Food Not Bombs
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The East Bay Food Not Bombs chapter started in 1991 shortly after the struggle to keep San Francisco Food Not Bombs going in the face of police repression.. They still serve five meals a week at People's Park, and a sixth outside Sutter Hotel in downtown Oakland.
Food Not Bombs recovers healthy, nutritious, vegetarian food that would have been otherwise discarded to cook food for people in immediate need. The problem isn't too little production, it's poor and inequitable distribution. Food Not Bombs is an alternative food distribution organization, intent on building sustainable community food sharing programs. By giving away free, vegetarian food in public places Food Not Bombs brings the invisible hungry and poor into the public's eye, forcing passers-by to examine, at least for a moment, their own complicity and involvement in allowing the unaccountable global economic system that oppresses every one of us to continue.
Food Not Bombs calls attention to the inherent contradictions in society's failure to provide food and housing for each of its members, while at the same time handing out hundreds of billions of dollars in funding for unconscionable wars and state violence.
Food Not Bombs is protest, not charity.
While FNB is a loosely-knit group of (hundreds of!) collectives, each Food Not Bombs group shares some basic unifying principles:
Non-violence Our society is dominated by violence - economic, political, environmental, and mental. The authority and power of the government is based solely on the threat and use of violence at home and abroad. Food Not Bombs is committed to a vision of society that is motivated by love and sharing, not violence and greed. The commercial food industry is also predicated on violence. It involves the slaughtering of millions of animals and the poisoning of our planet through the use of chemical pesticides and fertilizers. Tons of usable food go to waste to maintain high profits. While the police have attacked Food Not Bombs (members of San Francisco Food Not Bombs have been arrested more than 1000 times since 1988) for its actions, we never respond with violence because we would never want to recreate the authoritative methods of the state in our own actions.
Consensus Decision Making Rather then relying on a system of winner take all, Food Not Bombs believes that every member of the group should have the opportunity to participate in shaping all the group's decisions. The consensus process insures that the will of the majority doesn't dismiss the values and contributions of everyone else. Consensus process forces us to resolve conflicts through negotiation and compromise rather than overruling and censoring.
Vegetarianism Up to 25% of the food in the United States is wasted every year, with an estimated 130 pounds of food per person ending up in landfills nationwide. That's enough feed 49 million people, twice as many as starve in the world annually. More than 70% of the grain harvest in the U.S. is fed to farmed animals, as is 33% of the world's grain.
We hope that you will share with us.
Please come to the free food servings around 2:30 in People's Park every weekday (between Dwight & Haste, above Telegraph Ave., Berkeley), and at 14th & Jefferson in downtown Oakland by the Sutter Hotel on Sunday.
Our cooking locations are found at http://ebfnb.org/, and our meetings are the first Wednesday of every month, at 7:30, at TheLongHaul.