We Will Never Forget You Alice Nuccio

Born in Yonkers, New York, on May 9, 1960, she came of age politically in the anti-nuclear peace movement in the late 1970s. Alice participated in the direct action campaign to close the Seabrook nuclear power plant in New Hampshire. During mass actions with over 30,000 people organized into affinity groups and spokescouncils using consensus decision-making to plan creative non-violent direct action, Alice practiced political principles that became central in her life.

Alice came to San Francisco in 1982, after graduating from Harper College. For close to 20 years she constructed trade shows as a member of Local 510, Sign and Display Workers Union. During the 1980s she built a family with her wife Renna and husband Robert.

In the 1990s Alice became a core member of San Francisco Food Not Bombs (FNB), sharing free food at community meals in Civic Center and United Nations Plaza while opposing militarism and poverty. During the administrations of Mayors Frank Jordan and later Willie Brown, FNB was arrested for sharing free food with people in highly visible public spaces. As a result the issues that FNB was addressing became more known and FNB grew as a grassroots network of locally based groups around the world. SF FNB won important victories and continued to serve while pushing back gentrification efforts.

SF FNB was an organization that took direct action against the problem of hunger by cooking food for people with donations they collected from health food stores and provided solidarity to other groups with similar agendas. SF FNB worked alongside the Coalition on Homelessness, the Tenants’ Union, Homes Not Jails, and Eviction Defense Network for economic justice, Earthfirst, Save Ward Valley, the groups working to close the Nevada Test Site.

Alice’s involvement in Food Not Bombs was very encompassing. Alice held weekly cookhouses at her house, including a women’s cookhouse, she made food donation pickups, often on bike and bikecart, she cooked, she served food and participated in an infinate amount of meetings and committee meetings working on coordinating the daily servings, providing solidarity to other groups, writing literature and so much more. In 1996 Alice facilitated a several month long process in SF FNB of creating a vision statement that gave an overarching political framework of non-violence, feminism, anti-racism and anarchism to the group. That vision statement, which she wrote, was distributed widely in the FNB network in the U.S. and internationally. Alice also participated in women’s discussion groups on sexism and attended an ‘Undoing Racism’ workshop in 1996.

As part of the SF FNB affinity group, Alice was part of the historic mass actions that shut down the WTO as social movements from around the world organized for global justice. Alice worked hard to be part of generating the revival of anti-capitalist and anarchist politics in the U.S. Alice was a core organizer of the Bay Area Anarchist Cafes from 1998-2005 and brought lessons from her experience in the 1970s and 1980s into her work with younger generation FNB activists.

Alice was known for holding strong opinions and being fiercely independent. She was often challenging not just the larger public but within the groups she worked was known for raising hard questions to all of us. The questions she posed were often unpopular even within the radical groups she worked amongst. As someone who had struggled with intensely difficult health problems for years, she spent long hours researching AIDS and cancer on her own. She believed in using holistic health and often spent weeks on end trying to restore her health alone while maintaining her job and political involvement. She fought not just to raise the point that these health issues were not being addressed but for people to have more access to the information regarding their sickness and to more healthy holistic and less intrusive methods than traditional methods. She was involved with ACT UP working on AIDS issues. She believed strongly in inclusive, respectful, loving community and worked long hours to build healthy community institutions and projects. She enjoyed community gardening, potlucks, bonfires at the beach, opportunities to connect with others, spending time with her cat Venus and collective musical experiences like Grateful Dead concerts and playing music with friends. Alice wrote in the FNB mission statement “FNB is part of the revolutionary movement which is everywhere creating the ideology and infrastructure of a new society.” She leaves behind a legacy of putting these words into practice.

Alice died of cancer and her community is invited to a memorial service, Saturday March 24, 2007 at 6:30 pm, at St. Martin DePorres House, 225 Potrero Avenue.