Cooking up a revolution: Food Not Bombs, Homes Not Jails, and resistance to gentrification

Sean Parson

doi:10.7765/9781526108104

On Labor Day in 1988 two hundred hungry and homeless people went to Golden Gate Park in search of a hot meal, while fifty-four activists from Food Not Bombs, surrounded by riot police, lined up to serve them food. The riot police counted twenty-five served meals, the legal number allowed by city law before breaking permit restrictions, and then began to arrest people. The arrests proceeded like an assembly line: an activist would scoop a bowl of food and hand it to a hungry person. A police officer would then handcuff and arrest that activist. Immediately, the next activist in line would take up the ladle and be promptly arrested. By the end of the day fifty-four people had been arrested for “providing food without a permit.” These arrests were not an aberration but part of a multi-year campaign by the city of San Francisco against radical homeless activists. Why would a liberal city arrest activists helping the homeless? In exploring this question, the book uses the conflict between the city and activists as a unique opportunity to examine the contested nature of urban politics, homelessness, and public space, while developing an anarchist alternative to liberal urban politics, which is rooted in mutual aid, solidarity, and anti-capitalism.

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Cooking up a revolution

Food Not Bombs, Homes Not Jails, and resistance to gentrification

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Contents

Frontmatter
pp i-iv

Dedication
pp v-vi

Contents
pp vii-vii

List of figures
pp viii-ix

Acknowledgements
pp x-x

List of abbreviations
pp xi-xii

1 - Turning statistics into people: from sick talk to the politics of solidarity
pp 1-19

2 - What dumpstered soup tells us about violence, charity, and politics
pp 20-42

3 - Parks, permits, and riot police: understanding the politics of public space occupations 1988–1991
pp 43-62

4 - The war against the homeless: Frank Jordan, broken windows, and anti-homeless politics in San Francisco
pp 63-81

5 - The homeless fight back: the politics of homeless resistance
pp 82-98

6 - Bolt cutters and the politics of expropriation: Homes Not Jails, urban squatting, and gentrification
pp 99-118

7 - Towards an anarchist “right to the city”
pp 119-133

Coda: theses on homelessness, public space, and urban resistance
pp 134-138

References
pp 139-145

Index
pp 146-147

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Cooking up a revolution

Food Not Bombs, Homes Not Jails, and resistance to gentrification

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