Food Not Bombs

Members of the anarchistic mutual aid group Food Not Bombs have been arrested in scores of cities throughout the nation. Their crime? Providing free vegan food in public spaces. In this article I contend that the group's oppositional relationship to neoliberal charity provides a partial explanation for the state's hostility to the group; however, this is not sufficient on its own for explaining why certain cities have cracked down on the organization. Instead, Food Not Bombs’ resistance to neoliberal charity makes the group’s actions a serious threat to state power only given the right confluence of neoliberal economic development, austerity, urban gentrification efforts, and public visibility. In this article, I look at the impacts of neoliberal policies on homeless services, examine how neoliberal charities discipline and regulate the poor, and then analyze the way that Food Not Bombs activists see their actions as a form of resistance to neoliberal charity

Summary: The aim of the article is to present the main assumptions underlying the activity of Food Not Bombs groups in Poland. The article is a presentation of an idea that was born in the 1980s and gave rise to systematic feeding and sharing food with the poorest urban dwellers.
Why helping the poorest is important for people, who declare themselves to be non-religious or non-political groups that are also not NGO’s? Do they expect something in return? What are they trying to prove? How does this movement originate in the United States and in other countries? When did start the first activities of this type of groups in Poland? Why meals prepared under the action’s label are vegetarian or vegan?
I take note of both the reception of the actions of people involved in the movement of Food Not Bombs and the problems they face in their practice. I wonder about the ban on feeding homeless people, and the willingness of the FNB members, who despite the bans, continue to carry out their mission.
An issue beyond the help of the those who need the most is the issue of the ethical nature to prepare meals, that are based solely on plants, which often come from gifts or are unsold remnants from local markets and small shops.

The majority of literature on Slow Food focu- ses on the organization or actors involved in the movement. There is a dearth of material analyzing Carlo Petrini’s aspirations for Slow Food, particularly in light of his desire within Slow Food Nation (2007) and Terra Madre (2010) to make ‘‘freewill giving a part of economic discourse.’’ This essay corrects the literature gap through historicizing and critiquing Petrini’s alternative to global capitalism while rooting it in actually existing practices. First, Pe- trini’s problematic conceptualization of freewill giving will be compared to feminist theorizations and documentations of the gift economy. Second, Petrini’s avoidance of the toxic mimic of the gift, its subsumption to capitalism, will be amended by discussing how the gifting of food aid and emergency food networks actually reproduces inequality, poverty, and hunger. Third, Petrini’s example of gifting by a Trappist Monastery will be juxtaposed to the ongoing direct action strategies of Food Not Bombs, a much stronger example of an oppositional gift economy, one that is subsequently repressed by the state. In doing so, this essay seeks to expand discussion of the gift economy within the alternative food movement while amending many of the theoretical, historical, and political problems embedded within Petrini’s work, which performs a strong disservice to the politics of possibility embedded within gifting.

A common problem in all affluent societies, particularly in the retail sector,
is the burgeoning issue of food waste. In this, Australia is no exception. However, to
a large extent, the main focus of research in Australia to date has been on food waste
at the household level. This paper focuses on the previous stage in the food life-cycle
and examines the freegan practice of collecting and redistributing food discarded as
‘worthless’ by supermarket chains, in particular. For freegans, this is an act of choice,
not need, to protest against issues of overconsumption and waste. The practice of
freeganism has had multiple manifestations throughout history. It represents an alternative ethics of consumption and has multiple forms, embracing such issues as pesticide contamination, excessive labour exploitation, packaging and more. This paper reports on ongoing ethnographic research into two freegan subcultures in Australia: dumpster-divers and participation in the activities associated with ‘Food Not Bombs’. It complements freegan research conducted across the world while its analysis, applying theories of alternative food networks, food justice, diverse economies and concepts of autonomy, provides insights into contemporary forms of activism and social change around issues of food waste in Australia.

In this paper I focus on the sociolinguistic aspects of membership in a Food Not Bombs group in Athens, Georgia. I analyze the members' metapragmatic discourse in the instances of " language policing " to describe the language ideology I refer to as situated personalism, a register that was crucial in the performance of membership, and how the members were trying to create an inclusive frame of interaction free of discrimination. I discuss the paradoxical consequences of the members' reflexive language use, due to which a certain way of speaking effectively became a crucial prerequisite for group membership, contrary to the commitment to inclusion the members espoused.

A common problem in all affluent societies, particularly in the retail sector, is the burgeoning issue of food waste. In this, Australia is no exception. However, to a large extent, the main focus of research in Australia to date has been on food waste at the household level. This paper focuses on the previous stage in the food life-cycle and examines the freegan practice of collecting and redistributing food discarded as ‘worthless’ by supermarket chains, in particular. For freegans, this is an act of choice, not need, to protest against issues of overconsumption and waste. The practice of freeganism has had multiple manifestations throughout history. It represents an alternative ethics of consumption and has multiple forms, embracing such issues as pesticide contamination, excessive labour exploitation, packaging and more. This paper reports on ongoing ethnographic research into two freegan subcultures in Australia: dumpster-divers and participation in the activities associated wi...