ANOTHER FBI INVENTED TERRORIST PLOT
December 16, 2025
Audrey Carroll, 30 , Zachary Page, 32, Dante Gaffield, 24 and Tina Lai, 41 were arrested in what is likely an FBI invented terrorist plot.
The criminal complaint against the just formed “Turtle Island Liberation Front” suggests this was another FBI invented terrorist attack and that the four people arrested were set up.
The FBI used an informant from the beginning and then added an “undercover employee” (UCE) so they could “disrupt” the fake plot they were setting up.
The timing of the arrests and massive media attention accusing the newly formed Turtle Island Liberation Front was a leftist pro Palestinian anti ICE and anti-capitalist “terrorist” group supports the Trump agenda of fear as outlined in September 25, 2025 National Security Presidential Memorandum (NSPM-7) called “Countering Domestic Terrorism and Organized Political Violence”.
It seems very unlikely that the four that have been arrested would have called any such plot “OPERATION MIDNIGHT SUN” and would call themselves “Order of the Black Lotus” but one could believe the FBI would invent such a name.
It appears from the complaint that this plot was initiated by a paid FBI infiltrator and that both the informant and an FBI agent who graduated from the academy last year guided the defendants through the plot and to the site where the arrests were made. What are the chances that a bomb plot emerged naturally out of a small group chat that a paid informant and undercover agent were both passively members of?
Based on past FBI invented plots it is likely that we will learn that the “hand written” plans were drafted by the informant. The pebble in the shoe and the buying of “bomb making” items on Amazon and the photograph of the “evidence” still life that the authorities are sharing that looks like past frame ups also point to an FBI invented plot.
We saw a similar evidence still life provided by the FBI in the terrorism arrests of eight Food Not Bombs volunteers during the Republican National Convention in Minneapolis in 2008
I have direct experience with FBI invented terrorist plots FBI infiltrator “Anna” Zoe Elizabeth Voss spent time at the Food Not Bombs literature table and kitchen at St Marks during the 2004 protest at the Republican National Convention in New York City. A year later she participated as a “medic” at the protest against the Biotech industry. Zoe Elizabeth Voss, Zach Jenson, Lauren Weiner, Eric McDavid and I shared the second floor porch of a Food Not Bombs volunteers home in West Philadelphia each night during the 2005 Food Not Bombs World Gathering. The four of them traveled across the country afterwards in a car provided by the FBI to a California ski lodge provided by the FBI. The FBI raided the house arresting Eric, Zachary and Wren. Zoe Elizabeth Voss was paid over $65,000 for her role in securing Eric McDavid’s 19 year sentence on a FBI invented terrorist plot. On January 8, 2015, after he spent eight years and 360 days in prison, McDavid’s conviction was overturned after the prosecution conceded that the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) had withheld thousands of pages of potentially exculpatory evidence.
FBI infiltrator “Anna” Zoe Elizabeth Voss
Five cooks at Occupy Cleveland were arrested by members of the FBI’s Joint Terrorism Task Force on April 30, 2012 on charges of conspiracy and attempted use of explosive materials to damage physical property affecting interstate commerce.
The FBI affidavit makes it clear that the five ‘black bloc’ anarchists were swept into an FBI sting operation using an agent provocateur and an FBI Special Agent. According to the criminal complaint the FBI’s informant and Special agent spent over half a year systematically pushing the five to participate in an FBI invented plot to plant C-4 explosives on the Brecksville-Northfield High Level Bridge over the Cuyahoga Valley National Park near Cleveland. All five were convicted and sentenced to a decade in prison.
If the local charismatic member of your activist group asks you to join their secret organization for “serious people” in order to make bombs you must assume they work for the feds.
I have a chapter in The Anarchist Cookbook “Avoiding FBI entrapment”.
“Still it is not always possible to avoid being the target of the authorities, so take precautions to limit the damage if the state seeks to silence you. Taking actions that you can be proud of may be the most important single thing you can do. Think of the consequences of your acts. How will you feel if someone is injured or killed because of something you did? Could your actions be used to discredit the movement? Could they add to the divisions, fear, and paranoia in the community?”
The arrests of the “Turtle Island Liberation Front” for the New Years Eve plot using that evenings fireworks to hide what is supposed to be an act of political violence follows the arrest of 17 activists in Texas after launching fireworks on July 4, 2025 outside the Prairieland ICE facility. An unidentified person shot and hit a policeman in the neck. KERA reporter Caroline Love writes, “Court records don’t identify who fired the shots,” suggesting the shooter may well be working with law enforcement.
THE ANARCHIST COOKBOOK
https://www.foodnotbombs.net/anarchist_cookbook.html
THE CURRENT STATE OF STATE REPRESSION
https://keithmchenry.substack.com/p/the-current-state-of-state-repression
THE CURRENT STATE OF STATE REPRESSION
December 12, 2025
Food Not Bombs has a 45 year history of defending human and animal rights. Volunteers have provided support for indigenous struggles, class conflicts and in defense of the environment. We stand for the rights of those without a roof to a safe place to sleep free of police disruption and violence. Of course we aren’t going to let governments interfere with the sharing of meals and literature. We will always defend the basic human right to share meals without government permission.
When the Pensacola Florida Police arrested Food Not Bombs volunteer Mike Kimberl for sharing meals after dark in Martin Luther King jr Park the day after Thanksgiving 2025 Food Not Bombs refused efforts by the city to issue them a permit. Mike and the other Food Not Bombs volunteers have been sharing meals every Friday at 6 pm in Pensacola for 14 years Daylight Saving Time or not.
Pensacola Mayor D.C. Reeves and his police department don’t seem to understand that they have no say in how people help one another. That’s a most basic of freedoms. People don’t ever need permission from the government to share the gift of a warm meal. Food Not Bombs agreed during the1992 and 1995 World Gatherings that we would never request or accept a permit to share food with the hunger after the San Francisco authorities used their process to try and stop our meals. If they believe that they can give you permission they also believe they can take that permission away.
Melbourne Food Not Bombs on the Atlantic coast of Florida successfully pushed back against a local ordinance designed to drive the group from sight. “We are not here to negotiate with you” one volunteer tells City Council. She reminds the council members that the City of Fort Lauderdale was ordered to pay $750,000 to the attorneys that represented Food Not Bombs after the federal courts ruled it was our First Amendment right to share meals without a permit.
Another threat is brewing against anti-fascists, anarchists and groups like Food Not Bombs that organize using anarchist influenced nonhierarchical principles.
A July 4th fireworks protest outside an ICE detention center inspired the July 22nd story on the Dallas Fort Worth NPR station KERA,“Shooting at Alvarado ICE facility, other attacks: The new normal?”
KERA reporter Caroline Love says, “Era Yousuf describes herself as being close friends with many of the defendants — including Benjamin Song, who she said prefers to be called Suzuka. Song, who was recently arrested, is accused of purchasing four guns found in connection with the shooting, according to court records.”
“Yousuf met them through protests and local activism, including the group Food Not Bombs, a nonprofit organization that distributes food that would otherwise be discarded to people experiencing homelessness.”
“Yousuf, who moved to another state recently, said she wasn’t involved with the demonstration at the detention center or any of the planning. She said her friends are not violent.”
“‘These aren’t dangerous people,’ Yousuf said. ‘They want to help innocent folks that are being kept prisoner.’”
The report also notes that “Court records don’t identify who fired the shots,” suggesting the shooter may well be working with law enforcement.
The Alvarado ICE facility shooting was highlighted by Trump and his cabinet at his October 8th White House Antifa roundtable.
Trump stated that, “In July approximately a dozen Antifa aligned militants stormed the ice facility in Texas, and then lured offices out of the building before firing dozens of rounds at police. They were. crazy, frankly. Shooting 1 Texas officer in the neck.”
During that same Antifa roundtable, Jonathan Choe, a reporter for Turning Point USA’s newsroom Frontlines, claimed that political extremism on the ideological left intersects with the “homeless drug crisis.” As evidence, he shared a recent report from the Discovery Institute, a Seattle based think tank best known for promoting the intelligent-design theory that God made everything in seven days to refute the theory of evolution.
“In many cases, the homeless industrial complex is running cover for antifa, and antifa is benefiting from American tax dollars, and they’re essentially being used as the muscle,” Choe reported.
“He then pointed to Stop the Sweeps, a franchise-like, community-coordinated campaign that aims to prevent state violence against homeless encampments.” writes Ellie Quinlan Houghtaling in an October 8th story in the New Republic.
The Stop the Sweeps protests in Santa Cruz have been focused against the local homeless shelter Housing Matters and their coordination with the city to clear the streets of the homeless around their shelter.
The suggestion that Food Not Bombs could be national security threat continued. On October 3, 2025, Fox New’s Jesse Watters aired “Antifa whistleblower BREAKS SILENCE, warns of violence,” interviewing an actor he calls Eric about how he got involved with Antifa. Watter’s starts by explaining Eric had to disguise himself to protect his life. He goes on asking, “How did you get roped into this whole Antifa thing?” Fake Eric responds, “It stared when I was young. I got in through working with different groups like the ARA, Cop Watch, Food Not Bombs and the punk rock movement.” The pretend former Antifa Eric also refers to the WTO protest in Seattle and claimed he had a copy of the Anarchist Cookbook.
On September 25, 2025, Trump issued NATIONAL SECURITY PRESIDENTIAL MEMORANDUM / NSPM-7: Countering Domestic Terrorism and Organized Political Violence Presidential National Security Memorandum. It includes,“As described in the Order of September 22, 2025 (Designating Antifa as a Domestic Terrorist Organization), the groups and entities that perpetuate this extremism have created a movement that embraces and elevates violence to achieve policy outcomes, including justifying additional assassinations. For example, Charlie Kirk’s alleged assassin engraved the bullets used in the murder with so-called “anti-fascist” rhetoric.”
Attorney General Pam Bondi ordered the FBI on December 4, 2025 to “compile a list of groups or entities engaging in acts that may constitute domestic terrorism,” according to the Justice Department memo.
Under number 7 “Disseminating intelligence on extremist groups”
“Within 60 days of the issuance of this guidance, the FBI, in coordination with its partners on the JTTFs, shall disseminate an intelligence bulletin on Antifa and Antifa-aligned anarchist violent extremist groups. The bulletin should describe the relevant organizations’ structures, funding sources, and tactics so that law enforcement partners can effectively investigate and policy makers can effectively understand the nature and gravity of the threat posed by these extremist groups.”
It might be helpful to learn that when the FBI – Joint Terrorism Task Force observed the August 22, 1988 arrests of 24 Food Not Bombs volunteers at Golden Gate Park they sent a memo to the San Francisco FBI Field Office claiming we were “a credible national security threat”. That November during the Thanksgiving holiday National Guard units across the country held domestic terrorism workshops featuring Food Not Bombs as “one of America’s most hardcore terrorist groups”. In April 2009 the US State Department gave a lecture asking who is more dangerous, “Al-Qaeda or the people sharing vegan meals in the parks?” In conclusion they believed that the people sharing vegan meals were more dangerous because they were influencing the American pubic “to support diverting military spending to education, healthcare and other social services” reducing according to them the country’s ability to fight groups like Al-Qaeda.
While several Food Not Bombs volunteers have been arrested, framed or entrapped by FBI terrorism changes in plots invented by the agency it has not slowed the growth of our movement. Each of these cases was painful for the families and friends of those targeted but if anything it has encouraged more people to participate.
We maybe entering a time of transition where those of us who have no attachment to the current political and economic system can thrive.
In crisis like this people tend to step up and help one another. The collapse frees us to appreciated the value of community and compassion over the cold techno feudal digital dystopia during the dying days of this cruel US Empire.
THE CURRENT STATE OF STATE REPRESSION
https://keithmchenry.substack.com/p/the-current-state-of-state-repression
EMPIRE COLLAPSE
December 11, 2025
Could this open a path to a future of community and compassion?
The US Empire may have run its course. The last assets of America being cannibalized by the techno-fascist billionaire class hovering around Washington DC and Silicon Valley. The vultures of Wall Street are perched to sell the top of the stock market. We could be on the precipice of an economic crash as brutal as the world suffered in the 1930s.
For millions of Americans the Great Depression 2.0 has been their reality for that last few years. There was a 32% increase in the number of Americans who became homeless during the Biden Presidency.
The month long disruption of SNAP food stamps that forced 47 million people to worry about their next meal was a wakeup call for America.
But even before the SNAP disaster Americans were struggling. I have been getting calls nearly everyday for that past four years from all over the country seeking food. Many haven’t eaten in days. Others tell me they are eating canned cat food or have only one box of cereal in their pantry. Often these are seniors who have been referred to me by a health insurance company who gave them a $100 gift card when they signed up for Medicare Advantage. When the money runs out they call the number on the back.
United Health gave the Food Not Bombs toll free number to a woman in Corpus Christi, Texas during the first week of December. She told me that the Meals On Wheels waiting list was months long, the food bank couldn’t help her because she couldn’t drive and when she called SNAP they said they had run out of money. She is typical of my dozen or more such conversations I have each day. Fortunately I was able to direct her to Tacos Not Bombs.
The economy really is a house of cards. Families forced to buy ever more expensive groceries with credit cards at 20% interest. There is little money left after paying rent.
Meanwhile AI companies are using a circular financing scheme promising each other $300 billion contracts to gin up the value of their stocks and the Federal Reserve rushes billions in overnight repro (repurchase agreement) to save banks from defaulting on their obligations. One giant economic crashing Enron style Ponzi Scheme ready to crash. Get ready.
The number of people coming to eat with their local Food Not Bombs group is already on the increase. A collapse could send additional torrents of people seeking food and material support.
When industry and businesses closed sending millions into unemployment after the 1929 crash there were no food banks, soup kitchens or established mutual aid groups like we have today. And thankfully if food banks and foundation funded meal programs are used by the authorities to force compliance with the dystopian programs of control there is already a strong and growing network of hundreds independent mutual aid groups like Food Not Bombs that will refuse to cooperate
.The closest relief effort to that of Food Not Bombs was the Catholic Worker. In response to the savage hunger around her a young woman from New York named Dorothy Day started the first Catholic Worker soup kitchen in the Lower East Side of Manhattan New York. The depression had already been inflicting pain when their first pot of soup was removed from the stove and they spooned out the first bowls of stew. Unlike Food Not Bombs they had to learn the art of the soup line when the crisis was already unbearable.
This time when all goes bust there are hundreds of experienced cooks and logistic experts are at the ready in hundreds of American cities. Volunteers that have years of practice providing the most essential gifts of food, water, clothing and companionship. They have personal relationships with those working at groceries, bakeries and a whole network of local support. Many local Food Not Bombs chapters have been active for decades.
Our network of resources and support are already well established. Volunteers understand logistics, a skill that translates into being capable of providing hundreds of hot meals and emergency relief efforts after hurricanes, fires and social upheaval. Most Food Not Bombs groups are in a position to respond.
EMPIRE COLLAPSE – Could this open a path to a future of community and compassion?https://keithmchenry.substack.com/p/empire-collapse
DYSTOPIAN DIGITAL TERROR
October 22, 2025
The woman managing United Airlines gate D3 greets each passenger with, “Please stand here and face the camera”. I let her know I don’t do facial recognition. “Maggie, is this mandatory yet?” She responds “I don’t think so”. So I hand the attendant my boarding pass and head down the jetway towards my seat.
As I was driving to the airport I get a call from my former wife. She asks me to call her back when I am settled. It’s urgent she explains. I call her back. “I was just let go without warning. My job was replaced by AI.” No severance pay. The Social Security offices were closed due to the government shutdown and she can’t log on to essential websites because of the disruption in the Amazon Cloud Services. She sounds desperate. I promised to help. My heart is broken.
The shutdown could also impact food stamps. “SNAP benefits for November won’t be issued if the federal government shutdown continues past Oct. 27”, warned the Texas’ Health and Human Services Department. The U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) stated that it will not have enough federal funds to issue all of November’s SNAP benefits if the government shutdown lasts into the month. Separately from the government shutdown, new rules under the One Big Beautiful Bill Act (OBBBA) will also start in November, which means stricter work requirements will apply for many SNAP recipients.
We are living in a time of cruelty when Fox and Friends Brian Kilmeade could comfortably respond to Lawrence Jones when he says “They have given billions of dollars to mental health and the homeless population. Or uh, involuntary lethal injection. Or something,” Kilmeade said. “Just kill ‘em.”
Santa Cruz County’s largest homeless services provider, Housing Matters, is expected to close its Day Services program, which provides showers, bathrooms, water and a welcome area for homeless people at its Coral Street campus. The cuts to services also come as Housing Matters has conducted weekly sweeps of Coral Street in front of the shelter for more than a year.
The campaign to dehumanize those made homeless is nationwide bipartisan. Just a bunch of mentally ill drug addicts that don’t deserve our compassion. California Gov. Gavin Newsom issued an executive order in July 2024, to direct state agencies on how to remove homeless encampments.
A year later the Trump administration issued Executive Order 14321, titled “Ending Crime and Disorder on America’s Streets,” It states “ Purpose and Policy. Endemic vagrancy, disorderly behavior, sudden confrontations, and violent attacks have made our cities unsafe.” It also continues to dehumanize those without housing saying “The overwhelming majority of these individuals are addicted to drugs, have a mental health condition, or both. Nearly two-thirds of homeless individuals report having regularly used hard drugs like methamphetamines, cocaine, or opioids in their lifetimes.”
These policies may be an attempt to respond to an expected increase in homelessness due in part to the rapid replacement of workers by AI and other digital systems.
My former wife was one of over 209,000 employees who were laid off and replaced by AI across 1,319 companies so far in 2025 (and that’s just the layoffs that meet state reporting rules). On average, around 1.6 million people are laid off each month in the U.S., translating to an estimated 19.2 million annually. In August 2025, 85,979 jobs vanished, many being replaced by AI, a 140% surge compared to the same month last year.
The global rush to force Biometric digital ID on their citizens is already having catastrophic economic impact and could increase the number of people becoming homeless. Each country has its own unique policies they believe their populations might be willing to comply with.
In Ukraine the US State Department introduced the Diia app in 2020 where all your government documents including digital ID is stored. The Diia app has a feature that allows you to turn in Russian speaking people for prosecution.
Billionaire Joe Lonsdale, co-founder of the CIA initiated Palantir, writes on September 11, 2025, “A camping ban without enforcement is a dead letter. Residents should have an app to report encampments or street crime in real time. If city police fail to respond within hours, state authorities should step in, and if the problem persists after 24 hours, clear it themselves.”
Using this app, citizens could submit a photo of the problem, then confirm inaction by uploading another photo the next day.
This digital craze may dramatically increase the number of people forced in to homelessness who become the target of Lonsdale’s brilliant “solution”.
As of September 1, 2025, banks across Vietnam were closing accounts deemed inactive or non-compliant with new biometric rules. Authorities estimate that more than 86 million accounts out of roughly 200 million are at risk if users fail to update their identity verification.
The United Kingdom’s new digital ID program claims it will help combat illegals working, while making it easier for the vast majority of people to use vital government services. Digital ID will be mandatory for Right to Work checks by the end of the Parliament. One can imagine how many people will find themselves homeless as a result.
The Bank of Russia developed the digital biometric identification system with the implementation of the Guidelines for Financial Technology Development for 2018-2020. The Bank of Russia website claims, “The creation and development of the digital biometric identification platform means that financial services can be digitalized, financial inclusion can be increased, making financial services accessible for, among others, disabled, elderly and physically challenged consumers, and that competition in the financial market can be raised.”
Mexico officially introduced a digital identification system by signing a law that turned the previously optional biometric-based citizen code into a mandatory document for all citizens. The mandatory CURP will contain personal and biometric information, including a photograph and a QR code containing biometric fingerprint and iris data. The identifier is expected to be introduced gradually to all Mexicans by February 2026. So far the Mexicans I have spoken with believe it will be difficult to get people to cooperate.
The crypto crash in October 2025 could be a sign of things to come. Banking on digital currency could leave hundreds of millions of people without access to their money just because of technical failures.
The Binance-linked token BNB tumbled as much as 11% on Friday, October 10th. The world’s largest crypto exchange was cited by analysts as a key driver of the record crash on Oct. 10 and 11 as users encountered technical glitches and price discrepancies.
Galaxy Digital’s Alex Thorn says “The October 10th sell-off began with high leverage slamming into thin order books, then worsened as exchange auto-deleveraging capped some market-maker shorts and thinned liquidity at the worst point. He cites roughly $19 billion of liquidations as bitcoin slid from an Oct. 6 all-time high near $126,300 to an intraday low around $107,000, with ether falling from about $4,800 to roughly $3,500 before markets steadied into the weekend.”
A digital panopticon prison-state is rapidly being forced on us. “Citizens will be on their best behavior because we are constantly recording and reporting everything that’s going on,” Ellison told stockholders on September 24, 2024, describing what he sees as the benefits from automated oversight from AI and automated alerts. “We’re going to have supervision,” he continued. “Every police officer is going to be supervised at all times, and if there’s a problem, AI will report the problem and report it to the appropriate person.”
To make this frightening potential possible, massive AI data farms are being constructed all across the world. The number of hyperscale data centers, which house a large portion of AI capacity, increased to 1,136 globally in the last year. Companies are expected to spend $375 billion on data centers globally this year and $500 billion in 2026, according to the investment bank UBS.
The cost of electricity for households is increasing in part because of the need to power AI data centers. CNBC reports, “Billions of dollars of investment and customers’ electric bills are at stake”. CNBC reporter Spencer Kimball adds “The AI companies are rolling out ambitious plans to build server farms that in some cases would consume as much electricity as entire cities.”
Visual Capitalist reports that AI data farms use 7.4 percent of the state’s power and in Oregon it’s already up to 11.4 percent. Data centers in Ireland consume more than 20 percent of the country’s electricity.
Goldman Sachs reports, “Securing the power to operate these new data centers is even tougher, especially with AI data centers housing tens of thousands of energy-intensive GPUs in dense clusters. By 2030, data center power demand is expected to surge +160%*** relative to 2023 levels—and after a decade of flat demand growth, the current grid was not designed for this future.”
To meet the needs of the AI surveillance state nuclear power stations are being proposed and closed stations like Three Mile Island that had a meltdown on March 28, 1979, are going back online. Trade organizations like Central Coast Community Energy are pushing for the construction of new Lithium Battery Storage Sites while also providing lithium batteries to place on our homes.
These AI data centers are also a strain on water needs to cool the processors. For example Google, which operates Oregon data centers at The Dalles, a city of 16,000 people not far from the Morrow County center, resisted disclosing its water use, paying $100,000 for the city’s lawsuit against The Oregonian, a Portland newspaper that had filed a public records request for the data. When the suit was dropped, Google’s water-use totals were public: 355.1 million gallons, a quarter of the city’s annual water use in 2021.
While trillions of dollars are being invested in this surveillance and war-fighting industry their systems can crash. Even if you comply with the biometric ID programs, access to your banking or other essential services can vanish.
On October 20, 2025, Amazon’s cloud services unit AWS struggled to recover from a widespread outage that knocked out thousands of websites along with some of the world’s most popular apps like Snapchat and Reddit. Online banking, crypto, transportation and other businesses went dark across the globe. AWS CEO Matt Garman brags that 70% of their code is written by AI.
I support both a mass movement of noncooperation with this tyrannical dystopia and the formation of communities that live outside this control grid.This draconian system thankfully may collapse under its own contradictions. This sure is a time to start to rely on mutual aid groups on the fringes of society like Food Not Bombs. This may end up being our only hope at survival.
Food Not Bombs
PO Box 422 – Santa Cruz CA 95061 USA – https://foodnotbombs.net/new_site/
THE JOYS OF ANTIFASCISM
October 10, 2025
Community is the cure
The authorities might be trying to link Food Not Bombs to their threats to stamp out anarchists and Antifa.
This July, NPR’s KERN News published the story, “Shooting at Alvarado ICE facility, other attacks: The new normal?” The report included this passage, “Era Yousuf describes herself as being close friends with many of the defendants — including Benjamin Song, who she said prefers to be called Suzuka. Song, who was recently arrested, is accused of purchasing four guns found in connection with the shooting, according to court records.”
“Yousuf met them through protests and local activism, including the group Food Not Bombs, a nonprofit organization that distributes food that would otherwise be discarded to people experiencing homelessness.” The government claims that there were two shooters but only identifies Song. One defendant claims the group intended to launch fireworks outside the detention center on the 4th of July to provide solidarity with the prisoners on Independence Day. KERN reporter Caroline Love wrote, “At least one of the defendants told authorities he didn’t know there would be any violence according to court records. So far, eleven people are charged with three counts of attempted murder of a federal officer and three counts of discharging a firearm in relation to and in furtherance of a crime of violence for the shooting. Court records don’t identify who fired the shots.” This suggests that it was an unidentified government informant that fired at the police when they came out to see what the noise was about.
The Alvarado ICE facility shooting was highlighted by Trump and his cabinet at his October 8th ANTIFA round table.
Trump claimed that “In July approximately a dozen Antifa aligned militants stormed the ICE facility in Texas, and then lured offices out of the building before firing dozens of rounds at police. They were crazy, frankly, shooting one Texas officer in the neck.”
The “Soros Network” among others were listed at Trump’s ANTIFA round table as supporters of violence.
“Patel said his department is working with Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent, “who is allowing us to map out these networks through their financial criminal activities, which has been going on for decades.”
Scott Bessent was the chief investment officer of Soros Fund Management, a $30 billion family office. After graduation, Bessent went to work at the CIA law firm Brown Brothers Harriman, then did stints at the Soros Fund, Protégé Partners, and others before George Soros recruited him as CIO in 2011. In August 2015 Bessent announced that he will leave at the end of the year—with a $2 billion allocation from Soros to start his own hedge fund.
Soros Open Society Foundation provided funding for the NGO’s that participated in the Orange Revolution and 2014 coup of Ukraine as well as providing millions to Indivisible including $9 million in 2024.
On October 3, 2025, Fox New’s Jesse Waters aired “Antifa whistleblower BREAKS SILENCE, warns of violence” interviewing an actor he calls Eric about how he got involved with Antifa. Water’s starts by explaining Eric has to disguise himself to protect his life. He goes on asking, “How did you get roped into this whole Antifa thing?” Fake Eric responds, “It stared when I was young. I got in through working with different groups like the ARA, Cop Watch, Food Not Bombs and the punk rock movement.” The pretend former Antifa Eric also refers to the WTO protest in Seattle and claimed he had a copy of the Anarchist Cookbook.
I rewrote the Anarchist Cookbook after the FBI entrapped five young Occupy Cleveland cooks including two Food Not Bombs volunteers in an FBI invented May Day bombing plot of a bridge and noticed that the federal complaint repeatedly noted that they possessed William Powell’s book which they admitted they had provided to the defendants.
All the hype about anarchists and Antifa suggests that the federal authorities might start attempting to increase their disruption of peace groups like CodePink and Food Not Bombs. Trump signed an executive order Designating Antifa a Domestic Terrorist Organization on September 22, 2025 even though there is no Antifa Organization so that can mean anyone could be a target.
After that he issued NSPM-7: Countering Domestic Terrorism and Organized Political Violence Presidential National Security Memorandum.
On October 4, 2025 Trump’s aid Stephen Miller told NewsMax “Every time we make an arrest, we are initiating an investigation into the entire domestic terrorist network.”
He adds, “The president issued a national security presidential memorandum, an NSPM, making clear that it is the national security priority of the United States law enforcement to dismantle, disrupt, defeat, and destroy these domestic terror networks.”
The Trump administration isn’t only targeting organizations or groups but even individuals and “entities” whom NSPM-7 says can be identified by any of the following “indicia” (indicators) of violence:
• anti-Americanism,
• anti-capitalism,
• anti-Christianity,
• support for the overthrow of the United States Government,
• extremism on migration,
• extremism on race,
• extremism on gender
• hostility towards those who hold traditional American views on family,
• hostility towards those who hold traditional American views on religion, and
• hostility towards those who hold traditional American views on morality.
So really anyone with a thinking brain and a compassionate heart.
Food Not Bombs meals are a port in the storm of these times of authoritarian threats. Building community, celebrating our independence and cultivating a society of compassion outside the drumbeat of fascism.
We can avoid being framed in one of the FBI’s plots by speaking up when conversations or jokes about getting guns, suggesting arson or other acts of violence by speaking up and reminding them that Food Not Bombs is dedication to nonviolent direct action. We aren’t passive but also we don’t support the organizing of physical attacks against people. As our name makes clear, we are food and not bombs.
The FBI has used informants to suggest bombings and other acts of terrorism in the Food Not Bombs community such as happened with Cleveland Food Not Bombs or our volunteer Eric McDavid who was framed and sentenced to 19 years for an FBI invented plot that he was not aware of believing that “Sarah” the informant was just joking.
The feds can try to cause infighting by hinting someone is an informant so it’s wise to never make such an accusation. Those making suggestions to use violence may have been encouraged by someone they keep “randomly” running into and otherwise are great and dedicated activists.
But the main thing I would suggest is have fun and enjoy all the beautiful connections we make when volunteering with Food Not Bombs.
Keith McHenry
Co-founder of the Food Not Bombs movement
Shooting at Alvarado ICE facility, other attacks: The new normal?
Antifa whistleblower BREAKS SILENCE, warns of violence
THE INTERNING OF AMERICA’S HOMELESS
August 17, 2025
Will we be silent about our neighbors being removed from our communities?
Yes, that time I have been warning of since 1985 has arrived: prison camps for the homeless. Nearly four decades of demonizing the homeless as sub human drug addicted mentally ill “useless eaters” has provided the justification needed to intern those who cannot afford housing.
Thankfully many Americans have compassion for their homeless neighbors. Many of us have family on the streets or are struggling to keep housed and appreciate the difficulties tens of thousands of us are experiencing.
My wife and I owned a graphic design company in Kenmore Square. We designed ads and publications for companies in our neighborhood including the Boston Red Sox and local retail shops who were members of the local business association. The vice president of the Kenmore Association invited me to his stuffy second floor office to ask me to design another publication.
“Keith, the Association wants you to take a photo of that black guy that stands outside Captain Nemo’s Pizza and make a poster with a red circle with a line through it over his face like a no parking sign. The poster should say “Wanted out of Kenmore Square.”
I refused to make the poster, volunteered to share food behind Fenway Park before each game and suggested it would not be possible to drive the homeless from Kenmore Square since the crowds of Red Sox fans and college students made it the perfect place to panhandle. I also explained that “that black guy” was loved and had a name.
A few weeks later my wife Andrea called me over to her desk at our graphic design business to show me the Kenmore Association newsletter.
“Keith look at this.” pointing to page 2 of the October issue of the Kenmore News. The typewritten newsletter of the association mostly reported on the news of the Security and Maintenance Committee.
“The Security & Maintenance Committee encourages all KA Members to assume an active role in cleaning up Kenmore Square. In order to prevent the attraction of streetpeople (especially the “rough element”, new to Kenmore Square), the following guidelines were suggested at the breakfast meeting…
Please don’t give free food to these streetpeople.
Please lock all dumpsters. Unlocked dumpsters will be cited by the City inspectors and all infractions will be subject to fines. Open dumpsters attract streetpeople looking for collectibles and food.
Please refrain from throwing returnable cans and bottles in public trash receptacles. The streetpeople find Kenmore Square a profitable location for collecting on these cans and bottles.
Start calling the police if certain annoyances persist and keep a record of your calls (ie. date, time of day and response time).
We stopped what we had been doing and typed out a response to the business association.
“As members of the Kenmore Association we object to the dehumanizing statements against those living on our streets made by the Security & Maintenance Committee in the October newsletter.”
“These people are our neighbors, friends and family and deserve our compassion and support.”
“Dehumanizing people in this manor smacks of Hitler’s Germany. The association is showing a total disregard for people being people. We urge the Association to support efforts to help our neighbors instead of adopting policing to drive them out of the community.”
“There is no evidence that their presence is having any impact on business. We should celebrate the unique qualities of Kenmore Square that make it attractive instead of seeking to become a second Newbury Street.”
Sincerely,
Andrea and Keith McHenry
24 hour residents of Kenmore Square
We shared our life with our homeless friends. The most visible and lovable of our street friends was “that black guy” Mr Butch who could be found outside Captain Nimo’s Pizza with a blue electric guitar slung across his chest welcoming the streams of Boston Red Sox fans chugging through Kenmore Square. Harold Madison Jr could have been Jimi Hendrix’s double.
The war against America’s homeless had begun.
As the number of Americans who were not able to afford housing increased business districts and municipal governments started to enact laws deigned to remove the homeless from sight.
After eight years of Reagan’s trickle down economics the number of homeless Americans had grown to more than 750,000 people. Cities started to pass and enforce what they called “quality of life” laws designed to make it a crime to be unhoused citing the pseudo science of the Broken Windows Theory to justify their dehumanizing campaigns.
Demonizing the homeless took another ugly step after I had relocated to San Francisco. Mayor Dianne Feinstein held a press event in my Richmond District neighborhood praising the city’s homeless-proof Muni bus stops. Her replacement, former social worker Art Agnos continued her anti-homeless programs including arresting Food Not Bombs for sharing meals at the entrance to Golden Gate Park at the end of Haight Street.
But that was nothing when compared to Mayor Frank Jordan’s “Quality of Life Enforcement Matrix Program”. In the first months Jordan order the police to confiscate the shoes off of people living outside.
Jordan would brag that Rudy Giuliani had adopted his program to clear Manhattan of their homeless.
The next mayor of San Francisco continues the repression. Mayor Brown asks to borrow the Oakland Police Department night vision-equipped helicopter to locate homeless people illegally sleeping in Golden Gate, but Oakland refuses to help. Sweeps of the parks continues anyway and the quality of life enforcement continues with 23,871 tickets issued to people living on the streets in 1999. Brown orders the police to charge people with shopping carts with a felony.
When Gavin Newson was on the San Francisco Board of Supervisors he initiated the ballot measure Care Not Cash which would change San Francisco’s General Assistance from $395 per month to just $59 per month but came with a guarantee of housing and food for the homeless. The promise of housing and food failed to materialize but the cuts in assistance was implemented.
When Gavin Newsom took the mayor’s office in 2004 he launched “Operation Outreach,” a special police unit that responds to 911 calls to rid the streets of the homeless, claiming he would be placing people in rehab or mental facilities, but with the lack of services people were just arrested or ticketed. Newsom claimed his program would eliminate the chronically homeless from San Francisco by 2014.
The cruel criminalization of the homeless got a new ally in 2016 when the billionaire co-founder of CIA In-Q-Tel funded Palantir, Joe Lonsdale, started the Cicero Institute. He provides model legislation to states banning “unauthorized street camping.” The Cicero Institute also provides model legislation on civil commitment of the homeless saying that “states should amend civil commitment laws to make it easier to help those who cannot help themselves”.
The Cicero Institute succeeded in getting states to pass their legislation. Their Safer Kentucky Act started to be enforced in July 2024. Anyone cited with the offense for the first time can be fined. Subsequent offenses are Kentucky Class B misdemeanors and can bring more fines or jail time. Under this law, if a property owner believes an unhoused trespasser is uncooperative they can shoot the homeless person under a stand-your-ground provision.
With Joe Lonsdale’s help Tennessee made it a felony to camp on most state-owned property. Having a felony conviction will make getting housing even more difficult.
In September 2022 Governor Gavin Newsom started the first of his Community Assistance, Recovery, and Empowerment (CARE) Courts, opening a way to force the state’s homeless into involuntary mental health treatment.
Governor Newsom’s Proposition 1 passed in 2024 providing funding for facilities for those forced into state conservancy.
Two close homeless friends of mine were forced into civil commitment in 2023. Both were happy and no danger to themselves or others. All they required was enough money to afford an apartment.
The County of Santa Cruz removed one friend from a COVID hotel a week before everyone else was evicted in the Benchlands homeless camp. He was held in a psychiatric unit for months. Both of his cars were junked and he lost 30 years of crystals and drums he had in storage because he was blocked from paying for his units or his website, losing his life’s work. His once magical life was crushed.
My “rainbow family” friend was captured and forced into the mental facility and made to take psych drugs against her will. She died a couple of weeks after being released when she stopped taking the SSRIs.
On July 25, 2024, Newson signed the Executive Order N-1-24 calling on all state agencies to clear encampments. “With the recent U.S. Supreme Court decision in Grants Pass v Johnson, local governments now have the tools and authority to address dangerous encampments and help provide those residing in encampments with the resources they need.” He also told counties and cities who failed to clear homeless camps that the state would cut their funding.
Two months before Newsom signed his executive order the State awarded the City of Santa Cruz a $4 million “Encampment Resolution Grant” that provides two years of funding to remove the homeless from the streets around the Housing Matters homeless shelter. There is a claim that the grant will provide 55 people with a place in a tiny house or apartment. We will see.
The weekly sweeps scatter people to the woods and doorways until the police force them back to the relative safety of the camp outside the shelter.
In June 2025 San Jose, California passed a law making it illegal not to go into a shelter. San Jose Mayor Matt Mahan stated, “Homelessness can’t be a choice” when pushing for his Responsibility to Shelter Initiative. Those refusing shelter three times will be arrested for trespassing on public land. The San José Spotlight points out that the county only has one shelter bed for every three unhoused people.
Trump continues the drive to criminalize those who cannot afford housing with his “Ending Crime and Disorder on America’s Streets” executive order essentially plagiarizing Newsom’s 2024 anti-homeless executive order.
A month after signing his order he spotted several people living in pup tents as he traveled to play gulf in Virginia, writing on Truth Social platform, “The Homeless have to move out, IMMEDIATELY. We will give you places to stay, but FAR from the Capitol” ordering the unhoused residents to leave the US capitol or face eviction and vowed to use officers to make arrests.
Trump also federalized the District of Columbia’s police ordering them to enforce the anti-homeless laws passed by the liberal Democrats.
On August 12th White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt took questions about President Trump’s takeover of the Washington, D.C.police force and the Trump administration’s plan to remove homeless encampments in the city, responding that, “The Police Department, with the support of the new Federal agencies who have been surging on the street of the District of Columbia, are going to enforce the laws that are already on the books here in Washington DC. For far too long, these laws have been completely ignored in the homelessness problem, has ravaged the city. So D.C. Code 1307 and D.C. Municipal Regulation 24-100 give the Metropolitan Police Department the authority to take action when it comes to homeless encampments so homeless individuals will be given the option to leave their encampment to be taken to a homeless shelter, to be offered addiction or mental health services and if they refuse they will be susceptible to fines or to jai time. Again these are preexisting laws that are already on the books.”
The New York Post reported that, “In the past five months, U.S. Park Police have removed 70 homeless encampments, giving the people living in them the same options, she said. As of Tuesday, Leavitt said only two homeless encampments remained in district parks maintained by the National Park Service and would be removed this week.”
Associated Press reporter Meg Kinnard notes that “Trump said this week that homeless people will be moved far from the city in his crackdown on crime. But details of the plan to do so are unclear”.
The number of Americans facing homelessness is increasing as rents and the cost of food continue to rise, families face cuts in SNAP food stamps and other social safety nets. With the potential of tens of thousands more people being forced onto the streets US officials may believe they need to be prepared to deploy the National Guard across the country.
When we speak of the homeless people of Santa Cruz “being moved far from the city” there may already be a plan. Former Mayor Donna Meyers and former County Supervisor Ryan Coonerty were quietly proposing during their 2 by 2 meetings that people could be sent to the Camp Roberts California National Guard Base outside the tiny village of San Miguel in San Luis Obispo county.
Is this what Trump means, that America’s rapidly growing homeless population will be moved far from the city ?
War is a powerful way to justify the implementation of an authoritarian police state so why was Indivisible silent?
Consider this. Israel attacks Iran and Iran returns fire starting a world changing war. A war that could become a world war. A war that is likely to increase oil prices and increase economic suffering of the American people. A war where nuclear power stations are being bombed. A war started on Trump’s watch.
According to Indivisible, “Millions of Americans marched in over 2,000 events across all 50 states—protesting Donald Trump and his fascist administration,” as Tel Aviv and Tehran burned and dozens of children were being slaughtered in Gaza.
The NO KINGS DAY rallies could have mobilized all those “millions” they bragged had attended to take action against the most important event of that day which was the war against Iran. Every sign could have said NO WAR WITH IRAN – END THE GENOCIDE but there is a reason those signs were few and far between if at all.
This should clue you into the main goal of Indivisible and its billionaire funders who dumped millions into this project and that is to control the opposition to Trump and silence the threat of an anti-war movement in the United States. It’s no accident that there are always Ukrainian flags at Indivisible events since some of the main funders of Indivisible like the Open Society Foundation also donated hundreds of millions to western NGOs to build support for the 2014 coup.
Their secondary goal is to build support for the Democratic Party. Democratic political leaders are crowing about how successful the NO KINGS DAY campaign rallies were. “The Democrats sure came out today” one of the faithful Tweeted in her celebration of NO KINGS DAY.
As hypersonic missiles rained down on Israel and F-35s were bombing oil refineries in Iran Senator Chuck Schumer posted “I was so proud to be in New York City today supporting Americans making their voice heard at No Kings protests and pushing back on Donald Trump’s authoritarian push to rig the economy for his billionaire buddies.” We should push back on the slide into fascism. But it’s obvious that war is a powerful way to justify an authoritarian police state. Not a word about the horrific war between Israel and Iran.
During the first years of Indivisible their solution to the “fascism” of Trump was to ask everyone to vote for Hillary Clinton. She promised during the campaign that, “I want the Iranians to know that if I am the president, we will attack Iran.” Their solution to the “fascism” of Trump is to ask their supporters to vote for Biden and before long they will be asking us to vote for what ever genocidal warmongers the Democrats place before us.In April, Indivisible held campaign rallies called HANDS OFF which included the poster Hands Off NATO, a reference to the fear that Trump might keep his promise to end the regime change war against Russia. This should have been a red flag to anyone who opposes war.
Trump supporters posted warnings of nationwide riots using Indivisible’s NO KINGS DAY map of boomer campaign rallies as proof. While MAGA claims that the tens of thousands who attended the NO KINGS DAY campaign rallies were paid by George Soros to riot this is clearly not the case.
The people who went did so willingly, horrified by Trump. I too am horrified by the Trump administration. It angers me that the Democrats would use my participation and the participation of other anti-war activists to claim they have mass support for their pro-war, pro-genocide candidates. I can’t let my good name be used to endorse their agenda of slaughter.
While George Soros didn’t pay people to participate in the rallies, his foundation did provide millions to help promote the campaign. A financial statement for just one of Indivisible’s three organizations states that they had raised nine million dollars in 2024. The website opensocietyfoundations.org/grants lists the grants to one branch of Indivisible by the Open Society Foundation. Other billionaires also pitched in to support the NO KINGS DAY events. Other oligarchs like Walmart heiress Christy Walton promoted a planned nationwide protest against President Trump. She paid for a full-page advertisement promoting the Democratic campaign rallies in the New York Times on Sunday.
The roots of this astroturf organization start with two former Democratic Congressional aides Leah Greenberg and Ezra Levin who founded the Indivisible Project and its affiliated organizations in 2016. They still run the organization. Greenberg held various advisory, fellowship and public affairs positions in the Obama administration at the Departments of State and Defense. After that she worked in the House of Representatives for Democratic Congressman Tom Porriello. Porriello was the officiant at Greenberg and Levin’s wedding and after leaving the Congress Porriello became the “top man” at Soros’ Open Society Foundation. Leah’s father, Mark Greenberg, is a senior fellow at the Center for American Progress founded by John Podesta and is currently lead by Neera Tanden. A pro-war think tank connected to the Democratic Party.
The other co-founder and leader of Indivisible, Ezra Levin worked in Congress as Deputy Policy Director for Rep. Lloyd Doggett, and as field director for Doggett’s 2010 re-election campaign. He then jumped to the Obama White House in 2012, working “directly with the Deputy Assistant to the President and with other senior White House staff” as part of the White House Domestic Policy Council. After Levin’s time in the Obama White House he became Associate Director of Federal Policy for Prosperity Now, a non-profit advocacy group with close ties to the financial industry, federal agencies and NGOs. Its many donors include the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, Ford Foundation, Bank of America, Citi, Facebook, Goldman Sachs, JPMorgan Chase, Morgan Stanley, PayPal, the Rockefeller Foundation, and Wells Fargo. You can’t help but get the impression that Indivisible is not really an organic grassroots movement considering their funding and connections.
By the time you read this the war Indivisible ignored may have already killed and injured tens of thousands more people and crashed the global economy.
Those who innocently participated may wake up and realize they got played. This will be very painful for those whose family members and friends might be sent off to die in the war they could have been protesting against had Indivisible made Trump’s war against Iran a priority.
It will also be very painful for the millions of Americans who will be forced to survive what could be an economic depression more dire than that of the 1930s. That is if these psychos in Tel Aviv and Washington DC don’t kill all of us in a nuclear conflict.
It seems that Indivisible’s billionaire funded NO KINGS DAY might have been successful so far at its primary goal of killing opposition to the war with Iran, Russia and the genocide. But we shouldn’t let them.
It’s time to stop letting those in power organize and fund our protest movement and initiate our own resistance to fascism outside the Democratic Party.
Food Not Bombs – PO Box 422, Santa Cruz CA 95061 USA – menu@foodnotbombs.net
NO KINGS DAY – The tragic missed opportunity to protest against the war with Iran.
War is a powerful way to justify the implementation of an authoritarian police state so why was Indivisible silent?
https://keithmchenry.substack.com/p/no-kings-day-the-tragic-missed-opportunity
HUNGER IS NOT A GAME
May 16, 2025
When a billion people go hungry each day, how can we spend another dollar on war?
We need Food Not Bombs more today than at any point in our 45 year history. President Trump has proposed the first trillion dollar military budget an increase of 13 percent to $1.01 trillion in Pentagon spending while also proposing 22% in cuts for social services. President Ronald Reagan 2.0.
The lines of people seeking meals at Food Not Bombs grow longer month after month. American seniors call me all day long distressed that they have no food.
“I worked my whole life and always paid my taxes but now I am forced to beg for help. This is embarrassing” Jim said adding that all the pantries in his area have closed because they couldn’t keep up demand. I could hear his tears over my phone. Hour after hour calls of desperation. One has not eaten in three days. Another is eating cat food. All one woman has left is a box of Cheerios. It is heartbreaking that often all I can do is suggest they call their local 211 help line.
But nothing can match the shear horror of Israel and the United States starving two million Palestinians reducing thousands of children to skin wrapped skeletons.
On October 9, 2023, Israeli defense minister Yoav Gallant ordered a “complete siege” on Gaza, pledging that “There will be no electricity, no food, no water, no fuel. Everything will be closed.”
Thousands of truckloads of food have been blocked for over 70 days sitting but a few miles from these desperate mouths. the Integrated Food Security Phase Classification report saids nearly 71,000 cases of acute malnutrition among children under five are expected between April 2025 and March 2026. We have gone from witnessing drone video of the February 29, 2024,Flour Massacre killing over 100 Palestinians as they struggled to grab food for their families to images of starved sunken eyed children breathing their last breathe.
When Food Not Bombs started during the May 24, 1980 Occupation Attempt of Seabrook Nuclear Power Station the eight of us could not have imagined that four and a half decades later that we would have provided billions of meals with the hungry. Yet the wars would also continue. Wars of famine and wars of genocide. A billion dollars in naval forces, lost F 18 Super Hornets and US Air Force MQ-9 Reaper drones lost in one month this year defending Israel’s right to exterminate the families of Gaza.
The idea that Food Not Bombs volunteers would be sharing food in Moscow, Russia would have seemed impossible in those days when we were busy organizing for protests like the June 12, 1982 March for Nuclear Disarmament where over a million protesters walked across Manhattan to the Great Meadow that day. A world without a Soviet Union was unimaginable.
Food Not Bombs started when my friend Boston University Law student Brian Feigenbaum was arrested during our May 24th attempt to stop the nuclear power station on the New Hampshire coast. We found someone who could bail out Brian and that evening as we chugged back to Boston we agreed to raise the funds needed to repay his generosity by holding bake sales.
Well that was not at all lucrative but we did have a moving company called Smooth Move and one of our customers was discarding a yellow and green poster that said, “It will be a great day when our schools get all the money they need and the Air Force has to hold a bake sale to buy a bomber.” It was a light bulb moment for our little collective. We bought surplus military uniforms, mounted the poster on cardboard, dressed as generals and headed out with our baked goods asking pedestrians to help us buy a bomber. We had stumbled onto an effective way to get an otherwise distracted public to hear our message.
While we were pitching our baked goods for bombers we also learned of planned protests in Germany against the deployment of the Pershing II nuclear weapons on their streets. In solidarity, Food Not Bombs and Cambridge City Council organized an October 10, 1981, march from City Hall to Draper Nuclear Lab. A tiny story in the Boston Globe that week noted that nearly 300,000 people took part that day in Bonn West Germany. Our march only attracted about 100 people but it was an important step in our campaign to mobilize for the nuclear disarmament protest in New York.
Later that month on a drizzly Halloween night Vice President George HW Bush spoke at MIT about those protests. About 3000 came out to the protest that ended with many of us dancing around a bonfire of wooden police barricades in the middle of Massachusetts Avenue.
“It is one of the exquisite ironies of our times that the United States should find itself in this position,” Bush said. ‘The Soviet disinformation apparatus is as disquieting as it is dishonest, but it has not been unsuccessful. These protesters are not only the most recent ones to have been attracted by the argument that the world has more to fear from America than it does from the Soviet Union.”
“Most of the people who turned out to demonstrate against NATO’s nuclear forces are well-intentioned men and women,” he continued. “Many of them are young, too young to have had first-hand knowledge of World War II. I don’t question their idealism.”
Even though Bush portrayed our call for an end to the cold war as naive our campaign for nuclear disarmament would play an important role in pushing President Ronald Reagan and Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev to sign the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty in 1987easing the threat of a nuclear conflict.
The Trump administration withdrew the United States from that treaty in August 2019, and Russia reciprocated by suspending its participation.
Now the US plans to deploy the Tomahawk Block IV cruise missile systems in Germany returning to the days when the Pershing missiles lumbering across the cobble stone streets. Maybe it time to launch another mass mobilization against the nuclear threat.
After we started our “bake sales for bombers” street performances the original Food Not Bombs group began organizing against the banks that were investing in the Seabrook Nuclear Power Station and were profiting from the nuclear weapons industry.
We organize a theatrical soup line outside of the Bank of Boston’s stockholders meeting on March 26, 1981. I designed a flyer to show the connections between the bank and the military contractors with a warning that Reagan’s policies and those of the banks could lead to a future where Americans would have to seek food at soup kitchens.
Our friends were invited to dress as Depression Era hobos but as we were preparing a huge sixty quart pot of stew we realized we had not recruited enough people to have the shock value of a real soup kitchen. At around midnight I went to the Pine Street Inn Homeless Shelter and gave a speech about our protest and invited them to join us. One man excitedly responded, “cool, a protest like we did in the sixties.”
Nearly everyone I had spoken with at the shelter showed up. The first man we shared our soup with responded with “God bless you,” gently bowing his head. One by one they stepped forward for their cup of warmth offering a heart felt thanks. A young business man expressed alarm that Reagan had only been in office for a month and people were already standing in line to eat. The guys who ate with us suggested we share food everyday since there was no place for Boston’s homeless to get a free meal. It is difficult to imagine now but in 1981, homelessness in America was not a thing.
That evening we agreed to give our bosses two weeks notice so we could focus full time on recovering and delivering food while preparing meals to share at Harvard Square or outside Park Station Subway Station on the Boston Commons. I was a produce worker at Bread and Circus Natural Food Grocery and had been taking the food I was discarding to the mothers at the pubic housing projects on Portland Avenue. My boss agreed to let me continue to recover the discarded food.
One morning while dropping off food to the projects the women who I had been helping pointed out that a new building had just opened across the street. The women said scientists were designing nuclear weapons in the new offices, inspiring us to adopt the name Food Not Bombs.
I moved to San Francisco in 1987 with my wife Andrea and our Afghan Hound Bear. One morning we hear news that Veterans For Peace activist Brian Williams had been hit by a munitions train at the Concord Navel Weapons Station in the East Bay. He was participating in a campaign to stop weapons shipments to the wars in Central America called Nuremberg Action. Food Not Bombs had supported Brian and the other Veteran’s For Peace activists during their fast in Boston and I was stunned by reports that Brian’s legs had been severed so Andrea and I were moved to attend the protest that weekend. When we returned home and switched on the TV to watch the news reports on that day’s rally Andrea suggested I start a second Food Not Bombs group.
We pulled together a few volunteers meeting at a Chinese restaurant on Haight Street and agreed to share our literature and meals at the entrance to Golden Gate Park at Stanyan Street. We learned that there were no free meals in the Haight on Mondays we agreed to fill that day.
A hippy looking man stopped by our meal and suggested we could get a permit from the Recreation and Parks Department. I wrote Director Peter Ashe on July 11, 1988 requesting the suggested documents. Police officers would pass by our meal each Monday and ask if we had received a permit yet and I would walk over to the parks department office to find out the progress. No one there knew what I was talking about but agreed to take a message.
On August 15, 1988 the San Francisco Tactical Squad marched out of the woods and arrested nine of us. Local photographer Greg Garr took pictures of the police blocking people from getting food. His photo appeared with a UPI story of the arrests in Tuesday’s San Francisco Chronicle inspiring outrage.
A week later a couple hundred people marched down Haight Street many banging spoons on pots while others carried buckets of stew and fruit salad or cases of produce and bagels. We set up at the entrance to the park. The police arrested 24 volunteers and the FBI Joint Terrorism Task Force took notes sending a memo on August 29th to the San Francisco Field Office claiming that Food Not Bombs was “a credible national security threat” even though we had just three chapters and a total of 30 volunteers.
The August 22nd arrests made CNN, the New York Times, The Times of London and several other news outlets. People started to send request for information on how to start their own chapter in defiance so I took my notes on how I formed the San Francisco group and made a flyer called “Seven Steps to Starting a Local Food Not Bombs Group.” I still mail copies out to people wishing to start their own local chapter.
The San Francisco Police made a total of 1,000 arrests over eight years. News of these arrests would inspire others to start chapters in their cities. We organized our first International Gathering to coincide with the indigenous community’s protest against the 500th anniversary of Columbus invading the Americas. The national celebration was held in San Francisco since the city had the longest running Columbus Day parade in the United States. During our two day gathering we agreed on our three principles.
1. The food would always be vegan or vegetarian and free to anyone, rich or poor, stoned or sober.
2. That each group is autonomous and uses a process of consensus to make decisions. There are no leaders, presidents or directors, and no headquarters.
3. Food Not Bombs is not a charity but is dedicated to using nonviolent direct action to change society so no one needs to stand in line to eat at a soup kitchen.
After the gathering we joined the protest at Aquatic Park witnessing the indigenous elders push the official Columbus back out into the bay as we shared breakfast with the protesters before heading to Civic Center Plaza to feed the main rally against the 500 years of exploitation.
The Savings and Loan crisis was raging that across the country that same year tossing families out of their homes. That November the San Francisco Tenants Union and Food Not Bombs held a film showing in the Tenderloin about the squatters movement in Europe to inspire our own squatters campaign.
One participant agreed to pretend to be interested in buying the decrepit old building that once housed an X rated movie theater and would ask the real estate company for a key to check it out. We also planned to sneak into the gutted hotel across the street from the Glide Memorial Church soup kitchen the night before Thanksgiving knowing that the Mayor would arrive to do his annual photo op of serving a slice of turkey to a homeless guest.
When Mayor Jordan arrived we emerged from the glassless windows hanging a banner saying “Homes Not Jails” and blasted our disdain for the Mayor’s brutal “Quality of Life Enforcement Matrix Program” of homeless sweeps.
At the same time we had moved several families into the second floor of the movie theater. According to the book “No Trespassing” by Anders Corr we had placed locks on 400 buildings left vacant as a result of the corruption of the Savings and Loans industry and we had people living in as many as 100 of those buildings.
In 2008 another housing crisis forced over 5.5 million families into foreclosure. When Obama opted to bail out the banks, leaving millions of Americans to fend for themselves, thousands of people responded to the Ad Buster Magazine’s call to Occupy Wall Street on October 17, 2008 and took to the streets. Food Not Bombs volunteers swung into action helping set up kitchens to provide for their local Occupy Camps. That Thanksgiving Obama’s Homeland Security, the FBI and local police departments started to crush the protest.
The United States wasn’t the only country suffering from the 2008 economic crisis. I was invited to speak in England in 2010 and found that the least expensive flights to the British Isles were on Icelandic Air. The airline encouraged its passengers to spend as much time in the country as you wished with no increase in airfare so I spent a week visiting the local Reykjavik chapter of Food Not Bombs. I joined them at their weekly meal where they described how the conversations at their Saturday lunches often turned to a discussion about the corruption that had resulted in their own 2008 economic crisis. At one point the weekly conversations turned into a weekly march to the Parliament Building.
I was invited to speak about the history and philosophy of Food Not Bombs at a local community center. During the question and answering period a reporter asked me how I felt about Food Not Bombs initiating the uprising against the bankers and central government. I was amazed. Food Not Bombs had initiated a movement that toppled a government.
The Grapevine Magazine reported “Ever since the Prime Minister’s so-called ‘Disaster Speech’ on October 6, where he outlined the crash of the Icelandic economy, a crowd has gathered outside the parliament building every Saturday afternoon to voice their discontent and demanding the resignation of the government, the Central Bank directors, and other key figures associated with the collapse.”
A young Food Not Bombs activist, Haukur Hilmarsson, climbed up onto the roof of the Parliament building and raised the pink pig emblazoned flag of the Bónus food chain where the Icelandic national flag usually flies. Bónus is a part of Jón Ásgeir Jóhannesson’s Baugur investment empire, which owns the majority of the country’s food stores as well as most of the media, and is widely seen to be one of most powerful men in the country, and a key figure in the economic crash.
Local news outlet Fréttablaðið calculated that in the past few years after the economic crisis the Icelandic judiciary had sentenced 36 bankers to a total of 96 years in prison. All of the criminal cases are linked to the notorious crash of the Icelandic banking system in 2008.
In 2011, Iceland rewrote its constitution using a uniquely open process. It reshaped the dialogue on how a population can use available technology, consensus building, and civic engagement when reinventing the governmental processes supporting the needs of their constituents.
As the global economy faces another economic crisis possibly more dire than those in 1992 and 2008 and the horrific genocide and wars continue to kill and maim, the work of Food Not Bombs has never been needed more than today.
Our 45th anniversary is a good time to consider strategies not only to meet the growing need for food but also how to use our global network to force a redirection of military spending towards funding healthcare, education, local infrastructure and social services. I believe we are creative enough to organize a coordinated campaign to disrupt the techno-fascist seeking to implement a totalitarian digital control grid with their Stargate AI warfare and surveillance. Our freedom and humanity is at risk. The bonds we have made at Food Not Bombs can provide a foundation for this resistance. This task might be more difficult than the removal of the Icelandic government but we have every reason to try.
I will be encouraging the audience at our 45th anniversary celebration in Santa Cruz to join us in initiating another mass movement against war and austerity.
The Santa Cruz chapter of Food Not Bombs is hosting a free concert Soupstock 2025, on Saturday, May 24th at the Duck Pond Stage in San Lorenzo Park, Santa Cruz starting at high noon. This fun party features six bands, arts and craft displays, information booths, face painting, dancing and free food.
I hope you will join us in taking nonviolent direct action to not only provide meals with the hungry but to disrupt the political and economic system to force an end to the suffering. Hunger is not a game.
Food Not Bombs – PO Box 422, Santa Cruz CA 95061 USA – www.foodnotbombs.net
CONTROLLED OPPOSITION
April 18, 2025
Let’s build a movement against fascism outside the control of the genocidal pro-war Democratic Party
While progressive Senator Cory Booker was giving his 25 hour Democratic Party infomercial on the Senate floor a Palestinian father could be seen on social media emerging from clouds of concrete dust in Gaza holding his headless child to the heavens. Two days later in another theatrical stunt designed to secure progressive loyalty to the Democratic Party Bernie introduces a bill to block $8.8 billion in arms sales to Israel which Booker voted against. Where was Bernie when he was voting to silence anti genocide protesters and backing Biden’s arms sales?
Capitalizing on the understandable anxiety of a Trump victory the Democrats are once again deploying their astroturf movement Indivisible. Since the mythology of the Democrats is that they are the party of the left they need to attract support from those who desire a progressive agenda. The party was trounced out of power for refusing to end the genocide or provide for the needs of the American people. The Republicans employed a similar strategy and used the fear of an Obama administration to launch the Tea Party to counter the perception that their party had moved away from their conservative roots. This is one method the billionaire class uses to tamp down any threat to their power.
After spending 18 brutal days in the Orange County Jail for the crime of sharing meals with the hungry I was released into the arms of Food Not Bombs volunteer Eric Montanez and handed a Tupperware of the best vegan Mac and Cheese I have ever tasted. News helicopters whirled above but they were not there for me. Socialite Casey Anthony, whose daughter was found dead as she partied was also being released from the Orlando jail at the same time as myself.
I was one of nearly 30 food servers arrested in the summer of 2011 after an appellate court ruled Florida’s most liberal city had the constitutional right to ban the sharing of meals with the homeless when Food Not Bombs appealed the Orlando groups first arrest.
On April 4, 2007, at the conclusion of an Orlando police undercover investigation that, according to the Orlando Weekly, cost taxpayers $65,000, Food Not Bombs volunteer Eric Montanez was arrested. When Food Not Bombs lost its appeal of the city ordinance volunteers defied the order and continued to provide the meals at Lake Eola Park picnic grounds.
When I finally was able to access my email one message included a call from Ad Busters to “Occupy Wall Street” on October 17th in a campaign to protest Obama’s bailout of the banks instead of coming to the aid of the 5.5 million families who lost their homes to foreclosure.
I supported the strategy of occupation and delivered hundreds of pounds of rice to New York and Washington DC and cooking equipment ready to help feed the protests. By Thanksgiving I had participated in over two dozen camps when the Obama administration aggressively started to crush the Occupy Wall Street movement.
A year after Occupy Wall Street was smashed Naomi Wolf wrote in the Guardian that, “FBI documents just obtained by the Partnership for Civil Justice Fund (PCJF)… reveal that from its inception, the FBI treated the Occupy movement as a potential criminal and terrorist threat … The PCJF has obtained heavily redacted documents showing that FBI offices and agents around the country were in high gear conducting surveillance against the movement even as early as August 2011, a month prior to the establishment of the OWS encampment in Zuccotti Park and other Occupy actions around the country.”
Many of us started organizing to ReOccupy the camps on May Day. As we were building our campaign a group calling itself 99% Spring asked San Francisco Bay activists to join them at a meeting in the Mission District. Nearly a hundred people sat around a conference room listening to the facilitators and watched their 20 minute inspirational film.
After the video people started to ask questions about why was there no mention of Obama’s bail out of the banks or his wars. The organizers dodged our questions and moved on to their plan. When it was suggested that many of us had already been planning to start the occupation on International Workers’ Day they claimed they had already picked their day in April. The presenters were clearly uncomfortable and deflected our questions. Nearly half of those attending walked out at lunch and never returned realizing that 99% Spring was just another Democratic Party front group designed to co-opt our movement.
The resulting confusion from their heavily promoted 99% Spring made organizing an independent return to the streets difficult. Masked people trashed areas of Seattle on May Day posing as a Black Block and news broke of a May first plot to bomb a bridge. The FBI had entrapped five of the 2011 Occupy Cleveland cooks including three young Food Not Bombs activists in a plot to use plastic explosives to topple the Route 82 bridge spanning Ohio’s Cuyahoga Valley National Park on 30 April 2012. Media reports of these events made sure that we didn’t continue the occupations.
The controlled opposition of the 99% Spring was only one of such subversions used to suppress threats against the Democratic Party from the left. MoveOn.org and Common Cause are among the well financed “grassroots” groups like Bernie Sanders’ Our Revolution designed to “sheepdog” people they fear might dedicate their energy to organize against corporate power and war redirecting them back into the dominate political system.
I signed up with Our Revolution in 2016 when Sanders was running against Hillary Clinton. Since he supported military contracts like the F-35 I was skeptical that he would bring the change he was campaigning on but I gave him a chance. It seems that contact list is still being used for the purpose of corralling those who might be a threat to their agenda from the left into their orbit. Bernie asked us to vote for the cackling about Libyan Open Air Slave Markets Hillary Clinton. He would go on to ask us to back genocide Joe Biden and Kamala Harris. That list was an important factor in drawing so many people to the Hands Off and Anti-Oligarchy Democratic Party rallies.
Those lists were also used to send out a Cory Booker fundraising text shortly after the Senator voted to stop Bernie’s theatrical attempt to cut arms shipments to Israel. Messaging intended to mobilize people still gullible enough to believe that the Democrats could be a progressive challenge to the madness of the Trump administration. The Pussy Hat distraction of the first Trump administration has become the Hands Off of Trump’s second term.
In their all out effort to protect their system of exploitation and empire they also launched the AOC/Bernie Anti Oligarch tour, started another group, 5051 to attract those who had become wise to the Indivisible scam, and made much of the Cory Booker 25 hour content free yapathon. We are sure to see even more seemingly progressive groups emerge but none will be opposed to the genocide, war or corporate power.
In 2016 when it became clear that Trump would win the election two Congressional staff members, Leah Greenberg and Ezra Levin, initiated Indivisible “publishing a twenty-three-page document drafted by a handful of former Democratic Congressional staffers in the days after Trump was elected. The subtitle: “A Practical Guide for Resisting the Trump Agenda” with the intention of harnessing the fear many rightly had of what might happen during his first administration. It is no surprise that when the Democrats returned to power they made no effort to reverse some of the most damaging of Trump’s policies like the tax cuts for the wealthy, the mass deportations of migrants or even move the US Embassy from Jerusalem back to Tel Aviv.
The August 18, 2017, issue of the Progressive Magazine writes, “Indivisible has, in a very short time, emerged as the public face of citizen resistance to Trump. Like the Democratic Socialists of America and Our Revolution, the official outgrowth of Bernie Sanders’ primary campaign, Indivisible has received a surge of interest post election. Unlike those groups, it didn’t exist beforehand.” The Tides Foundation provided $350,000 to help them start.
The article goes on to say, “The former staffers, including Ezra Levin and Leah Greenberg, now the group’s executive director and chief strategy officer respectively, had seen the Tea Party kneecap their bosses” attempts to pass progressive policies during Obama’s first term.”
One core member, Peter Dreier, claimed, “the goal of Indivisible was to “save American democracy&” and “resume the project of creating a humane America that is more like social democracy than corporate plutocracy.”
Anyone following the Democratic Party knows the last thing they support is democracy, otherwise for example, Bernie Sanders would have been their nominee, they wouldn’t have sued to keep the Green Party off the ballot in state after state and they would have held a primary in 2024. To claim the political party that refused to increase the minimum wage, presided over an economy that caused a 30% increase in the number of Americans who became homeless during their four years in power and armed the genocide of Gaza as “humane” seems a stretch.
Indivisible’s website states, “We’re a grassroots movement of thousands of local Indivisible groups with a mission to elect progressive leaders, rebuild our democracy, and defeat the Trump agenda.”
It is rare to see a grassroots movement receive millions in donations from wealthy foundations like Open Society Foundation that gave $3 million to one arm of Indivisible in 2023; $1,135,000 in 2022; $500,000 to one account in 2021 and $375,000 to another account also in 2021; $1,750,000 in 2019; $500,000 in 2018 and $350,000 in 2017. The Open Society Foundation has not posted how much it donated in 2024 and it is not clear how many millions more was provided by other foundations to the other Indivisible units like Indivisible Project, Indivisible Civics, and Indivisible Action. Open Secrets reported that one of the sections of Indivisible raised $9,922,930 in 2024. Hardly grassroots.
Indivisible isn’t the only Democratic Party project that was funded by Soros. In the second quarter of 2020, his organizations gave at least $500,000 to presumptive Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden, becoming one of the campaign’s largest donors. Soros was the country’s largest donor to political campaigns in 2022 donating $128.5 million to support the Democratic Party in that election cycle. While Soros’ Open Society Foundation was financing the Hands Off rallies Trump’s Secretary of the Treasury happens to be Soros Fund Management partner Scott Bessent.
The Democrats are employing the same Color Revolution strategy they used to topple the elected governments of Ukraine and Georgia. Build a system of controlled opposition in defense of US centric corporate power. The Soros funding of regime change programs in Georgia was considered by Georgian nationalists to be crucial to the success of the Rose Revolution coup. Alexander Lomaia, secretary of the Georgian Security Council, is a former executive director of the Open Society Georgia Foundation (Soros Foundation), overseeing a staff of 50 and a budget of $2.5 million. The Biden administration was still seeking to subvert the democratically elected government of Georgia with a second color revolution as he left office. Like most of Biden’s policies Trump is continuing the effort to replace that government with a US compliant puppet.
I echo CodePink’s Medea Benjamin in strongly agreeing with most of the demands listed on publicity for the Hands Off rallies, Hands Off Medicare, Hands off Social Security, Hands Off Education, Hands Off Public Lands, Hands Off Immigrants and Hands Off LGBTQIA+.
But what suggested to me that these Hands Off rallies have another goal other than to stand against the terror of the CIA linked vultures hovering around the Trump administration was what was absent in their messaging. Their publicity didn’t include Hands Off Gaza or Hands Off Yemen even while US bombs were tearing children to shreds as people gathered for the rallies. Horrors that were beyond anything we have ever witnessed raging at the exact time these rallies were taking place.
Even more telling was that one of the institutions they want to protect is the organization directing the regime change war against Russia. The “Hands Off!” rally’s website even offers a pdf of a “Hands Off NATO” sign for activists to print and bring to their rallies. The website also quotes MoveOn Executive Director Rahna Epting saying, “This peaceful movement is powered by everyday people.” Does that include the dozens of “everyday people” who have been calling me nearly everyday for the past two years desperate for food often remarking that it makes them angry that we can fund a war in Ukraine but we can’t provide for our own people here in the US.
While most of those who join these rallies have the best intentions, some even came holding handmade signs against the genocide in Gaza or waved a Palestinian flag, it is unlikely that Indivisible intends to unite with the massive protests against the murder of Palestinian families. Their message of peace was drowned out by all the Ukrainian flags supporting the deadly war against Russia and their support of the political party that just spent 15 months slaughtering Palestinian babies.
It is understandable that people would join the Hands Off rallies. The stunning cascade dismantling our rights and social supports is frightening. Legal residents being snatched off the streets and deported, the privatizing of social services and threats to donate our National Parks to Trump’s billionaire friends for mining and oil extraction couldn’t be more terrifying. Americans are leading busy lives, struggling to pay their bills and base their political perspectives from limited information served by the same corporate media that supports the agenda of the war state and naturally joined the rallies in desperation. Had I not been following Indivisible since their founding and realized their organization was designed to kill any opposition to the system I would have also participated. I just can’t join rallies where it’s ok with the organizers for people to wave the Ukrainian flag. I don’t want to be seen as supporting war let alone one led by supporters of Stepan Bandera.
When rallies get such positive national news you know they have the support of those in power. You won’t see dozens of Democratic Party officials participating in protests that threaten the economic and political system. Insider trading success Congresswoman Nancy Pelosi spoke to her fawning supporters in the swing state Pennsylvania. Former vice presidential running mate Tim Waltz screamed to his supporters that the Democrats were back. The ghoulish anti-homeless YIMBY California State Senator Scott Wiener gloated over a video of himself he shared on Facebook that opened with a fluttering Ukrainian flag outside San Francisco City Hall. Wiener came to Santa Cruz on April 5, 2019 helping launch the luxury high rise condominium craze that is turning our community into a 15 Minute Smart City hell-scape.
Santa Cruz Indivisible is dominated by our city’s worst West-siders and pro development politicians. Their Facebook site includes supporters like anti-homeless Take Back Santa Cruz activist and former city councilperson Richelle Noroyan. One of the first members is the founder of the Predictive Policing Software Ryan Coonerty now used by CIA contractor Palantir to target Palestinians. Bookshop Santa Cruz owner Casey Coonerty-Protti’s husband Michel Protti helped finance this program when he was Vice President of Yahoo.
Those who waved their Ukrainian flags most likely believed that Russia’s military actions were unprovoked and feared Trump’s claims of making peace with Putin were real. Nothing says provoked like the torrent of western leaders spending the last 20 years threatening to topple the Russian government. On March 26, 2022, Biden continued those regime change threats during a speech in Warsaw saying of President Putin that,”For God’s sake, this man cannot remain in power.”
The Hands Off events share the same Zionist sponsors as the current regime so it’s no wonder there was silence about the bombings of Palestine, Lebanon, Yemen and Trumps threats to attack Iran. In a January 2024, article, “I don’t belong”: A Jewish student leaves Occidental College over wartime protests” the Forward writes, “Dreier, who identified himself as a “committed Jew” and has taught at the school for 30 years, acknowledged that “there are Jewish and Arab students feeling traumatized by what is happening in the Middle East.”
The Bernie AOC billionaire funded Anti-Oligarch tour is a second major front after Indivisible in the campaign to absorb those who might otherwise participate in an authentic movement against fascism into their dead end project. Police arrested Pro-Palestine protestors that had unfurled a banner saying “Free Palestine” at the Nampa, Idaho, rally as Sanders repeated his “Israel has a right to defend themselves against terrorism&” Zionist mantra followed by “I am doing my best to demand not another nickel for Netanyahu’s war.” Bernie is careful to accuse Netanyahu and avoids placing blame on Israel or his own record of voting for the genocide. Many in the crowd chanted Free Palestine as they removed the protesters. Non-Binary Artist in Recovery Blakeley posted a video of the tour saying “Bernie continues to claim “Israel has a right to defend themselves against terrorism” 18 months into a fucking genocide is actually fucking grotesque and you can’t call yourself pro-Palestine if you think this is okay or excusable.” Even though the Idaho crowned chanted Free Palestine Bernie ignored them and continued with his speech.
Of course he turned his back on his supporters.In 2023, as the genocide was reaching its most murderous levels, Bernie Sanders voted for a Senate Resolution condemning anti-genocide student protesters and organizations as “antisemitic, repugnant, and morally contemptible”. AOC and Bernie are not likely to travel to the Louisiana Detention Center where Columbia University graduate student Mahmoud Khalil is now being held.
This could spell disaster for our future as the US threatens to start a global war while the economy collapses. Two aircraft carrier armadas, six to ten B 2 stealth bombers capable of dropping nuclear weapons, and dozens of heavy transport planes, air defense systems are set to attack Iran if they fail to bend to Trump’s demands. At the same time Ukraine is increasing its attacks on Russia while it is reported that Moscow strikes a meeting with NATO officers in Kyiv and the global economic system crashes, threatening to force millions of Americans into financial ruin. Yet none of this was even a blip on the agenda of the Hands Off or Anti-Oligarch rallies.
Indivisible helped smother any possibility of using the terror of Trump’s first term to build a massive movement. Their solution was more war, austerity and a genocide.
If we have any hope of the change required to defend ourselves from the onslaught of the End Times Techno-fascists implementing their Stargate AI digital future we had better stop falling for the two party illusion. We urgently need to build a movement independent of the Democratic Party. A movement that threatens power.
Food Not Bombs – PO Box 422, Santa Cruz CA 95061 USA – https://foodnotbombs.net/new_site/
https://open.substack.com/pub/keithmchenry/p/controlled-opposition
FOOD NOT BOMBS – OUR BERLIN CONNECTIONS
March 31, 2025
The New England chill was starting to warm into a pleasant spring morning in 1980. Food Not Bombs cofounder CT Butler and I coasted through Harvard Square in our old Dodge van on our way to Brattle Square to set up our daily literature and food distribution when we caught a glimpse of an addition to the square.
A new character in the theater of our Cambridge streets stood near Out of Town News dressed with a bright colored poncho depicting a Russian bear and American eagle embracing. The white bearded man balanced a pole topped with a weather balloon painted to look like the Earth. After setting up our equipment I walked over to greet our latest addition to the carnival.
He introduced himself as John Runnings and gave me a copy of his flyer about his “The Odessa Odyssey”, his plan to travel to the Soviet Union for a person to person type détente. He shared that he had bought a boat back in his home in the state of Washington with the intention of sailing to Odessa Russia. He described how he would have docked in some seaside town, stepped onto shore and greeted the first people he came upon with a message of peace from the Americans. Unfortunately the person repairing ship stole the vessel so his new plan was to board a plane in Boston for Berlin and attempt to cross the wall to meet East Berliners
He slept in his van outside the Food Not Bombs house using our restroom before heading down to promote his dream to the pedestrians of Harvard Square. After a few months he recruited the Food Not Bombs volunteers to help him in his plot to sneak onto a Lufthansa flight to the divided city.
We lifted the slight man over a plastic wall that guarded the gangway to the plane but he was never able to board a flight without a passport so he gave in and flew legally to his goal. Once in Berlin he scaled the wall banging a chuck out of its rim, walked along the barbed wired top and dropped into the GDR side where he was arrested. A website tribute to his work says, “He then became the first person in history to have gone over the wall from west to east and back to the west again, all without a passport.” The piece of wall that he hammered free on one of his 1986 walks between worlds is displayed at the “Checkpoint Charlie Museum”.
Around the same time we had first become friends with the “Wall Walker” the Food Not Bombs collective organized a solidarity march with the German people who were protesting the deployment of US Pershing Nuclear Missiles. In October 1981, 300,000 protesters assembled in Bonn, West Germany.
We marched that same October from Cambridge City Hall to Draper Laboratory where they were designing nuclear weapons. Our name Food Not Bombs comes from our learning of the lab while we were donating produce to the mothers at the public housing project across from Draper. That evening I dialed International phone operators in Germany seeking to find an operator who could pass on the message that we had a protest in the United States in support of their campaign against the Pershing missiles. After a dozen or more calls we found one man who promised to let the German Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament know about our protest.
Food Not Bombs helped organize a protest against newly elected Vice President George H Bush who was set to speak against the Pershing Missile protests in Germany. Sue Eaton and I made the first Food Not Bombs banner before the action and she suggested the fist in the logo should be purple to honor all races. A friend borrowed the car of Food Not Bombs co-founder Jo Swanson’s to use while wheat pasting posters for the rally and along the way he spray painted the popular slogan “Shot Bush First” on the wall of the MIT Student Union inspiring the Secret Service pay her a visit but thankfully her roommate who answered the door sent them away. Jo went into hiding to avoid arrest. We brought torches as well as hot food. The torches were used to start a bonfire of wooden police barricades in the middle of Mass Ave. People drummed and danced around the fire and we provided psychedelic mushrooms to all who wished to enjoy them.
George Bush told his audience of MIT alumni that, “Most of the people who turned out to demonstrate against NATO’s nuclear forces are well-intentioned men and women. Many of them are young, too young to have had first-hand knowledge of World War II. I don’t question their idealism”. He continued,”That alone really ought to give these demonstrators pause. Pacifism and Soviet ideology are as incompatible as sheep and wolves, but the latter always fashions clothing out of the former’s wool.” History may be repeating with the new US attempts to deploy short range nuclear missiles in Europe as part of NATO’s current regime change war against Russia.
On the sidelines of the July 2024 NATO summit in Washington DC, Germany and the US announced plans to deploy missiles capable of being nuclear armed. The September 2024 issue of “The Arms Control Association Newsletter” said, “U.S. Army forces in Germany will field the multipurpose Standard Missile-6 (SM-6), the Tomahawk land-attack cruise missile, and a hypersonic missile that is still in development in ‘episodic deployments’ as part of planning for enduring stationing of these capabilities in the future,” the joint announcement said. These weapons will equip the army’s Multi-Domain Task Force based at Wiesbaden, Germany, which the army first activated in September 2021.” My father was stationed in the same armored unit as Elvis Presley at Wiesbaden and thus I was born in Frankfurt in May 1957 in the US occupied Luftwaffe Hospital that featured huge concrete swastikas on its cornices.
There is another Berlin connection. A cold San Francisco wind chilled the small ACT-Up rally against Anthony Fauci that I was attending in 1994 outside the Social Security office at United Nations Plaza. A friend named Michael saw me and hurried my way. “Keith, it’s great to see you. Heinke and I did a small tour to highlight your case. We even made T-shirts,” he told me. I had been framed by San Francisco Mayor Frank Jordan in his attempt to crush Food Not Bombs and was facing a prison sentence of twenty-five to life.
He was excited. His partner Heinke had booked a popular Kreuzberg pub during Michael’s visit to Berlin and organized an event to build interest in my California Three Strikes case. The threat of a twenty-five to life sentence for crimes that included feeding hungry people and “stealing” milk crates must have been intriguing to a Berlin audience .
He described meeting an activist who had been sitting in the back of the bar listening to their presentation. The activist approached my friends and introduced himself as Manolo. He told them he was touched by my plight and suggested they join him in Spain. He offered to organize a couple of speaking events. Michael spoke warmly of his new friend Manolo. He was a serious radical and well connected in European circles. Michael would give me several news clippings about their presentations in the Basque country and an X Large T-shirt with “Free Keith McHenry” silkscreened across the chest at our next meeting. I felt honored. I would join Manolo on a tour of Spain and host him and two other Spaniards on a two month tour of North America that we called the Unfree Trade Tour, seeking to build resistance to the globalization of the economy by organizations like the Word Trade Organization, International Monetary Fund and the World Economic Forum.
We showed the video “Fifty Years is Enough” about the impact of the economic policies that came from the 1944 the Bretton Woods Conference in the US and the intentions of those same financial vultures to expand their control. The movie showed peace, labor and environmental activists united in protest the introduction of Euro and the European Union warning it would bring in economic and environment damage to Europe. I had participated in a giant protest against the formation of the European Union organized by labor unions, communists, socialists, anarchists, peace activists and environmentalists in Bonn, West Germany and attended a two week long convention against the World Trade Organization in Geneva, Switzerland. This coalition also tried to disrupt the World Economic Forum in Davos each year seeking to build opposition to the slavery and destruction caused by these globalization programs. It was shocking to return to Europe as the Euro was transitioning from the local currencies. The introduction of the Euro was already driving down wages while increasing prices. The contrast from the relative economic security of the pre Eurozone days and the financial struggles of Europeans after the Euro was heartbreaking. My friends no longer had the time to spend their days with me as they were now too busy meeting their financial expenses.
The UnFree Trade Tour featured one of our low-watt FM radio stations which let us broadcast the program over the airwaves. We shared literature not only on the threat to labor rights and damage to the environment that could happen if the policies of these global organizations were not stopped. We also provided details on how to start your own low-watt radio helping build the Free Radio movement across the US and Canada.
We proposed that people organize a massive protest against the World Trade Organization in the event that they were to hold one of their economic summits in North America. A year later the World Trade Organization announced its summit in Seattle to be held the last week of November 1999. A coalition of left groups united in a campaign to block participants from entering the summit. Since Food Not Bombs had formed the first IndyMedia Center in San Francisco during our second International Gathering in 1995 spreading the idea across the globe and by the time of the Battle of Seattle we had IndyMedia centers all over the world. An IndyMedia center in Australia had written code that let us post videos, sound, photos and text on our IndyMedia sites much like people can on Facebook or other social media platforms today making it possible to share uncensored news of the protests.
While global capital was busy tricking the public into supporting their wars and austerity plans Food Not Bombs chapters were also springing up all across the world in defiance. Food Not Bombs activists joined in anti-globalization protests across Europe, Asia and the Americas.
The Gothenburg European Council meeting was held on June 15-16, 2001, laying the groundwork for EU enlargement while addressing what the corporations called “sustainable development”, as well as economic and social issues, and external relations. The presence of US President George W. Bush at the EU-USA Summit attracted a huge crowd of protesters.
CBS News reported that “Up to 25,000 activists from dozens of anti-EU, anti-U.S. and anti-globalization groups have descended on Gothenburg. About 1,500 people appeared to have been involved in Friday’s rioting.”
The Guardian report of June 15, 2001 said “Anti-globalization protests spilled over into serious violence at the EU summit in Sweden last night as two people were shot and wounded by police apparently overwhelmed by demonstrators. Police in the southern port city of Gothenburg confirmed that two people had been shot when street fighting broke out after a day of clashes. Twelve police officers were injured and 600 people were detained.”
Gothenburg Food Not Bombs co- founder, Hannes Westberg was shot in the chest by police, suffering multiple injuries. According to a hospital spokesman, he had a damaged kidney and liver and is ‘critically ill’. Surgeons had to perform a series of complicated operations in a bid to save his life. I recall that he spent some of his time as a prisoner in a coma. I was honored to play Father Tomte for Hanne’s child on his son’s first Christmas when I visited Sweden on one of my European speaking tours.
My work against the centralization of the global economic system has never stopped. I joined a bus caravan at the Monument to the Revolution in Mexico City and headed to the 2003 protest against the World Trade Organization protest in Cancun. Several Food Not Bombs volunteers from Australia had rented a house on the edge of the old town. My Mexican Food Not Bombs friends set up a camp in a park downtown where we provided meals for the protesters. The first day we shared food outside the Ritz Carlton on the beach front. That area was closed to the public soon after. Tens of thousands of us marched outside the security fences. I was less than ten feet away when Lee Kyung Hae, a South Korean farmer, scaled a fence and stabbed himself to death with a penknife while wearing a sign that read “WTO kills farmers.” A few minutes after he fell to the street the police started to toss chunks of concrete at the demonstrators. I joined a friend under the nearest car as blocks of cement rained down around us.
Our history of organizing against the exploitation by the financial institutions has been at the core of our actions from our founding. Our first soup line was a theatrical event outside the Bank of Boston’s stockholders meeting outside the Federal Reserve Bank in March 1981. The night before our noon meal I spoke at the local homeless shelter and invited the twenty or so men to join our protest. They showed to our protest suggesting we share food everyday since there were no free meals for Boston’s hungry. We handed out literature warning that the policies of the bankers and President Reagan could lead to a future where people would be forced to line up for meals at a soup kitchen. Pedestrians were surprised to see people were already queuing up for food just a month after Reagan had taken office.
That evening while cleaning our cooking equipment we made the decision to give our employers two weeks notice so we could dedicate all our time to recovering and sharing food. We all had to seek work after six months when our landlady reminded us that we has not paid rent for half a year but she was so impressed with our work that she reduced our rent from $600 a month to $400 and asked us to start paying at the first of the following month. Our humble beginnings sure have blossomed into a strong global community of compassion in an often very brutal world.
It’s been 45 years since we started the first Food Not Bombs collective after our friend Brian Feigenbaum, was arrested during the May 24,1980, occupation attempt of the Seabrook Nuclear Power Station construction site in New Hampshire. During these four decades our volunteers have join relief efforts after cyclones, hurricanes, earthquakes, floods and wild fires. Our volunteers initiated the campaign that toppled the banker government of Iceland, shared vegan meals outside MacDonalds on the annual McLibel protest each October and during the Millions Against Monsanto marches in May. The Anarchist Against the Wall campaign in Palestine started after the Tel Aviv chapter of Food Not Bombs has helped provide meals during a two months long Peace Camp on the West Bank. We have supported indigenous sovereignty movements in the Americas, Australia and across Asia. As a worldwide movement Food Not Bombs is in a position to initiated global days of action against the cruelty of the emerging totalitarian digital dystopia. And of course we have filled the bellies of the hungry millions of times and will do so for decades to come.
The crisis of war, state repression and poverty is greater today than at anytime in our history. Thankfully we have a global network of over 1,000 chapters to provide mutual aid, emotional support and solidarity.
Food Not Bombs – PO Box 422, Santa Cruz CA 95061 – http://www.foodnotbombs.net
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