Dennis J Bernstein Interviews Keith McHenry, Founder of Food Not Bombs

DB: It’s good to have you with us Keith. First tell us your response to the election. It’s been a hard year for Food Not Bombs, and people have been hungrier than ever. More people hungry. Give us your thoughts on this day after election brings the extreme right into power.

KM: Well, you know, sadly, the Democrats, leading up to this, a lot of Democratic mayors and leaders, including Nancy Pelosi and Feinstein have been actually against Food Not Bombs, and against feeding the hungry. And some of our most liberal governments, and democratic governments have passed laws against the sharing of free food in public, including Philadelphia, Fort Lauderdale, Orlando. And these are supposedly the bastions of liberalness in these areas. But on the other hand, having the Republicans sweep the Senate and the House and many other state legislatures, it looks like things like, cuts in food stamps will be on the increase, more cuts in education...cuts in the very things that keep people out of poverty, or help people that are living in poverty. So I would say that the elections will mark an increase in homelessness, poverty, and in wars, unfortunately, that seems to be the direction it’s going.

DB: Remind us Keith, remind us what Food Not Bombs does specifically and then talk about some of the encounters, some of the struggles that you face as you continue to try and give free food to hungry people, and the folks who work with you keep getting attacked for it.

KM: Yeah, there seems to be, in the last several years, particularly since 2007, but it’s escalating. They’re and...I think after Occupy this even grew even more dramatic. There’s a policy nationwide to limit or ban the sharing of free food outside in public, and a lot of it is definitely directed at Food Not Bombs. Although, sadly, even the now church groups and so on, are being roped into this. Anybody sharing free meals outside in public in the United States face laws that will restrict them and make it illegal.

This just happened in Orlando where they made...I mean in Fort Lauderdale where they made the law that restricts the sharing of free food in public within 500 feet of a residence, and 500 feet of somebody else providing food if you could even find a place. And it essentially, from what local activists are reporting, bans the sharing of free food outside.

And yet there’s this huge increase of homeless people in the south Florida region who are seeking food. And there’s a huge increase in...just in poverty alone. So it’s not just the people coming to Food Not Bombs, and these other meal programs are all homeless, although many are, which is really tragic. There the families that are working in the communities who are going to be affected even more intensely by the cuts that are probably going to come down with a Mitch McConnell Senate, in the next two years.

And so three people have been detained so far for sharing free food in Fort Lauderdale. They are facing fines of $500.00 and 60 days in jail for each case of them sharing food. And so this is getting to be pretty dramatic, that this kind of thing is happening. So 60 days in jail...this one man, whose 90 year old, he’s been providing food in the streets of Fort Lauderdale for over 20 years.

And Food Not Bombs itself just got arrested yesterday. They were waiting in a lobby to have a meeting with one of the city officials involved in promoting this legislation...and just as soon as they had sat down to wait for this meeting, Fort Lauderdale police arrived and arrested a number of them and took them away. So we’re waiting to see if they can get out of jail now. Maybe by this broadcast they will have been released. But that’s the kind of thing that we’re facing there.

And then most recently, I went to speak in Indianapolis, to the Food Not Bombs chapter there. When I arrived they were busy scanning in documents from Environmental Health, claiming that they needed to get permits and go through this huge regulatory process. And it seems pretty clear...

DB: This process to give out...to be allowed to give out free food to hungry people.

KM: Correct, yes. That’s exactly what they are doing. And we...you know this is a gift, these are people that are on their own time, going out and sharing free food, and it’s also a first amendment right because when Food Not Bombs started in 1980, it was estimated roughly 100,000 homeless Americans, then after the election of Reagan and 8 years of his rule, the census for homeless people went up to 750,000. And today it’s estimated there’s at least 3,000,000 homeless Americans and then almost half of America is living at or below the poverty level. So see conditions with Republicans in power in 1980 got dramatically worse. We can only imagine what will happen in the next two years with already failing economies throughout the world, and what is going on with wider wars against the Islamic state, and across Asia, Africa, and the Middle East.

So the amount of money being dumped into the wars while people in America are going hungry and now having to face the fact that their food can be confiscated from them and their meal programs criminalized is really outrageous.

DB: I want to come back to Florida, for a moment. You said that a 90 year old man was arrested for giving out food?

KM: Yes, a 90 year old man, Arnold Abbott. And he’d been handing out food...there’s a number of these really...like kind of, really sweet organizations, or just not even organizations. One is a peanut butter and jelly project, and they’ve been getting harassed. It’s really incredible that so many people are being told that they are not allowed to do it. There was also two ministers who were arrested with him from the Sanctuary Church of Ft. Lauderdale. And another minister, or one minister from the Sanctuary Church of Ft. Lauderdale, and his name is Dwayne Black, and then Mark Sims was Saint Mary Magdalene, Episcopal Church in Coral Springs. And it’s really tragic that people are seeing all this poverty in their streets and yet they are being told that they cannot share food.

There’s also Love Bags, a project downtown, Love Thy Neighbor and, of course, Food Not Bombs, which are all now subject to $500.00 fines and 60 days in jail for continuing something that they have been doing, just out of the goodness of their hearts, for years. Ft. Lauderdale has been targeted by the police now since at least 2010. They had several raids on their home where they were preparing the meals. In fact, while I was visiting with them police surrounded the house, and surrounded my van that I was sleeping in, and claimed that there was a warrant for someone who did not even live there.

I saw the doors were kicked in, the interior doors of the house were broken up and people taken out of their beds while sleeping, and so on, just over the issue of providing free meals in Ft. Lauderdale. But that did not stop them. And they continue to this day. And so the city, I guess, because of police intimidation didn’t work, has passed this law.

DB: It’s sort of hard to imagine. You’ve got a 90 year old guy in jail, and somebody comes up to him in the jail cell or wherever they are holding him and “Whatta you in for?”...“I’m in for feeding hungry people.” I guess it’s a misdemeanor, it could be a felony depending upon how the charges are filed. Why are people so afraid of you and these folks who are determined to feed a growing army of hungry people?

KM: The issue is that our resources, our tax dollars have being diverted to supporting the super rich, that’s the billionaires like the Koch brothers and so on, bought the election, the national election, yesterday. And so, it puts a bad face on capitalism if you have all these people out on the streets needing food, families with little children. I’ve had people come up to me who haven’t eaten in 5 days.

So they are running a whole propaganda machine claiming that this is the greatest, wealthiest country on earth, that our policies are fantastic, that we’re defending democracy abroad by bombing people all over the world. So it makes it a lie. It makes it so obvious that what is going on with this political and economic system is failing a majority of the people in the country. And, therefore, they want to hide it.

They have offered, for instance, in Orlando, they said, that we could share food underneath this freeway, in this cage, where not a single soul would ever see us or talk to us, that was supposedly the negotiated...the attempt at a negotiated settlement.

But we’re seeing the national priorities have gone awry. The local priorities have gone awry. And that’s no solution to homelessness. To drive them to the margins of society where no one can see them and no one can find out that’s there’s an economic and political crisis here. And that’s really what they are about. They don’t want tax dollars diverted from the military, from profiting on the S35s and all this stuff that they are doing with upgrading the nuclear arsenal, and so on. They want the billions of dollars dumped into that, dumped into the fracking,dumped into coal, into their projects and they don’t want any political pressure by the public to change those policies. And they are fearful...they can’t figure out how to make a profit on making sure no one is living on the streets, and no one is needing to eat at a place like Food Not Bombs.They just haven’t figured out how to maximize that profit.

And the other thing I believe is, as [our] society collapse[s] and we may see this in the next two or three years, as the policies of the new government are implemented, that there could be riots, there could be all kinds of social unrest if large numbers of people are gathering in public to eat, and they’re discussing the fact that they have this shared destiny that has been forced on them by economic and political policies.

DB: We’re talking with Keith McHenry. He’s talking to us from Santa Cruz. He’s the founder of the national organization, Food Not Bombs, and they attempt to give out free food to hungry folks, all over this country. And there are more and more people going hungry, and there are more and more people who have part-time, and full-time jobs, and they still don’t have enough money to put food on the table. It is a real struggle. This is a growing, invisible group of people who are made up of veterans, people who have some kind of psychological breakdown, people who just can’t hold on, given the way in which this economy is moving.

We hear that the stock market is doing great, but on the front lines...on Wall Street things are well, but on main street, things are not going so well. Keith you’re going to be part of an event in Santa Cruz, coming up, I believe, this or next month, that has a lot to do with this, you want to talk about it?

KM: Yes, Chris Hedges, the Pulitzer Prize winning journalist who was working for the New York Times, in the Middle East Bureau and so on. He is coming to Santa Cruz on Sunday, November 23rd. And he’ll be speaking at the New Life Church, at 5:30 pm, in support of a campaign to get a constitutional protection zone passed. The legislation here where the...and this is in regards to Chris Hedges’ lawsuit where he sued Obama for aspects of The National Defense Authorization Act, the NDAA, which is a law passed...signed into...signed by Obama late in 2011, actually on the last day of 2011 when he was in Hawaii.

And what it does is, it provides...makes it legal for the military to come, or this is what the Obama administration is alleging, that it makes it legal for the military to come to your community, and round up the people that they think are a national security threat, and disappear them into secret prisons, without charges, you don’t have access to an attorney, and there is not necessarily even a military tribunal available. And you can be held until the end of hostilities.

And Leon Panetta, another local resident of the Monterey Bay Area, who is also speaking on Monday, at the Peace Church, of all things, is claiming that this war that we’re currently supposedly involved in will go, at least, another 30 years. So you could be picked up by the military, in any community in the United States, if civil unrest grows, because of the policies that Obama might support, when he has both the House and the Senate controlled by Republicans. Could lead to civil unrest, and then the military could be called in like the Ferguson case and rather than rubber bullets, tear gas, and tanks, they could just send in the U.S. military, capture whoever they want, take them away, and disappear them for until the end of...

DB: Oh, I’m sure Food Not Bombs, out there in the streets, could be a prime candidate of violating various statutes, and taking actions that jeopardize national security. If you can get arrested, as you were, on Christmas Eve for giving out free food, then you can get arrested for violating national security, I guess.

KM: Absolutely. And that’s why I’ve been invited to speak at this event, that’s again Chris Hedges, on Sunday, November 23rd, in Santa Cruz, California, at the Inner Light Ministries, on Soquel. And people are definitely encouraged to come. It should be a pretty incredible event. And we’re hoping that this will catapult our campaign into success here, where there will be a constitutional protected zone.

DB: Well, I am going to try and make it down there. We have been speaking with Keith McHenry, founder of Food Not Bombs, giving out food to the armies of homeless and hungry, that are now walking the streets of cities, all over this country. Keith, we appreciate you joining us today on Flashpoints.

KM: Thank you so much Dennis, for....you know, for taking the time to report on this really, incredibly crazy dilemma that the people of America are now facing.


Listen to the interview:

http://www.kpfa.org/archive/id/108178