Speaker 1: Cool Zone Media.
Speaker 2: Hello, and welcome to Cool People Who Did Cool Stuff,
Speaker 2: your weekly reminder that sometimes I take a week off
Speaker 2: and do a rerun episode like this time where it's
Speaker 2: a rerun instead of a new episode. But it's from
Speaker 2: a while ago and maybe you haven't heard it. It's
Speaker 2: about food not Bombs, which is a group that does
Speaker 2: exactly what it says it does, and about how important
Speaker 2: mutual aid is and how important taking care of each
Speaker 2: other is.
Speaker 3: So I hope you like it.
Speaker 2: Hello, and welcome to Cool People Who Did Cool Stuff,
Speaker 2: your weekly podcast that brings you all the cool history
Speaker 2: and cool people who did I'm your host. I'm tired
Speaker 2: of saying the word cool one thousand times in every introduction,
Speaker 2: but that's the way it's going to be. My name
Speaker 2: is Margaret kilj and with me this week is none
Speaker 2: other than Andrew T, who is the host of the
Speaker 2: also does What It Says It Does podcast?
Speaker 3: Yo? Is this racist?
Speaker 4: Yeah?
Speaker 3: Andrew? Are you doing pretty straight up? Yeah? I'm good. Good. Uh, yeah,
Speaker 3: I've been.
Speaker 4: I'm on a merciful hiatus from my day job, so.
Speaker 3: I'm still I'm still at the point in.
Speaker 4: The like like week where I'm like, I still wake
Speaker 4: up at six am, even though I don't have anywhere
Speaker 4: to be and things like that.
Speaker 2: So stare at the wall being like, I don't understand.
Speaker 2: I have so much to do, but how do I
Speaker 2: do it?
Speaker 3: I'm just like so tired.
Speaker 4: But yeah, for no good reason, I saw I hung
Speaker 4: out with a friend's child. I'm gonna just back of
Speaker 4: the envelope it and say, like a three or four
Speaker 4: year old, And I was like sitting on the couch
Speaker 4: and fell asleep while she was talking to me. And
Speaker 4: apparently she like simply did not stop talking the whole time.
Speaker 3: But yeah, I'm at that, just like, why am I
Speaker 3: so tired? I'm just falling asleep.
Speaker 2: Okay, well I will attempt not to put you to sleep.
Speaker 3: No, no, I'm awake. I had I had coffee.
Speaker 2: And So for anyone's listening who doesn't know it, just
Speaker 2: I don't know if there's any of you you know,
Speaker 2: is this racist has been around for?
Speaker 3: Was it like ten years now or something?
Speaker 1: Yeah?
Speaker 3: Than notthing like that?
Speaker 2: Oh God, And from my point of view, honestly, it
Speaker 2: did a lot to shape discussions about race, at least
Speaker 2: in the subcultures that I'm part of. So thanks for
Speaker 2: doing that we used to like crowd around a not
Speaker 2: even laptop and are like weird communal punk house and
Speaker 2: like laugh at the tumblr.
Speaker 3: Good lord.
Speaker 4: Yeah, it's been such a like, you know, such a
Speaker 4: evolution also of just like how people talk about stuff,
Speaker 4: and you know, I've grown and then I had a
Speaker 4: co host a couple of years ago with Tawny Newsome,
Speaker 4: so we've all like, you know, both been part of conversations,
Speaker 4: but also everyone's talking about this stuff in a in
Speaker 4: a smarter way, but also.
Speaker 3: Not but yeah, it's nice.
Speaker 4: It's nice to just have a thing to do that
Speaker 4: that's a that's you know, more or less my own,
Speaker 4: our own.
Speaker 3: Uh yeah, I don't know.
Speaker 4: And the thing that I've always liked about doing Joss
Speaker 4: Racist is as a person of color in comedy, more
Speaker 4: often than I would like, wind up in situations where
Speaker 4: it's like all white folks around, and you know, sometimes
Speaker 4: people expect you to be the arbiter of this shit
Speaker 4: simply by virtue of not being white. And now I
Speaker 4: can offload that stuff to podcast. I can just you know,
Speaker 4: I'm not on the clock right now.
Speaker 2: So yeah, yeah, totally. I'm not going to tell you
Speaker 2: whether something's racist or not.
Speaker 4: I don't want to talk me about this shit. Yeah,
Speaker 4: I have a time to do this and it's not
Speaker 4: right now.
Speaker 3: Yeah. I hear you have a tour coming up? Is
Speaker 3: that true? Just a few tour dates.
Speaker 4: Yeah, Austin on the twentieth of August and Brooklyn on
Speaker 4: the tenth of September. I'm realizing the months ago seven,
Speaker 4: eight nine, and the dates go thirty twenty ten, So
Speaker 4: that's weird.
Speaker 3: Anyway, I'm glad now it is a numerology. I'm just
Speaker 3: looking at this. Yeah, but uh yeah. Suboptimal pods dot com.
Speaker 4: Suboptimal Pods is the little not even network because it's
Speaker 4: just us, me and my co host Tany Newso we
Speaker 4: made a little website and a little little thing for
Speaker 4: when we went independent a couple of years ago. Anyway,
Speaker 4: please come see us.
Speaker 3: It would be lovely. Hopefully I will entertain you all
Speaker 3: now enough to make a case to see us live.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I'm optimistic. We also have our producer, Sophie Lickdhiman
Speaker 2: on the call. How are you today, Sophie?
Speaker 1: I am doing well, Margaret, thank you for asking.
Speaker 2: Sophie, did you ever have a tumbler?
Speaker 3: I did not.
Speaker 1: That was like the one that was like the one
Speaker 1: subculture thing that I like avoided.
Speaker 3: I really think I'm jealous.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I mean in retrospect, yes, but it does seem
Speaker 4: like the kind of shit you would like.
Speaker 5: It definitely does.
Speaker 1: But I honestly was did not have access to like
Speaker 1: computers and stuff that much.
Speaker 3: Sure, Okay I was.
Speaker 1: I was more of like an outside kid, more of
Speaker 1: a sports team kid.
Speaker 3: Yeah, doing doing actual ship.
Speaker 1: Yeah I did get I did get my MySpace scrubbed
Speaker 1: from the internet like a few years back, because there
Speaker 1: was like because it was it was you can do that,
Speaker 1: you can do yeah, oh man, Yeah, but you have
Speaker 1: to like contact them because they because because when you
Speaker 1: for a while, when you googled me, there was just
Speaker 1: like awkward like tween age photos of me on the internet.
Speaker 1: But yeah, you had had to work really hard to
Speaker 1: scrub You have to contact my Space still exists, but
Speaker 1: you have to contact them, and you have to contact
Speaker 1: them like a lot, and then you can get your
Speaker 1: my space scrubbed because it was.
Speaker 3: Y'all keep talking, I'm gonna go ahead and just see
Speaker 3: if my Yeah.
Speaker 2: I am so grateful for the fact that I was
Speaker 2: an adult before not before the Internet, but before the
Speaker 2: like ever present internet.
Speaker 5: So much back in my day the Internet.
Speaker 2: But I was an adult when I was on MySpace,
Speaker 2: and so I was posting cringy stuff. But it's like
Speaker 2: twenty three year old me cringy stuff or something. You know,
Speaker 2: a lot of old bad bands of mine have like
Speaker 2: multiple I had multiple MySpace profiles for the same band
Speaker 2: because you can only have four songs up, and so
Speaker 2: I just set.
Speaker 3: Up more the whole. Oh wow, yeah, yeah, so enterprising.
Speaker 4: Yeah, it appears as if I am not on my Space.
Speaker 5: I'm so happy for you.
Speaker 3: Yeah, because it was.
Speaker 1: It was a mission to innermove what was an interesting
Speaker 1: choice in music?
Speaker 2: Okay, so speaking of things that have cringy moments and
Speaker 2: really beautiful moments, much like Sophie's MySpace. I'm sure I
Speaker 2: don't know what order we're going to release the episodes,
Speaker 2: but the last week, last week, we recorded this tier
Speaker 2: jerker of an episode about the Warsaw ghetto uprising and
Speaker 2: people fighting against Nazis, and I cried like a million
Speaker 2: times while I was researching it. So I decided I
Speaker 2: didn't want to do that this week. So this week
Speaker 2: I've got something a little lighter. It doesn't have zero
Speaker 2: people killed by Nazis, but has so many fewer, so
Speaker 2: many fewer, all right, And because anywhere there's activists, there's
Speaker 2: bad stuff they're fighting against and people trying to stop them. Right.
Speaker 2: But today we're going to talking about how cool it
Speaker 2: is when people share food with each other, because today
Speaker 2: we're going to talk about a long standing global mutual
Speaker 2: aid project. Andrew, how do you feel about mutual aid?
Speaker 4: Uh? Yeah, I've been I've been trying to get more
Speaker 4: involved in the one that I my friend set out
Speaker 4: this little little outfit on mostly hands stuff out on
Speaker 4: skid Row and San Pedro for the sweep defenses here
Speaker 4: in La.
Speaker 3: Oh cool.
Speaker 4: It's called Solidarity and Snacks, which I guess actually, if
Speaker 4: there's another plug the last meeting that I missed, apparently
Speaker 4: we are once again, as perpetually, we are running low
Speaker 4: on funds. So solidarity and snacks go, go and donate
Speaker 4: if you feel like contribute, because.
Speaker 3: Those are two good things in one title. Yeah.
Speaker 2: So today we're going to talk about a story of
Speaker 2: a mutual aid group that has spent a lot of
Speaker 2: time on the FBI's domestic Terrorist watch list. It's an
Speaker 2: international conspiracy. It's present on every continent on Earth except Antarctica.
Speaker 2: It's present in at least sixty countries. It has somewhere
Speaker 2: around one thousand autonomous cells, and daily they commit crime.
Speaker 2: Since pretty much nineteen eighty, thousands of members of this
Speaker 2: conspiracy have been arrested, including fifty four of them in
Speaker 2: one single rate and one of their terror cells in
Speaker 2: San Francisco in nineteen eighty eight. Because today we're going
Speaker 2: to talk about food not bombs, Yes, I figure we're
Speaker 2: going to talk about the group of non violence activists
Speaker 2: who cook vegetarian meals out of food that would have
Speaker 2: gone to waste and then feed it for free to
Speaker 2: people in the park.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I was in high school.
Speaker 4: I grew up in Annaburm, Michigan, which is a you know,
Speaker 4: sort of because of college child vibes, like a big
Speaker 4: food not bombs kind of joint.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 4: It was often like yeah, things like like littering or
Speaker 4: like you know, serving like unlicensed food prep and things
Speaker 4: like that.
Speaker 3: Yeah, with the crime. Yeah, yeah totally.
Speaker 2: And we're going to get into how like it's you know,
Speaker 2: why they're choosing to come after people with all that stuff.
Speaker 2: But yeah, wherever there's people trying to serve free food.
Speaker 2: There's people trying to stop them.
Speaker 4: So I mean that's that has been the one thing
Speaker 4: is in my short like time, like really participating regularly
Speaker 4: in a mutual laid effort is like, yeah, just like
Speaker 4: the act of not having of trying to make people's
Speaker 4: lives slightly less miserable from time to time or like dignified,
Speaker 4: slightly more dignified from time to time is like an
Speaker 4: act of violence against the state in a way that
Speaker 4: is like, all right, well, this is good. This is
Speaker 4: something like this is the revolution that my personal old
Speaker 4: body can handle.
Speaker 3: Also, yeah, totally, we can just fucking help people. And
Speaker 3: that's like kind of a revelation I think for me.
Speaker 2: Yeah, like realizing that it actually Yeah, the fact that
Speaker 2: they are mad and try and stop it is how
Speaker 2: you like realize you're getting something done. You're kind of like,
Speaker 2: I mean, I want to feed people. That rules, but
Speaker 2: you're like, oh, this actually means something more, and you know,
Speaker 2: because they're trying to stop you from doing it.
Speaker 3: Yeah, they're really pissed about it. Yeah.
Speaker 2: So anthropologist David Giles called food nut Bomb's tongue in cheek.
Speaker 2: He calls it a mass conspiracy to feed people or
Speaker 2: a network of anarchist soup kitchens. And importantly, Food not
Speaker 2: Bombs tries for a mutual aid model rather than a
Speaker 2: charity model. It's basically attempting to create horizont care rather
Speaker 2: than something that denies people agency. Right, You're trying to
Speaker 2: increase our collective agency rather than say well I've got
Speaker 2: some stuff and you can have it, you peasant or whatever.
Speaker 3: Yeah, you know. Yeah.
Speaker 2: It's a mass, leaderless movement of autonomous groups that just
Speaker 2: share a few basic concepts in the name. All you've
Speaker 2: got to do to be Food notut Bombs is call
Speaker 2: yourself food notut Bombs and then go out and do it.
Speaker 2: Get food donations or just pull stuff out of the trash,
Speaker 2: and then follow three basic principles of the non group.
Speaker 2: And the three principles are the food is always vegan
Speaker 2: or vegetarian and free to everyone without restriction, rich or poor,
Speaker 2: stoned or sober. You can tell this was written a
Speaker 2: couple decades ago. Food Not Bombs has no formal leaders
Speaker 2: or headquarters, and every group is autonomous and makes decisions
Speaker 2: using consensus process. Food not Bombs is dedicated to nonviolent
Speaker 2: direct action and works for non violent social change. So
Speaker 2: those are the three rules. But even these three rules
Speaker 2: on the ground, this gets messy, right because not everyone
Speaker 2: follows these three rules right right, right, Like, theoretically, the
Speaker 2: one that I've run across the most, you know, theoretically,
Speaker 2: a group should not call it self food not bombs
Speaker 2: if it serves meat, for example, And I might get
Speaker 2: flack for suggesting that I have observed people doing otherwise, right,
Speaker 2: you know, usually it's on the side, but you know,
Speaker 2: and then I know another group that just didn't call
Speaker 2: itself food not bombs because they were like, well, we're
Speaker 2: going to do the exact same thing, but we're going
Speaker 2: to serve meat. And their reasoning was sound. The reasoning was,
Speaker 2: we eat meat. The people who were serving.
Speaker 3: Eat meat, so let's just serve them meat.
Speaker 2: Yeah, And you know, and they're getting the same donations
Speaker 2: of meat from the same place they get all the
Speaker 2: rest of the produce.
Speaker 3: Who fuck it? Yeah?
Speaker 4: Yeah, but oh go ahead, Oh no, I was just
Speaker 4: gonna say, yeah, we recently had a thing with solidarting
Speaker 4: stecks where we got, yeah, like a hot food donation.
Speaker 4: And it really was a thing where it was like, man,
Speaker 4: you know, because our normal thing, it's like packaged like
Speaker 4: snacks and PB and stuff like that, and it was
Speaker 4: just like, oh right, the transition between like surfing plates.
Speaker 3: Of is so many layers more difficult.
Speaker 4: And then like, the vegan thing does have a extremely
Speaker 4: I guess there's practical elements that sort of cut both ways.
Speaker 4: One is like it's a little while too. It does
Speaker 4: feel like, look, if there is food that is not
Speaker 4: vegan that is going to waste, it makes sense to
Speaker 4: get it back out into the community, I think. But
Speaker 4: also it does it creates layers of food safety that
Speaker 4: are so many, so many magnitudes more complex. Just like,
Speaker 4: you know, the thing with the vegan stuff is that
Speaker 4: it is almost certainly never going to go bad, and
Speaker 4: if it goes bad, it's not going to kill someone.
Speaker 2: That is literally the next sense of my script. That
Speaker 2: is so true.
Speaker 4: Yeah, in all likely, yeah, you know, caveat, but yeah,
Speaker 4: it really is. I was just like, because, yeah, I
Speaker 4: think the first time I came across the vegan thing,
Speaker 4: I was like, people don't necessarily want vegan.
Speaker 3: Stuff, yeah, but it's so much easier.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean, I've been vegan for a very long time, right,
Speaker 2: But I have no problem with the people who are
Speaker 2: like figuring out ways to serve other people meet and
Speaker 2: all that. But one of the reasons I stayed vegan
Speaker 2: for so long was because I ate food out of
Speaker 2: the trash for a very long time, and I was like,
Speaker 2: the worst I'm facing is a stomach ache, you know.
Speaker 2: I mean, I'm sure that there's a way that I
Speaker 2: could eat vegan trash and kill myself if I really
Speaker 2: worked at it.
Speaker 3: But yeah, you know, like way easier.
Speaker 4: I think it's significantly less, Like yeah, yeah, I think
Speaker 4: that that truly is like the strongest case for it.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it was a little hilarious.
Speaker 4: I forgot like at one point we were getting oh shoot,
Speaker 4: I feel bad. I don't remember the name of the organization,
Speaker 4: but it was it was some organization in South central
Speaker 4: had vegan burritos. How they were like contributing, and it
Speaker 4: was a like the chickpea curry burrito. It's like such
Speaker 4: a staple of Yeah. I was just like, yeah, yeah, yeah,
Speaker 4: this is what's going out the door right now. I
Speaker 4: was like, damn, I have I have like held this
Speaker 4: very burrito in my hand across like different decades, like
Speaker 4: different states, different cities.
Speaker 3: It's always the same thing.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I love foodut bombs. But I I didn't eat
Speaker 2: eggplant for a very long time after eating a lot
Speaker 2: of foodnut bombs because I was convinced you just was
Speaker 2: impossible to cook it well. But the truth was random
Speaker 2: people who don't know how to cook yeah, don't cook
Speaker 2: it well.
Speaker 4: It is it is that, like, God, we feel like
Speaker 4: someone should just do like like the updated Mutual Aid cookbook. Yeah,
Speaker 4: just like still shit that you can get frequently in donations,
Speaker 4: but really just got to like change the proportions a
Speaker 4: little bit and like to figure out some way to
Speaker 4: or not. But I was just like, God, damn it,
Speaker 4: this fucking yeah, like p curry Burrito had it so
Speaker 4: many times.
Speaker 3: Totally okay.
Speaker 2: And the other rule that people I think break are
Speaker 2: not break, but is like complicated to a lot of
Speaker 2: people who set up these groups is the third rule,
Speaker 2: the fact that it is committed to non violent direct action.
Speaker 2: I would say food not bombs itself is a non
Speaker 2: violent direct action, and people get very excited about as
Speaker 2: a non violent direct action. But I will say that, yeah,
Speaker 2: a lot of the the activist world has changed dramatically
Speaker 2: since the eighties, and the threat models that we face
Speaker 2: have changed dramatically since the eighties, and I would say
Speaker 2: that a lot of people who cook and participate in
Speaker 2: food not bombs on an organizational level are not themselves
Speaker 2: committed to non violence resistance.
Speaker 4: Sure, yeah, I mean I think I think rightfully. It's
Speaker 4: a multiar thing.
Speaker 3: Yeah, exactly. Yeah, that has been. That has been like.
Speaker 4: The an interesting thing about more actively participating in something
Speaker 4: like this too, which is like again something not the
Speaker 4: food not bombs, but I'm mutually more more like regular
Speaker 4: mutual aid thing is like yeah, just like like because
Speaker 4: part of me was like people here seemed really paranoid,
Speaker 4: and then like after hanging out with them for a
Speaker 4: couple of years, I'm like, I understand why people here
Speaker 4: are because I was like, I don't know, I feel
Speaker 4: like we put a lot of secrecy in like you
Speaker 4: know how many granola of ours.
Speaker 3: Were getting this week? And like yeah, you know, but
Speaker 3: I was like, Okay, I'm sorry to understand what's happening here.
Speaker 2: One time this hasn't been I'm going off script. Whoa, Okay,
Speaker 2: So this one time I was in it was like
Speaker 2: two thousand and two or two thousand and three, and
Speaker 2: we're having this demonstration in Chicago and I remember, I
Speaker 2: don't even remember what we were demonstrating against these to
Speaker 2: demonstrate against a lot of things. And we're meeting up
Speaker 2: in the basement of the inbo shop and we're like,
Speaker 2: everyone's being really careful and like speaking about anonymous things,
Speaker 2: and everyone's like it's this top secret thing. And the
Speaker 2: city has spent tens of millions of dollars on the security,
Speaker 2: and we're all.
Speaker 3: Like, all right, what are we going to cook? What?
Speaker 3: What is the food? Not bombs?
Speaker 2: And I remember because we had to drive past police
Speaker 2: lines with our like tables strapped to the top of
Speaker 2: a minivan in order to serve food, and and we picked.
Speaker 2: I was considered the most arrestable person. So I was
Speaker 2: the one who carried the knife so that we could
Speaker 2: cut the cable. Why eh, I had nowhere else to
Speaker 2: be and I wasn't out as trans yet, you know, the.
Speaker 5: Most arrestable person low key off flex.
Speaker 2: That's right. Yeah, I was the one with no responsibilities,
Speaker 2: and so so I carried the knife so that we
Speaker 2: could cut the rope to get the table off of
Speaker 2: the top of the minivan, so that the minivan could
Speaker 2: get away before they would be like pulled over and ticketed,
Speaker 2: and it was like, Okay, how are we gonna you know,
Speaker 2: And I just remember I had this moment where I
Speaker 2: was like, they think we're down here plotting like murder,
Speaker 2: you know, yeah, and we are definitely like how do
Speaker 2: we go feed people downtown tomorrow?
Speaker 3: Yeah?
Speaker 4: I mean, like the other way to look at it though,
Speaker 4: a little bit, I think, and the feeling I've been having,
Speaker 4: and this might be a little not like self serving
Speaker 4: but self justifying, is like, you know, like like any effort,
Speaker 4: it's it's that like logistical support is actually like how
Speaker 4: you run a resistance, run an army, like you know,
Speaker 4: even just like recently, you know, I'm not like a
Speaker 4: military person, but just watch you know this, this this
Speaker 4: shit in Ukraine, Like half of it is really just
Speaker 4: like yeah, you you make it so the food trucks
Speaker 4: take two days longer to get there and the army stops.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 4: Yeah, It's really like I think that that is maybe
Speaker 4: the other side of it is like they realized that
Speaker 4: like this level of organization and like just truly mass
Speaker 4: logistical support is the thing that turns into whatever resistance
Speaker 4: is most needed at the time, or at least can
Speaker 4: turn into those are the pieces.
Speaker 2: Oh, you're right, and it's part of and now I'm
Speaker 2: cheating and we'll have to skip this when I get
Speaker 2: to it later in the script. It's part of what
Speaker 2: makes it mutual aid instead of just a charity organization, right,
Speaker 2: because you're creating the infrastructure by which we can feed
Speaker 2: ourselves and others.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I know, absolutely, it's one of those things because
Speaker 4: I you know, I'm now just like I've just aged
Speaker 4: into I'm too old to throw a brick.
Speaker 3: That I ever threw a brick, but I.
Speaker 4: Was certainly not at least ready ready in theory to
Speaker 4: throw a brick, and if I know, absolutely had to
Speaker 4: and I was just like all my brick throwing days
Speaker 4: are over. But like I don't even remember who this
Speaker 4: is something I've repeated multiple places, and I should look up.
Speaker 4: But this pair phrase, which is like, you know, it's
Speaker 4: not the sexiest thing, but someone needs to wash the
Speaker 4: dishes during their revolution too, like totally, you know, that's
Speaker 4: like just you know, not like just as important maybe,
Speaker 4: but like those things are all like part of, you know,
Speaker 4: both an active resistance and an active good society.
Speaker 2: It's part of the invisibilized labor too, right, like, yeah.
Speaker 4: Yeah, right, I mean it's definitely like, I'm sure there's
Speaker 4: an element to it where the reason it's not glorious
Speaker 4: is because it's quote unquote with does work.
Speaker 3: Yeah, totally, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 2: Okay, So the first time I wrote in some of
Speaker 2: you know, the whole thing isn't just Margaret Nostalgia Hour,
Speaker 2: but but I I wrote in part of this the
Speaker 2: first time I ate food ut Bombs. I've been a
Speaker 2: traveling activist for like three days. I had just dropped
Speaker 2: out of college. I'm in Richmond, Virginia, and I'm hanging
Speaker 2: out by the river with these like super scary train
Speaker 2: riding people with like there's like a woman with like
Speaker 2: face tattoos of like tiger stripes and stuff. And they're like,
Speaker 2: all right, we're going to food ut Bombs. So I
Speaker 2: go to food nut Bombs and I show up in
Speaker 2: the park and a couple minivans full of crustpunks, which
Speaker 2: is at the time is a very important distinction in
Speaker 2: between the crustpunks who live in houses and the krusties
Speaker 2: who don't. All the terminology has changed since then. There's
Speaker 2: no point in me telling anyone this. They come out
Speaker 2: and they have all these trays of food. It's a
Speaker 2: three course meal. It's actually the best food nut bombs
Speaker 2: meal I've ever eaten. They had like made dessert. They
Speaker 2: made this like raspberry cobbler, and it was hundreds of
Speaker 2: people in the park from a lot not all walks
Speaker 2: of life, right, but a lot of different walks of
Speaker 2: life of people are in this park eating this food
Speaker 2: it And that was kind of when I learned that
Speaker 2: there was almost this like and I when I say
Speaker 2: was was because my own knowledge of food out bombs
Speaker 2: tapers off, my own direct involvement in food nut bombs
Speaker 2: tapers off. But at least at the time, there was
Speaker 2: this kind of like network of all of the different
Speaker 2: East Coast cities were kind of competing to see who
Speaker 2: had the best food, the most food, the most servings,
Speaker 2: and the feed the most people. And it ruled like
Speaker 2: it just you know, that's the competition I'm really excited about,
Speaker 2: is the like super friendly competition when we all just
Speaker 2: get better at everything, you know.
Speaker 4: So yeah, yeah, that that that's sort of like exactly
Speaker 4: the best version of this sort of thing.
Speaker 3: I guess.
Speaker 4: It's also like having not as close but witness sort
Speaker 4: of these things. Also like It is remarkable how that
Speaker 4: what should be friendly competition can then also turn to
Speaker 4: like Bonker's hierarchical bullshit.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I'm just like, come on totally, but any power,
Speaker 3: I guess is always dangerous.
Speaker 2: Yep okay. So the history of food out bombs. So
Speaker 2: it started as a bit of it was a prank,
Speaker 2: kind of a bit of street theater. And one of
Speaker 2: the problems doing the history of food not bombs, we
Speaker 2: mostly have one guy's word for it. The guy's still
Speaker 2: around who still cooks food ut bombs, mostly in Santa Cruz.
Speaker 2: His name's Keith McHenry, and I don't agree with most
Speaker 2: of his takes on current events. He's kind of gone
Speaker 2: anti vax oh sure, but but we mostly have his word.
Speaker 2: We also have a word from our sponsors. Yeah. So,
Speaker 2: one of the things that's very important to know about
Speaker 2: cool People did cool stuff is that we are only
Speaker 2: sponsored by very positive things and also things that you
Speaker 2: can't buy. So, for example, we are our perpetual, longest
Speaker 2: running sponsor is the concept of potatoes. No individual potato
Speaker 2: vendor or even style, but just the concept of potatoes.
Speaker 2: And I'm wondering if you have anything particularly positive that
Speaker 2: you would like Sophie to do the work to get
Speaker 2: to sponsor this particular episode.
Speaker 1: Previous sponsors have been the concept of tap water, the
Speaker 1: concept of meal.
Speaker 4: I see, well, yeah, just a little of the dogs.
Speaker 4: I'm using a toothpick to point to the dogs.
Speaker 5: Concept of dogs.
Speaker 4: Dogs like a sleepy dog, a sleepy dog.
Speaker 3: Yes.
Speaker 4: My absolute worst thing that I've done in the last
Speaker 4: two years is I have trained the dogs to go
Speaker 4: into the crate by saying go to.
Speaker 3: And they go. They hop right in the crate and
Speaker 3: it's funny to me, but not awesome.
Speaker 5: I love that.
Speaker 2: My friend had a header dog trained to put his
Speaker 2: paws on the wall. If you said cops, he would
Speaker 2: go up and put his paws.
Speaker 5: That's amazing.
Speaker 4: Yeah, it's really you know, your relationship with your dogs
Speaker 4: is interesting.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 3: Yeah, let's give give it up for these little for
Speaker 3: the snooze and dogs.
Speaker 2: Sleeping dogs and whatever whoever else paid us the money
Speaker 2: and put ads on the show. Okay, and we are
Speaker 2: back from those excellent advertisements about sleeping dogs. If there
Speaker 2: were any other advertisements at all, please complain to Sophie.
Speaker 2: You can find her on Twitter at irate okay and
Speaker 2: so Keith McHenry, one of the founders of food nut
Speaker 2: Bombs and the primary historian of food ut bombs, and
Speaker 2: I'm I don't think he has any particular reason to
Speaker 2: lie about any of this, but it's just sort of
Speaker 2: frustrating that I can't check against other things very effectively.
Speaker 2: And he sometimes centers himself a little bit in the history, but.
Speaker 3: Maybe it's completely accurate. I don't know.
Speaker 2: So he seems to be the one who runs the
Speaker 2: food out Bombs website.
Speaker 3: Anyway.
Speaker 2: I like food nut bombs as a mass movement, is
Speaker 2: what I'm trying to say, and no offense to this
Speaker 2: particular person who I disagree with on some stuff, so
Speaker 2: sure it grows out of the anti nuclear movement. On
Speaker 2: May twenty fourth in nineteen eighty there's this big civil
Speaker 2: disobedience protest at a nuclear power plant construction site in
Speaker 2: New Hampshire. And I know that nuclear power is kind
Speaker 2: of more of a complex issue in the current context
Speaker 2: of global warming and as we try and figure out
Speaker 2: what the how we're going to do, But at the time,
Speaker 2: nuclear power especially was understood as a pretty clear danger,
Speaker 2: right the anti nuke movement spent its time drawing attention
Speaker 2: to that danger and especially nuclear disarmament, and the fact
Speaker 2: that they were all expecting to die in like a
Speaker 2: nuclear war at any given moment. And they were also
Speaker 2: did all this six years before Chernobyl, so they clearly
Speaker 2: weren't entirely wrong about the dangers of nuclear power plants.
Speaker 2: So they decided to try and stop this place from
Speaker 2: being built, and they do it through mass CIVI disobedience,
Speaker 2: and the way they go about it is really fucking cool.
Speaker 2: Four Thousand people show up, and that's not huge for
Speaker 2: a protest, but it's really big for direct action. Four
Speaker 2: Thousand people with construction helmets and diy padded armor and
Speaker 2: grappline hooks and shit show up and they are all
Speaker 2: set to tear down the fence, storm the place, and
Speaker 2: put their bodies in front of bulldozers in nonviolence of
Speaker 2: disobedience form the government, though the government doesn't actually want
Speaker 2: them to do this for some odd reas I wasn't
Speaker 2: able to find the government's reasoning for stopping them, But
Speaker 2: they go about working trying to stop them. The National
Speaker 2: Guard shows up, They wade in with batons to beat
Speaker 2: the shit out of everyone. They pepper spray everyone, helicopters
Speaker 2: dropped hear gas on them from helicopters.
Speaker 3: I guess the helicopters are the helicopters.
Speaker 2: And the spokesperson for the protesters, a guy named Brian Figenbaum.
Speaker 2: May or may not have hit a cop with a
Speaker 2: grappling hook. That is what he got arrested for, anyhow,
Speaker 2: and I would argue that he deserves support even if
Speaker 2: he didn't do it. So so his support team, thanks,
Speaker 2: thanks for laughing at my joke.
Speaker 3: I appreciate it. It took me a second. I was like,
Speaker 3: I got it. Yeah, yeah, I wrote it.
Speaker 2: And I was like, this is gonna work. I don't
Speaker 2: know anyway, So his support team goes about trying to
Speaker 2: raise money for his legal defense. And so they're like,
Speaker 2: all right, it's nineteen eighty and you're how would what's
Speaker 2: the first non crime method that you would use to
Speaker 2: try and raised money?
Speaker 3: I'm curious in the eighties and nineteen eighties. God, I
Speaker 3: don't know. It's okay, there's kind of there's got to
Speaker 3: be some some like securities.
Speaker 2: So I said, non crime, non crime crime.
Speaker 3: I think those guys were not charged with them, all right.
Speaker 5: All right, I like mine, Dan Pathon.
Speaker 2: Yeah, there it is and the world will be a
Speaker 2: very different place if they had gone with dancethon. They
Speaker 2: did not, No, they went with a bake sale. Cute,
Speaker 2: and a bake sale is a very cute way to
Speaker 2: have people have muffins and brownies, but it is not
Speaker 2: a particular effective way to raise money on the scale
Speaker 2: that they're attempting to raise money, so it doesn't work
Speaker 2: very well. And so they're like, Okay, you know that cliche.
Speaker 2: It'll be a great day when our schools get all
Speaker 2: the money they need and the Air Force has to
Speaker 2: hold a bake sale to buy a b one b Okay.
Speaker 2: So my theory is that in the eighties, everyone in
Speaker 2: the United States was mailed a poster that says this,
Speaker 2: and that's how it became a cliche, much like how
Speaker 2: I believe it was two thousand and five where the
Speaker 2: government mailed everyone a co Exists sticker so that they
Speaker 2: could put it on their car.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 4: Yeah, so they're look, I mean, I feel like I
Speaker 4: having grown up in like a kind of hippie college town,
Speaker 4: I'm just like, I feel like I know the exact
Speaker 4: person who probably had to be making those fucking coexists.
Speaker 3: Oh yeah, totally Yeah, they're also anti vaccine.
Speaker 4: Yeah, hippies hippies when anti boomers hippies.
Speaker 2: When I guess no, that's just the way, Like we
Speaker 2: don't trust the government, and I'm like, I don't either,
Speaker 2: but I trust scientists sometimes.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 4: Well it's also like I mean, obviously we don't, you know,
Speaker 4: go go down this road. But it's like, that's not
Speaker 4: how the government is going to fuck It's so weird.
Speaker 4: It's like they're going to fuck you by not giving
Speaker 4: you a vaccine, you lunatic, or charging your money for them.
Speaker 4: If you think they have goddamn terminator style nanobots.
Speaker 3: Then like it's over. It's over at that point. The vaccine.
Speaker 4: Yeah, the vaccine is by far the least of your work.
Speaker 4: Bill Gates can't even get you to buy a fucking telephone.
Speaker 3: You think you could control people's minds?
Speaker 2: Oh, if he did, it would just be through advertising,
Speaker 2: and like yeah, yeah.
Speaker 3: It's they are control of your mind in a different way.
Speaker 3: I'm so dumb.
Speaker 2: Sorry, they would be buying advertising and politically radical shows.
Speaker 3: Oh no, this is.
Speaker 4: Like twenty twenty yeah, uh level of discourse.
Speaker 3: I apologize for being so far behind it.
Speaker 2: All right, I live under a rock, So okay, So
Speaker 2: they look at this poster. They have a copy. They
Speaker 2: apparently they got one because they were like they also
Speaker 2: like a moving company. They just had a bunch of
Speaker 2: different odd jobs and someone like gave them a poster
Speaker 2: and they look at the post like, oh, that's a
Speaker 2: good idea. So they have another bake sale, but this
Speaker 2: time they dress up like generals and they just say
Speaker 2: we're here to raise money by a bomber. And this
Speaker 2: once again does not raise much money for their friend.
Speaker 2: But what it does is it shows them that street
Speaker 2: theater is a very effective means to communicate with people
Speaker 2: and talk to people, because the first bake sale is
Speaker 2: kind of a wash. Second bake sale they don't make
Speaker 2: any money, but they talk to people and people get
Speaker 2: are like, oh, what's this about. And they get to
Speaker 2: like talk about all their politics and stuff with passerby,
Speaker 2: and people are into it. So they're like, all right,
Speaker 2: street theater, that's the thing. And so the next thing
Speaker 2: they do, they're not even trying to raise money anymore.
Speaker 2: They just want to protest some banks that are funding
Speaker 2: nuclear nonsense. And so there's a big stockholder meeting. It's
Speaker 2: March twenty sixth, nineteen eighty one, and the activists decide
Speaker 2: to stag just okay, this part's actually really cringey. They
Speaker 2: decide to stage a soup kitchen in front, which is okay,
Speaker 2: and they're like, these policies are what led us to
Speaker 2: the Great Depression. We don't want to go back. I'm like, okay,
Speaker 2: I'm with you. And then they're like, so let's dress
Speaker 2: up like homeless people. I'm no longer with them. And
Speaker 2: then sure, they're like, and let's go to a homeless
Speaker 2: shelter the night before and recruit people to come be
Speaker 2: extras in our street theater at this protest by telling
Speaker 2: them that we'll give them some soup if they come.
Speaker 2: And I don't want to like deny the people who
Speaker 2: came their agency, but like, I don't know, I don't
Speaker 2: I don't love this.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I mean, any anything conditional is always like yeah, yeah,
Speaker 4: you sort of like see exactly like the origins of this, Yeah,
Speaker 4: this like kind of type of movement.
Speaker 3: In a way, you're like, okay, well.
Speaker 4: But that is actually why it's nice that you know,
Speaker 4: there's I think the emphasis on a non hierarchical kind
Speaker 4: of thing. At least it's like good there's no there's
Speaker 4: no gods, there's no founding fathers that we have to
Speaker 4: give a shit about you in this mutual aid.
Speaker 2: Yeah exactly, which is like so yeah, yeah, and you know,
Speaker 2: and I could be like super grateful that you know,
Speaker 2: they what they set up and like, and so they
Speaker 2: staged this protest. They set up a soup kitchen and
Speaker 2: like fifty people from the shelter come and they show
Speaker 2: up for lunch and everyone was happy and everything was
Speaker 2: good based on what we know of it. And the
Speaker 2: fifty folks were like, there's no one really feeding people
Speaker 2: downtown is Boston, No one really feeding downtown. You should
Speaker 2: do this every day. And I would argue that these
Speaker 2: fifty anonymous people are the true founders of food, not bombs.
Speaker 2: But that's just my own yeah yeah, And they're like, okay,
Speaker 2: we're actually onto something here. So all these activists, they're like,
Speaker 2: food matters, Food brings people together. People also need food.
Speaker 2: People seem to be addicted to it for some odd reason.
Speaker 2: And so they all quit their jobs. And depending on
Speaker 2: who you ask, they either rented a house or squatted
Speaker 2: a house. And now I would argue, quit your job
Speaker 2: and rent a house is a sort of contradictory statement.
Speaker 2: So my money is on squad of house, Oh yeah,
Speaker 2: you know, or you know, or one of them had
Speaker 2: a bunch of money from somewhere, which is totally fine,
Speaker 2: and if so, they just if so, they use their parents'
Speaker 2: money incredibly well, but my money is on squad at
Speaker 2: a house. And they just go about doing this, and
Speaker 2: they start soliciting donations of food that would be going
Speaker 2: to waste from bakeries and food co ops. One of
Speaker 2: them worked at a food co op and was like
Speaker 2: used to throwing away all this food and was like
Speaker 2: this sucks, you know. And they start cooking all this
Speaker 2: food and they start bringing it to shelters, to rehabs,
Speaker 2: to immigrant support centers, to housing projects. Basically, they're like,
Speaker 2: anywhere someone needs food, we're showing up with food. We're
Speaker 2: good at finding food, and we will bring it to people.
Speaker 2: And then with the like kind of leftovers, they start
Speaker 2: having this feed in Harvard Square and they set up
Speaker 2: Food for All Commerce and these feeds turn into events
Speaker 2: and people are bringing puppets and drums and all that
Speaker 2: shit that eighties activists were super into, and people are
Speaker 2: sharing radical literature, and then they're running around graffeiti and
Speaker 2: everything with like peace graffiti. I've totally met this kind
Speaker 2: of person before, and I love them, even though I'm
Speaker 2: not one of them, you know. And one of the
Speaker 2: slogans that they use in their tag is money for
Speaker 2: Food not Bombs, and eventually this gets shortened to food
Speaker 2: not Bombs, and that's how the whole project gets its name,
Speaker 2: or Keith Henry coined, it depends on who you ask, sure,
Speaker 2: And I'm going to take one more swife at this
Speaker 2: particular weird history stuff. Soon they had a logo too,
Speaker 2: which is a purple fist holding a carrot. That's the
Speaker 2: Food not Bomb's logo, and Keith McHenry drew that, but
Speaker 2: the Food co Op movement had been using a fist
Speaker 2: holding a carrot as a logo since the nineteen seventies.
Speaker 2: So anyway, whatever, like yeah, I actually kind of don't care, like,
Speaker 2: go ahead.
Speaker 4: Yeah, it's that era, Yeah, yeah, totally. Yeah, it's just
Speaker 4: sort of that era and that type of folks. And
Speaker 4: there's a kind of limit to how much different graphic
Speaker 4: design you can that's.
Speaker 2: A good point, yeah, totally. And so culturally this group
Speaker 2: grows out of the anti nuke movement. Which was a
Speaker 2: a fun mix of anarchists and Quaker who are both.
Speaker 3: Friends of the pod.
Speaker 2: They seem to show up constantly, well, the anarchists because
Speaker 2: I'm one, so I keep throwing them in. But the
Speaker 2: Quakers said no idea when I started this podcast. How
Speaker 2: fucking radical the Quakers are throughout everything in history. And
Speaker 2: then also radical Catholics are part of the anti nuke movement,
Speaker 2: and and I know some of the founders of the
Speaker 2: of Funabombs or anarchists.
Speaker 3: I don't know if all of them were.
Speaker 2: It's possible because they like they seem to practice a
Speaker 2: lot of the cultural norms of like anarchist activism throughout
Speaker 2: this time. But it's also possible that they just set
Speaker 2: those norms.
Speaker 3: So I don't know.
Speaker 2: But the anti nuke movement, it's drawing from these three sources.
Speaker 2: And as far as I can tell, you get direct action, protest,
Speaker 2: and youthful vigor from the anarchists. You get consensus decision
Speaker 2: making from the Quakers, and from the Catholics. You get
Speaker 2: this you do what is right, whether it's safe or not.
Speaker 2: And then you also get this idea that I had
Speaker 2: no idea about, but I got kind of excited about
Speaker 2: when I learned about this idea called personalism, this theological concept,
Speaker 2: and this segues us into me explaining the different ways
Speaker 2: that people talk and look at homelessness.
Speaker 3: So I want to do that. Yeah, all right, uh huh?
Speaker 2: Are you to go into personal But it's going to
Speaker 2: come back around. Oh do you know do you know
Speaker 2: about personalism? Because if so?
Speaker 1: No?
Speaker 3: No, yeah, I really am just like yeah.
Speaker 2: Okay, No, it's going to come back around to it.
Speaker 3: So amazing.
Speaker 2: Okay, So this I'm going to contrast two theories about
Speaker 2: homelessness and extreme poverty, as a named by sociologist Teresa Gowen.
Speaker 2: And I hate a good versus bad dichotomy, but this
Speaker 2: is a good versus bad dichotomy because one of these
Speaker 2: ideas is good and one of these ideas is bad.
Speaker 2: The first theory Gowan called sick talk, and this theory
Speaker 2: claims that people are homeless because of mental health, addiction,
Speaker 2: and criminality. Do you want to guess whether this is
Speaker 2: the good theory or the bad theory? By my standard,
Speaker 2: I'm comfortable saying.
Speaker 3: Yes, surprise, I love this one. I'm just kidding.
Speaker 2: So sick talk goes back centuries. Everyone always wants to
Speaker 2: blame individuals for social problems. I don't know if you've
Speaker 2: run a trust this before.
Speaker 3: Yes.
Speaker 2: In contrast, you've got system talk, and I think that
Speaker 2: they use these terms to be like the way people
Speaker 2: talk about it, right, So you can either talk about
Speaker 2: people as sick or you can talk about systems. And
Speaker 2: during the Great Depression, future friends of the pod industrial
Speaker 2: workers of the world, the Wobblies, they push this sort
Speaker 2: of theory. This theory is basically that homelessness is driven
Speaker 2: by the boom and bus cycles of capitalism and the
Speaker 2: economy's need for a huge reserve of workers. And for
Speaker 2: a good forty years or so after the Depression, even
Speaker 2: the US government is on system talk, kind of a
Speaker 2: watered down one compared to what the labor unions want.
Speaker 2: And this is where you get like the New Deal
Speaker 2: and all that shit from, which is like trying to
Speaker 2: moderate out the worst bad stuff about capitalism in a
Speaker 2: lot of ways, as far as I understand, basically to
Speaker 2: be like, well, we either do this or people start
Speaker 2: thinking that the USSRS looks like a good idea.
Speaker 3: You know.
Speaker 2: Then Reagan came in and dismantled all that shit. In
Speaker 2: the eighties, with this free market bullshit, which caused a
Speaker 2: spike in homelessness, which then got blamed on people getting
Speaker 2: out of mental institutions, right, even though actually there were
Speaker 2: more people going into mental institutions, not the other way around.
Speaker 2: But right, right, Siktok isn't a totally fuck them approach.
Speaker 2: It's not just a like I don't care, let them
Speaker 2: die in the streets. Instead it's like, yeah, like system
Speaker 2: talk is like, well, let's provide everyone what they need,
Speaker 2: or at least let's set up like work programs and
Speaker 2: help everyone deal with shit, where siktok solutions are like,
Speaker 2: oh no, everyone who's homeless is sick and needs treatment,
Speaker 2: and they treat homelessness as this individual problem.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 4: Well, it's also that you know that the thing the
Speaker 4: charity versus mutual aid thing, as you talked about earlier,
Speaker 4: which is like which is also a vocabulary I'm like
Speaker 4: not good at. But yeah, this idea that it's like
Speaker 4: like sick sick talks as we were, as you were,
Speaker 4: is sort of like leads to this like pity. Yeah
Speaker 4: you do this out of pity, which.
Speaker 3: Is not like a fact.
Speaker 2: I mean you see the ways that is totally no
Speaker 2: that's such a good point. And so even though it's
Speaker 2: Reagan who brings all this stuff up is bipartisan. Bill
Speaker 2: Clinton is entirely on this page, and everyone since then
Speaker 2: has pretty much been on this page. Because if we
Speaker 2: can see homelessness as a personal failing instead of an
Speaker 2: economic crisis, then we can avoid paying essential to the
Speaker 2: economic crisis. Although I would argue that we will not
Speaker 2: be able to avoid talking about the economic crisis much longer.
Speaker 3: Yeah, but I don't know. So.
Speaker 2: I don't like siktok very much. I like system talk.
Speaker 2: But what does this have to do with Food Not
Speaker 2: Bombs and Catholics and personalism? You ask? Glad you asked.
Speaker 2: So these problems they have to get addressed on a
Speaker 2: system wide level, but that doesn't mean there aren't individuals
Speaker 2: who are suffering from it. And so I want to
Speaker 2: quote the author Sean Parson, who wrote a book called
Speaker 2: Cooking Up a Revolution about Food not Bombs. What makes
Speaker 2: the radical homelessness politics of groups like Food Not Bombs
Speaker 2: and the Catholic Workers unique is not that they embrace
Speaker 2: a system's talk, but that they fuse systems talk with
Speaker 2: a radical personalism, personalism which has its roots in Catholic
Speaker 2: theology and the writings of Threau and Tolstoy. Front of
Speaker 2: the pod Tolstoy and every fucking episode.
Speaker 5: Along in incredible. I did not think we were getting
Speaker 5: a Tolstoy in this one.
Speaker 3: Wow. Nope.
Speaker 2: Unbelievable is a European religious ethical philosophy developed by Emmanuel Manie.
Speaker 2: I think, Hu Manye, Each and every person was modeled
Speaker 2: in the image of God, and therefore was uniquely beautiful
Speaker 2: and valuable. Therefore, no person is worth more than another,
Speaker 2: and no person is expendable, and so is no longer quote.
Speaker 2: Personalism is really interesting to me. It springs up in
Speaker 2: the early twentieth century, and then it influences this inter
Speaker 2: war movement in France. I love falling down these rabbit
Speaker 2: holes is one of my favorite parts about this podcast.
Speaker 2: So there's this inter war movement in France called the nonconformists,
Speaker 2: who do what a lot of my favorite people do.
Speaker 2: They like They're influenced by a bunch of French socialists,
Speaker 2: including Prudalin the anarchist, And they hate capitalism because reasonably
Speaker 2: obvious why. And they hate fascism because it's even more
Speaker 2: obvious why. And they hate the USSR because reasonably obvious
Speaker 2: why And actually one of the reasons that they hate
Speaker 2: the USSR though, is that they're mostly religious and they
Speaker 2: are not materialists. They believe in spirituality, and so they're
Speaker 2: like left with, like, well, what the hell do we
Speaker 2: believe if we come up with this like spiritual socialism
Speaker 2: and it's very heavily influenced by personalism And.
Speaker 3: I don't know a ton.
Speaker 2: About these folks yet, I'm just like kind of starting
Speaker 2: to learn about them. Also, they kind of didn't get
Speaker 2: a chance to do anything cool because then World War
Speaker 2: two happened, and then like half of them became collaborationists
Speaker 2: with the Nazis and then the other half joined the
Speaker 2: French Resistance, I think, right, So, which I guess.
Speaker 4: They'll make sense. It's sort of those are sort of
Speaker 4: the two sides. I just even as you're talking. The
Speaker 4: interesting thing is like, I mean, like any philosophy obviously,
Speaker 4: like anything can be used in a different way, but
Speaker 4: I hadn't really like heard this phrase or this concept personalism.
Speaker 4: But that also is the direct line to if you
Speaker 4: truly believe that a fucking embryo is a person, then
Speaker 4: why why is you know, a real person more valuable
Speaker 4: than these cells.
Speaker 2: Yeah, totally, like yep, and you know what else is
Speaker 2: more valuable than some cells?
Speaker 3: Advertisements?
Speaker 5: Yes, once again debatable.
Speaker 3: Yeah, fair enough.
Speaker 2: Unfortunately, based on the aforementioned economic system that we live under,
Speaker 2: we are sponsored by advertisers and you can listen to
Speaker 2: them if you want, or to get fast forward.
Speaker 3: I don't care, neither do I. And we are back.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and we're talking about personalism and all that stuff.
Speaker 2: And one of the reasons I like how it ties
Speaker 2: into taking care of people is that it's kind of
Speaker 2: this exploding brain meme.
Speaker 3: Right.
Speaker 2: You get the smallest brain is the sick talk, where
Speaker 2: it's like, homelessness is an individual person's fault. And then
Speaker 2: you get systems talk, which is like, actually, there's all
Speaker 2: systems that needs to be addressed on a systemic level.
Speaker 2: And then you get the big exploding brain thing where
Speaker 2: it's like, yeah, it's totally the system's fault and needs
Speaker 2: to be addressed on a systemic level. But this also
Speaker 2: affects individuals and we need to address it on an
Speaker 2: individual level as well. Even though the blame isn't on
Speaker 2: the individual, the care also needs to happen on an
Speaker 2: individual level.
Speaker 3: So I like it. That's what I'm trying to say. Yeah, yeah, yeah,
Speaker 3: I think that's probably right.
Speaker 4: I mean, it's it's the two sides of that, which
Speaker 4: is like it's a systemic problem, but systems are just
Speaker 4: groups of people doing shit to other.
Speaker 3: Groups of people.
Speaker 4: And like one way to help fix that as an
Speaker 4: individual is to just try to undo some of that.
Speaker 2: No totally, and like like I don't know if you'd
Speaker 2: like walk into your house and it's trashed totally, wasn't you,
Speaker 2: I swear, And like you just got to start cleaning,
Speaker 2: you know.
Speaker 3: It's like all right, just pick up one thing and
Speaker 3: then the next thing, and then the next thing.
Speaker 2: Yeah exactly, you know, and then you also have to
Speaker 2: figure out the systems that we're allowing your yeah exactly.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 2: So uh, anyway, the anti nude movement, all these things
Speaker 2: coming together. I really like when different different groups with
Speaker 2: different ideologies get together and figure out what they can
Speaker 2: do together and where their strength overlap. And so that's
Speaker 2: and and how you get food not bombs, this global
Speaker 2: movement out of this melting pot or you know whatever,
Speaker 2: this chemical pit, mortar and pestle. I'm not very good
Speaker 2: at alchemy. I have not successfully turned lead into stone,
Speaker 2: lead into gold. I don't even know what I'm supposed
Speaker 2: to turn lead into. I'm gonna continue with the script
Speaker 2: gold gold, Yes.
Speaker 3: That's it. Yeah, you don't need that lead, Oh my god.
Speaker 2: Okay, but when we start our work around AMMO Factory
Speaker 2: and we use it to fund food for everyone, we
Speaker 2: can have the slogan turning lead into gold because we
Speaker 2: make money off the AMMO.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 4: I thought you were going the other way. We're turning
Speaker 4: gold into lead.
Speaker 2: Ah No, yeah, but it does go both ways. Okay,
Speaker 2: that's actually a better direction.
Speaker 3: All right.
Speaker 2: Well you can be in charge of that part, the
Speaker 2: figuring out what we're doing. Okay, So yeah, yeah, I
Speaker 2: guess I have other stuff to do.
Speaker 4: Okay, I wouldn't be you don't want to, all right.
Speaker 2: All right, fine, we'll find someone else. Sophie, all right
Speaker 2: Anderson maybe Sophie.
Speaker 5: Shaking my head.
Speaker 1: And person, I mean, she doesn't have thumbs, but she
Speaker 1: would give it her best.
Speaker 5: Ever.
Speaker 2: Well, that's our Our logo is just Anderson's face. Anderson
Speaker 2: is a dog. For anyone who's listening.
Speaker 5: She just gave me the best side eye a dog
Speaker 5: could give. Like, I was like, is that true, you're
Speaker 5: doing on your free time.
Speaker 1: And she was like, uh huh, so I guess it's true.
Speaker 2: Yeah, all right, so back to honestly seems right back
Speaker 2: to bombs.
Speaker 3: It really does.
Speaker 2: In the early eighties, Fodnut Bombs is at every protest,
Speaker 2: including anti nuclear activism, against the war on drugs. They're
Speaker 2: working against all the fuckery that the US is getting
Speaker 2: up to in Central America. Basically they're part of like
Speaker 2: every movement that anyone who's paying attention in the nineteen
Speaker 2: eighties would be part of. And and this part is
Speaker 2: important too, right that they fed protests. You know, we
Speaker 2: talked about this a bit before, right that like it's
Speaker 2: mutual aid is this act of solidarity because it's it's
Speaker 2: sharing things, because sharing things is good because we should
Speaker 2: take care of each other. And there's like this reciprocity
Speaker 2: implied in mutual aid. And actually a lot of the
Speaker 2: older definitions of mutual aid are actually like mutual aid
Speaker 2: societies where everyone like pools their money take care of
Speaker 2: each other. It's actually where like modern insurance comes from
Speaker 2: and all this shit.
Speaker 3: Like, yeah, basically like you you join a society, Yeah
Speaker 3: that makes sense.
Speaker 2: Yeah, but but this mutual aid. It's it doesn't necessarily
Speaker 2: imply a one to one. It's not I scratch your
Speaker 2: back and you scratch mine. And so the mutual aid
Speaker 2: of food not bombs is I'm human, you're human. Let's
Speaker 2: take care of each other. I got all this extra food.
Speaker 2: I cooked it up for me and my friends. You
Speaker 2: can come too, you know. And a lot of the people,
Speaker 2: more than other organizations that I've seen, that do this.
Speaker 2: It's not perfect or utopian. Then it's never always right,
Speaker 2: but it's like a lot of the people who come
Speaker 2: to eat end up whining, wind up cooking and organizing
Speaker 2: as well, because it's so participatory. And they've done two
Speaker 2: things intertwined for forty plus years. First it feeds hungry people,
Speaker 2: and second it's fed a movement and just basically allows
Speaker 2: these social movements to exist. You know, like when I
Speaker 2: was a full time activist, when I was sick, I
Speaker 2: would go to activist doctors. When I needed shelter, I
Speaker 2: would squat buildings, or I would stay in people's backyards
Speaker 2: or basements or wherever people could find shelter for me
Speaker 2: while it's in town for a protest or whatever. And
Speaker 2: when we needed food, there's food not Bombs. Sometimes in
Speaker 2: some cities there'll be four or five days a week
Speaker 2: that you could go to Food not Bombs and get
Speaker 2: a hot meal and groceries to take home, and anyone
Speaker 2: who comes you're treated like a person instead of like
Speaker 2: the sort of like lots of other groups feed and
Speaker 2: that's cool, but there's like a scale of how inclusive
Speaker 2: it feels. Like when you show up and they're like,
Speaker 2: here's your number, make sure you sit at least thirty
Speaker 2: feet away from me because I don't like looking at you,
Speaker 2: you know.
Speaker 4: Yeah, uh yeah, that's like, oh god, I mean that's
Speaker 4: that's like it's so like I'm just I mean, I
Speaker 4: can't even like figure out like the what I say.
Speaker 4: But it is just the thing where you're like, yeah,
Speaker 4: you see that, and yeah, I maybe this is again
Speaker 4: me me now having spent more time on sket road
Speaker 4: than I had, you know, prior in the last like
Speaker 4: two years. But it is like, and I'm sure every
Speaker 4: every bit of like you know, eye roll I feel
Speaker 4: and watching some other groups, I'm like, I have been
Speaker 4: that person. So I'm totally not to just be like
Speaker 4: like you know, gate keeping or a dick about it. Yeah,
Speaker 4: it is though, you're just like, oh my god, yeah,
Speaker 4: all those things that you see, it's like almost and
Speaker 4: not always without malice, but often it's like not.
Speaker 3: Even with malice.
Speaker 4: It's just like, you know, you don't know how to
Speaker 4: if you're not sort of comfortable or fluent in in
Speaker 4: what folks need and want, you know, you know there
Speaker 4: and there's elements too of just like what I'm giving
Speaker 4: you something, Yeah, you know, I think you see like
Speaker 4: you should be great. Yeah that is like so.
Speaker 2: Like yeah, yeah, and it's like and sometimes it sucks,
Speaker 2: right you Like you give someone something and they're like,
Speaker 2: well I want another one, and I'm like, I wish.
Speaker 3: You appreciated that I had made this for.
Speaker 2: You, you know, and like because like sometimes it's like, well,
Speaker 2: you also want to be seen as human And now
Speaker 2: I walk through my life and I'm seen as human
Speaker 2: on a fairly regular basis as compared to the person
Speaker 2: who I'm offering this thing too. But yeah, like it
Speaker 2: you know, yeah, it's it's it's all a scale and
Speaker 2: like I'm not trying to knock people who you know,
Speaker 2: it's like and even the like the line between charity
Speaker 2: and mutual aid is not this like impassable Gulf with
Speaker 2: who completely different ideas on each side. It's like it's
Speaker 2: a spectrum and like we should all look at trying
Speaker 2: to increase other people's agencies and create mutual aid, you know.
Speaker 2: But it's like but also just like fucking go out
Speaker 2: there and try and help people have better yeah, lives,
Speaker 2: and then figure it out. I don't know, like whatever.
Speaker 4: Yeah, yeah, I think hopefully the good version of this
Speaker 4: is people get there no matter what.
Speaker 3: So yeah.
Speaker 2: And then another another thing that sort of ties into
Speaker 2: this like movement building version of mutual aid really quickly
Speaker 2: that I is not really including this episode will have
Speaker 2: his own episode, I'm sure, is the Black Panthers breakfast
Speaker 2: program that they did, you know.
Speaker 3: And there's this famous thing that the Black Panthers.
Speaker 2: One of the most radical things they did and actually
Speaker 2: one of the things that, if I believe even the
Speaker 2: FBI said was one of the most dangerous things they did,
Speaker 2: was that they fed people. They fed kids before they
Speaker 2: went to school, and like, and that's a movement feeding itself,
Speaker 2: you know, even though it's like, I mean, the kids
Speaker 2: aren't the activist, but like whatever, Like I don't know,
Speaker 2: So this is what they're doing in Boston at this point,
Speaker 2: this is not spread yet. And there's one little tiny
Speaker 2: anecdote that I think is just like cute and funny
Speaker 2: about them. Okay, so this is the Pepsi challenge, right
Speaker 2: And I thought this is this thing that only exists
Speaker 2: in the eighties, but I was like looking it up
Speaker 2: for this episode. Apparently it's like still ongoing.
Speaker 3: I don't know.
Speaker 2: Okay, So there's a pepsi challenge where you're like supposed
Speaker 2: to drink pepsi versus coke and a blind taste test.
Speaker 2: Sophie's looking at the scripting like where's this shit going?
Speaker 5: Yeah, because this is a thing again. This is a
Speaker 5: thing again.
Speaker 3: It's all over you.
Speaker 1: You would that you would not know this, Margaret, because
Speaker 1: it is very pop cul tree. But it's a whole
Speaker 1: thing right now, TikTok no. I had no idea, yep,
Speaker 1: where there's a bunch of people and they take, you know,
Speaker 1: diet coke, diet pepsi, coke, pepsi cokes here, all those
Speaker 1: things and they put it, they put all the cans
Speaker 1: or whatever, and then the person drinking it can't take it,
Speaker 1: and people are like trying to be like, no, I
Speaker 1: know what the real one is and like most of
Speaker 1: the time they get it wrong. Yeah, so it's yeah, no,
Speaker 1: that's like a viral trend right now, TikTok.
Speaker 3: And I'm on trend by accident.
Speaker 1: For some reason, I get those, which is like why okay,
Speaker 1: Like apparently that's something I'm super into and now we're
Speaker 1: talking about it on cool People did.
Speaker 2: Yeah, maybe maybe the algorithm wrote this episode. Maybe I'm
Speaker 2: the algorithm. I'm the machine.
Speaker 3: Are you the algorithm? I'm the machine?
Speaker 1: It?
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's where you're so angry against me. It's a
Speaker 2: raging as machine joke. That's a band I've heard of,
Speaker 2: even though their pop culture I'm joking.
Speaker 3: I'm joking. Okay.
Speaker 2: So the Pepsi challenge has been going on since the seventies.
Speaker 2: It's the least important thing that's ever happened in the
Speaker 2: history of the universe. You get the cola Wars between
Speaker 2: coke and pepsi. So Pepsi is setting up tents and
Speaker 2: doing this blind taste test and they they probably there's
Speaker 2: like different ideas of how they like make it so
Speaker 2: that they win all the time, you know, And one
Speaker 2: one claim is that they basically put out like fizzy
Speaker 2: pepsi and flat coke, and they they set up right
Speaker 2: next to the Food Not Bombs tent in Harvard Square
Speaker 2: and so and they keep doing this, and the Food
Speaker 2: Not Bombs is like, oh my god, we hate this
Speaker 2: so much. This is the fucking nineteen eighties. Like anti
Speaker 2: corporate branding is like their thing, right, and and so
Speaker 2: they hate this so much. So what they do is
Speaker 2: they go home and then they come back and they
Speaker 2: have the Tofu Challenge where they make smoothies with tofu
Speaker 2: in them, and they offer.
Speaker 3: People free smoothies with tofu in them.
Speaker 2: And I hope they made them taste okay, because you
Speaker 2: can have a tasty tofu smoothie.
Speaker 1: It's just that sounds like some shit. So my brother
Speaker 1: has was like plant based for about ten years. When
Speaker 1: he started medical school, he stopped being it. I'm just
Speaker 1: airing out his life. He stopped being able to digest meat. Yeah,
Speaker 1: he can digest meat again. He kept trying to trick
Speaker 1: me into eating tofu, like he would be like, isn't
Speaker 1: that delicious? And then and then could he'd be like
Speaker 1: it's tofu and like I wouldn't know. So I had
Speaker 1: like major like trust issues a vegans for a minute
Speaker 1: because he'd be like, isn't that delicious? It's not actually cheese.
Speaker 3: It's like, yeah, I know, yeah, you wouldn't have given cheese.
Speaker 1: You sprinkled it from like a little container. Like I'm
Speaker 1: a very aware that that is not cheese on the
Speaker 1: thing you're calling pizza anyways. But yeah, tofu smoothie, delicious, hot, Okay,
Speaker 1: I'm not believing not believing you.
Speaker 3: Here's my pitch.
Speaker 2: Half a block of tofu, a tablespoon or two of cocoa,
Speaker 2: some protein powder if you feel like you want protein powder,
Speaker 2: and then a bunch of maple syrup and so some
Speaker 2: almond milk if you need to.
Speaker 3: You kind of just kind of make it. Make it. Yeah,
Speaker 3: it's like.
Speaker 5: No for textive still no, all right, well I don't
Speaker 5: believe you.
Speaker 3: I drank on earlier. Try it.
Speaker 1: I'll try it because you're telling me what it is
Speaker 1: before giving it to me, and you're not going hot
Speaker 1: tofu or whatever the but uh yeah, so it's a
Speaker 1: smoothie with no fruit.
Speaker 5: What's happening?
Speaker 2: Yeah, So it's actually more of like like the first
Speaker 2: time I did it, it's like chocolatea it's actually if
Speaker 2: you have a if you have a food processor, and
Speaker 2: I don't. You don't have to add the almond milk
Speaker 2: and then it's like a moose texture and you just
Speaker 2: have to add enough sugar. So it tastes good because
Speaker 2: the texture is fine.
Speaker 3: Mine are a little bit more smooth. You can also, I.
Speaker 4: Mean it's just a I think you might be thinking
Speaker 4: of a different tofu sofi. It's more like that very
Speaker 4: silken stuff. Yeah, yeah, a B C D type place.
Speaker 4: So once that's fair, well, well you can go like
Speaker 4: with it's just.
Speaker 1: Been you know, tricked into eating tofu won too many times.
Speaker 2: I didn't eat tofu for the first like two years
Speaker 2: I was vegan because when I was a teenager, I
Speaker 2: went to a salad bar and was like, I will
Speaker 2: try tofu and it was just a block of unseasoned tofu. Yeah,
Speaker 2: it's horrible. It was one of the worst things I've
Speaker 2: ever eaten.
Speaker 5: If you don't know how to take tofu, and that's
Speaker 5: that's what you think.
Speaker 1: Tofu is it tastes horrible. But cooke tofu done correctly
Speaker 1: and marriage and seasoned, and you know, actually it's delightful,
Speaker 1: especially in.
Speaker 3: A soup or a stew.
Speaker 2: And so what I wonder and I think the most
Speaker 2: important decision before we can decide whether the Fun Not
Speaker 2: Bomb's original crew was good or bad was whether or
Speaker 2: not they made good tofu and fed it to people
Speaker 2: or whether they made bad tofu and fed it to people,
Speaker 2: because they could go either way.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it was definitely.
Speaker 4: I'm gonna say that I would find it bad pretty confident.
Speaker 2: I think you're probably right, especially when you're right next
Speaker 2: to fucking Like. I don't drink, so this is no
Speaker 2: like purity thing. I do all kinds of bad things
Speaker 2: for my body. But like, but if someone was like
Speaker 2: does this taste better? Does this taste better? And one
Speaker 2: of them is soda, and one of them is like
Speaker 2: random tofu smoothie, I bet my money's on the soda.
Speaker 3: There's no. Yeah, it's pretty unlikely.
Speaker 2: But and they scared away the Pepsi people, and I
Speaker 2: suspect it was more to do with the fact that
Speaker 2: they were probably like cussing Adam and yelling at him
Speaker 2: all the time than the tofu.
Speaker 3: Yeah. Yeah, that's so.
Speaker 4: Yeah, that's I mean, that's like kind of.
Speaker 3: A nice victory exactly.
Speaker 2: And that's what I want to end today's today's episode,
Speaker 2: where we can you know, there's hippies feeding Boston healthy
Speaker 2: food and I hope it's tasty, but who knows. And
Speaker 2: you know, they get more and more interesting to me
Speaker 2: as they spread, And that's what we're gonna talk about
Speaker 2: next time. The and the massive and sort of unfammable
Speaker 2: repression that they face for giving out free food to
Speaker 2: all takers.
Speaker 4: That's yeah, this is a good a good place to
Speaker 4: put a pause and then hear the other side.
Speaker 3: Sophie, do you have any plugs?
Speaker 4: Uh?
Speaker 1: Yeah, listen to Okay, listen to hood Politics with Prop
Speaker 1: on the Cool Zone Media network wherever you get your podcasts.
Speaker 1: That's that's the podcast of my choice to plug right now,
Speaker 1: and just like follow Prop in general because he's the
Speaker 1: best at prop hip hop. That is all I would
Speaker 1: like to plug at this time.
Speaker 3: Andrew, oh god.
Speaker 4: I mean, you know, if you've enjoyed even this amount,
Speaker 4: come out austin August twentieth and Brooklyn September tenth doing
Speaker 4: that with Yosi's Racist Me and Tawny Knew. So we're
Speaker 4: going to be there.
Speaker 3: So far.
Speaker 4: We just did one show in Boston and I ate
Speaker 4: a lobster roll on stage. In Many people in the
Speaker 4: audience said it was one of the worst things they'd
Speaker 4: ever seen.
Speaker 3: So get a lobster role challenge.
Speaker 5: You just stilled that for me.
Speaker 3: The way I did it was, Margot, you have a
Speaker 3: book coming out, don't you.
Speaker 2: I do on September twentieth, My book of short fiction
Speaker 2: Cool People Who Did That's my podcast Live like that.
Speaker 3: That's the other podcast.
Speaker 2: We won't be here tomorrow.
Speaker 5: There it is.
Speaker 3: We'll be out from.
Speaker 2: Akpress on September twentieth, and you can pre order it
Speaker 2: now and if you pre order through different independent bookstores.
Speaker 2: If you just google we won't be here tomorrow, Margaret
Speaker 2: kildre pre order or whatever, or you probably don't even
Speaker 2: need that many words, it'll come up. If you order
Speaker 2: it through different independent bookstores, including several cooperatives. Oh, this
Speaker 2: wasn't an episode about cooperatives, but they're cool. Anyway, you
Speaker 2: will get an art print from the book, which is
Speaker 2: also cool.
Speaker 3: That's the end.
Speaker 1: Yay, you see, we'll be back. We won't see you,
Speaker 1: but we'll be back on Wednesday with another episode seeing Shit.
Speaker 1: This is an audio medium. Get it together, Okay, Bye bye.
Speaker 1: Cool People Who Did? Cool Stuff is a production of
Speaker 1: cool Zone Media.
Speaker 5: For more podcasts and cool Zone Media.
Speaker 1: Visit our website cool zonemedia dot com, or check us
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