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
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
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
FOOD NOT BOMBS IN THIS TIME OF TECHNO-FASCISM
March 17, 2025
CIA funded Billionaires publicly take control of the United States while we organize our resistance to their digital dystopian panopticon.
“…one suspects that democracy, whatever that means, is exhausted…” Peter Thiel, February 21, 2024
The eight college aged antinuclear activists who started Food Not Bombs in May 1980 imagined a time when we would need to respond to a time like we are living through today. We thought President Reagan would be the Trump of our time but thankfully it’s taken four more decades to arrive at this dystopian moment.
We could have never imagined there would be nearly 1,000 autonomous chapters of Food Not Bombs in over 65 countries when we started. But we did consider a number of strategies of survival.
If faced with the repression of a totalitarian police state our vision was to build our own communities outside the system with a focus on meeting the basics of water, food, shelter, free expression and friendship.
We had planned to coordinate days of actions with what we at the time dreamed might be a network of dozens of Food Not Bombs chapters spread across to United States. Our first multi-city action happened on October 15, 1988, when all three groups that existed at the time participated in a protest against the US war in El Salvador. The Boston group helped organize and shared meals outside the US Capital in Washington DC while chapters in San Francisco and Long Beach provided meals with those protesting to end the war in their own cities.
This vision of creating a community outside a totalitarian society was experienced in a condensed version by over a thousand people who participated in the 1995 International Food Not Bombs Gathering held in San Francisco during the 50th anniversary celebrations of the founding of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.
This ten day event may offer suggestions on how to build a community of sanctuary from the dystopian digital prison being implemented by the DOGE transfer of the US government’s assets to this junta of techno-fascists. Programmable digital currency linked to your biometric facial digital ID connected to the internet of bodies could be our future if their plans become reality. The Stargate of electronic control and warfare.
The hours of preparing and sharing free vegan meals together built many strong friendships. Smuggled plastic buckets of stew and garbage bags of pastries and bread were quickly shared at United Nations Plaza at noon before the San Francisco Tactical Squad marched in to make the daily felony conspiracy arrests. Over 130 were cuffed for serving food in violation of a court order. We were released a day or two later in to the welcoming smiles and hugs of our fellow Food Not Bombs activists.
At a meeting of about 200 people we came to consensus that we would continue to unite around our three principles that we had agreed to during the first International Gathering held in San Francisco before the October 1992 protests against the 500th anniversary of Columbus invading the Americas.
1. The food is always vegan or vegetarian and free to anyone rich or poor, stoned or sober.
2. Each group is autonomous, there are no leaders, directors or headquarters and decisions are made by consensus and we strive to include those eating with us in our meetings.
3. We are not a charity but instead we are dedicated to taking nonviolent direct action to change society so no one is forced to sleep in the streets or seek food at a soup kitchen.
The assembled also agreed that we would never request or accept a permit from the government to share meal with the hungry. Sharing the gift of food is always an unregulated act of compassion.
Our decentralized horizontal philosophy of organizing is our strength. A strength that could save us under the current conditions.
While these meals and meetings were getting underway people started to pass through our tiny convergence center in an office we rented for the occasion on the fifth floor above one of the Off Broadway theaters on Market Street. Those staffing the office registered over 1,000 names of those who came to attend our second world gathering.
The first Indymedia Center ever was housed in that same office. We broadcast news of the gathering from a low watt pirate radio station whose antenna was mounted on the theater’s roof. That got busted after just a few days but we were also broadcasting on Free Radio Berkeley and San Francisco Liberation Radio. Stephen Dunifer held workshops on how to build your own low-watt free radio transmitter and radio station. Participants took these plans home and set up their own stations. I had the honor of being a guest on many of those stations while on tour. You can see our diagrams in the book Hungry for Peace.
By the time of the blockade of the first World Trade Organization Summit in Seattle in November 1999 there were Indymedia Centers in cities all over the world. Activists in Australia wrote code that made it possible to upload news, photos and videos of the action globally. Massive protests like the blockage of the 1999 WTO Summit rarely made the news outside the city where they were happening before Indymedia. A protest against the first war on Iraq attracted nearly a million people in San Francisco yet few outside the Bay Area had any idea this took place. People are still surprised when I tell them about the Rodney King Uprising in San Francisco and the implementation of martial law assuming that it had only happened in Los Angeles.
As part of the gathering the group Homes Not Jails invited activists to help take over the abandoned officers quarters at the recently decommissioned Presidio Military Base. The housing was in perfect condition and could have housed more than a hundred homeless vets but since it has one of the best views of the Pacific in the city they were not about to sacrifice the property to the poor. Federal police arrested the occupiers hours after we seized the buildings. Even so Homes Not Jails also occupied other housing San Francisco left empty by the Savings and Loan Crisis and was providing shelter for dozens of formerly homeless people.
The workshops on the most effective way to squat abandoned buildings were a popular feature of our gathering. There were also classes on lock picking, making giant puppets and banners, consensus decision making, vegan cooking and other organizing strategies as well as the free radio workshops.
In contrast to the drama in San Francisco there was no threat of arrest for sharing meals at People’s Park in Berkeley where East Bay Food Not Bombs hosted playful events on the lawn and powerful concerts on the stage. Terri Compost shared her skills in what could be called a Food Not Lawns garden near the stage.
The closing event was a torch light march against the death penalty. Black Panther journalist Mumia Abu-Jamal had been sentenced to death in Pennsylvania and was set to be executed soon after the gathering. Hundreds marched from UN Plaza through the Mission with torches, banging drums, chanting, tipping over a flaming dumpster outside the Mission District Police Station as we marched past the precinct. Then the parade was off to the Castro where the police kettled the procession making the country’s largest arson arrest taking over 200 people to jail.
Our ten days of skill sharing and resistance inspired many participants to return home excited to strengthen the Food Not Bombs movement, start their own radio stations, plant vegetable gardens, organize Indymedia Centers and initiate local squatter campaigns. Consider reading our book Hungry for Peace to get an idea of how to start creating an outside the matrix community in your city.
The horrors of the techno-fascists who are now overtly seizing power may feel over whelming but thankfully we have the sanctuary of our Food Not Bombs community.
After 45 years of direct action and service many of us have the experience needed to respond to these terrifying days. We are more prepared than ever to welcome another wave of Americans who could be forced into homelessness under the policies of the privatization of Medicare, and SNAP food stamps. This crisis is not limited to the United States. European governments are removing many of their social safety nets so they can fund their war with Russia and a failing global economy is sure to increase poverty around the world.
Thankfully the Democratic Party’s phony astroturf “resistance” rallies calling for more war and genocide and our vote in the midterms are slowly evaporating as their political party commits a slow suicide. The fact that the share the same agenda as those they are protesting has become all to obvious.
At the same time the Palestinian and immigrant solidarity protests are building an authentic resistance to this totalitarian coup free of Democratic Party domination. Food Not Bombs activist are supporting those actions as well as participating with Veterans for Peace, local homeless unions, LGBTQIA+ diversity rights groups, anti racist activist, labor organizations, mutual aid collectives and environmentalists to build a movement to resist the tyranny of these cruel technocratic oligarchs.
As a Great Depression scale economic crash unfolds Food Not Bombs groups are in a position to use our decades of practice to ease the suffering. No such movement was in place when the world was ravaged by the impact of the 1929 crash. The Catholic Workers, anarchist and communist collectives had to start from scratch as the calamity unfolded. Our flexibility and history of responding to major crises like Hurricanes Katrina, and Sandy, the Covid Lockdowns and the Hurricane Helene floods provides us with an advantage when it comes to making a difference at this critical time.
Along with our regular sharing of food and survival gear we are able to offer our years of logistical skills to support a wider resistance movement. Logistics are what we do week in and week out. We could even initiate our own nationwide campaigns of protest, blockades and noncooperation to this dystopian AI dominated digital war and surveillance state of control. Our creativity is unlimited.
If you are not already volunteering with a local Food Not Bombs group I encourage you to do so. If there isn’t a chapter in your community you are welcome to start a group with your friends. We are happy to help. It could not only save your own sanity it can provide the infrastructure for the change required to protect our rights and wellbeing from the techno-fascist CIA contractors, hedge fund vultures and financial institutions who are seeking to impose their will on society.
Our 45th anniversary reminds us that Food Not Bombs is capable of accomplishing amazing things. If there ever was a time when the spirit of Food Not Bombs was needed that time is now.
Food Not Bombs documentary of the 1995 International Gathering – San Francisco
SOUPSTOCK 2025
Saturday, May 24, 2025 – San Lorenzo Park, Santa Cruz, California – Visit our website to find the celebration nearest you or email menue@foodnotbombs.net
https://foodnotbombs.net/new_site/
HOW DID I KNOW?
February 5, 2025
By Food Not Bombs co-founder Keith McHenry
“Citizens will be on their best behavior because we are constantly recording and reporting everything that’s going on.” Oracle’s Larry Ellison – September 24, 2024
My mother’s father John Vanderpoole Phelan slowly rowed our family’s sky blue dingy into position across the placid waters of Middle Pond a few hundred feet from our beach on Cape Cod. My 5 year old frame sat on the bow bench armed with my first fishing pole. I faced my grandfather at the stern. He picked up a fresh water mussel from a pail, broke the paper thin shell, scooped out the slimy life and stabbed his fish hook into its grey flesh. I followed his instructions, skewed my bait onto my hook and dropped my lead sinker into the still waters. It wasn’t long before there was a tug on my line.
He instructed me to snap my pole to set the hook. A heavy creature fought as I reeled it to the surface.
“Unhook him and smack his head hard on the gunnel” he explained. “You don’t want him to suffer,” he added. I looked at those big perch eyes starring back at me, slid the hook from his gasping lips and smashed it against the wooden boat.
He continued with his lesson. “One day you may be asked to kill others. This is our duty. Those you kill will have no moral ambiguity. They will just be dead but for you it will be more difficult. This is the white man’s burden.”
He would repeat this lesson in one way or another for the next ten years often adding that I was born into a genetically superior family that was tasked to defend the rewards of capitalism.
My Grampy Phelan followed the path of many in the intelligence world attending Phillips Academy, Dartmouth College and Harvard Law. He was recruited into the US Army’s Office of Strategic Services, attended boot camp in Biloxi, Mississippi, spent time overseeing the testing of Boeing’s B-29 Superfortress in Wichita, Kansas before being stationed in Burma where he directed bombing raids on Japan during World War II.
The 10 acre property on the Cape was our vacation home. My mother’s parents lived in Needham, Massachusetts in a huge two story white house with Dartmouth green shutters. My bed was down in their finished basement. I slept next to two metal file cabinets filled with the MIT formulas that my grandfather would sell to Ken Olson and became the foundation of Digital Electronics. A black and white photo hung on the wall next to my bed showing thousands of people in Burma smashing rocks with hammers or balancing reed baskets piled with stones as they toiled building my grandfather’s runway for his squadron of B-29s.
My grandfather’s first floor den was lined with 63 framed black and white photos that he snapped from 20,000 feet of his progress in the world’s most deadly bombing campaign,Operation Meeting House, the fire bombing of Tokyo.
I watched him pace under those photos arguing over the phone with General Curtis LaMay and then Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara about the need to drop an atomic bomb on Hanoi. We had to “send the Communists a lesson.” he insisted. Let the world know that the US atomic bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki was not a “one off” and that America had no limits to what it would do to defend capitalism.
My grandfather taught me about how the US provoked Japan with tariffs and naval blockade and ordered the Pacific fleet to line up at Pearl Harbor to maximize the impact. He claimed that even though US intelligence knew Japan was about to attack the naval facility they intentionally concealed this from the base commander. My grandfather explained that he and his friends set up the attack “because otherwise the American people would never support a war in the Pacific.”
During those days when my grandfather was arguing the logic of a third nuclear strike his good friend Curtis LaMay was trying to convince President John F Kennedy of the logic of bombing a shopping mall in Miami and blaming it on Fidel Castro to justify an invasion of Cuba in their Operation Northwoods plot.
Grampy explained that elections were designed to divide people so they won’t be a threat to those in power. The intelligence agencies had the responsibility of placing people in positions of power making sure the correct people came to office and that according to him this included the President of the United States.
This can be achieved in many covert ways. For example their claims that the Hunter Biden Laptop was Russian disinformation to make sure Biden won or making a deal with Ayatollah Khomeini to hold the hostages at the US Embassy in Tehran in exchange for US weapons in an effort to sink President Jimmy Carter’s reelection campaign.
Chuck Schumer told Racheal Maddow in a January 2017 interview, “You take on the intelligence community, they have six ways from Sunday at getting back at you, so even for a practical, supposedly hard-nosed businessman [like Trump], he’s being really dumb to do this,” referring to claims by Trump that he would take on the Deep State. And sure enough the Deep State ate Trump and today we are witnessing the bitter fruits of a military dominated surveillance state free to overtly seize control of the government and confiscate its assets for their own benefit.
I spent the summer before high school living in that sweet little cubby in my grandfather’s basement while I attended summer classes at Needham High. He passed that winter.
My grandfather’s second wife held his funeral at the Congregational Church in Needham. The pastor claimed Grampy was a great and godly soul and would be remembered in heaven. I was stunned as my grandfather made it clear to me that he believed that God was a fiction and talked about his having belonged to a secret Satanic order.
When I was an art student at Boston University I had a part time job staffing Old South Meeting House on Milk and Washington Streets telling visitors about the drama of the Boston Tea Party, collecting the 50 cent entrance fee and selling post cards of the historic building.
During a lunch break I went to Boston Commons to eat and enjoy the warm spring sun. An older lady was standing on a milk crate telling a small audience of other elderly women about the threat of nuclear Armageddon and Mutually Assured Destruction. Her name was Dr Helen Caldecott.
After absorbing Helen Caldecott’s speech it occurred to me that I could use my skills as an artist to address what seemed to be the most important yet mostly invisible issue of our times.
I dropped into the offices of Mobilization for Survival in the basement of Saint Peter’s Episcopal Church to see if I could put my artistic skills to use. It wasn’t long before I was participating with the just formed Boston Alliance Against the Registration and the Draft. At first, nearly a hundred people were attending the weekly meetings but the number of participants started to decrease after a few months.
We had organized a plan where we would table outside the local high schools in the weeks before the students left for summer vacation to warn them of the potential danger of cooperating. Red Sun Press was going to give us a great price for the literature we intended to distribute. Once we were set to launch our campaign one of the leaders of BAARD announced she had spent most of our money on a first class plane ticket from San Francisco to Boston for Pentagon Papers whistleblower Daniel Ellsberg and that he had agreed to speak at a rally on the Boston Commons after attending his child’s graduation at Harvard. We needed to raise more money for our printing.
Since the number of people attending our meetings was plummeting just when they were most needed my friend Frank and I called those on our phone list to see why they stopped participating. Most were disturbed about the jokes by some of the core members about “getting guns for the revolution” so we made a suggestion that we stop any reference to guns since the point of the organization was to oppose war. There was push back from the others so we agreed to take a vote at the next meeting.
When Frank and I arrived to the meeting a dozen or more people who had never attended before were there to vote against our proposal and the policy was not adopted.
After the meeting I returned to the street with a bucket of wheat paste and a stack of flyers but I was arrested before posting the first flyer. Frank was still in the office and saw the woman who had spent all our funds on the first class plane flight for Ellsberg dial up the Cambridge Police. This event is described towards the end of Brian Glick’s book “War at Home” on covert actions against the peace movement.
The shock at learning that BAARD had been infiltrated and was intentionally sabotaging our efforts at tabling and plans for the July 21,1980 protest outside the Main Post Office inspired us to start another group we called AWOL. We organized our first meeting at the Clamshell Alliance office at 595 Mass Ave in Central Square and just as it was about to start members of BAARD arrived with rebar and started attacking us.
It was very disturbing to discover that many of those who you thought were friends were likely working for the FBI. I was no longer a virgin to covert state manipulation and disruption.
I would face years of FBI, CIA, Interpol, local police and corporate intelligence operations. I have survived over 40 years of honey traps, the confiscation of all my out going and incoming mail for months at a time, elaborate smear campaigns, wiretaps, police doubles dressed as me who did crimes that I would be arrested for and the trauma of learning that an FBI agent slept with my wife while I sat in jail facing 25 to life in prison.
On August 15, 1988, the San Francisco Police arrested nine Food Not Bombs volunteer at the entrance to Golden Gate Park for sharing meals without a permit, a permit we would learn did not exist. A week later another 24 of us were arrested at Haight and Stanyan. Fifty-five more food servers were cuffed and taken to jail on Labor Day. The pressure on Mayor Art Agnos to end the spectacle led to our negotiating an end to the arrests and the creation of a permit process. I had to take the City to Federal Court to force them to comply with the process but they revoked the permit shortly after issuing it anyway and deleted the permit a year later.
That Thanksgiving volunteers wearing the Food Not Bombs button on their coat were approached by uniformed members of the National Guard as they waited for flights home after the holiday. They remarked that they had seen the Food Not Bombs logo at that weekend’s Domestic Terrorism Workshop claiming we were “one of America’s most hardcore terrorist groups.”
In 2021 as part of a decade long Freedom of Information Acts Request effort by “Property of the People” we received a document that showed that the FBI- Joint Terrorism Task Force had watched the August 22nd mass arrests and sent a memo on August 29, 1988, to the FBI’s San Francisco Field Office claiming we were a “credible national security threat.” There were only three chapters at the time with a total of 30 volunteers combined.
The San Francisco Police made over 1,000 arrest in all for sharing meals ending in 1995. I was arrested 94 times, spent 500 days in jail and as noted before faced 25 to life in prison after being framed by the Mayor’s office. I was captured three time and taken to a dark room where my clothes were ripped off, was lifted by my arms and legs until my ligaments and tendons were torn and stuffed into a tiny Stress Position Cage. I spent hours in that cold dark cage struggling unsuccessfully to stretch my legs.
A parade of Food Not Bombs volunteers have been framed in FBI invented terror plots. Connor Cash on Long Island, Eric McDavid in California and three of the cooks at Occupy Cleveland, Douglas Wright, Brandon Baxter and Connor Stevens are among the many targeted.
While I find it frustrating when people express distress or support for the actions of Donald Trump suggesting they believe he is all powerful I understand they’ve had a lifetime of messaging that suggests that things like elections and the law are real.
I believe Trump was “hired” by the Deep State to perform the needed drama designed to implement the strategies formulated in think tanks, intelligence funded university research programs, the halls at the Pentagon and Langley and corporate boardrooms on Wall Street, in London, Tel Aviv and Silicon Valley.
The choice of JD Vance as Trump’s running mate signaled that the Deep State was no longer going to play nice. When the PayPal Mafia of CIA contractors at Palantir took over power of the United States on January 20, 2025, it became clear to me that things are about to get very bleak and not just the ways the liberals have been crowing about.
At Trump’s first press conference of his second term on January 21st he announced the $500 billion artificial intelligence infrastructure project called Stargate. OpenAI’s Sam Altman, Masayoshi Son of SoftBank and Larry Ellison of Oracle introduced their grand designs as though they were the masters of the Universe.
Larry Ellison stepped to the mic, “Okay. Thank you, Mr. President. We certainly couldn’t do this without you. It would simply be impossible. AI holds incredible promise for all of us, for every American. We’ve actually been working with OpenAI for a while, and with Masa for a while. The data centers are actually under construction.The first of them are under construction in Texas. Each building is a half a million square feet. There are 10 buildings currently being built, but that will expand to 20, and other locations beyond the Abilene location, which is our first location.”
“Walking down a suburban neighborhood street already feels like a Ring doorbell panopticon.” writes Kenneth Niemeyer of Business Insider after Larry Ellison spoke at Oracle financial analysts meeting in September 2024.
“We’re going to have supervision,” Ellison said. “Every police officer is going to be supervised at all times, and if there’s a problem, AI will report that problem and report it to the appropriate person. Citizens will be on their best behavior because we are constantly recording and reporting everything that’s going on.”
It appears that the United States government is about to be privatized and handed over to the techno-fascist oligarchs associated with the intelligence community. They seem to have the belief that their AI program has finally sucked up enough data that they are ready to implement a totalitarian terror state here at home and launch massive automated wars abroad to achieve their vision of global domination.
So when people ask me how I come to my unusual perspectives it is because I have nearly five decades of real world experience in the application of the grand lessons of my grandfather.
Food Not Bombs – PO Box 422, Santa Cruz CA 95061 USA – https://foodnotbombs.net/new_site/
THE FOUNDING OF FOOD NOT BOMBS – May 24, 1980
April 11, 2024
Bitter tear gas clawed at our eyes as National Guard clubs smashed against our frames. Several thousand arrived in this little New Hampshire town intent on gaining access to the Seabrook Nuclear Power Station construction site to stop the nuclear power station from going on line.
That sunny spring morning Boston University Law Student Brian Feigenbaum stood before the local media as whiffs of white acrid gas drifted in the background blurring the view of the main gate and the hundreds of State Police and Guardsmen guarding the Public Service Company’s investment.
Brian outlined the dangers to downwind Boston and intentions of the Coalition for Direct Action at Seabrook and our May 24th Occupation Attempt.
After several failed attempts to breech the high chain link fences hundreds of us retreated to the warm asphalt entrance outside the facility.
Brian and his friends were chatting when a half dozen riot police waded through the crowd, lifted him to his feet and cuffed him whisking him off to jail.
Brian’s friends rushed off in pursuit. We got the impression that he was picked as an example since he was one of the few of us who could be identified because of his TV appearances. In those days we never came to protests with an ID and it was common when arrested to use names like Alexander Berkman or Emma Goldman.
A substantial amount would be required to make bail. Fortunately one of us knew of a man of means who was able to loan us enough to win his freedom.
That evening as six of us chugged south in our old van towards home in Cambridge we bounced ideas on future protests and discussed possible ways to pay back our benefactor. Bake sales rose to the top of the list.
As to be expected that was not very lucrative. We also ran an informal moving company called Smooth Move. A family we were moving was tossing out a copy of that famous poster,”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” and we at once knew what to do.
So we headed off to the army navy surplus store in Central Square to buy uniforms. We set up again in Harvard Square with our poster and pastries but this time we brought the cardboard backed poster dressed as soldiers and pretended that we were raising money to buy a bomber. While we didn’t really make much more cash we did notice that many more pedestrians visited, giving us a chance to educate them about the nuclear industry.
Meanwhile I was delivering my unsold leftover produce from my job at Bread and Circus to the mothers at the Portland Avenue public housing projects. One morning they excitedly pointed out that the glass office building at the end of the block had finally opened, reporting that it was a laboratory that designed nuclear weapons. It was Draper Lab and sure enough they were working on the guidance systems for intercontinental nuclear weapons. What a symbol of misdirected priorities and at a time when Ronald Reagan was promising to cut social services and increase military spending. Families needing food on one side of the street while those with money were busy designing guided bombs and the idea for the name Food Not Bombs was born.
The May 24th action at Seabrook Nuclear Power Station and our inability to occupy the site led us to the idea of bringing the protests to the doorsteps of those profiting from the project. Top on that list was the First National Bank of Boston and its board members. Their next stockholders meeting was scheduled for a month after President Reagan’s inauguration on March 26, 1981 at the Federal Reserve Bank across from South Station.
We set out to organize a theatrical soup line on the Atlantic sidewalk so those entering the stockholders meeting would see a line of Depression Era hobos waiting for soup. Our message on our literature was both against the nuclear projects pushed by these bankers but also in opposition to local investment policies that created areas of neglect and poverty. The banks board was well represented by the CEOs of military contractors and would be reaping in huge profits from the new administration’s proposed increase in military spending.
The night before the lunch action we realized we had done a poor job of recruiting friends to play hobo so I went to the old Pine Street Inn to see if the men staying at Boston’s Depression era homeless shelter would be interested in joining the protest. Several remarked that they hadn’t been to a protest since the Vietnam War and expressed an interest in joining our performance against the bankers.
Our Smooth Move van sidled up to the curb below the towering silver Federal Reserve Bank. We set up our saw horse and plywood table and slid a huge pot of steaming hot vegan stew. Our supporters from the homeless shelter ambled up. I oriented the quickly assembled participants in a line along the sidewalk. One by one they stepped up to receive their cup of warmth. “God bless you,” the first in line whispered.
An angry blue hair pearls gave us the middle finder as she stomped towards the Fed doors. Another stockholder thanked us sharing she was on her way to vote on some issue facing the bank. A young businessman who had just departed one of the South Station trains stopped to speak with us expressing amazement at the sight of a soup line, “Wow, Reagan has only been in office a month and there are already soup kitchens.”
The guys and one woman who ate with us asked us to share food everyday. They had no access to food all day long until their donuts and coffee back at the Pine Street Inn. So that evening while cleaning up from the day we agreed this had to be one of the most magical days any one of us had ever experienced. Without hesitation we all decided to quit our jobs and spend our days recovering groceries, making deliveries to local housing projects, and sharing vegan meals on the streets.
Thus Food Not Bombs was born.
Forty-four years later Food Not Bombs has grown to an all volunteer global movement sharing meals and groceries in over 1,000 cities in nearly 70 countries.
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