out and makes fresh, hot vegan and vegetarian meals that are served in outside in outside in public spaces to anyone without restriction.

Many Food Not Bombs groups also share groceries and organize each other to support their communities. Each each independent group also serves free meals at protests and other events. And if you want more information, there’s a lot more about the history of this organization and the various activities that it’s been involved in. There’s plenty more to go through and explore here if you are just encountering Food Not Bombs for the first time. But if you are, you might want to check out another resource. It is called Hungry for how you can help end poverty and war with Food Not Bombs.

This is by Keith McHenry, who is one of the co founders of the Food Not Bombs organization and this book has, well, basically everything you need to know about the idea, how it got started and what it is, how it is being used and applied in various locales throughout the world. And it starts with a section on the Solidarity not Charity, nonviolence in theory, nonviolence in practice, Food not Bombs, et cetera. The overview and then section two on a lot of very specific information about food collection and distribution in the kitchen and the revolution doesn’t need a permit, call the media, jail, solidarity, etc.

Etc. Section 3, section 4 afterward appendixes so there there’s a lot of information in here and preface by or Howard Zinn wrote the forward to this book. But anyway, moving just to the opening section so that we can get a sense of what’s in here after the introduction, Keith McHenry writes section one solidarity not charity which lays out the three principles of food not bombs. 1. The food is always vegan or vegetarian and free to everyone without restriction, rich or poor, stoned or sober. 2. Food not bombs has no formal leaders or headquarters and every group is autonomous and makes decisions using the consensus process.

3. Food not bombs is dedicated to nonviolent direct action and works for non violent social change. And then he starts by writing the name Food Not Bombs states our most fundamental society needs to promote life, not death, implement the positive and end cooperation with the negative, live in a world of abundance and stop fearing a future of scarcity. Celebrate with love, not hate. Cooperation instead of domination and compassion, not exploitation. Food Not Bombs. Wonderful. Short, succinct and rememberable little catchphrase there. Food Not Bombs. Yeah, I could get behind that. So interesting. This is an organization, as I say, that has existed for half a century and is truly in hundreds and hundreds of locations around the world even as we speak, feeding people in your community today, whether you know it or not it’s happening in a lot of places.

So there is a lot of valuable information to be learned from an organization like this and the people who helped to found that organization. And it is for precisely that reason that I recently Talked to Keith McHenry, the author of Hungry for Peace, and also, as I say, one of the co founders of Food Not Bombs, about this organization, what it is, what it does, most importantly, how it has continued to survive and thrive for decade after decade after decade, despite concerted governmental and intelligence agency opposition, as we will hear about in this interview. So sit back, get your notes, because there are a lot of specific examples and things that we talk about in here about how an organization like this, a movement like this, can survive and thrive in the face of opposition.

There are a lot of very important things we can learn from this. So let’s listen to this interview, then we’ll come back and think about what we’ve learned about this. So this is Keith McHenry of Food Not Bombs. And I started by asking Keith about the origin story of this organization. How and why and when and in what circumstances did he come to co found this group. Well, okay, I was an art student at Boston University, and. And I was working, and I figured out the way you could go to school and pay your bills was to be a produce worker because you got done before school started.

So I started. I got kind of dismayed by the amount of fresh produce or like wilted produce or not saleable produce I was tossing in the bin in the back of the grocery store. This was at Bread and Circus in Central Square, Cambridge. And so I started taking it to the public housing about three or four blocks away on Portland Ave. And that’s where one day the mothers who are the people receiving the food and, you know, making meals for the kids start telling me, hey, there’s like a new building that just opened across the street called Draper Lab, and they’re designing nuclear weapons.

And so that’s where I got the idea for the name Food Not Bombs, because I’d heard all these complaints about public housing and how the electricity and the plumbing didn’t work and so on. And they were so grateful to get this, you know, surplus produce that is like, wow, okay, so it’s a good idea. Have a. People should have food and not bombs. So then I was also in a group called Clamshell alliance and the Coalition for Direct Action at Seabrook, and we were trying to shut down a nuclear power station about 45 miles north of Boston in Seabrook, New Hampshire.

And so on May 24, 1980, was our last ditch effort to occupy the construction site before it became radioactive. And one of my friends got arrested, Brian Feigenbaum. And so he got charged with felony assault of a police officer. And back in those days, we didn’t use our real names. We always just chose fake names. But the problem for Brian was, is he was on TV and his real name was under his face during a news broadcast earlier that day. So he ended up in jail with serious charges. And we found somebody who actually had the money to bail him out.

So on the way home that night, we decided what we got to do. Bake sales and things like that and raise money to pay this good man back. So as it turns out, you really don’t make any money doing bake sales. And it was like. But fortunately, we did have an old van, which we called Emma, after Emma Goldman. And we had a moving company called Smooth Move. And so we’re moving this family. And they had a poster that said, wouldn’t it be a beautiful day if the schools had all the money they needed and the Air Force had to hold a bake sale to buy a bomber.

And for viewers in America, that resonates for viewers everywhere else. That’s what teachers do to raise money for books and pencils and things for their students. So I was. When I’m traveling outside the U.S. that story doesn’t resonate. And I have to explain that. So anyway, we decide we’d buy some military uniforms at the Army Navy surplus store and take our sign, put it on cardboard, this poster, and then we’d set it next to our card table and we would tell people that we’re trying to buy a bomber, Please buy our baked goods. And we found, particularly when we were in Harvard Square, where everybody’s a brainiac and they’re rushing by not paying any attention to anything, they would stop and they would talk to us and we’re like, wow, this is a great shtick.

This might be a way to communicate to people about the nuclear arms race. You know, Reagan was impending. You had, you know, all these, you know, things in the media about like a. A 5 cent bolt costing $2,000 if it was sold to the military, things like that. So we had our bolt on the table and everything and explaining we’d already raised enough for the bolt and which of course, we had not. And then, so anyway, we. That gave us this idea of doing street theater, political street theater. And one of our members, Joe Swanson, was, was participating in the living Theater, which was like a really amazing theater where they involved this.

They would go out and do an action on the street and you wouldn’t know whether the who was in the audience, who was in the performance and so on. They were erasing the walls of the theater. And so we adopted that philosophy. And also the Bread and puppet theater, which was up in Vermont, we were influenced by them. So we decided we would organize a soup line outside the stockholders meeting of the bank of Austin on March 26, 1981, 30 days about after Ronald Reagan was inaugurated President of the United States. And so we’re making all this food and everything the night before.

And we realized we’ve not done enough organizing to get our friends to dress up like hobos in the Great Depression, because that was going to be our theme, that the policies of the bank and the policies of Reagan would lead to a future where people would have to stand in line to eat at a soup kitchen. And so that night I went to a holdover of the Great Depression called the Pine Street Inn, and I gave a little speech to about 30 guys sitting around there. And they were like, oh, this is great. A protest like the 60s.

And to our surprise, they showed up. And it was a most amazing thing because I remember one businessman came out of South Station, which was right across the street, and he’s like, oh, wow, Reagan’s only been in office one month and there’s already soup lines in America. This is that crazy. And then some of the stockholders slipped us off, others thought it was great. And the guys, mostly guys. And one woman expressed that it would be great if we did this every day because there was no food for homeless people in 1981 in Boston. So that night we decided we’d give notice, two weeks notice, at our jobs.

My boss was cool with me picking up not only the produce, but also I made arrangements to get delivery of, of, you know, unsalable tofu, you know, chunks of tofu that weren’t fitting in the eight ounce boxes and so on. And so for the first six months, we just did nothing but collect food, take it to public housing projects, daycare centers and, and battered women’s shelters, and then did street theater with food at Harvard Square and the Boston Commons. And it was just an amazing experience. And then after a while, our landlord, landlady Joan Blount, said, you know, I hear such great things about what you’re doing, but you have not paid any rent.

And so he said, apparently 600amonth for a two bedroom house with a Full basement was too much. So he said, go, you know, start paying next month, I’ll lower it to 400. Eventually we rent another apartment from her. And hence that was the beginning of Food Not Bombs. An incredible story. Lots of twists and turns there. But I guess, okay, some questions that arise. Is food not bombs charity or is it mutual aid? Or is there a difference? Okay, so we actually. So to further the story and why it’s in like a thousand cities of the world, I went to San Francisco in 1987 and I started a second chapter and started sharing food in front of, at the entrance to Golden Gate Park.

And so we started getting arrested on August 15, 1988. Ultimately, we survived a thousand arrests over eight years. But because of that, it inspired us to have our first food Nam Palms gathering in on the 500th anniversary of Columbus invading North America or the Americas. And at that we came up with three principles. The principles being that the food is always vegan or vegetarian and free to anyone, rich or poor, drunk or sober. But the second would be that each chapter would be autonomous and that they would make decisions using consensus and they would involve the people recording, you know, needing the food to also participate in the decision making process.

And then to answer your question more directly, we also adopted a policy that we were not a charity, that we were dedicated to taking non violent direct action to change society so that no one would have to live in the streets or eat at a soup kitchen. So one of the more popular slogans of phonot bombs is solidarity, not charity. And that was born out of our earliest experience of in Cambridge actually, when somebody from the federal government came to us and said, oh, you’ve got to collect Social Security numbers from everyone because we need to deduct it from their welfare check.

And having been a formerly homeless person also, I knew how the homeless industrial complex worked even in the early 80s, and it was this kind of at that time. It’s changed a lot since then. But the main point was that those who were requiring food had, you know, fallen from grace from God. And if they’d only were more, you know, tight with, with Jesus, then they wouldn’t be in this predicament. And so there was this hierarchy of the servers and the, and the destitute that needed their food. And, and it’s a slightly different thing now. It’s now instead of them not being Christian or something like that, it’s that they’re all drug add and mentally ill and therefore they’re helpless.

And then, and you know, we’re good church people or we’re good people and then we will feed them. So we are not a charity and we’re kind of. We’re definitely mutual aid, but we’re also more than that. We’re trying to influence the community to think that money should be diverted from military spending to things that actually helped the community. So non violent direct action as a way of changing society seems like it’s a pretty fundamental principle. There’s. Yeah, that’s one of our principles. Yeah. Well, let’s talk about how that works and what effect it’s had. I mean, the first thing is you have to tell the listeners the secret to creating an organization that can survive what, four decades and counting.

Now that is an incredible achievement by any standards, and especially in this day and age where lots of people have lots of ideas for organizations and they come and go like flashes in a pan. But Food Not Bombs has been around for nearly half a century now. That’s incredible. How do you account for that success? Well, it’s a, it’s a series of serendipitous acts in part, but part of it is through essentially living our philosophy as, as anarchists, basically. So, for example, at the very. I’m a graphic designer and I won Clio awards and I designed stuff for the Boston Red Sox and I had ads and, and Vogue and stuff.

At the same time, I designed the Fun Up Bombs logo. And I never owned the logo. I never copyritten the logo. And I’m in fact enthusiastic when somebody redesigns a logo and puts like a potato or in it or like say the Roswell, New Mexico group has like a, an ET holding two peppers, you know, so I don’t own, I never own any, any of those things, you know, so that helps it become global. The other is you have the three basic principles which are, you know, that I just recounted. And that’s what ties all the groups together.

But the other is that is when we got arrested in 1988, the first thing that I happened was people started writing letters. You know, they would even send us like Food Not Bomb San Francisco. And I would get the letter from London or from Australia or whatever because, you know, that’s. Those are the days. And, and so I ended up. I had taken notes on how I started the second one, second chapter. And so I made a flyer called 7 Steps to Starting the Food Not Bombs. And I would mail that to you and, and people would just adopt it and start doing their own Food Not Bombs chapters.

So the, the series of arrests actually aided us a great deal. So then when I faced 25 to life in prison in San Francisco, that got us another wave of publicity. When they arrested the kids in Tampa, Florida, each time they were arrested on four different, you know, periods of time with four different mayors or whatever. When Orlando got arrested for serving food at Lake Eola park and, and when Fort Lauderdale was getting arrested. So each time there’d be a arrest, there would be more interest in starting new Food on Bombs chapters. The other thing is that because we’re not a charity and that we would take food to protest.

So in the original Food Not Bombs, we spent about two years helping organize for this massive march in Washington or New York City called the March for Nuclear Disarmament during the second special session of the UN on Nuclear Disarmament. And so we would go to all kinds of rallies, we’d go to concerts and we would provide the food and that would then connect people who would experience us and then they would go on and, and when they’d see us again, that would help, you know, build their interest. So then the other thing that was helped build Food Not Bombs was punk bands started really get.

We were very into associating with punk bands. We, you know, advocated the kind of punk, you know, DIY idea because we were diy. And so that, that’s do it Yourself movement was starting to take off. And so we would be in liner notes or punk bands would, would, you know, promote us. So the. So in one sense, what kept us going for 46 years has been the fact that so many people are doing it. So a lot of chapters might happen for like five years and then the people graduate from college, it dies out. Then new people come and it restarts.

So that’s, that was part of it. But the other thing is that the fact that you could use a logo however you wanted. You could use any of my artwork or any other Food Not Bombs activist artwork for free. You, you. The whole idea is just to start it yourself, get your friends together to do it. It’s an easy enough. It’s a task oriented thing and that really helps keep it going. And then the other thing is when you’re out there sharing food, the connection that you make with the people coming to eat is so profound that you just don’t want to really stop doing it.

And I think that helps people, you know, continue it. And that’s part of the whole idea that you’re actually doing something that you can do and it’s making a difference. And you’re also participating in Trying to change society. You’re taking food to protest, you’re coming up with all kinds of other ideas. You know there’s like one, I know a chapter in the, in the Midwest of the United States. They tied coats on trees all around the park where they were serving to be free coats for people or, or in the, in the 90s we not only did fun up bombs but there was a Christchurch, New Zealand fun up bomb started this thing called the really, really Free market to protest a free market conference that was happening across the street in the park that they were serving.

Then that took off, went to Australia, then people in Australia took it to Kuala Lumpur. Then eventually at the Free Trade Agreement of the Americas protests in Miami. Phonopom’s kids did a really, really free market there. And then that spread. Then another thing was we were into micro low powered radio, FM pirate radio. So we had at one point about 400 stations in North America that would broadcast news about what was going on and make crazy music and things like that. So this creativity aspect of Food not bombs really helped propel it. Then the other thing is I’ve been very fortunate that you know, I’ve been.

We were designated one of America’s most hardcore terrorist groups in a memo written by the FBI Joint Terrorism Task Force on August 29th, 1988 to the Field Office, San Francisco FBI Field Office. And so it wasn’t a surprise when 911 happened. I was working as a graphic designer for United Way of Tucson and Southern Arizona and their two largest clients, one was Raytheon, that was their largest client and their other was David Mlin military base. So before the end of September I end up getting fired from, from that job. And then I went got another job as a marketing director for the National Park Service Bookstore in Tucson.

I got fired right away from that. And then I was the marketing director for Sun Sounds Radio for the blind in Tucson. And Mitzi Theron, who’s a really wonderful boss, she comes to me and said wow, I got a call that you’re on a blacklist and you’re not allowed to work in the United States. And so since, since 911 to today, I have had a lot of free time. So you know, I have to make my living in unusual alternative ways like I give lectures and I sell my books and, and, and then I don’t spend money.

I largely have lived in a, in a 1986, you know, Chevy van. But so that, so that is having, you know, and then it’s, they’ve, we’ve also had this philosophy that I think has really worked for us too. So when the eight of us first started Food Up Bombs, we are out of that generation that saw Malcolm X get killed, Martin Luther King get killed. You know, that these you we could. Then there was always bad people that you had that the government had to go after, you know, and so when they would personalize a movement around like Martin Luther King, then you kill him or you smear him or whatever it is you.

You do. And it can kill the movement. So we have always made sure there’s no charismatic leader and that there can’t be an, you know, identified like, oh, if Keith McHenry has sex with a goat, then Funa bonds is terrible. So that doesn’t. Even though they’ve tried that, it has never worked. Because since it’s in a. Each group’s autonomous. Each group is busy doing what it’s doing. Each group can use our logo, make it however they want, can, as long as they stick with those three principles and however they identify them too. Because that can be really interesting.

Because it can be. Some groups are strictly vegan. We said vegetarian or vegan. And the original principles, because we didn’t know what was in the bagels and we were getting an entire truckload of bagels from House of Bagels every morning. So we thought, okay, most of it was actually vegan, but you know, in high holy days you were going to get, you know, you know, food that might have eggs or might have dairy. So anyway, so there’s been interesting debates around that. Or what is non violence. That can be another movable idea to a certain extent.

You know, some groups are against, you know, like property damage and other groups like don’t see anything wrong with it as long as you’re respectful for the people and you’re not hurting animals and people. That’s another thing is the fact that we’re vegan. We are connected to animal rights movement, to the vegan, to people that are vegan. Because we’re anti war. We have connections to all kinds of anti war groups because we have been sharing food at like anti racist actions. We’ve got connections there. So we have. And then we, we also. There was a period where they’re trying to glamorize dumpster diving, which is not a bad thing.

But the reality is, is if you go to your grocery store and you start picking up the produce every week from the, from that same grocer, you end up making a relationship with the produce department there and the bakery. And then so you Start to build this huge network of, of allies who, you know, they’re not in Food Not Bombs, but they’re helping you in Food Not Bombs. And so you’re making all these other very strong relationships. So you have chapters. I saw the Johannesburg Food Not Bombs in South Africa celebrated its 25th anniversary, which was probably about 10 years ago now.

But they had, you know, like, all the, the, what they were kind of calling sponsors, which were the grocery stores and places they were getting the food from as part of their whole celebration. So they had at that point 25 years of these, of some of these relationships. You know, some were new, but some were and were very old. And then the other things is we’ve been involved in relief work quite frequently. So we. I think the first thing that I did personally was after Loma Prieta earthquake in 89 in San Francisco, the World Series earthquake, where the electricity and gas in the whole city went out and the only food that was available was that food not bombs.

And oddly enough we were already been serving food at 5:00 and the earthquake, I think it was at 5:15 or something. And that was really wild because the reflection pool behind us like was like throwing water everywhere. And then we had been getting arrested virtually every day at that point. And this time when even more cops than normal showed up, which was kind of weird, and instead of arresting us, they waited in line patiently with everybody else and had dinner and they ate with us for three days. It was something that was highlighted in a couple of articles in the local like the examiner and the Chronicle in San Francisco.

So we did Katrina for eight, eight months. We had kitchens in, in on Divine street and served people down there. We were the only daily meal in New Orleans for that whole eight months. You know, churches would come down for a week, things like that. So you built all these relationships with that as well. And then you have things like, like saying when the, the, the Beirut port explosion happened and Funa Bonds was the first group to respond and gave out hundreds and hundreds of meals to the people that lost their, their housing in that, that catastrophe or the other, another one is fun up bombs in Tel Aviv organized a refusenik conference and people from the west bank came and invited them to feed a peace, peace camp for two months on the West Bank.

And during the peace camp they came up with this idea called Anarchists against the Wall. And the night that I arrived in Tel Aviv, it turns out no one met me at the airport because they had just done an anarchist to get their first attempt to reach the, the, the wall where one of the volunteers got shot, named Gil. And so they were busy in, in Jaffa making a, you know, taking all their videos and making a newsreel to put to first Jews to be shot by idf. And Gil had been an IDF officer probably less than half a year before he was shot.

So it’s these kind of real life things that we do that has sustained us for the 46 years. You know, it’s an incredible and inspiring story in so many ways, but I think it raises a fundamental chicken and egg question because there’s no doubt that food not bombs would not have taken off if there was not a vast community of people out there to, to not just support it, but to participate in it. But it does raise the question does food not bombs exist because that community exists or does that community exist because food not bombs exists and becomes a focal point for people’s activities? It’s interesting, I think there is already people that would, if they heard about a funeral bomb, saw fun at bombs happen upon one would be inspired.

But there’s also this other great historic thing that happened so in the, in the United States, the left as it was was dominated by sectarian groups. And so we are always marginalized like for instance already. And you know, even though I been doing this for 46 years, I’ve never spoke on the main stage of any national peace rally or anything like that. They’re not going to have me do that. But, and even to today, you know, even though sectarian groups are much smaller and less influential amongst the, you know, anti war movement, if there were such a thing.

And, but, but, but the thing is that then when the Berlin Wall came down and the communist groups, particularly in Europe and the United States were kind of on the waning dramatically and anarchism as an ideology started to really grow so that I think, you know, one of the ways you could hook up with this new way of thinking, what younger people were observing, was to join a food not bombs chapter. So there ended up being all these connections with, with all these other autonomous, you know, non hierarchical organizations because we were already there when, when conditions changed so dramatically.

And that’s when we just expanded hugely in the Warsaw Pact countries, former Warsaw Pact countries, and we started to happen in all over Russia, Belarus and so on. So it, we, there was kind of an aesthetic that we were always trying to promote kind of this like you know, DIY punk music, you know, outside of, of the, the system and that we’re willing to do any kinds of, of Non violent things. We also, you know, we’ve had squatter movements. We had San Francisco, we had homes, not jails where we had keys to 400 buildings and housed homeless people and, and 100 of them is a protest against the savings and loan crisis, but also as a way to house people.

And so you have in the pirate radio you had indie media. We started the first indie media center in San Francisco in 95. And so by the time the battle of Seattle in 99 happened, there’s indie media centers all around the world. And the fun up bombs kids in Melbourne, Australia figured out how to do file, you know, FTP or file transfer protocol as an invisible thing that we now think of as, you know, Facebook or whatever. Right. But they’re the ones that wrote the code that got that to happen originally and that really helped us because we had this new decentralized media thing that was happening.

So we’re just, it’s kind of this whole energy, I think we’re into a new level of where something similar may be happening because of the wars and, and Ukraine and then, and in Iran and after the, you know, all this stuff protesting that was going on with the genocide which that got really clamped down on in the US that’s not really happening anymore, which is even though the genocide is happening and but there is like kind of this and we’re almost like air. You know, no one even thinks you get. What’s really cool is I remember reading a Florida food on bombs website, I might have been Tampa.

And they said that we started in Fort Lauderdale like three years before this website was made and that there was five groups now you know, not knowing that they’re already, by the time they made that website there was hundreds of groups and it was actually started many years before in Cambridge. So but you know, I think it’s cool just whatever your best guess at the history of huna bombs it, you know, I don’t own it. No one owns it. It’s, it’s, it’s just. And if you can think of some other version of Food not Bombs that sticks with the three principles and you do it, no one’s going to stop you.

So excellent. Well on that note then if there is somebody out there in the audience listening to this who has not heard of Food not bombs or is looking around and thinking, well there is no local chapter here, I don’t see one. And they are inspired to start one, what would be your advice for those people? So one, you could go to foodnotbombs.net and just read the, you know, the three principles of food Not Bombs and then there’s a page on seven steps to starting the Food Not Bombs. But the main thing is to, I would say gather together some friends is, you know, you, one person really doesn’t make a Food Not Bombs group, although one person could be the initiator and have a lot of energy to get and get started.

That was the case, for example, after flash was and in, in New Mexico. That’s why people started that one to respond to the flash floods from Rodesso. And then, so anyway the, so then have a meeting somewhere and you know, at a library or in a park or something and then figure out where you’re going to pick up the food. One of the things that’s a very common hurdle to get over is you go to the local produce, you know, stay away from Safeways and chain stores because they’ll never do anything but go to the smaller local groceries and bakeries and you’re going to get turned down at first.

But then don’t, don’t fret because what’s happened for that produce worker or that baker is people are all enthusiastic. They’re going to come get the food and they leave it. They don’t, they come three times and they don’t come again and it rots in their store. And so they’re going to push you away. But if you keep coming and now, thankfully, because so many people have heard of food on Bombs, they know we’re going to be reliable. We are going to show up. You might come with a flyer, we have flyers you can download off the website and let them know we’re with food op bombs, we’re going to come by what’s the best time and then pick up the food.

Say for instance, if you’re going to start out with a Saturday meal, find like a high visibility location where the, where both homeless people and hungry people and it’s easy for transportation like bus stations or something and, and, and start serving there with literature about your organization and with a banner that says Food not Bombs or signs that say Food not Bombs and do it on a regular basis. A really important feature of Food Not Bombs which has really worked also is be on time because there’s a kind of credibility that happens if you say you’re sharing and it doesn’t always happen.

You know, sometimes there’s problems. But if you say you’re going to serve at noon on a Saturday at the bus station, show up at noon at the bus station and serve at noon and Even if the food isn’t there, be there to greet people and let them know. That kind of building trust is super important. And it really, you know, if you imagine you haven’t eaten in a long time and you’re every second seems like an hour while you’re waiting for the food to arrive. So that’s another thing to be doing. The other is to, when you start your Food Not Bombs chapter, you might like originally set up a network of picking up the food, taking it to the other food programs in your community, so other soup kitchens.

And through that you’ll make relationships with the other soup kitchens and you will find out like for example, some that I know and here there’s like a pea soup that Everybody Loves at St. Francis Soup Kitchen on a Thursday. So you would not want to do Food not Bombs necessarily on a Thursday when they’re serving the most popular meal. Right? So, and you can ask homeless people for much. They are the wealth of information about where the best location to serve, the best time of day to serve, the best day of the week to serve. That’s where you can get solid information about what you know.

Now people will have different ideas and you might hear six different versions of something from six different unhoused people. But you, you know, through that you’ll figure out like what the best time, day and location is. And then also start taking food to other people’s events, concerts, protests, you know, things like that then. And that way you’re going to get more volunteers, you’re going to get more solidarity of and support from other groups. For instance, also we have, because we have been arrested so much, we have a flyer I send everybody that writes to get the, either the food up on startup kit or anything if you buy a T shirt.

I have a new book that is coming out in May called Soup street, which is my memoir. And I just put in a flyer which is also on the website on what to do if you get arrested if they try to stop you from feeding people. Because in San Francisco we had developed this technique where we would divide the food into thirds. We’d come out with a little bit of food in, in white five gallon buckets. If they, you know, that we didn’t mind losing, they would arrest those servers. They would take, we would make a handmade banner that was just funky.

The cops always take the banner first because that’s what’s most important. And then you’d come out with two or three more buckets of soup that were just tiny half, you know, maybe 3 servings 4 servings in each one. Those people get arrested and then everybody would wait because they knew the entire meal would arrive after that. And so we have that as a, as a, as a pattern that. And just by having that available to all these chapters all over the world, I think that’s played somewhat of a role in why we’ve had less arrests in recent years.

But we’re kind of anticipating. We just had a bunch of friends convicted of terrorism charges and in Fort Worth, Texas for doing a noise protest outside of the Prairieland detention center on 4th of July. And apparently some FBI or other state related person came with a gun and shot at a cop while they’re doing the protest. And they, our, our nine friends ended up getting charged with that and they got convicted. But I hopefully, you know, one guy just for having fanzines. I mean he did, he wasn’t even there or anything. They just, I think he might have got 20 years for fanzines and you know, little booklets and stuff that he was moving from one house to another that he didn’t want the FBI to take from his friend’s house if they raided it and said they raided his house and took his zines and charged him and convicted him.

So that’s kind of where it’s at right now. It’s not so much the suppression of the meals, but more of first Amendment activities around protesting and then frame ups. And we’ve had a lot of people. That’s why I ended up rewriting the, the Anarchist Cookbook because they were. FBI was circling the C4 recipe and William Powell’s first edition and they would hand it to the Food not Bombs kid and then they would develop a whole little story. And then once they finally got to trial they say, hey, he had the Anarchist Cookbook. He’d circled the. Even though FBI circled the C4 and therefore we know he was a terrorist.

So you know, we, we’ve had to survive a lot of infiltration. But actually, you know, there are a few people, you know, I have in both Anakin’s Cookbook and in Hungry for Peace, my other book on that shows you how to do food on bombs and provides some of the history a chapter on how to avoid being convicted of terrorism because that is essential and fortunately don’t be scared of being in food you’ll be arrested for. Well, because there’s. But yeah, it’s exactly. I mean it’s a good point to raise because that’s of course what a lot of people who, let’s face it, are probably not going to engage in this work.

Would use as an excuse. Well, if you do it, they’ll just come after you. If you do it, they’ll provocateur you. So you can’t win, so don’t try. Is, I think, the lesson that a lot of people would take out of that. Yeah. But fortunately, you know, it turns out in a certain sense, it really helps the movement because people. How absurd is it that you could be a terrorist when really all you’re doing is serving vegan meals? You know, it kind of throws a lie in the, in the, you know, in the whole system, you know, that, that if we’re the worst terrorists you’ve got, then you’ve got problems.

And the State Department had a lecture in Tufts University in April of 2009 comparing food not bombs to Al Qaeda, who’s more dangerous. And they said that they were more. That we were more dangerous because we were convincing the American public that money should be diverted from military spending to healthcare, education and other social services. All right, friends, that is Keith McEnry of. Well, co founder of Food Not Bombs. He’s on X. He’s on Substack. He is working on a website, but that isn’t ready yet. So in the meantime, meantime, follow him on Substack. I will put a link into his latest post on Embrace the Compassion of Community, which I think is a good message and one that very much corresponds with what we just heard there.

But what a wild ride. What a story. And coming from someone who isn’t just talking the talk, someone who has walked the walk for the better part of half a century now, that is something and something that we can learn from. So let’s learn from it. I think there are several things from that conversation that we can pull out and highlight and underline for people who are interested in starting such a group, in making a difference. It is possible. Keith McHenry is just one example and he has some important tips there. So let’s. Let’s pry them apart.

I think the first thing that he noted that’s extremely useful is be useful to others. You can talk a wonderful game and have highfalutin ideas, but if you are not genuinely useful and providing a service to other people, that is how you get people to join your community. It’s genuinely helpful to them. And if, if you can be useful to other people, that community will start to form around you and a community of people who are interested in providing that useful activity. The second thing is be reliable. Yeah, exactly. As he makes the Point if you do it for a few weeks and it kind of doesn’t work and you’re kind of bored and you move on, then you have probably done more damage than if you had stayed at home and done nothing.

No, be reliable, Be dependable. Be that person who shows up at what time you say you’re going to show up at that place. Make it a regular thing that you do commit to and you do time after time after time, show up and do that thing that you, you promised. And again, it might not happen at first, but over time people will recognize the reliability as one of your assets. The third thing that I think he points out there that is important, be leaderless. Do not start some leader based organization in which I am the leader and founder and this is mine, I’m trademarking and copywriting and patenting this logo and, and this, this slogan and all of this and you have to come to ask me permission for everything.

And no, start a leaderless autonomous idea that can be taken up and spread by everyone. That is what Ernest Hancock did with the Levolution idea and that is what Keith McHenry did with the, the Food Not Bombs idea. And as I say, it’s been pointed out and tried by other people. It, it is the way to get people excited and enthusiastic, get them to buy in so that eventually you have Food Not Bombs branches opening up in Florida that think that it just started a couple years ago in Fort Lauderdale or something. I don’t know. It’s a new thing that people are, who cares if they know or don’t know about the history and who you are as a person to help co found the organization.

If it’s about your ego, you’re probably doing it wrong. The number four thing we can take from that conversation have a core set of principles. Yes, it’s a leaderless, autonomous association of groups that may or may not even know of each other’s existence. The one thing that they have in common is a core set of principles. Principles that yes, different people are going to interpret in different ways in different contexts. But these, these core principles, this is what the group is about. You want to do something else, great, go do it. But if you want this name, let’s use these core set of principles.

And with those principles, then again you, you have something that you are working for and working towards something that is itemized, something that people know what they are getting when they get it. Food not bombs. Again, it can be very simple set of three principles, but it is those guiding things that keep the Continuity of the organization that make it something that can be reliable and useful. Number five, you have to get into the mindset where you recognize resistance is winning. Yes, absolutely. But if I build something, they’ll come after me. If it works, they’ll, you know, the police will come.

Yes, yes, they probably will. And exactly as in the case of Food Not Bombs, they absolutely did. And the FBI has declared Food Not Bombs a terrorist organization. And, and they’ve been arrested time and time again, many times. Yes, if it is successful, you will have resistance, but that means you are making a difference. It means that there is something that is happening that is worthy of the time and attention of the supposed presumed authorities. That is a good thing. And when you get into that mindset, you can have a better and more, more, more impact with the work that you’re doing.

The sixth thing that we can take out of that, you’re going to have to practice agorism at some level at some point. And by that I mean Keith McHenry, again, a good walking, talking example of this. At some point he had been railroaded out of employment opportunities and participation in the system unless he signs up on the dotted line and agrees to this or that. So he has found ways to work in the gray and black markets. And sometimes, yeah, it doesn’t mean you’re going to have to work without a social insurance number or you’re going to have to find ways around that.

You’re going to work for people under the table in cash, etc. And that again, is part of that community. That is the alternative that we’re trying to build here. And once you start to build up the community with your organization, you practice the agorism with your lifestyle and you don’t have to comply and say, yes, sir, every time the authorities give you an order. Number seven, Charity has legal ramifications. Solidarity does not. So it is not a. Again, it’s a. It’s an interesting and important point that they stress solidarity, not charity, because charity means you’re going to have to Sign up and 501C3 and comply and make sure you’re signing all these tax documents and making sure everybody takes some sort of receipt so that they can take that out of the welfare check, all of that.

No, this is not charity. We are not charity. This is a mutual aid organization providing solidarity. This, that is nonviolent resistance towards social action and change and hopefully trying to undermine the war state. That’s what this is. It’s not charity. And I think that’s a key thing that they did in their organization. Maybe it will or will not work for your purposes, wherever you are and whatever you’re doing. But I think it’s something to keep in mind. And number eight, let’s not forget, have fun. Make it fun. Make it fun to participate in your group. Don’t, don’t make it about lectures and everybody better be on board and fighting the new world.

Let’s make it fun. Make it something that people want to participate in. Have a bake sale for the Pentagon or those kinds of culture jamming operations that can, that people will see and will actually get a laugh out of and will make them think. And with those types of operations, you’re probably going to have more success. If people are not having fun participating in your group, in your activity, they’re probably not going to want to continue to participate in it. So those are just eight things that I took out of that conversation. I’m sure there are many more and I’m sure Keith McHenry has more insights on that.

So perhaps we can talk more to him and to other activists along these lines in the future. But let’s try applying some of these in whatever activity you’re doing. It may be a Food Not Bombs chapter and if you start one as a result of being inspired by this, this conversation today, great, awesome. I’d love to hear about it, but maybe it has nothing whatsoever to do with Food Not Bombs. Maybe it’s some completely other organization that you want to start or something, some other movement. Great, wonderful. Start it today and you will be that first person and you will be useful.

You will be reliable. You will have the resistance is winning mindset. You will practice agorism. You will make it fun. You will form the community around you of people who will want to participate in your group applying some of these practices. Anyway, that’s the message for today. I hope it is an inspiring one and I would love to hear people who have been inspired by this message and what comes of it. So keep me informed in the coming days, weeks, months and years, and hopefully 46 years from now, we’ll be celebrating the creation of some other organization that you started today.

I would love to hear about that. On that note, Corporate Report members, again, this Solutions Watch is not a, is not a partisan, is not a spectator sport. It is a participatory activity in which you are engaged. So please do let me know about what is going on. Corporate Report members, as always invited to log in and leave your thoughts and comments and observations in the comments of Today’s. Episode@corbettreport.com Solutions Watch-Revolution that’s going to do it for today. Thank you for investing your time in today’s exploration. I’m James Corbett of CorbettReport.com Looking forward to talking to you again in the very near future.

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