What does Food Not Bombs mean?

The name Food Not Bombs may sound strange to people who hear it for the first time. “Food Not Bombs?
What does that mean?” Our name is a succinct summary of our two main values:

Food
We believe that every single person has a right to the necessities of life, especially food and shelter. No other proclaimed liberties matter if we do not have our basic needs met. We also believe that it is entirely within our power as a society to provide these things to everyone if we so choose. Just look at the statistics. Before the pandemic, around 10% of US households experienced food insecurity, rising to
about 25% during 2020 [1]. At the same time, the USDA estimates that 30-40% of food produced is wasted [2]. This is taking place even as the government spends over 20 billion dollars on agricultural subsidies [3]. We produce far more than enough for everyone, but it is more profitable for businesses to destroy essential resources than to give it to those who need it. In a similar story, there are an estimated
500,000 unhoused people on any given night in the US, along with almost 20 million vacant homes [4]. Not only that, but homelessness costs the state over $35,000 per person per year while permanent housing for every single unhoused person would cost only $12,800 per year [5]. The choice to keep people on the streets is a deliberate one made by those who benefit from the current system.
In the words of Angela Davis: “The idea of freedom is inspiring. But what does it mean? If
you are free in the political sense but have no food, what’s that? The freedom to starve?”

Not Bombs
Many of the resources that could be used to care and provide for the community are instead being diverted into systems of violence. This includes both violence abroad in the form of the military industrial complex, and violence at home in the form of police and the prison industrial complex. We are opposed to all forms of state-sanctioned violence. The US spends over 750 billion dollars annually on the military—more than the next 10 countries combined [6]. This money is funnelled into the hands of weapons manufacturers and private military contractors to facilitate the murder of innocent civilians (over 71,000 in Afghanistan alone [7]) while doing next to nothing to improve the lives of either the citizens of the US,
or the people whose lands we forcefully occupy. Prisons and the police are the weaponized arm
of the State and Capitalism, built on racism and oppression. Their purpose is not to protect us,
the citizens, but to intimidate us and protect capital while allowing the State to reinforce itself. These issues exist wherever there are police and prisons, but the problem is exacerbated ten-fold in America; US police would be considered the world’s third largest army [8], and US prisons hold nearly 25% of the
world’s incarcerated population [9]. We advocate the abolition of both the military and prison industries, and we believe, as Fannie Lou Harmer once said, “Nobody’s free until everybody’s free.”

In pursuit of these values, we share meals with the community made from food that would have gone to
waste, partner with local groups to advocate for the unhoused, supply food at local actions, and distribute radical literature on topics ranging from community gardens to prison abolition.

Sacramento Food Not Bombs

We collect food that would otherwise go to waste and cook a vegan meal that we share with our community as a protest against poverty and war.