Food not Bombs, Free food the hungry + homeless

dublin | miscellaneous | news report

Tuesday October 14, 2003 16:11

by Paul Cummins - FnB

foodnotbombs at thisbetterworld dot org

Every second Sunday St S G end of Grafton Street

A group of friends decided to re-jig Food not bombs in Dublin. We reclaimed food prepared into lovely veggie burgers and then went to St Stephens Green to give the free food out to hungry passers by and the homeless who thought it was lovely we got moved on several times by the hostile park keepers, who then called the police when we were reluctant to exit the park just for giving out free food.

Eating free food in St Stephens Green

Food not Bombs reclaims food that otherwise would be thrown out and gives it to the hungry and homeless. To read more visit http://www.foodnotbombs.net/bookwhy.html

Food not bombs in Ireland has been around in various forms for the last few years but mostly doing protests and events. A group of friends decided to re-jig fnb in Dublin and try to run bi-monthly fnb, going back to its fnb main aim giving reclaimed food to the hungry and homeless in public parks, to highlight the amount of food that is wasted and to interact with homeless people.

On Sunday afternoon veggie burgers were made from the collected food and it was brought down to St Stephens Green.

We first set up beside the fountain in the centre of Stephens Green and began to handout the food to passers-by who were pleasantly surprised by this free food with no catch.

After a while a elderly park attendant came over and told us to move but when we said it was free, he went "Oh alright, free is it?" and walked off.

We continued to give food out to parents with children, tourists, the regular OAPs who probably had their name on a bench etc., giving out flyers to explain the fnb idea as above.

Then two more attendants arrived telling us to move, we asked them why. they said we had no permission and no insurance "someone could trip and fall" said, we asked him what this had to do with giving out free food?

We tried to get an actual reason for why we were being kicked out, when the first attendant came back "I thought you guys were wrapping up I told you to go". The large attendant threatened to call the police several times, we still asked for a good reason to leave but we eventually did when we saw we couldn't reason with him and he was getting hostile so we left to set up outside the park.

We gave out more food at the entrance and handed out flyers, the food was mostly taken by Sunday walkers or shoppers but when the Sunday afternoon routine is established we hope to spread the news to homeless too.

After a while the park attendant returned and because we were still supposedly on park property told to move again.
We expected this to happen but had to try to do it in a park first because a large part of fnb is to have communal food in a public space so all kinds can interact. The police were called and as we continued to give out food about 20 minutes after the police were called they arrived. The male policeman was quite pleasant and reasonable he asked us to move to the side while he talked to the park attendant who continued to shout at us in front of the policeman. The park attendant called the police to remove us from the park but as we were doing nothing illegal the only thing he could do was make a complaint that we abused him verbally which I feel we didn't, I never raised my voice nor swore at him while he shouted and called me an asshole several times.

The policeman congratulated us on what were doing but did take our name addresses because of the other guy’s complaint and advised to move across the street.

We did so and continued to give food out for another half and hour or so attract foreign tourist and skate kids who hung around and talked as they ate.

We plan to do this every second Sunday as near as to Stephens Green at 4pm.

Keith McHenry a co-founder of Food not Bombs will be in Ireland and available to give talks at the beginning of December. See http://www.foodnotbombs.net/

If anyone wants to help this group out and find out how to start one in your area please email [email protected] or go to http://www.foodnotbombs.net/