Food Not Bombs

Food Not Bombs (FNB) is a loose-knit group of independent collectives, sharing free vegan and vegetarian food with others. The group believes that corporate and government priorities are skewed to allow hunger to persist in the midst of abundance. To demonstrate this, FNB serves surplus food gathered from grocery stores, bakeries and markets which would otherwise go to waste, or occasionally has already been thrown away. The group exhibits a form of franchise activism. Food Not Bombs is an all-volunteer global movement sharing free vegan meals as a protest against war and poverty. Each chapter collects surplus food from grocery stores, bakeries, and that would otherwise go to waste and occasionally collects items from garbage dumpsters when stores are uncooperative. FNB also accepts donations from local farmers, then prepares free community meals which are offered to anyone who is hungry. According to FNB, the group's central beliefs are: Meals are always vegan or vegetarian. Meals are free to anyone. Each chapter is independent and autonomous and makes decisions via consensus. Dedication to nonviolence. Views "food as a right not a privilege." Coinciding with these beliefs, the groups' goals are: To combat poverty and homelessness To facilitate community gatherings of hungry people To allow anyone to volunteer to help cook, and then eat. Food Not Bombs was founded in 1980 in Cambridge, Massachusetts by anti-nuclear activists Keith McHenry, Jo Swanson, Mira Brown, Susan Eaton, Brian Feigenbaum, C.T. Lawrence Butler, Jessie Constable and Amy Rothstien. According to Keith McHenry, the name came about when he discovered that they were distributing food to the poor just across the street from a new building development for Draper Labs where, rumor had it, they were designing nuclear weapons. McHenry says that it made the group realize that "there are hungry people on one side of the street. There are people on the other that are making money making nuclear weapons. We should be called 'Food Not Bombs.

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Related concepts (4)

Freeganism

Freeganism is an ideology of limited participation in the conventional economy and minimal consumption of resources, particularly through recovering wasted goods like food. The word "freegan" is a portmanteau of "free" and "vegan". While vegans avoid buying, consuming, using, and wearing animal products as an act of protest against animal exploitation, freegans—at least in theory—avoid buying anything as an act of protest against the food system in general.

Direct action

Direct action is a term for economic and political behavior in which participants use agency—for example economic or physical power—to achieve their goals. The aim of direct action is to either obstruct a certain practices (such as a government's laws or actions) or to solve perceived problems (such as social inequality). Direct action may include activities, often nonviolent but possibly violent, targeting people, groups, institutions, actions, or property that its participants deem offensive.

Prefigurative politics

Prefigurative politics are the modes of organization and social relationships that strive to reflect the future society being sought by the group. According to Carl Boggs, who coined the term, the desire is to embody "within the ongoing political practice of a movement [...] those forms of social relations, decision-making, culture, and human experience that are the ultimate goal".