Introduction

The name Food Not Bombs states our most fundamental principle: 
society needs to promote life, not death. Our society condones, and even promotes, violence and domination. Authority and power are derived from the threat and use of violence. This affects our everyday lives through the constant threat of violent crime, domestic violence, police repression, and the threat of total annihilation from nuclear war. Such constant exposure to violence, including the threat thereof, leads many people to hopelessness and low self-esteem. 

Poverty is violence, and one expression of poverty is hunger. Millions of Americans, almost half of them children, go hungry each day. Childhood malnutrition contributes heavily to infant mortality rates, which are higher in the United States than in other industrialized nations. Globally, we continue to spend more time and resources developing, using, and threatening to use weapons of massive human and planetary destruction than on nurturing and celebrating life. By spending this money on bombs instead of food, our government perpetuates and exacerbates poverty's violence by not providing food for everyone in need. Food Not Bombs has chosen to take a stand against violence and hunger; we are committed to nonviolent social change by giving out free vegetarian food, thus celebrating and nurturing life.