Food Not Bombs: Modeling community, a meal at a time
posted: June 22, 2008 | category: community
tags: Food Not Bombs, free meals, Glenwood
Tina Firesheets’ excellent article about Greensboro’s Food Not Bombs is called “Community Cuisine,” and I love the title! My church has a weekly “community dinner” for the homeless (because it’s for the “community”), but Food Not Bombs really models what it means to build community with their three times weekly dinners and free-food distribution program.
At the Monday, Tuesday, and Thursday evening meals, participants are invited to serve and eat together. Tasks like cooking and cleaning up are shared. Diners serve themselves and eat communally around sofas, chairs and porch swings at St. Mary’s, or park benches at the library. There is no distinction between the homed and the homeless, the haves and the have-nots. It’s true community. I’d love to see our church incorporate the FNB model into our own “community” dinner.
Read what Stormy, Tim, Liz, Brian and others have to say about FNB’s free, organic, vegetarian and sometimes “freegan” meals, and the new free-food distribution program at the HIVE in Glenwood — all from food that would have been thrown away otherwise. FNB really serves Greensboro — for about $500 a year. (Agencies and churches who feed the homeless could learn from FNB’s thrifty ways!)
Note: Although I’m definitely a fan of their egalitarian approach to building community, and I like to visit the dinners and the HIVE, I haven’t joined FNB, because it’s a political movement. They lean kind of left. I lean a little right. I guess there’s a balance in there somewhere, because we do have a lot of common ground. And they sure are fun to hang out with. The ones that know about it even seem to overlook my authoritarian streak. 
Comments
2 Responses to “Food Not Bombs: Modeling community, a meal at a time”
Leave a Reply
Hey Michele, I have to agree that Tina did an excellent job with this article. I steered clear of Food Not Bombs the week Tina was doing her reporting, mainly because I was humping to finish a cover story before my vacation, but also partly because I know how annoying it is to be working on an article and have a fellow journalist pop up in the middle of your reporting.
I also wanted to mention that although Food Not Bombs’ politics do certainly lean left, the structure of the organization doesn’t impose any ideological requirements on participants. I know of at least one participant who has expressed sentiments against Islam and against affirmative action. Also, several participants have expressed a distrust of Obama that I can only assume stems from a slight streak of latent racism.
Granted, there’s a subtle conversion process at work. I’ve noticed that folks come for the food and community, and over time seem to adopt anti-consumerist and anti-militarist attitudes.
I don’t know about your authoritarian streak. All of us have a touch of it. Those of us who are anti-authoritarian are just more conscientious about keeping it in check.
Jordan, I wondered why you weren’t quoted. You’re one of my favorite FNBers. That explains it.