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Food Not Bombs Founder Visits Oberlin
Keith McHenry’s red cheeks, slight beard and jovial manner are qualities that lend themselves more to a department store Santa Claus than to the leader of a group reportedly listed on the FBI’s Terrorist Watch List. Looks can be deceiving.
In his lecture in West Lecture Hall last Tuesday, sponsored by Oberlin’s Amnesty International chapter, McHenry enumerated the lengthy array of events that launched Food Not Bombs 27 years ago from a small activist soup kitchen in Cambridge, MA to a worldwide network fighting for human rights and the right to be fed. As a produce worker in Massachusetts, McHenry witnessed significant amounts of food being thrown out, prompting McHenry and his friends to make the rest into a soup to be served at a protest of a First National Bank of Boston Board of Directors meeting. McHenry and company invited many of the area’s homeless from a local shelter to join in the protest. As people took note of the 75 homeless men at the midday meal, “there became this amazing conversation between homeless people and stockholders going into their stockholders meetings and business people walking by,” McHenry said. He continued, “We thought, ‘This is definitely the way to reach out to people in the mainstream community about social issues.’” As more businesses began donating food and as more volunteers contributed, FNB meals became highly visible public happenings, even outfitted with live music and performances. According to McHenry, food at the gatherings provided grounding for protests and the spread of activist information. “The principles of FNB would be that every chapter would be dedicated to nonviolence and nonviolent social change, that the food would always be vegetarian and free and that it would be given to everyone without concern for their condition, whether they were poor or rich there would be no restrictions for the food; and that we would work by consensus. There would be no hierarchy,” McHenry said. After moving to San Fransisco, McHenry helped start a second chapter of FNB in 1988. This FNB began serving food in Golden Gate Park every Monday when the other local soup kitchens didn’t serve food. “We’d make sure everybody in that neighborhood had a free lunch every day of the week,” said McHenry. “We wrote a letter to the city government as we did in Cambridge expecting to get our street performers permit,” said McHenry. However, on “August 15, 1988, instead of getting a letter, what happened was 45 riot police came out of the woods and surrounded us and arrested nine of us for serving free food. We were really shocked. We had no idea that this could be considered illegal.” The following week 29 volunteers were arrested, and the next week, 54 were arrested. By this time FNB members were making world news. In the wake of media coverage, FNB grew to hundreds of chapters worldwide. The arrests stopped for a time. Upon the election of San Francisco mayor Frank Jordan, the arrests began again, this time after the passage of a new California “three strikes” law. At this point, according to McHenry, Amnesty International stepped in with a worldwide campaign to get the government to stop its violence against FNB and to allow the group to continue. “Up until then, Amnesty International had not had a case in the United States on the issue of human rights violations here.” McHenry said. After Amnesty’s campaign, McHenry moved on, working intensively for FNB chapters. In addition, McHenry helped with the creation of over 400 pirate radio stations, community gardens, and other organizations such as Homes Not Jails. Since then FNB has been organized everywhere from President Bush’s Crawford, TX ranch to New Orleans to Australia. “Almost every day I learn of a new chapter,” McHenry said. After his lecture, a Dateline clip was shown documenting McHenry helping to start FNB chapters in Nigeria. Since very little surplus food is discarded in that country, the local FNB there would instead get cash donations in order to invest in farming food. According to Matthew Presto, College sophomore and member of Oberlin’s Amnesty International chapter, “We...chose Mr. McHenry to come and speak because world hunger is a human rights issue, and this is a man who is helping set up FNB chapters all over the world. I consider him one of the most passionate and effective individuals right now working to end world hunger.” | ![]() |
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