FNB Dublin and its Co-founder Visit

dublin | rights, freedoms and repression | opinion/analysis Tuesday January 27, 2004 17:37 by pc

Better late then never

Keith Mc Henry one of the co-founders of Food Not Bombs visited Ireland. He gave a talk in Dublin, Belfast and joined us at the blockade in Shannon. The main lessons learned from the talk and videos shown was how far a simple idea like FNB could effect a city and the people that lived there, and could possibly be a concrete contribution to helping out the homeless situation in Irelands cities.

Starting in San Franciso in the late 60's Keith described how they began to collect food from bakeries and markets and set up in a local park giving out food to hungry and the homeless.

Read more about how to set-up a fnb at www.foodnotbombs.net

Apparently over a period of ten years 50 millions was spent on measures to break up the fnb groups in the state and they still never succeeded in doing so. In one video we saw they set up on a Plaza outside the UN building in New York on the occasion of the 50 anniversary of the UN with many dignitaries going into the building the police baton charged this grouping explaining it was bad for tourism to have these scruffy people on the plaza. A plaza that had a motto a kin to "this is a place of peace for all" inscribe on a plaque.

In recent attempts to start a regular fnb here we ended up spending as much time dealing with irate park attendants and police then sharing food with people. We felt it would have been better to share out free food rather then try battle with police all the time, it seems ridiculous to think that such a simple idea would be such a threat to some people but it was and unfortunately it something we won't be able to avoid.

What was a surprise was how central fnb was to everything this group did in its city and they used the non-hierarchal ideas developed in fnb as model for others campaigns they did, as opposed to here where it was something we did secondary to RTS or anti-war protests. I think I remember Keith explaining how they did for 50 days straight outside the city hall once when there was a crackdown on homeless, and when the earthquake happened in San Francisco they set-up a food kitchen in the open air and were feeding everyone even police and emergency services who a one time were kicking them off the streets.

So if anyone wants to contact fnb to help out or get advice on setting one up in your own area please do and if you (as we always are) looking for more creative ideas to get your point across then usual boring protest then fnb is a good and very unique way of getting your message across about injustice and could be used for highlighting the hypocrisy of the EU presidency or any other campaign.

(although thougths had been in dublin to try and establish a regualr fnb not apart from protests)

our email address is foodnotbombs@athisbetterworld.com and a webpage for Dublin-fnb is at

http://www.freewebs.com/fnbdublin/