Food Not Bombs

Um, she worked at Catholic Worker House.

I was starting Food Not Bombs.

So it's interesting, this whole, uh, serendipitous parallel lives that, uh, I was in Clamshell Alliance.

She was in Abalone Alliance, but...

I had read, uh, uh, On Civil Disobedience by Thoreau.

That was my first book, was Walden, when I was in the fifth grade.

And so I, you know, I that- that's how I got on this path to, to dedicating my whole life to doing, uh, Food Not Bombs.

And then I'd, you know, to make a living I had, uh, I was a graphic designer.

Yeah.

So he wasn't just, you know, like, you have people doing social service work from kind of all walks of life, but in this case, you know, he was involved with Food Not Bombs and playing music- Yeah ... and all those things.

So having that relationship still tied into Fest making sense for this all to happen.

Yeah, that's a great point.

Not just because it's violence, which should be reason enough, not simply because of the murder of thousands of children, but because this is state-sanctioned violence in the sense that we are paying for it.

And people, just like what we were talking about with Measure E, Care Not Cops, you know, Food Not Bombs, I think people in this country are saying, "Wait, we don't have universal healthcare.

Israel has universal healthcare.

We don't have free college for all.

So like, there's a lot of people who I donate to.

Um, I'm a big donation to the immigrant pantry and to, um, Food Not Bombs Memphis, right? That do on the ground stuff that like I, as a disabled person don't have capacity for, but want to support with what limited funds I have.

Same thing goes with my professional skills, right? That is part of what has guided some of my consultation work.

But I'm consulting with only a couple, not every possible organization here in Memphis.

yeah I there's still some there's still plenty of like mutual aid groups that do that kind of stuff there's lots of

food not bombs have stopped to exist I'm just saying that that word has been stolen

sure yeah um i mean there are actually uh i think that there are some like i know um the the crown heights tenant union has been doing some like actual like classic mutual aid as in like um they've got a bunch of like trade spin that are art members or like actually like hey here like i will come do repairs on your house you will like watch my kids like like trying to do actual like uh um kind of community building uh setting up like uh systems of care but

at some point I can't remember what it was and this is probably going to be a kind of useless statement but there was some kind of community which was like doing mutual aid but they were using like actual company script uh script for um like how many chores you were doing for each other but this led first to hoarding where people would do more chores for each other but would never spend their own for some structural reason But then they changed.

Because obviously the disabled stuff derives from the masking stuff.

I don't

consider that Food Not Bombs was founded just by a man, a particular man that you might meet.

of course it's john communism

And two city councilors opened up City Hall and were holding 24-hour emergency meetings, which was just an opportunity to have people receive shelter in City Hall.

And finally, the mayor opened up an emergency shelter at a community center that's not very easy to get to, that has no beds, that was just like a really, it was just a community room that was opened up And I was helping with a bedding drive for that and started doing some meals with Food Not Bombs.

And there was an evangelical church and the Food Not Bombs stuff that together we're serving all of these meals.

And so it was really an opportunity for the community to come together with very, very different perspectives, but just one shared value on making sure that our neighbors didn't die.

And while all these outreach workers were going out in the cold and saying, please come to this location.