Anarchistcook’s Weblog

Celebrating 2 years of sharing food everyday with live music by Johnny and the Free Thinkers

Sunday, March 13, 2022

Noon to 4:00 PM

At the Town Clock where it all began

Pacific Avenue and Water Streets, Santa Cruz, California

Sharing food is always and unregulated gift of love.  Please write and call the City of Santa Cruz and let them know you support the daily meals provided by Food Not Bombs.  (831) 420-5020 • citycouncil@cityofsantacruz.com

THANK YOU SANTA CRUZ – We couldn’t have done it without you.

The all volunteer group Food Not Bombs thanks the people of Santa Cruz for two years of support during the pandemic. We could not have done it without you!

On March 14, 2020, we learned that all the indoor food programs would be closed because of the COVID-19 crisis so we stepped in to take their place and started to share our meals seven days a week thinking we would return to our weekend schedule as soon as the pandemic was over in a month or two. Two years on those programs are still not able to provide the hot meals they had before the lockdowns.

Thankfully our community stepped up. Hundreds of local people have helped bring donations of food, clothing and survival gear to help us meet the needs of those who live outside or are struggling to maintain housing. Others have chipped in $5, $10 and $20 dollar donations to help us buy pup tents, car batteries and repair to support our effort to save people’s vehicular homes from being seized by the city.

Our unhoused friends help us set up and break down every day. College students from Cabrillo and UCSC join our team to help serve our seven to ten course meal. Local herbalists have provided tea. Area farmers truck in fresh harvests. Second Harvest, Trader Joes, Gayle’s Bakery, Beckmann’s, Grey Bears and local farmer’s markets are among those who provided our food.

Advanced Auto interrupted their schedule to fix our van several times so we wouldn’t miss providing that day’s meal. The Tabby Cat Cafe grounds our donations of coffee beans. The staff at Big Five Sporting Goods seeks ways to give us discounts for tents so we could afford as many as possible. Stolts Signs helped us replace the signs and banners taken from us by members of Take Back Santa Cruz.  The workers at Santa Cruz Restaurant Supply make sure we have the equipment we require to keep our kitchen humming. Bernie and the kind office staff at Azzie’s Storage jumped into action to move our shipping containers every time we were evicted.

The security guards at New Leaf and their staff lifted our five gallon water bottles into shopping carts when back injured Keith is tasked with the job and dozens of people passing through the New Leaf parking lot have helped him load those heavy jugs into our vehicles. Others were happy to be stopped on the street to help lift urns of coffee into our van at the Little Red Church.

India Joze has contributed their kitchen, their refrigeration and thousands of hours of labor to help make sure a healthy meal is served everyday. Tom at University Copy donated reams of printing. The staff at WorldCentric has gone out of their way to supply us with cases of compostable paper products. Our good friend, Eric Fawcett, a local retired master plumber constructs our DIY hand washing stations and repairs the faucets at our kitchen.  The staff at the Homeless Garden Project made vegan burritos and sandwiches. Barrios Unidos helped store dozens of pallets of dry goods before we purchased our second Conex box. Musicians perform at our meals. The drivers at Meals on Wheels drop off their extra food. Encompass social workers help us calm the emotionally distressed. Our friends at the Court Community Service Program send us waves of volunteers. Church people deliver cases of socks. A small army of supporters share our messages on line.

We even get clandestine help from city and county workers. The number of ways the people of Santa Cruz have helped us provide the most reliable source of support for communities poor and unhoused cannot be detailed in one short article. You can thank them for saving downtown Santa Cruz from suffering the damage that would result if people had no other way to get food became so desperate that they had to resort to extra-legal means to eat.

We have a dedicated core of volunteers who know what is required to provide healthy hot meals, groceries, drinking water and survival gear to hundreds of people everyday.

We haven’t been sitting at computers collecting $100k+ salaries like those at city hall and the county buildings who spend their time evicting us from one location after another in their campaign to attract hedge-fund property speculators to ravage our community.

We have been volunteering for free on the streets of Santa Cruz everyday of this pandemic responding to the hunger and emotional stress of those living outside.

While the city is busy facilitating the wishes of global hedge funds and out of county property speculators we have been preparing for the unfolding crisis of evictions and the dramatic increase in hunger. We raised money to buy three shipping containers to stockpile dry goods and equipment. We have invested in reliable sources of fresh water. Our group has organized systems to maintain a daily response to the escalating disaster working in teams.

One team coordinates the preparation and cooking of 150 to 200 hot meals a day. Another team recovers our scraps to compost at the Homeless Garden and that team also takes the cardboard to Grey Bears.

We have two shifts of drivers. The opening shift starts by bring the hot water for our hand-washing station, sanitizing buckets to clean our tables, serving equipment and the first round of coffee. They open one of our shipping containers and set up the canopies, tables, social distancing cones, signs and banners. Yesterday’s bread and the survival gear that was not distributed the day before is brought to the sanitized tables along with our pre-meal snacks, creamer, sugar and paper products.

A team of servers complete the setup and the madness of four hours of food service and compassion begins.

That opening driver returns to the kitchen to collect six to eight five gallon hotel trays of that day’s hot meal, another five gallons of tossed salad and fruit salad.

Another team orders two or three pallets of food from Second Harvest and recovers food from the farmers markets, local grocery stores and bakeries. Then much of this food is taken to one of our three shipping containers and our kitchen. At least one pallet is taken to the people at the Benchlands along with our five gallons of drinking water and another load is distributed to undocumented families.

Yet another team orders the paper products, cooking oil and coffee, receives the deliveries and packs them into our rented storage units, the kitchen or one of our Conex boxes.

Finally the closing team sanitizes the tables, packs the empty hotel trays and coffee urns into the van. The tables, canopies, signs, banners, unused paper products, left over bread and survival gear were packed into the shipping container or as of late into our rented U-Haul trailer. That team also picks up all the trash left around the area during the day, sweeps up the site and scrubs the food stains off the pavement. That team bags all the garbage and takes it to the dumpster we rent at the Little Red Church. Then they return to the kitchen to wash and sanitize our serving equipment and hotel trays ending the day by giving the kitchen a thorough cleaning.

We pay a cleaning company to do a deep clean of the kitchen at the first of each month.

This all repeats again day in and day out for nearly 730 days now.

Please join us on Sunday, March 13, 2022, accept our thanks to the people of Santa Cruz for making all this possible.

Santa Cruz Food Not Bombs

PO Box 422

Santa Cruz, CA 95061 USA

santacruz.foodnotbombs.net

menu@foodnotbombs.net

1-800-884-1136

We couldn’t have done it without you

Join us in our celebration with live music by Johnny and the Free Thinkers

Sunday, March 13, 2022 • Noon to 4:00 PM at the Town Clock where it all began

Pacific Avenue and Water Streets, Santa Cruz, California

The all volunteer group Food Not Bombs thanks the people of Santa Cruz for two years of support during the pandemic. We could not have done it without you!

On March 14, 2020, we learned that all the indoor food programs would be closed because of the COVID-19 crisis so we stepped in to take their place and started to share our meals seven days a week thinking we would return to our weekend schedule as soon as the pandemic was over in a month or two. Two years on those programs are still not able to provide the hot meals they had before the lockdowns.

Thankfully our community stepped up. Hundreds of local people have helped bring donations of food, clothing and survival gear to help us meet the needs of those who live outside or are struggling to maintain housing. Others have chipped in $5, $10 and $20 dollar donations to help us buy pup tents, car batteries and repair to support our effort to save people’s vehicular homes from being seized by the city.

Our unhoused friends help us set up and break down every day. College students from Cabrillo and UCSC join our team to help serve our seven to ten course meal. Local herbalists have provided tea. Area farmers truck in fresh harvests. Second Harvest, Trader Joes, Gayle’s Bakery, Beckmann’s, Grey Bears and local farmer’s markets are among those who provided our food.

Advanced Auto interrupted their schedule to fix our van several times so we wouldn’t miss providing that day’s meal. The Tabby Cat Cafe grounds our donations of coffee beans. The staff at Big Five Sporting Goods seeks ways to give us discounts for tents so we could afford as many as possible. Stolts Signs helped us replace the signs and banners taken from us by members of Take Back Santa Cruz.  The workers at Santa Cruz Restaurant Supply make sure we have the equipment we require to keep our kitchen humming. Bernie and the kind office staff at Azzie’s Storage jumped into action to move our shipping containers every time we were evicted.

The security guards at New Leaf and their staff lifted our five gallon water bottles into shopping carts when back injured Keith is tasked with the job and dozens of people passing through the New Leaf parking lot have helped him load those heavy jugs into our vehicles. Others were happy to be stopped on the street to help lift urns of coffee into our van at the Little Red Church.

India Joze has contributed their kitchen, their refrigeration and thousands of hours of labor to help make sure a healthy meal is served everyday. Tom at University Copy donated reams of printing. The staff at WorldCentric has gone out of their way to supply us with cases of compostable paper products. Our good friend, Eric Fawcett, a local retired master plumber constructs our DIY hand washing stations and repairs the faucets at our kitchen.  The staff at the Homeless Garden Project made vegan burritos and sandwiches. Barrios Unidos helped store dozens of pallets of dry goods before we purchased our second Conex box. Musicians perform at our meals. The drivers at Meals on Wheels drop off their extra food. Encompass social workers help us calm the emotionally distressed. Our friends at the Court Community Service Program send us waves of volunteers. Church people deliver cases of socks. A small army of supporters share our messages on line.

We even get clandestine help from city and county workers. The number of ways the people of Santa Cruz have helped us provide the most reliable source of support for communities poor and unhoused cannot be detailed in one short article. You can thank them for saving downtown Santa Cruz from suffering the damage that would result if people had no other way to get food became so desperate that they had to resort to extra-legal means to eat.

We have a dedicated core of volunteers who know what is required to provide healthy hot meals, groceries, drinking water and survival gear to hundreds of people everyday.

We haven’t been sitting at computers collecting $100k+ salaries like those at city hall and the county buildings who spend their time evicting us from one location after another in their campaign to attract hedge-fund property speculators to ravage our community.

We have been volunteering for free on the streets of Santa Cruz everyday of this pandemic responding to the hunger and emotional stress of those living outside.

While the city is busy facilitating the wishes of global hedge funds and out of county property speculators we have been preparing for the unfolding crisis of evictions and the dramatic increase in hunger. We raised money to buy three shipping containers to stockpile dry goods and equipment. We have invested in reliable sources of fresh water. Our group has organized systems to maintain a daily response to the escalating disaster working in teams.

One team coordinates the preparation and cooking of 150 to 200 hot meals a day. Another team recovers our scraps to compost at the Homeless Garden and that team also takes the cardboard to Grey Bears.

We have two shifts of drivers. The opening shift starts by bring the hot water for our hand-washing station, sanitizing buckets to clean our tables, serving equipment and the first round of coffee. They open one of our shipping containers and set up the canopies, tables, social distancing cones, signs and banners. Yesterday’s bread and the survival gear that was not distributed the day before is brought to the sanitized tables along with our pre-meal snacks, creamer, sugar and paper products.

A team of servers complete the setup and the madness of four hours of food service and compassion begins.

That opening driver returns to the kitchen to collect six to eight five gallon hotel trays of that day’s hot meal, another five gallons of tossed salad and fruit salad.

Another team orders two or three pallets of food from Second Harvest and recovers food from the farmers markets, local grocery stores and bakeries. Then much of this food is taken to one of our three shipping containers and our kitchen. At least one pallet is taken to the people at the Benchlands along with our five gallons of drinking water and another load is distributed to undocumented families.

Yet another team orders the paper products, cooking oil and coffee, receives the deliveries and packs them into our rented storage units, the kitchen or one of our Conex boxes.

Finally the closing team sanitizes the tables, packs the empty hotel trays and coffee urns into the van. The tables, canopies, signs, banners, unused paper products, left over bread and survival gear were packed into the shipping container or as of late into our rented U-Haul trailer. That team also picks up all the trash left around the area during the day, sweeps up the site and scrubs the food stains off the pavement. That team bags all the garbage and takes it to the dumpster we rent at the Little Red Church. Then they return to the kitchen to wash and sanitize our serving equipment and hotel trays ending the day by giving the kitchen a thorough cleaning.

We pay a cleaning company to do a deep clean of the kitchen at the first of each month.

This all repeats again day in and day out for nearly 730 days now.

Please join us on Sunday, March 13, 2022, accept our thanks to the people of Santa Cruz for making all this possible.

PLEASE CONTACT THE CITY COUNCIL OF SANTA CRUZ

The city wants to evict Food Not Bombs from the Town Clock

Sharing food is always an unregulated gift of love.
Let the City of Santa Cruz know you support
Food Not Bombs and our continued
service at the Town Clock
(831) 420-5020
citycouncil@cityofsantacruz.com

Protest Tuesday, January 11, 2022, noon at Laurel and Front Streets, Santa Cruz, California Let the City of Santa Cruz know how you feel about their hostility towards Food Not Bombs:
citycouncil@cityofsantacruz.com

It is 3:30 pm on Friday, January 7, 2022, when I finally get a call from Larry Imwalle, the Santa Cruz City Homelessness Response Manager. He never returned my calls about moving people to higher ground before the Benchlands flood or after my desperate efforts to get two families in to housing. He is paid $150,000 a year to “manage the homeless.”
I was buying two more sets of Industrial Steel Shelving at Home Depot to place in our new shipping container. We are rushing to remove our back stock of rice, lentils and other dry goods from India Joze’s Restaurant before he closes down to make way for a luxury apartment complex to be built in its place.
“I’m following up on our phone conversation a few minutes ago, in which I let you know that the City will require that Food Not Bombs (FNB) vacate Lot 27 by Tuesday, January 11, 2022 at 2:00 PM”
Larry tells me as can be read in his email that, “The Pure Water Soquel Construction Project will be working in this area and requires use of Lot 27 and the surrounding area to accomplish the project and stage equipment. “ I suggested he have the project manager call me so we can make this work and pointed out that there is another parking lot next to Wheelworks that is always vacant.
As soon as Larry and I hang up I start getting calls from our volunteers at Lot 27. The police have arrived and are handing out papers saying we have to leave by Tuesday.
This is not the first late Friday afternoon eviction from Lot 27 during our 664 days of sharing meals with the community during the pandemic.
We received notice late Friday, October 2, 2020, that we would have to move to the lot across Front Street because the need to use it to park construction equipment for a levee project. We did move across the street. The city fenced off Lot 27 and three months later not one piece of construction equipment was ever placed on the lot. A New Years Eve march removed the fence and returned it to the police department steps and we have been sharing food there at Lot 27 everyday since.
The police told our volunteers and those camping around our meal that we have to go to the flooded Benchlands.
The number of just evicted is increasing and the increase in those seeking food is shocking but expected as the economy for working people fails. We distributed $2,000 in cheap pup tents in December. It is heartbreaking to see the desperation in peoples faces and learn there is no place for them to sleep. People cry with relief when you hand them their tent.
Our volunteers have been preparing for this increase for months seeking a location for our third shipping container and lining up more sources of food. We have had to increase our orders of paper products and deliveries of dry goods to share with the people at the Benchlands and Depot Park.
If we stopped providing food for even one week it is likely the over 400 people who depend on us every day would be forced to seek extra legal means to meet their needs. This would not be good for anyone.
The city has no business interfering with Food Not Bombs. We are not stopping them from feeding the hungry.
Let the City of Santa Cruz know how you feel about their hostility towards Food Not Bombs:
citycouncil@cityofsantacruz.com
Please contact Food Not Bombs at 575-770-3377 or menu@foodnotbombs.net

Dear Keith,
 
I’m following up on our phone conversation a few minutes ago, in which I let you know that the City will require that Food Not Bombs (FNB) vacate Lot 27 by Tuesday, January 11, 2022, at 2:00 PM.
 
The factors impacting this decision are as follows:
 
·         The Pure Water Soquel Construction Project will be working in this area and requires use of Lot 27 and the surrounding area to accomplish the project and stage equipment.  Due to the construction project, it will not be safe for FNB to continue its operations in Lot 27, and the City will be closing this property to the public.
·         FNB’s continuous presence in this lot, including storage of the Conex box in the lot, is simply illegal and not permitted by the City.  See SCMC 9.64.030 and SCMC 9.50.010.
 
Accordingly, the City requires that FNB must vacate Lot 27 and remove the shipping container / Conex Box located on Lot 27 by 2:00 pm on Tuesday January 11, 2022.  Failure to take these actions could result in citation, arrest, and/or the City taking action to remove property unlawfully placed or stored at Lot 27.
 
Thank you for your attention to this communication, and I’d be happy to answer any questions you may have.
 
Sincerely,
 
Larry
 
Larry Imwalle
Homelessness Response Manager
City Manager’s Office | City of Santa Cruz
809 Center Street, Room 10  | Santa Cruz, CA 95060
831-420-5405
LImwalle@cityofsantacruz.com
 

Looking at COVID as a Progressive

I can understand wanting to get the COVID injections and I support your right to do so. The fear of death from COVID is compelling. The images and reports frightening. I would never interfere with someone’s desire to participate in these vaccine trials. I can understand how much more terrifying the world looks to those who quarantined at home for weeks relying on social media, NPR, CNN and the New York Times for information unaware of the reality on the streets. Had I been inside quarantined I may have also internalized that fear and found a logic in the ever changing information about COVID, the vaccines and the boosters.
 
As progressives I think we should be standing against attacks on our freedoms and supporting the civil rights of all essential workers, people who like myself spent every day of the pandemic outside meeting the needs of our community.  I would think that my anti-war, anti-capitalist friends would be open to questioning the story about COVID since it is being pushed by the same people who also told us there were WMDs in Iraq and that we were winning the war on Afghanistan.

I first wrote a letter on this subject when I received an invitation to attend a meeting forming a new progressive alliance. To participate you had to provide proof of a vaccination or a negative COVID test.  I wrote to invite the progressive community to stand in solidarity with the working class by refusing to meet in facilities that demand proof of participation in the vaccine experiments. 

I had shrugged off the proof of vaccine requirement to attend the ACLU awards ceremony since I had to cook that day.  But when I came to understand that the outdoor venue for the meeting did not require this proof, nor does the Simpkins Family Center where the progressive alliance meets this week nor the Del Mar Theater where I was barred from seeing a film that I was in, I became even more concerned.

Initially the demand for proof of vaccination or negative test may have seemed reasonable to those implementing the policy based on the messaging allowed in the media and on-line platforms. Since so much scientific debate has been censored to protect the profits and power of those institutions pushing the vaccines it is easy to understand why such measures would be considered.

Those local progressives initiating these policies are well meaning I am sure, thought it would slow the spread of COVID and I believe had no idea what role they were playing in implementing the first of what could become an ever tighter noose choking what is left of our freedom and democracy.

I remained silent about my objections to COVID policies, self censoring to protect the global movement Food Not Bombs from smears and a withdrawal of support. That was until I was personally impacted by demands by my friends for me to prove my vaccination status.
 
I have been organizing against corporate power, censorship, the military and the CIA for 50 years and plan to continue

I helped start the Santa Cruz Homeless Union COVID-19 Relief Center and Food Not Bombs meal. Like many I was freaked out about COVID in those early days and even spent $20,000 of my own money on hotel rooms for the homeless worried that if my friends were not indoors and quarantined, they could die. Food Not Bombs organized our first COVID safety meeting at LuLus the morning of March 14, 2020. My seven bleach-stained teeshirts illustrate the hours I spent sanitizing our equipment. I posted the latest California Health Department safety measures on the Food Not Bombs website starting in early April 2020. The fading six foot apart circles I spray painted at the Town Clock and Garage10 and the white dashes that decorate Lot 27 are a testament to my concern. So I can understand the fear people have of COVID. I can understand wanting to get the injections and again I support your right to do so.
 
Things started to change for me when I first heard about Trump’s secret military program Warp Speed, and became concerned that the vaccine program may not be about health. The six or seven NPR programs a day about massive COVID deaths and the rush to get everyone a vaccine also made me suspect there was another agenda.

Like many of you, when I saw people called anti-vaxxers armed with AR-15s waving confederate and Trump flags I was horrified. There is no way I would ever join people like the Proud Boys and Trump supporters in protesting the lockdowns and other COVID policies. The questioning of Dr Fauci was framed as a position taken only by racist gun- toting Trump supporters effectively driving the left into the arms of the military and big Pharma.

My dear friend and virologist, Dr. Shannon Murray came to visit in November 2020. I knew her when she was helping develop the Moderna vaccine at the National Institute of Health in Bethesda, Maryland. She feared there could be major health problems from the vaccines since the first human trials had not taken place yet and more study was needed before they could be considered safe in humans. The animal trials had not been promising at that point, killing nearly 80% of those vaccinated animals who were exposed to SARS-CoV-1. She also expressed concern that the research in these vaccines had become a secret military program when her access to data had suddenly been removed.  At that time she was still using an alias as did her coworkers so they could share their concerns without fear of being banned from their life’s work. Like many at the NIH, she refuses to get a jab.

Until that time I had the impression I was one of only a couple of progressives that thought something wasn’t right.  I would slowly learn that several other left friends also shared my perspective. I connected Shannon to an old journalist friend, Sam Hussini who had been writing on gain of function research and bio-warfare at places like the Fort Detrick Biological Warfare Laboratories. I learned that another colleague of mine, the director of the Organic Consumers Association, Ronnie Cummings and my friend Vandana Shiva were also starting to express concerns that mirrored our work together against Monsanto. So even though I remained publicly silent I started to feel less alone.

 
We now see that the vaccines do not protect from the spread of COVID or protect us from becoming ill from COVID. I have a number of friends who contracted COVID from a fully vaccinated person. To highlight the failure of the vaccines the Santa Cruz Health Department reported that four fully vaccinated people, one partially vaccinated person and three unvaccinated people died of COVID in our county during October 2021. The unvaccinated may have been classified as such because they had their last jab less than two weeks before their death or they had not had a booster or maybe they had not had any vaccination for COVID.

Now things are getting scary. I never thought my friends would feel justified in segregating me from their places of business or banning me from participating in their events.  That was upsetting enough but now I have to face the possibility that these same friends will remain silent as those of us who are refusing the experimental jab are criminalized and possibly interned. When Austria announced plans to place all unvaccinated under house arrest I found that particularly unsettling.The open assault on the unvaccinated had started. News came that Australia had started to force the unvaccinated into quarantine camps followed by media reports that the Dutch police had fired live ammunition at unarmed anti-mandate and anti-lockdown protesters, shooting three people in Rotterdam. This has been followed by the lockdown of the unvaccinated in Germany and a call by the leaders of the European Union to force everyone in the Euro Zone to get a vaccine.  

I believe that left progressives will be crushed if the current trend is not stopped. The very reasons a new Santa Cruz progressive alliance was proposed was to stop the gentrification of our community. The building of ghost condominiums is in coordination with the COVID policies that have closed small businesses letting hedge funds scoop up property. So far there has been no local, state or national plan to house the millions of Americans facing eviction.  Will the unhoused be placed on military bases as suggested by former mayor Donna Myers? This push for control also includes a drive to pass H.R. 350: The Domestic Terrorism Prevention Act of 2021, which targets anti-capitalist, anarchists and other progressive activists like myself. Progressive voices questioning US interventions, the Occupation of Palestine or the increase in surveillance programs are now regularly removed from social media platforms. It won’t be long before Digital IDs are required to participate in commerce and your vaccine status could be linked to your income, access to education, health care and your personal freedom if we don’t unite now against the corporate clampdown.

Aren’t these the issues that we progressives have been organizing against?

As a progressive, I am still against censorship by groups like Henry Kissinger’s CIA dominated Atlantic Council, the Aspen Institute and Imran Ahmed who are tasked with deleting social media accounts that do not support the corporate agenda. I am also still against the exploitive corporations with a history of deceit and harm like Pfizer who has paid out billions in damages for their products that have killed or maimed. Why are we progressives defending the goals of global corporate power, the US military and the CIA by demanding proof of vaccination when we know they don’t work as advertised.

We should start our resistance by insisting that progressives only hold events in facilities where all working class people can participate regardless of vaccine status. As progressives we must also speak out against mandates, vaccine passports, segregation, the current increase in bio-warfare research, the domestic terrorism law and all censorship.

You may have seen video of the vaccinated in Italy burning their green vaccine passports in solidarity with the unvaccinated. We need such solidarity here in Santa Cruz.

Every day or two another person arrives to our meal in shock. Mostly older single women whose life was towed. This is a death sentence for many. The list of those we lost this year as a result of city policies is crushing.

Maybe the hardest for me this year was the murder of Bob Rees by the city. We were not able to secure a hotel bed before he died of heart attack on the pedestrian bridge above the Benchlands. It took months to secure a place on a church floor to sleep where he could plug in his C-pap machine. Another heartbreaking death directly caused by city council was that of our dear friend Desieire Quintero killed after being evicted from Ross Camp.

Those newly unhoused ask if we can help them get into a shelter but this is not possible in Santa Cruz so we hand them a tent and a tarp and suggest a place to set up. Those first moments when you have to move to your car are bad enough but as the city drains your funds by daily tickets, your home is towed and you are driven to a doorway is even more brutal.

I remember one woman in her late sixties who came stunned to Laurel and Front Streets in early October. After failing to get her into a shelter I gave her the only accommodations we could offer, a three person tent and suggested she seek a patch of ground on the levee or San Lorenzo Park. The next day she returned all smiles. “I found a place under the Soquel bridge,” she announced with pride.

The crisis is so extreme that we have had to start housing people next to our meal now as space is running out. Last week another older woman arrived saying her home was towed. We tried to get her into a shelter but failed so we handed her a tent and blanket and helped her set up in one of the last remaining scraps of land at Lot 27.

Yesterday the police towed another unhoused friends vehicular home. He was frantic as he sat next to his worldly belongings in the rain on a Cedar Street door step.

Food Not Bombs has provided nearly $2,000 in cheap pup tents and tarps for those who have lost everything but their dignity to the intentionally cruel policies of these officials.

Lets be honest, these people are murderers – Donna Meyers, Sonja Brunner, Justin Cummings, Renee Golder, Shebreh Kalantari-Johnson, and Martine Watkins.

Call them out for the murders they are by emailing citycouncil@cityofsantacruz.com

I live in the United States of America. 

Clouds tumbled slowly over my beach town Santa Cruz as I arrived at Lot 27, home to the daily Food Not Bombs meal. The first thing that caught my eye was the new bright white canopy with walls that hugged the Credit Union wall. 

The proud owner was a family of four that had returned to Santa Cruz the day before just in time to snag this palace of a donation.

The mother of the house smiled as she told of her families effort to find a place in Nevada and several other states. “It’s the same every where we went so we just came back.” Her son reminds me that he had volunteered with Food Not Bombs when we shared at the downtown Post Office. He asked if I could get a larger tent for them. All four we stuffed into a two person pup tent sheltered by the canopy. 

Friends joined me to report the events of our asphalt dining room that I had missed the day before. We needed to restock the larger plates and another friend needed money to buy another green canister of propane for their Coleman so they could make coffee in the morning. Our coffee arrives at noon. 

Two more friends come to let me know the police had come to their tent that clung to a patch of dry grass along the levee that morning telling them they would have to leave by Monday. They asked the officers where they should move and the police didn’t know but suggested they might try the San Lorenzo Park Benchlands where a few hundred other people were already camping. 

Another friend drives into the parking lot grinning fresh blue tape strengthening the new back window we were able to buy to replace the plastic that had been between his worldly possessions and the thieves of the streets. 

Student volunteers join the festival. One has agreed to post our flyers seeking more volunteers around campus so I give her the posters, and J21 staple gun and backup staples. The school year has begun. 

My dear activist friend pulls in next to the Food Not Bombs van. We hug that long hug of our friendship. She is delivering a t-shirt she designed “Most of my heroes have done some time in jail” with my name included in a list of revolutionaries. I passed her a few of the Food Not Bombs pot holders she requested and signed page 617 of her hardback copy of “A People’s History of the United States” by Howard Zinn. She didn’t depart until she had made a generous financial donation and another long hug.

More friends arrived several seeking tents to replace the ones that were stolen by a desperate neighbor or trashed by the city. 

Than it was time to unload my Honda Pilot of its cases of coffee, coconut oil, sugar and creamer at the kitchen. A loyal occupant of the streets did the heavy lifting. He and I meet a few minuted later at India Joze to move our pallets of that days Second Harvest delivery. One load goes to our shipping container at Laurel and Front Streets. The rice is stored in Joe’s office and the balance fills my car again for the trip to the Benchlands camp.

Our staff at the Santa Cruz Homeless Union tent unpacks the first half of the load. I take the other half to “Mama Judy’s Memorial Honor Pantry”. A grumpy camper tells me to screw off when I call out for help and returns to his dismantling of his tiny tent tossing parts into a pile unloved debris.

But a couple of other friends answered the call and the pantry was restocked. A passer by asked if I had water and I let him know I would return with a supply in about an hour.

It was back to the union tent and the collection of empty dusty five gallon water jugs and the run to New Leaf to fill them with filtered water. If you lived in Santa Cruz you would know that the tap water tastes like a mixture of chlorine and allege and that’s what the one faucet in the park provides. 

I run into an old friend at the grocery. He tells me he is tired of the police repression in Santa Cruz and plans to leave. The city has seized his vehicular homes twice now. He shared that he lost all his family photos, precious childhood belongings and work tool in the first tow. He lost the replacement tools in the second. He is done with it. 

It was another day navigating the country I live in. It wont be long before the Bidenvilles of America will double in size and numbers. This will be a rough winter for millions in the country I live in.

Keith McHenry is working on another book, The Food Terrorist Diaries http://www.foodnotbombs.net

On August 24, 2021, The US Supreme Court ruled for a second time this summer that Biden’s eviction moratorium was unconstitutional. Only about $5.1 billion of the $46.5 billion in rent and mortgage relief had been disbursed by the end of July 2021. What is the plan now?

So as predicted, just 20 days after Congresswoman Cori Bush’s stunt on the steps of the US Capital millions of American’s are about to be forced on to the streets.  At least 9.4 million workers with be cut off from Pandemic Unemployment Assistance on Labor Day. Millions more Americans could find themselves living under overpasses, parks and doorways this winter. A cruel wave of Bidenville camps are already struggling against the sweeps. Why wasn’t Cori Bush and the Squad pushing for legislation to protect tenants and small landlords on June 1, 2021, when the US Supreme Court first ruled the CDC eviction moratorium was unconstitutional?

We see the tragic consequences here in Santa Cruz, California as our friends panic before their move to a tent along the San Lorenzo River or next to the freeway.

On September 3, 2021, many people at the Oceana Motel and another dozen or more at the Sea Air Hotel in Santa Cruz were forced out of their COVID hotels into the doorways and parks of Santa Cruz California. the ones that did secure temporary housing had to do so on their own without help from the city or county according to a number of those who spoke to me this week.

I received an email from Jessica Scheiner, Housing for Health County of Santa Cruz on August 26, 2021

Due to the shift in our COVID-19 homeless response and changing priorities and staffing, we are discontinuing our COVID-19 Homeless Services Providers Call, so I emailed both Jessica and cc’d her supervisor Dr Robert Ratner asking this question.

Hi Jessica,

Is it true that those unhoused who live in the COVID hotels are being provided housing on September 3rd. I did hear of one friend that did get housing.

Thanks

Keith McHenry

That same day at noon Dr Robert Ratner, Director, Housing for Health Division replied:

Hi Keith –  we’re not “providing housing” for all guests.   Nearly all guests have an opportunity to secure housing authority housing subsidy vouchers and to receive supportive services.  The guests need to make personal decisions about where they want to live given the supports and resources available.

This one friend, Noël who did get housing reported to our Santa Cruz Homeless Union meeting that she got help from the county’s Housing Matters program or Housing for Health. She spent a month seeking her own apartment. Another friend from Sea Air, Nikki has also been seeking a place to live since the announcement of the September 3 evictions. So far no luck. Her car died so she cannot return to her pre-COVID accommodations.

 Anthony rolled up to the Food Not Bombs in his electric wheelchair on Sunday to say Housing for Health and the other county agencies have provided no help in his finding a place for him to go after his COVID hotel eviction. He found a place on his own but the landlord wants proof that they will be paid by the county, proof the county so far has not provided.

September has also been a rough month already for those who live in their vehicles. The Santa Cruz Police ran a public relations campaign, Operation Westside Story, where they bragged about towing people’s vehicular homes after aggressively ticketing people until it becomes too expensive for them to register their only safe place to sleep. The police seized 4 RVs and 7 cars in one Westside sweep according to their Facebook publicity. Santa Cruz Homeless Union president Alicia Kuhl was in tears when she called me after witnessing another sweep reporting that the police took a disabled man’s RV, handed him his cane and left him to stand on the side of the street without any of his belongings.

But there is plenty of money in the states coffers to make sure no Californians are forced to live outside. In June 2021 Governor Newsom reported there was around a $75 billion dollar surplus yet these funds have failed to provide rent relief or provide housing for the unhoused. According to the US Department of Housing and Urban Development, it would cost $20 billion to end homelessness in the United States.

 Local Santa Cruz leaders claim they ran out of COVID money so the hotel and camp evictions are starting. The city and county managed Golf Course Camp will evict about 60 people in mid September according to people who live there. Unhoused people and their supporters are questioning where the nearly $100 million the county and city of Santa Cruz spends each year goes since there is little evidence of it providing services let alone housing for the thousands that already live outside.

What exactly is the point of the City of Santa Cruz’s Camping Services and Standards Ordinance that makes it a crime to sleep outside unless you are one of the lucky 150 to 200 people who get to participate in the city’s dusk to dawn safe sleeping site in a downtown parking lot?  Are they hoping to drive their homeless problem out of town or are they participating in an ominous national strategy? Most local leaders are probably blind to such a strategy and believe they are just following state and federal policies.

So why would Democratic leaders fail to implement any solutions while they control the White House, Senate and Congress? Where was the legislation that the US Supreme Court announced was necessary to prevent millions of people from facing homelessness? They clearly have the money, having given trillions to the billionaire class.

We have known for more than a year that millions of households would be facing eviction and foreclosure yet little has been done to address the crisis. Sure property speculators are pouring millions of dollars into the Democratic Party and  this could be at the root of the inaction but there may be something much more sinister behind their refusal to protect the American people.

This is a small example of the funding that has been flooding into the Democratic Party on behalf of the real estate billionaires and their effort to end the eviction moratorium.  George Marcus, chairman of both the massive real estate brokerage Marcus & Millichap and the investment firm Essex Property Trust, gave $1 million on June 1, 2021, to House Majority PAC. That was the day the Congress should have been rushing through tenant and landlord protection.

Marcus also donated $263,400 in June to a fundraising committee benefiting Congresswoman Nancy Pelosi’s campaign, her leadership PAC, and the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee. Executives at Blackstone Group, gave $2.3 million to Senate Majority PAC, $250,000 to House Majority PAC, and $350,000 to Unite the Country, the pro-Biden super PAC. This June Blackstone said it was buying Home Partners of America, a company that owns more than seventeen thousand homes. A Koch Industry lobbyist, Akin Gump Strauss Hauer & Feld, donated $336,500 to the Democrats after buying and managing more than 30,000 homes. Blackstone also became a minority investor in Tricon Residential, which owns more than thirty-thousand single family and multifamily rental homes.  Heather Podesta, the former wife of Tony Podesta raised $177,000 for the DSCC and $114,000 for the DCCC this year. Heather is the founder and CEO of Invariant LLC, which lobbies for the National Association of Realtors and NAREIT, and the National Association of Real Estate Investment Trusts. The Podesta Group’s Clients have included Google, Wells Fargo, General Electric, Boeing  the Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America, and the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. His brother John previously served as White House chief of staff to President Bill Clinton and chaired Hillary Clinton’s campaign for president in 2016.

The National Association of Realtors provided funding for the recall campaign of pro-tenant Santa Cruz City Councilors Chris Krohn and Drew Glover replacing them with their property speculator allies who have since paved the way for the current string of anti-homeless laws and rubber stamped policies that encourage hedge funds to scoop up the seaside community.

But I believe there is possibly a more sinister reason why the Democrats have all but ignored this nation shattering crisis.  The DNC organized Capital Steps stunt with Congressperson Cori Bush and Congresses failure to introduce life saving legislation gave me the impression that the government wants there to be millions living outside without access to water, trash collection and toilets.

They could be intentionally forcing a dystopian hell-scape on the American people so that after a winter living in a Mad Max Cyclone the good people of  our nation will demand something be done and that something will be the implementation of a total police state and the removal of the unhoused “useless eaters” to those FEMA camps our homeless friends have been warning us of for the past decade. This was the strategy that was useful for the National Socialists of Germany in 1930s and could be a useful strategy for the global predator class of today.

Otherwise why are they forcing millions of people on the cold streets this winter?

On August 24, 2021, The US Supreme Court ruled for a second time this summer that Biden’s eviction moratorium was unconstitutional. Only about $5.1 billion of the $46.5 billion in rent and mortgage relief had been disbursed by the end of July 2021. What is the plan now?

So as predicted, just 20 days after Congresswoman Cori Bush’s stunt on the steps of the US Capital millions of American’s are about to be forced on to the streets.  At least 9.4 million workers with be cut off from Pandemic Unemployment Assistance on Labor Day. Millions more Americans could find themselves living under overpasses, parks and doorways this winter. A cruel wave of Bidenville camps are already struggling against the sweeps. Why wasn’t Cori Bush and the Squad pushing for legislation to protect tenants and small landlords on June 1, 2021, when the US Supreme Court first ruled the CDC eviction moratorium was unconstitutional?

We see the tragic consequences here in Santa Cruz, California as our friends panic before their move to a tent along the San Lorenzo River or next to the freeway.

On September 3, 2021, many people at the Oceana Motel and another dozen or more at the Sea Air Hotel in Santa Cruz were forced out of their COVID hotels into the doorways and parks of Santa Cruz California. the ones that did secure temporary housing had to do so on their own without help from the city or county according to a number of those who spoke to me this week.

I received an email from Jessica Scheiner, Housing for Health County of Santa Cruz on August 26, 2021

Due to the shift in our COVID-19 homeless response and changing priorities and staffing, we are discontinuing our COVID-19 Homeless Services Providers Call, so I emailed both Jessica and cc’d her supervisor Dr Robert Ratner asking this question.

Hi Jessica,

Is it true that those unhoused who live in the COVID hotels are being provided housing on September 3rd. I did hear of one friend that did get housing.

Thanks

Keith McHenry

That same day at noon Dr Robert Ratner, Director, Housing for Health Division replied:

Hi Keith –  we’re not “providing housing” for all guests.   Nearly all guests have an opportunity to secure housing authority housing subsidy vouchers and to receive supportive services.  The guests need to make personal decisions about where they want to live given the supports and resources available.

This one friend, Noël who did get housing reported to our Santa Cruz Homeless Union meeting that she got help from the county’s Housing Matters program or Housing for Health. She spent a month seeking her own apartment. Another friend from Sea Air, Nikki has also been seeking a place to live since the announcement of the September 3 evictions. So far no luck. Her car died so she cannot return to her pre-COVID accommodations.

 Anthony rolled up to the Food Not Bombs in his electric wheelchair on Sunday to say Housing for Health and the other county agencies have provided no help in his finding a place for him to go after his COVID hotel eviction. He found a place on his own but the landlord wants proof that they will be paid by the county, proof the county so far has not provided.

September has also been a rough month already for those who live in their vehicles. The Santa Cruz Police ran a public relations campaign, Operation Westside Story, where they bragged about towing people’s vehicular homes after aggressively ticketing people until it becomes too expensive for them to register their only safe place to sleep. The police seized 4 RVs and 7 cars in one Westside sweep according to their Facebook publicity. Santa Cruz Homeless Union president Alicia Kuhl was in tears when she called me after witnessing another sweep reporting that the police took a disabled man’s RV, handed him his cane and left him to stand on the side of the street without any of his belongings.

But there is plenty of money in the states coffers to make sure no Californians are forced to live outside. In June 2021 Governor Newsom reported there was around a $75 billion dollar surplus yet these funds have failed to provide rent relief or provide housing for the unhoused. According to the US Department of Housing and Urban Development, it would cost $20 billion to end homelessness in the United States.

 Local Santa Cruz leaders claim they ran out of COVID money so the hotel and camp evictions are starting. The city and county managed Golf Course Camp will evict about 60 people in mid September according to people who live there. Unhoused people and their supporters are questioning where the nearly $100 million the county and city of Santa Cruz spends each year goes since there is little evidence of it providing services let alone housing for the thousands that already live outside.

What exactly is the point of the City of Santa Cruz’s Camping Services and Standards Ordinance that makes it a crime to sleep outside unless you are one of the lucky 150 to 200 people who get to participate in the city’s dusk to dawn safe sleeping site in a downtown parking lot?  Are they hoping to drive their homeless problem out of town or are they participating in an ominous national strategy? Most local leaders are probably blind to such a strategy and believe they are just following state and federal policies.

So why would Democratic leaders fail to implement any solutions while they control the White House, Senate and Congress? Where was the legislation that the US Supreme Court announced was necessary to prevent millions of people from facing homelessness? They clearly have the money, having given trillions to the billionaire class.

We have known for more than a year that millions of households would be facing eviction and foreclosure yet little has been done to address the crisis. Sure property speculators are pouring millions of dollars into the Democratic Party and  this could be at the root of the inaction but there may be something much more sinister behind their refusal to protect the American people.

This is a small example of the funding that has been flooding into the Democratic Party on behalf of the real estate billionaires and their effort to end the eviction moratorium.  George Marcus, chairman of both the massive real estate brokerage Marcus & Millichap and the investment firm Essex Property Trust, gave $1 million on June 1, 2021, to House Majority PAC. That was the day the Congress should have been rushing through tenant and landlord protection.

Marcus also donated $263,400 in June to a fundraising committee benefiting Congresswoman Nancy Pelosi’s campaign, her leadership PAC, and the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee. Executives at Blackstone Group, gave $2.3 million to Senate Majority PAC, $250,000 to House Majority PAC, and $350,000 to Unite the Country, the pro-Biden super PAC. This June Blackstone said it was buying Home Partners of America, a company that owns more than seventeen thousand homes. A Koch Industry lobbyist, Akin Gump Strauss Hauer & Feld, donated $336,500 to the Democrats after buying and managing more than 30,000 homes. Blackstone also became a minority investor in Tricon Residential, which owns more than thirty-thousand single family and multifamily rental homes.  Heather Podesta, the former wife of Tony Podesta raised $177,000 for the DSCC and $114,000 for the DCCC this year. Heather is the founder and CEO of Invariant LLC, which lobbies for the National Association of Realtors and NAREIT, and the National Association of Real Estate Investment Trusts. The Podesta Group’s Clients have included Google, Wells Fargo, General Electric, Boeing  the Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America, and the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. His brother John previously served as White House chief of staff to President Bill Clinton and chaired Hillary Clinton’s campaign for president in 2016.

The National Association of Realtors provided funding for the recall campaign of pro-tenant Santa Cruz City Councilors Chris Krohn and Drew Glover replacing them with their property speculator allies who have since paved the way for the current string of anti-homeless laws and rubber stamped policies that encourage hedge funds to scoop up the seaside community.

But I believe there is possibly a more sinister reason why the Democrats have all but ignored this nation shattering crisis.  The DNC organized Capital Steps stunt with Congressperson Cori Bush and Congresses failure to introduce life saving legislation gave me the impression that the government wants there to be millions living outside without access to water, trash collection and toilets.

They could be intentionally forcing a dystopian hell-scape on the American people so that after a winter living in a Mad Max Cyclone the good people of  our nation will demand something be done and that something will be the implementation of a total police state and the removal of the unhoused “useless eaters” to those FEMA camps our homeless friends have been warning us of for the past decade. This was the strategy that was useful for the National Socialists of Germany in 1930s and could be a useful strategy for the global predator class of today.

Otherwise why are they forcing millions of people on the cold streets this winter?

The fog was still clinging to the tree branches at the entrance to Golden Gate Park that chilly August 15, 1988, noon. John, Derek and a few others put up two heavy folding tables and set out the pots of vegan food as we had every Monday for months. A collection of Dead Heads, vehicle dwellers and park campers gathered themselves into an informal line in preparation for another Food Not Bombs lunch. John had turned up a Meat Puppet favorite on his boom box. My wife Andrea and I join the scene. I had just been released from a week in St Mary;s Hospital after my appendix ruptured. 

A cluster of Haight Ashbury community members including photographer Greg Garr nervously watched and they were right to be concerned. San Francisco Police Commander Richard Holder leads a unit of riot police out of the woods and surrounds the food and literature tables. A police van wheels into position. Holder orders his men to arrest me first. 

Andrea rushes along with the arresting officer frantic, “He just got out of the hospital” she screams pointing to my side. He lifts my shirt to reveal a mountain of gauze bound around my waist blurting out, “Oh fuck.”

John, Derek and six other enthusiastic food servers are cuffed and stuffed into the van with me. Deetje Boler is on hand with a tape recorder and captures the distress. “If they aren’t going to let us eat with Food Not Bombs than lets rush Cal-Foods across the street.” It doesn’t happen. Instead people chant Food Not Bombs and we prisoners sway back and forth rocking the van to our own chants. The nine of us are freed from booking at 850 Bryant about 14 hours later. The long day sitting in that dirty concrete cel didn’t dampen our enthusiasm. 

These arrests were the Recreation and Parks Department’s response to our July 11, 1988, request for a permit to share our literature and food at Haight and Stanyan.  

I woke the next day to news that the San Francisco Chronicle had run a page 3 top of the fold story on the arrests illustrated with a three column photo of riot police guarding our food from the hungry. That angered many who had not witness the cruelty first hand. We pulled together a meeting of community activists, agreed we would return on Monday, August 22 meeting at the Haight Street side of Buena Vista Park and march to our Golden Gate Park location. David Solnit made a flyer using the Greg Garr’s photo from the Chronicle article of the helmeted police surrounding the food and servers.

We meet at 11:30 at Central and Haight. Cases of produce lined the sidewalk. Pots of rice, beans and soup were placed on a collection of milk crates in preparation to the march. Many people arrived with pots and spoons to bang as we paraded towards Stanyan Street. Max Ventura stood on the grassy slope above the gathering crowd a sang “The World Turned Upside Down” by Leon Rosselson. 

The gathered flooded Haight Street chanting Food Not Bombs, Food Not Bombs. A colorful mix of signs, banners, produce and pots of food defiantly marched towards the entrance of Golden Gate Park. The police on motorcycles made a few timid attempts to clear the street but were ignored. 

We set out our gifts of lunch and produce on tarps since we had yet to recover our confiscated tables from the police. Our regulars formed a line. One by one the first twenty or so people were shared out gift of lunch. That is when the Tactical Unit of the Police stomped up and started to drag the servers off to a line of police vans parked along Waller Street. A camera man from CNN was among the journalists covering what would be another 29 arrests for sharing food without permission. Andrea and I snuck away down Waller and hide in the woods of Buena Vista Park when the police started swinging clubs. I still had a healing gash in my side and couldn’t take that risk of a beating.

The story goes global. The New York Times, Times of India, The London Times, local media and CNN reported that 24 volunteers had been arrested for feeding the hungry. 

An even larger number of community members meet again a week later at Haight and Central and march down Haight to risk arrest sharing food. This time the police hesitate due to the bad publicity and they make no arrests.  San Francisco Police Spokesperson Jerry Senkier tells the media that they don”t have a problem with Food Not Bombs feeding the hungry. “There has to be some kind of (police) action. At this point it seems to be a political statement on their part not a food give away issue.”

Hundreds of people showed on Labor Day to risk arrest. The riot police gave up after cuffing 59 food sharers hauling them off booking at 850 Bryant Street. 

And this is were the story gets interesting. The Ryan Shapiro of Property of the People texted me this July 2021 to say they had received another batch of FBI Joint Terrorism Task Forced documents about investigations into Food Not Bombs. One was a report to the San Francisco Field Office of the FBI dated August 29, 1988, that refers to “Date Advised” August 22, 1988.  Much of this document is still classified secret but there is enough information to let us know that a reliable source from Squad 14, The FBI’s San Francisco Field Office’s Foreign Counterintelligence Unit had furnished information claiming Food Not Bombs was a “National Security Threat” (b1). This person’s identity and the details of his or her report still remain classified “Secret”. What is in those other pages that would justify our being a national security threat at a time when there were not more than 20 Food Not Bombs volunteers total that were sharing vegan meals in just three cities, San Francisco, Boston and Long Beach.

Some of our volunteers and supporters joined their families and friends for the Thanksgiving Holiday. When they returned to San Francisco they mentioned that National Guard personnel had approached them as they waited for their flight home on seeing a Food Not Bombs button pinned to they’re clothing to say they had just taken a class on domestic terrorism that featured Food Not Bombs saying “Food Not Bombs is one of American’s Most Hardcore Terrorist groups.”

This is the most recent draft of the last chapter of  The Food Terrorist Diaries, a book that I am currently writing.

Chapter 61 – THAT PHONE CALL 

The phone rings at 9:30 pm. I’ve stopped answering the late-night calls. A gift to myself after my second back surgery in six months. 

But I look at the smart phone. UNLISTED NUMBER. Unlisted numbers are never worth answering yet I don’t know why but I take the call.

“I’m in Central Asia you understand” the man starts in a shaky voice. No hello, no I am so and so, just an announcement that the American sounding caller  has dialed the Food Not Bombs phone from Asia.

“You see,” he continues without a pause, “things are really bad”.

He asks why Americans are not in the streets protesting the wars.

He tells me Americans don’t know whats going on in Central Asia.

Afghanistan I ask.

It didn’t seem like he wanted to say but yes, Afghanistan he admits.

I can tell from his voice that he is really upset.

“People don’t understand. Last week I checked into a hotel and paid for three nights telling the manager not to bother me. You can get Fentanyl real cheap here.  We get it from China,” he adds.  “So I took so much I was sure I would die but I woke up 36 hours later.”

He asked if I knew what a stop loss was. I told him I did, one military redeployment after another. 

“I have been in Iraq or Afghanistan for the last 13 years and I just can’t take it any more.”

I asked if he talked with his superior officer. He had and was told to suck it up.

He went on to say, “I’m trying to stop drinking.”

He continued in his shaky voice,  “I was in a convoy and a kid on a scooter came near us. You know kids on scooters could have a bomb so I shot him but he didn’t have a bomb.” 

His voice cracked, “I killed an innocent child for no reason. If the US wasn’t here we wouldn’t be killing kids like him.” 

He asks again, “ How come there are no mass protests against the wars?”

I agree we need to organize against the wars but its difficult. Trump is giving Americans lots to protest but so far war is low on the list even with his threats against Little Rocket Man.

My caller continues, “I’m not worried about nuclear war so much as the wars we already have.”

I asked if he had talked with his unit’s chaplain. He tells me he is not religious. I suggest maybe he could start a Food Not Bombs group in Afghanistan since he had mentioned that he volunteered with a local chapter before signing up for the military horrified by the World Trade Center attacks.

He thought that wouldn’t be a good idea. “Remember the US dropped orange packets of food for a while during the beginning of the war on Afghanistan  than dropped orange cluster bombs that looked like the food drops. No one would trust me here and I don’t blame them.”

He tells me he logs on to Indymedia and follows Food Not Bombs on line hoping to see a mass uprising against the wars. 

The compassion that inspired him to volunteer with Food Not Bombs as a teenager was the compassion that inspired him to join the military.

“Thanks for speaking with me. I am going to get drunk.”

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