Birmingham Food Not Bombs would like to issue a statement of solidarity to all groups and people around the world who have been arrested for sharing food with the hungry. There’s been a worrying trend recently in America of new laws being introduced to prevent free food being given out to the hungry which has resulted in many people being arrested and held for days in prison. There has been a call out for people around the world to consider sharing free meals in celebration of our right to food on Sunday 1st April. Food is a right not a privilege.
https://network23.org/brumfnb/2012/02/21/food-is-a-right-not-a-privilege-statement-of-solidarity/
https://network23.org/brumfnb/2012/02/21/food-is-a-right-not-a-privilege-statement-of-solidarity/
The first arrest for sharing food in Orlando, Florida
FOOD IS A RIGHT, NOT A PRIVILEGE
Sharing food with the hungry is an unregulated act of kindness.
End all efforts to stop people from feeding the hungry.
Rescind all laws restricting compassion.
“THERE IS NO RIGHT WAY TO GIVE OUT FOOD, THERE IS ONLY GIVING OUT ALL THE FOOD YOU CAN”
- Kathy Mitro who posted a petition on line after being threatened with arrest for sharing food in Daytona Beach. Florida in January 2012
We are proposing that people all over the world consider sharing free meals in celebration our right to food and participate in our campaign for an end to laws restricting acts of compassion. Celebrate our right to feed the hungry with music, theater, and the sharing of food.
SUNDAY, APRIL 1, 2012
It has been distressing to receive so many reports in the past few weeks of people being threatened with arrest or cities adopting new laws limiting people’s right to share free food with the public. People in England, California, Texas, Pennsylvania, South Carolina, and Florida contacted Food Not Bombs about having been threatened with arrest. Others report that their local governments are considering laws to limit acts of compassion.
This new wave of threats is happening as half of all Americans are struggling to survive. The Department of Agriculture’s February report shows that 46,286,294 people relied on food stamps in November of 2011. People have been arriving at Food Not Bombs meals claiming they had not eaten in four days because other food programs had exhausted their resources. The Food and Agriculture Organization estimates that 1 in 7 people or 925 million people world wide went hungry in 2010. We are announcing a global campaign to recognize that sharing food with the hungry is an unregulated activity of compassion and should not be interfered with by the authorities.
Our movement started when the “Diggers” occupied St George’s Hill in Surrey, England on April 1, 1649 in a protest for the right of landless people to feed themselves. We are announcing our global campaign for the right of all people to share food with the hungry without regulation on the anniversary of the first act of the peaceful resistance by the “Diggers” of St George’s Hill.
The public is encouraged to share meals with their community on Sunday, April 1, 2012 in defiance of government’s efforts to restrict acts of compassion. Please email our office so we can post your event on our website.
FOOD IS A RIGHT NOT A PRIVILEGE ? End all efforts to stop people from feeding the hungry
http://www.foodnotbombs.net/food_is_a_right.html
FOOD IS A RIGHT NOT A PRIVILEGE ? End all efforts to stop people from feeding the hungry on blog.foodnotbombs.net
http://blog.foodnotbombs.net/food-is-a-right-not-a-privilege-end-all-efforts-to-stop-people-from-feeding-the-hungry/
ENDORSED BY
Barbara Ehrenreich, author of Nickel and Dimed
Noam Chomsky, author and professor M.I.T.
Eric Holt-Giménez, Food First/Institute for Food and Development Policy
Bill McKibben, author Deep Economy
David Barsamian, founder and director of Alternative Radio
David Rovics,musician, USA
Kevin Devine, musician, Brooklyn, NY
Kathy Kelly, Co-coordinator, Voices for Creative Nonviolence
Michael Stoops, National Coalition for the Homeless
Kathy Mitro, Daytona Beach. Florida
Keith McHenry, Co-founder of the Food Not Bombs Movement
###
PLEASE ENDORSE THIS CAMPAIGN
Please consider endorsing this nonviolent campaign. Email us you name, position and city or if your group is endorsing the name of your organization and city. Seek to overturn all local laws restricting the sharing of food.
Thanks so much.
menu@foodnotbombs.net
ADDITIONAL RESOURCES
The current cities actively seeking to restrict the sharing of food are Los Angeles, Daytona Beach,Tampa, St Petersburg, Dallas, Myrtle Beach, Philadelphia.
https://network23.org/brumfnb/2012/02/21/food-is-a-right-not-a-privilege-statement-of-solidarity/
Sharing food with the hungry is an unregulated act of kindness.
End all efforts to stop people from feeding the hungry.
Rescind all laws restricting compassion.
“THERE IS NO RIGHT WAY TO GIVE OUT FOOD, THERE IS ONLY GIVING OUT ALL THE FOOD YOU CAN”
- Kathy Mitro who posted a petition on line after being threatened with arrest for sharing food in Daytona Beach. Florida in January 2012
We are proposing that people all over the world consider sharing free meals in celebration our right to food and participate in our campaign for an end to laws restricting acts of compassion. Celebrate our right to feed the hungry with music, theater, and the sharing of food.
SUNDAY, APRIL 1, 2012
It has been distressing to receive so many reports in the past few weeks of people being threatened with arrest or cities adopting new laws limiting people’s right to share free food with the public. People in England, California, Texas, Pennsylvania, South Carolina, and Florida contacted Food Not Bombs about having been threatened with arrest. Others report that their local governments are considering laws to limit acts of compassion.
This new wave of threats is happening as half of all Americans are struggling to survive. The Department of Agriculture’s February report shows that 46,286,294 people relied on food stamps in November of 2011. People have been arriving at Food Not Bombs meals claiming they had not eaten in four days because other food programs had exhausted their resources. The Food and Agriculture Organization estimates that 1 in 7 people or 925 million people world wide went hungry in 2010. We are announcing a global campaign to recognize that sharing food with the hungry is an unregulated activity of compassion and should not be interfered with by the authorities.
Our movement started when the “Diggers” occupied St George’s Hill in Surrey, England on April 1, 1649 in a protest for the right of landless people to feed themselves. We are announcing our global campaign for the right of all people to share food with the hungry without regulation on the anniversary of the first act of the peaceful resistance by the “Diggers” of St George’s Hill.
The public is encouraged to share meals with their community on Sunday, April 1, 2012 in defiance of government’s efforts to restrict acts of compassion. Please email our office so we can post your event on our website.
FOOD IS A RIGHT NOT A PRIVILEGE ? End all efforts to stop people from feeding the hungry
http://www.foodnotbombs.net/food_is_a_right.html FOOD IS A RIGHT NOT A PRIVILEGE ? End all efforts to stop people from feeding the hungry on blog.foodnotbombs.net
http://blog.foodnotbombs.net/food-is-a-right-not-a-privilege-end-all-efforts-to-stop-people-from-feeding-the-hungry/ ENDORSED BY
Barbara Ehrenreich, author of Nickel and Dimed
Noam Chomsky, author and professor M.I.T.
Eric Holt-Giménez, Food First/Institute for Food and Development Policy
Bill McKibben, author Deep Economy
David Barsamian, founder and director of Alternative Radio
David Rovics,musician, USA
Kevin Devine, musician, Brooklyn, NY
Kathy Kelly, Co-coordinator, Voices for Creative Nonviolence
Michael Stoops, National Coalition for the Homeless
Kathy Mitro, Daytona Beach. Florida
Keith McHenry, Co-founder of the Food Not Bombs Movement
###
PLEASE ENDORSE THIS CAMPAIGN
Please consider endorsing this nonviolent campaign. Email us you name, position and city or if your group is endorsing the name of your organization and city. Seek to overturn all local laws restricting the sharing of food.
Thanks so much.
menu@foodnotbombs.net ADDITIONAL RESOURCES
The current cities actively seeking to restrict the sharing of food are Los Angeles, Daytona Beach,Tampa, St Petersburg, Dallas, Myrtle Beach, Philadelphia.
https://network23.org/brumfnb/2012/02/21/food-is-a-right-not-a-privilege-statement-of-solidarity/
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Comments
Hide the following 9 comments
Please let this be a bad dream.
22.02.2012 12:13
What is the legal basis for the arrests mentioned above? ...I mean, what were the 'reasons' given for introducing such legislation?
Anyone? Were people killing animals at the scene or something?
Gobsmacked.
A Place at the Table
22.02.2012 17:36
The report “focuses on ordinances, policies, and tactics that discourage or prohibit individuals and groups from sharing food with homeless persons. Uncomfortable with visible homelessness in their communists and influenced by myths about homeless people's food access, cities use food sharing restrictions to move homeless people out of sight, an action that often exacerbates the challenges people experiencing homelessness face each day just to survive”
Some examples include:
Gainesville, Florida began enforcing a rule limiting the number of meals that soup kitchens serve to 130 a day
Phoenix, Arizona used zoning laws to stop a local church from serving breakfast to community members, including many homeless people
Myrtle Beach, South Carolina adopted an ordinance that restricts food sharing with homeless people in public parks … groups may only obtain a permit 4 times a year.
New laws being considered in Miami, Florida would criminalize individual acts of charity, like giving a sandwich or spare change to a homeless person.
Birmingham Food Not Bombs
Homepage:
https://network23.org/brumfnb/
Not as bad but tricky
22.02.2012 20:00
And we do have people working for more than one agenda. For example, in my state somebody can get raw milk IF they pick it up at the farm and bring their own clean container. If the farm cleaned the container or if they brought the milk to somebody then has to be qualified/inspected as a dairy. So I could give out milk or chesse bought from the store but not from the farm.
Number of meals or number of times a year? Our churches face the same restrictions, in this case there are limits below which they DON'T have to have qualified their kitchen the same way a public restaurant does. Generally solved by rotating the duty among several churches/synagoges so that they all stay below the limits.
I'll repeat, most places in this country you can feed the poor BUT you need to learn and follow the regs (and so can't have as part of your agenda wanting this to also be abn action against those regs). And almost anywhere, when done indoors, theere is going to be a limit on how many (because all public indoir spaces including church halls are registered/inspected for "occupancy limits").
MDN
poppycock
22.02.2012 21:51
This is not true. There is no laws to this effect.
Food (like anything else), is something you pay for with either money you earn or money that you get from benefits.
Harry brown
natural or legal 'rights'
22.02.2012 22:20
Natural 'rights' come to you naturally without help from any other person; like the right to breath fresh air, or the right to sing a song. These are universal to all human beings.
Legal 'rights' are entitlements bestowed on you by a legal authority; like the right to claim unemployment benefit or the right to enrolment on a collage course. These are not the same the same for all human beings.
If you talk about 'rights' it is important to state which type you are talking about.
read more:
To me natural rights are for more important than legal rights.
And to me it is important that legal rights should not be seen to supersede natural rights.
anarchist
"Natural" rights don't really exist
23.02.2012 13:09
There is no way of defining what is a natural right or not.
At the end of the day, we are all just collections of atoms working according to the laws of physics, just like animals or inanimate objects.
That isn't to say I disagree with society defining fundamental rights like being able to share food with people - I'm all for it, I just think we are deluding ourselves if we think they are natural.
anon
Fingers in your mouths.
23.02.2012 22:46
Yes, I beleive God has defined (in writing) our natural rights. But for athiests who don't beleive in anything (or anyone) well they need something else to replace their lack of faith which works out quite handy for government which adores that vacuum.
So it comes along and decides that everybody (athiests only) must become a law-loving secular bigot instead. Its a disempowering existance for sure...ever so sad!
I see food as the most basic right to survival and happily for me, the feeling of starvation is so strong apparently that I can kill you to take what I need to survive and not worry too much about having to pay the consequences. I can just claim diminished responsibility through starvation.
Only a trouble-maker would try to make that basic right...permissible only through the law!
I suppose the man being arrested in that photo above, and the people who will no doubt be arrested in the future, are just paying the price for voluntarily surrendering their rights to the bureucratic and political classes who have worked hard to rob them of their rights over the years. This is what 'progressive' politics is all about. Idiocy ending in eventual slavery!
Food hasn't got much to do with it.
Charity Black.
@ the killer
23.02.2012 23:01
No - you cant do that. Your defence wouldn't stand up and you'll be done for murder (and rightfully so). Starvation takes a loooooooooong time (months), by which time you could of easily got help from many sources. Hence, if you did kill someone, it could be proven that you weren't starving but rather a bit peckish., unless you could prove you havn't eaten for months and that you had taken active steps to legally feed yourself (which if you had - you would have succeeded via a soup kitchen or something).
What you describe is called survival of the fittest. Eg. if you were ship-wrecked on an island with limited supplies of food, it would make logical sense to kill all your fellow survivors to ensure that food lasted you the longer (ie. take what you need --> which in this case is all of it). And since you already said you would kill for food, you fit this model.
Thats why there are laws like murder - to protect the hardworking public from people like you who would try and kill them and steal their food.
mauve
Eating money!
24.02.2012 16:30
"What you describe is called survival of the fittest. Eg. if you were ship-wrecked on an island with limited supplies of food, it would make logical sense to kill all your fellow survivors to ensure that food lasted you the longer (ie. take what you need --> which in this case is all of it). And since you already said you would kill for food, you fit this model."
Yeh, thats really nice and your logic works wonderfully in London of course but then again any feeble minded nonsense works in London these days.
Do you think it would make sense to kill everybody you are stranded with simply to make the food last longer? How odd! Personally I wouldn't do that. Not just to make the food last longer...thats stupid!
Remind me never to get stuck on a desert island with you...I would clearly have to kill you just to get a decent nights sleep!
Charity Black