Cooking up Non-violent Civil-disobedient Direct Action for the Hungry: ‘Food Not Bombs’ and the Resurgence of Radical Democracy in the US

This paper examines the efforts of one of the fastest-growing (anarchist) social movement groups in the world, ‘Food Not Bombs’ (FNB), to redefine urban anti-hunger politics in the US. The aim is to understand how FNB contests the politics and processes of poor people’s containment through their efforts to develop new, decommodified modes of biopolitics. As it is central to their success, the paper focuses on how FNB uses non-violent civil-disobedient direct action to provide an alternative grassroots response to the destructive market-driven imperatives of neo-liberal capitalism. The case of FNB provides an example of the continued potential for mutual aid and cooperativism in the city and does so against the backdrop of growing injustices within an ever-globalising world. Ultimately, the paper shows that FNB offers an example of the kinds of resistance necessary to secure the most fundamentally inherent right to the city, which is the right to eat and survive in the city.

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