The past several weeks had been crazy, with reporters interviewing us, city officials supposedly offering us a building for cooking and serving (it actually wasn't available or theirs to give away in the first place), and the press misrepresenting everything so that we looked uncooperative and implying that we had sinister intentions. And, of course, there were all the arrests to deal with. Labor Day was a Monday holiday, so we needed to cook an extra-large amount of food to serve at lunch. Each successive Monday, we had been attracting larger numbers of homeless and supporters, not to mention police, in response to all the press coverage and controversy of the previous arrests. Thinking back to how innocently we stumbled into this bizarre situation is mind-numbing. 

Although we had been serving free food in Golden Gate Park every Monday since May, the police stopped by our table on the first Monday
in August and told us we couldn't serve food there. We told them we believed we did not need a permit to give away free food, that it was a constitutionally protected activity, but that we had written the Parks Department anyway. We told the police we had hand-delivered a letter on July 11 asking for a permit but had not yet received an answer. The cops left, but as we loaded the last boxes at the end of our day, two cops came up to us and demanded to know "What are you doing here?" and "Do you have a permit to be here?" We told them we were just leaving. At that point, the police started giving us tickets for things we weren't even doing, like not having our seatbelts on, driving with a broken taillight, and other things we couldn't even figure out. We were legally parked with the engine off, and we were getting moving violations. We knew we were in trouble. While signing the citation, the person sitting in the driver's seat was punched in the face by one of the cops for making "inappropriate" comments. The cop opened the door of our truck, pulled him out, threw him on the hood of the vehicle, and handcuffed him. A police wagon arrived, and he was taken to jail. An hour later, he was released without charges. 

We realized next Monday's regular lunch might be visited again by these same two cops and we felt apprehensive as we cooked our huge pots of miso soup. We loaded the truck, drove to Haight and Stanyan, and unloaded with the help of those who had come to eat, setting up along the sidewalk A line formed, and we began serving our food. Within minutes, police vans and cops on horses started coming from every direction. Two long lines of riot police, with riot sticks and helmets, marched out of the woods and surrounded the tables and volunteers. The captain in charge ordered them to arrest the servers. Nine of us were handcuffed and led to an awaiting police wagon, but the energy in the police van was high. Food Not Bombs could be arrested for serving free food in a public park; could this be the start of America's own "Gandhian Salt Marches?" 

After finishing lunch preparations on Labor Day, we again loaded the truck with food. We didn't want to drive directly to Golden Gate Park because we were afraid we might have all our food confiscated before we even started. 

Golden Gate Park, August 29, 1988. Photograph by Greg Gaar.