The campaign starts on Sunday, April 1, 2012. We intend to keep up the pressure until there are no longer any efforts to regulate the sharing of food. The national day of action for human rights and the equality of homeless people is this Sunday, April 1st in cities on an international scope! Actions and activities will take place in San Francisco, Philadelphia, Houston, Tampa, Fort Lauderdale, Grand Rapids, Durango, and Nashville as well as in Monterrey, Mexico and Birmingham in the U.K. and elsewhere.
The number of people and groups contacting us to offer support is growing by the hour. We can’t thank you all enough.
Please take action this Sunday by helping and especially speaking with homeless people in your community about the hunger and discrimination they face, and see what can be done to improve this enduring human rights crisis!
Please comment on this post or e-mail menu@foodnotbombs.net if you would like to be directed to a nearby event on April 1st or need help starting your own.
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Every day we learn of new efforts to regulate the sharing of food. We are writing to ask for your support. Our office has seen a huge increase in reports of people and groups being stopped for sharing food with the hungry. There is also a new wave of laws restricting the sharing of food. The expense and regulation required by authorities makes it impossible to provide help. In many cities you can be jailed for weeks and even months for sharing meals with the hungry. Many of our volunteers have been arrested and held for days for their acts of compassion. Please consider endorsing our campaign and issuing a statement of support.
Thanks for your consideration.
Keith McHenry and Kathy Mitro
March 31, 2011
CONTACT:
Keith McHenry
575-770-3377
menu@foodnotbombs.net
www.foodnotbombs.net/food_is_a_right.html
Kathy Mitro
386-795-9643
kathymitro@yahoo.com
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 to celebrate our right to share food and end all 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
ENDORSED BY
- Barbara Ehrenreich – author of Nickel and Dimed
- Dr. Cornel West – author and professor Princeton University
- Noam Chomsky – author and professor M.I.T.
- Michael Parenti – author and lecturer
- Raj Patel – author of Stuffed and Starved
- 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
- Dorinda Moreno – Fuerza Mundial Collaborative
- Rev. Brian Burch – President, St. Clare’s Multifaith Housing Society
- Francisca James Hernández, Ph.D. – Southwest Institute for Research on Women
- Kathy Kelly – Co-coordinator, Voices for Creative Nonviolence
- Max Ventura – Musician, Activist, Mom, USA
- Michele Burke – St. John’s, Newfoundland, Canada
- Rabbi. Auri V. Ish – Musician, Nederland Colorado
- Christina Persaud – Halifax Nova Scotia
- Can Baskent – Practical Anarchy, New York City
- Planting Justice – Oakland, CA
- KT Terry – Founder Homeless Not Hopeless Poets For Change
- Marian Wagner – The North Country Coalition for Justice and Peace, East Ryegate, Vermont
- Tessza Udvarhelyi – The City is for All, Budapest, Hungary
- Tristram Stuart – organized “Feeding the 5000″in London’s Trafalgar Square UK
- Kathy Mitro – Daytona Beach, Florida USA
- Agustina Vidal – Myrtle Beach Food Not Bombs
- Birmingham Food Not Bombs – Birmingham, UK
- Keith McHenry – Co-founder of the Food Not Bombs Movement
- Lauren Melodia – Founder & Co-organizer Milk Not Jails USA
- Tom Ferguson – Author, Atlanta, Gerogia USA
- Comida, no bombas – Monterrey, Mexico
- Tampa Food Not Bombs – Tampa, Florida USA
- Grand Rapids Food Not Bombs – Grand Rapids, Michigan, USA
- The Civil Liberties Defense Center – Eugene, Oregon, USA
- Durango Food Not Bombs – Durango, Colorado, USA
- Houston Food Not Bombs – Houston, Texas, USA
- Budapest Food Not Bombs – Budapest, Hungary
- Randall Amster – Chair of the Master’s Program in Humanities at Prescott College, and also serves as the Executive Director of the Peace & Justice Studies Association. USA
- Ellen Murphy – Bellingham, WA, USA
- Cincinnati Food Not Bombs – Cincinnati, OH, USA
- Miakoda (jyll taylor) – founder & director of Fierce Allies
- Washington D.C. Food Not Bombs – Washington D.C. USA
- Christy Prahl – New Communities Program Director – Humboldt Park, Chicago, IL
- Buffalo Food Not Bombs – Buffalo, NY, USA
- Cranford Joseph Coulter – founder and director or The King’s Jubilee, Philadelphia, PA, USA
- Hector Lopez – Constable of New Canaan, New Canaan, CT, USA
- Sanjay Kharod – Executive Director New Orleans Food & Farm Network (NOFFN), New Orleans, LA, USA
- Carol Denney – musician, Editor of the Pepper Spray Times, founder of Fiddlers for Peace
- Las Vegas Food Not Bombs – Las Vegas, NV USA
- Gail Sacco – Homeless Advocate, Las Vegas, NV USA
- Molly D. Anderson – Partridge Chair in Food & Sustainable Agriculture Systems, Bar Harbor, ME, USA
- Dr. Will Tuttle – author, The World Peace Diet, and co-founder, Circle of Compassion
- Don McCormick – Trustee Patient Physician Cooperatives Houston, TX and Portland, OR, USA
- James Heddle and Mary Beth Brangan – Co-Directors EON, The Ecological Options Network
- Vancouver Catholic Worker – Vancouver BC Canada
- Theresa and Blase Bonpane – Directors Office of the Americas, Los Angeles, CA, USA
- Don Madden – Grass Valley, CA, USA
- Peter Phillips – President: Media Freedom Foundation/Project Censored
- Jack & Felice Cohen-Joppa – editors the Nuclear Resister, Tucson, AZ, USA
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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 Santa Monica, Minsk, Houston, Los Angeles, Daytona Beach, Tampa, St Petersburg, Dallas, Myrtle Beach, Philadelphia.
SAMPLE STATE LAW PROTECTING THE RIGHT OF ALL TO SHARE FOOD WITHOUT REGULATION
Connecticut General Statute 19A-36 was changed on October 3, 2009
According to Peter Goselin, one of the lawyers for Food Not Bombs, “the amended state statute not only protects free distribution of food to people who need it in Connecticut, but should be viewed as a model for other states to follow so that faith-based and civic organizations can do what is needed. This is particularly important given news released today that one in six Americans now live in poverty.”*
http://middletowneyenews.blogspot.com/2009/10/cease-and-desist-lifted-for-food-not.html
*In 2011 that figure increased to one in two Americans live in poverty – http://www.foodnotbombs.net/poverty and food stamps flyer.pdf
A PLACE AT THE TABLE
http://www.foodnotbombs.net/A_Place_at_the_Table.pdf
Food is a Right Jean Ziegler
http://www.righttofood.org/
Hunger Is a ‘Weapon of Mass Destruction’, says Jean Ziegler
http://www.opednews.com/articles/Hunger-Is-a-Weapon-of-Mas-by-Siv-O-Neall-120120-44.html
SUPPLEMENTAL NUTRITION ASSISTANCE PROGRAM: NUMBER OF PERSONS PARTICIPATING
http://www.fns.usda.gov/pd/29snapcurrpp.htm
2012 World Hunger and Poverty Facts and Statistics Food and Agriculture Organization
http://www.worldhunger.org/articles/Learn/world 20hunger facts 202002.htm
Anti-Poverty Groups Alarmed At Obama Budget
http://www.npr.org/2011/02/14/133756360/Anti-Poverty-Groups-Alarmed-At-Obama-Budget
PETITIONS
If you have been threatened with arrest for sharing food please contact us. menu@foodnotbombs.net
Speaker of the House: Change the laws that criminalize sharing food with
hungry individuals
http://www.change.org/petitions/the-president-of-the-united-states-change-the-laws-that-criminalize-sharing-food-with-hungry-individuals
Allow Food Not Bombs Myrtle Beach to Feed the
Hungry
http://www.thepetitionsite.com/1/allow-food-not-bombs-myrtle-beach-to-feed-people/
The City of Dallas: Stop
threatening people for feeding the homeless
http://www.change.org/petitions/the-city-of-dallas-stop-threatening-people-for-feeding-the-homeless
NEW REPORTS ON EFFORTS TO LIMIT THE SHARING OF MEALS
National group organizes to help hungry in Ithaca
http://theithacan.org/21572
BELARUS
Food Not Bombs activists to stand trial after riot police's raid on charity concert in Minsk
http://naviny.by/rubrics/english/2012/03/25/ic_articles_259_177292
FORT LAUDERDALE
Lauderdale homeless situation must change, officials say
http://www.orlandosentinel.com/news/local/fl-lauderdale-homeless-problems-20120221,0,7500001.story
SANTA MONICA
Santa Monica City Council plans to vote on a new law requiring groups to get a permit to share meals with 75 or more people. At the same time they a similar Community Bill of Rights ordinance that we are using to support the right to share food without regulation. The community is encouraged to contact the Santa Monica City Council before the Tuesday, February 21, 2012 meeting and ask them not to pass the Gathering Permits law. Thanks
Gathering permits
Gatherings including more than 75 people on the Third Street Promenade will need to get a permit in the future after the City Council took its first vote on an ordinance changing the permitting rules. Staff cited space constraints and safety as reasons for the change.
A night with Santa Monica Food Not Bombs
http://youtu.be/0z3tTv8GC8Y
Previously, it took over 150 people to require a permit.
http://www.smdp.com/Articles-local-news-c-2012-02-15-73480.113116-Council-wrap-More-eateries-on-Main-development-sees-changes.html
Feeding homeless in public raising concerns yet again
http://www.smdp.com/Articles-local-news-c-2011-11-22-72994.113116-Feeding-homeless-in-public-raising-concerns-yet-again.html
PHILADELPHIA
“Food Safety and Public Feeding”
http://www.change.org/petitions/food-is-a-right-not-a-privilege#share
We are asking the Philadelphia Public Health Department not make any rules regulating the sharing of food with the hungry. No one has ever been made ill from eating free meals shared with hungry in Philadelphia and regulations are more likely to reduce the number of people able to help and force the hungry to seek food out of the garbage or face malnutrition. These regulations are not necessary to protect the safety of those seeking free food and will cause many more people to go hungry. Philadelphia is one of the ten poorest cities in the United States. One in two Americans are struggling to survive and any proposal to regulate acts of compassion in the City of Brotherly Love are contrary to the spirit of Philadelphia.
Philadelphia Health Commissioner’s Office Representative, Sandra Greene
Sandra.greene@phila.gov
Arguments about food safety rules should consider the homeless people being served
February 21, 2012
http://www.newsworks.org/index.php/component/flexicontent/item/34081-arguments-about-food-safety-rules-for-homeless-should-consider-the-people-being-served
Philadelphia may start requiring permits for those who feed the homeless
February 10, 2012
http://www.newsworks.org/index.php/health-science-multimedia/item/33820-philadelphia-may-start-requiring-permits-for-those-who-feed-the-homeless
Proposed rules for feeding homeless on Parkway assailed February 9, 2012
http://www.philly.com/philly/news/breaking/139063949.html
Proposed rules for feeding homeless on Parkway assailed
http://articles.philly.com/2012-02-09/news/31042407_1_regulation-bad-policy-shelters
Ronnie Polaneczky: Dinner for the homeless, with a side of dignity
http://www.philly.com/philly/columnists/ronnie_polaneczky/20120214_Ronnie_Polaneczky__Dinner_for_the_homeless__with_a_side_of_dignity.html
Let Donald F. Schwarz, know there should be no restrictions to the sharing of food in Philadelphia
Donald F. Schwarz, MD, MPH
Deputy Mayor for Health and Opportunity and
Health Commissioner
1401 JFK Blvd, Room 600
Philadelphia, PA 19102
Telephone: 215-686-5000
Fax: 215-686-5212
healthdept@phila.gov
MYRTLE BEACH
Horry County Police arrest 10 people in Myrtle Beach area homeless camp sweep – February, 21, 2012
http://www.myrtlebeachonline.com/2012/02/21/2673510/police-continue-homeless-sweeps.html
WMBF Special Report: Homeless Bound
http://www.wmbfnews.com/story/10779717/wmbf-special-report-homeless-bound
Myrtle Beach Deals With Homeless, Or Do They?
http://www.nowpublic.com/health/myrtle-beach-deals-homeless-or-do-they
Please Don’t Feed Our Homeless, Many Cities Say
http://news.change.org/stories/please-dont-feed-our-homeless-many-cities-say
DETAILS ON THE DIGGERS
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. Consider preforming the World Turned Upside Down at your meal on April 1, 2012.
The English Diggers
http://www.diggers.org/english_diggers.htm
The World Turned Upside Down – The Diggers – Leon Rosselson text
http://www.diggers.org/english_diggers.htm#worl
The World Turned Upside Down – The Diggers – Leon Rosselson music video
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=594JpY2ahFg
GET INVOLVED, PASS THE NEWS, CONTACT YOUR LOCAL MEDIA AND ORGANIZE AN ACTION IN YOUR COMMUNITY.
PRINT OUT FLYER
http://www.foodnotbombs.net/food is a right day of compassion flyer.pdf
PRINT OUT FLYER ANNOUNCING THE TIME AND LOCATION OF YOUR CELEBRATION
http://www.foodnotbombs.net/food is a right diggers
flyer.pdf
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/
FOOD IS A RIGHT NOT A PRIVILEGE – End all efforts to stop people from feeding the hungry on facebook
http://www.facebook.com/pages/Food-is-a-Right-Not-a-Privilege/370091826334550
PLEASE FORWARD- thanks!
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