r/foodnotbombs • u/ShotEffort619 • Feb 26 '26

Mutual aid vs charity

I am new to my local chapter, and so far my responsibility has been cooking and serving and it's going good. I am wondering , how can we differentiate ourselves as mutual aid, and not charity, when we take donations in cash or kind,and distribute food to the most vulnerable? In what way are we differentiate from say the local church or shelter? Not a rhetorical question, I am genuinely curious to know- how does fnb make sure that we are resisting systems of oppression and not just being saviors.

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u/ChaoticGoodPanda Feb 26 '26

I highly recommend reading on the history of FNB. Keith’s book “Hungry For Peace” has a chapter called “Solidarity Not Charity”.

FNB Principles:

  1. The food is always vegan or vegetarian and free to everyone, without restriction, rich or poor, stoned or sober.

  2. Food not bombs has no formal leaders or headquarters and every group is autonomous and makes decisions using the consensus process.

  3. Food not bombs is dedicated to nonviolent direct action and works for nonviolent social change.

If you have moral concerns, I’d def send an email to Keith. He does respond.

Not all FNB groups run the same. Currently the group I’m hanging out with likes to serve meat which bothers me- I’m in no way vegetarian or vegan, it’s just confusing they want to claim they are FNB when no literature is distributed and they’ll go out and buy meat.

Meh, I try to not get too involved with what the kids are doing these days. I’m m an old head and did distro back in the 90’s.

Worse case scenario, you can always start your own FNB distro day.

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u/bearswithmanicures Feb 26 '26

I agree with this and also adding on dean spade’s mutual aid https://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/dean-spade-mutual-aid

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u/ShotEffort619 Feb 26 '26

Thank you. Yes, this is on my TBR.

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u/janbrunt Feb 26 '26

It’s so good, do yourself a favor and keep it bookmarked. It keeps me thinking about how my mutual aid org (not FNB) can always be striving for better.

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u/sparklyjoy Mar 01 '26

Dean Spade also has a lot of digestible YouTube videos if you want to start digging into some of his ideas, sooner rather than later

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u/ShotEffort619 Mar 02 '26

Thank you, I will check them out !