Talk:Food Not Bombs

Idea for Sourcing

Consider adding some information about how the federal government has contributed to the problem of people living on the streets. For example, how public housing have been turned into for-profit developments, making them unavailable to low-income people.I think this could be a great example to flesh out your contribution. Heres a source I found that could maybe help with this- Npfarr (talk) 16:07, 7 November 2017 (UTC)

References

Overall Analysis

I'm not sure how much or what part was contributed to the group project I will be referencing, but all in all this is a pretty sound page in terms of publishable content. Aside from a few grammatical errors that I saw in the intro, on the surface, this looks to be pretty fine. However, some of the sources may need to be double checked and updated, seeing as how the article could have been up for a couple of years. Lorealhawk (talk) 00:04, 7 November 2017 (UTC)

@Lorealhawk: do you feel that sources need to be checked when articles have been online for a couple of years, more so than if articles have been online for a few months or a couple of decades? MPS1992 (talk) 01:15, 7 November 2017 (UTC)

@Lorealhawk: MPS1992 (talk) 01:15, 7 November 2017 (UTC)

Analysis - I think this article is very strong and actually really interesting. I never knew about this program and I think it is great. The content is strong with evidence but there are some aspects that are one-sided. I found a few run-on sentences but those are very easy to fix. Overall I think it is a strong informative article.Hengle (talk) 23:44, 7 November 2017 (UTC)

Peer Review Overall, I found the 'Food Not Bombs' page to be very informative, thorough, and well-researched. I will say however that it is important to remain objective. At times I felt like the writers were supporters of 'Food Not Bombs' rather than objective learners. I found this to be a problem especially in the section entitled "Lack of Nutrition in Neo-Liberalism". Would it be possible to do more research on some of the active chapters of the organization? This might help flesh out your page. Lastly, in the "In Anarchy" section, I didn't know what you were referring to when you said, "social understanding" ("leading to a large misuse of natural resources and social understanding"). Ksugseed (talk) 20:39, 10 November 2017 (UTC)

After Reading this article, I found it to be very informative and an interesting read. I had noticed that there are small but noticeable grammatical errors throughout the article. I would go back through and proofread to clean up those minor mistakes. I thought the article had a lot of deal and had covered a lot of key points. However, I believe when it comes to the topic of effects on the economy, There should be more examples and understanding. Maybe you should take about how it affected certain areas within the economy. How does it affect state local economies and broaden the effect on the national level? Also, the last sentence under effects of the economy should be looked at. there should be a reference to that remark to hold it credible. Bgreen29 (talk) 20:53, 10 November 2017 (UTC)

Rusty Davis Peer review - Hey guys, I thought that your article was very good at outlining the topic you guys chose. You explained what the group does, the history behind it, and some other interesting things about it. Generally, there is not much I would change about this article except for one thing. The section "Lack of Nutrition in Neo-Liberalism" I think is very unnecessary to the topic. If this is something that the organization actually says, I think that you should specify that because the way it is written, it seems like it is trying to defend or voucher for the group. It actually kind of seems like it is politically biased. This isn't good for a Wikipedia article so I would recommend removing it. Other than that, the only other things are some sentences in the article which are:

"Food Not Bombs is an all-volunteer global movement that shares free vegan meals as a protest to war and poverty. " I would remove this sentence because you already say this in your introduction.

"Food Not Bombs was founded in 1980 in Cambridge, Massachusetts by anti-nuclear activists Keith McHenry,[3] Jo Swanson, Mira Brown, Susan Eaton, Brian Feigenbaum, C.T. Lawrence Butler,[4] Jessie Constable and Amy Rothstien" I would remove all of the names because it is unnecessary.

"The first arrests for sharing free food were on August 15, 1988 at the entrance to Golden Gate Park in San Francisco, California" I was unaware that you could get arrested for food so I would try to add that to this or specify why specifically they were arrested.

"During a presentation to the University of Texas at Austin in 2006, an FBI counter-terrorism official labeled Food Not Bombs and Indymediaas having possible terrorist connections" Specify why they thought that the group had terrorist connections because that is important information.

Those are the only complaints I have. Other than that, great article.

Neutrality dispute

This article seems 100% sympathetic to the organization, including undue, epic legal & political details in unencyclopedic terms. 68.3.248.181 (talk) 07:41, 28 February 2022 (UTC)

Care to quote examples from the article to support the tags you added? Hussierhussier1 (talk) 05:21, 8 March 2022 (UTC)

Planned updates

Hello! Just a heads up that I am planning on overhauling and improving this article. My primary goals are to improve sourcing and to expand the article in preparation for a GA review. Here are a few notes on these changes:

• Some of my main sources will be "Doing Liberation: The Story and Strategy of Food Not Bombs" by Drew Robert Winter from the collection Anarchism and Animal Liberation: Essays on Complementary Elements of Total Liberation, Cooking up a Revolution: Food Not bombs, Homes Not jails, and Resistance to Gentrification by Sean Parson, and A Mass Conspiracy to Feed people: Food Not bombs and the World-class Waste of Global Cities by David Boarder Giles. The former is, of course, an essay, and the latter two are academic monographs. Both Boarder Giles and Parson are, I believe, FNB volunteers, but since their books are from academic presses, they likely underwent some kind of peer review. As a result, it felt appropriate to rely on them.
• My revisions will also cite FNB co-founder Keith McHenry very extensively. I recognize he's also not a neutral source, and his book hasn't been peer reviewed, but ultimately, I think the info he provides is just too valuable to pass up. His timeline of FNB activities is particularly useful, because it includes dates that other sources omit. In the "history" section, I generally try to use him in an auxiliary fashion to fill in gaps, verifying what he says using external sources (such as news coverage or academic literature) when possible. When there are contradictions, I note them. In the ideology section, I use his statements with attribution.
• I try to cover activities from collectives outside the United States as much as possible. This means, in some cases, that I have to use WP:PRIMARY sources and sources close to the subjects. While this could potentially be an WP:NPOV problem, I have to weigh the inclusion of these sources with the possibility of US bias, which is its own NPOV problem. Ultimately, I decided that including some weaker sources is probably necessary. If there are objections to this, please let me know (and if you find better sources, please add them).

If you have an issue with this (or with any of my other edits), I am happy to discuss it here. I will be working in my sandbox, so feel free to check my progress there. There will probably be a very big edit coming tomorrow or in the next couple days. Thank you! Spookyaki (talk) 06:10, 3 January 2026 (UTC)

GA review

The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

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This review is transcluded from Talk:Food Not Bombs/GA1. The edit link for this section can be used to add comments to the review.

Nominator: Spookyaki (talk · contribs) 14:01, 3 January 2026 (UTC)

Reviewer: Rollinginhisgrave (talk · contribs) 06:58, 4 January 2026 (UTC)

I'll grab this one as part of my pledge for the review at Talk:Tamale pie/GA1, and complete a review over the next day. As you note on the talk page, the most important aspect for a strongly political subject such as this will be neutrality, which I have some concerns about from my first skim in the spirit of WP:INSCRUTABLE. Will depend of course on the sources ultimately. Rollinginhisgrave (talk | edits) 06:58, 4 January 2026 (UTC)

Hi Spookyaki, I've selected a sample to evaluate the sources. I'd like to hear your take before we proceed, so I don't go too deep down a rabbit hole if it is representative.

Looking at "However, a new style of radicalism also emerged during the 1970s. This style was defined by its decentralized structure, feminist-inspired politics, and use of anarchist methods like affinity groups and direct action."

• From my copy, Gay 1999 only discusses up to the 1960s on the pages cited.
  • This may be getting into WP:SYNTH, but I cite Gay & Gay primarily to show that the concept of direct action is associated with anarchist thought. This can maybe be gleaned indirectly from some of the language in the other sources, but I wanted a source that said so directly. Spookyaki (talk) 01:57, 5 January 2026 (UTC)
• What I imagine will be more controversial, I really am not liking Kauffman 2002 for this. I'll give you my reasons and hear what you think. The book is an imprint of New Left Books, it is describing an activist model adhered to by the author, and cites only other activists in the movement for the history. Many of the descriptors are value-laden, and are employed to positively contrast with earlier activist movements. Whether this lack of independence impacts reliability is one matter, but it certainly has bearings on how the author selects facts and framing narratives, which needs to be taken into account (e.g., through de-emphasis, attribution so on)
  • That's a fair critique, but I will say that this book (and this essay in particular) is cited extensively when discussing this style of mass movement politics. I actually was directed to it by a footnote in Chris Dixon's Another Politics: Talking across Today's Transformative Movements:

    Activist researcher L. A. Kauffman has offered some of the best analysis tracing the anarchist and direct action politics that led into the North American global justice movement: L. A. Kauffman, "A Short History of Radical Renewal," in From Act Up to the WTO: Urban Protest and Community Building in the Era of Globalization, ed. Benjamin Shepard and Ronald Hayduk (London: Verso, 2002), 35–40. (Dixon 2010, p. 264)

Now admittedly, Dixon, per his author bio, is also an "activist, writer, and educator" (specifically, he "received a PhD from the History of Consciousness program at the University of California, Santa Cruz"), but his book was published by University of California Press. Google Scholar also shows 31 citations for the Kauffman essay and 344 for the book as a whole. Spookyaki (talk) 01:57, 5 January 2026 (UTC)

• Dupuis-Deri is thankfully fairly credible, even while writing as an anarchist from what appears to be a pro-anarchist perspective. However, he is not necessarily speaking to trends within New Social Movements as a whole, which is relevant if we lose the previous two sources.

Overall, I am struck by the fact that we are citing 20th century histories of left-wing activism in the US exclusively to sympathizers. I find it difficult to believe more independent voices have not written accounts, which would go some way to value-laden terminology. Rollinginhisgrave (talk | edits) 00:53, 5 January 2026 (UTC)

@Rollinginhisgrave: None of the sources, aside from Gay & Gay, were written in the 20th century (Kauffman's essay is from 2002 and Dupuis-Déri's article is from 2010). Other sources that I know of that discuss the genealogy of this style of activism as a whole (rather than discussing discrete movements) include Lesley J. Wood, who is an associate professor of sociology at York University who has also been active in Seattle-style mass-movement politics. One left critique of these movements that I am aware of is Vincent Bevins's If We Burn: The Mass Protest Decade and the Missing Revolution, but again, this is explicitly a left critique (and largely focused on the 2010s).

One thing that I could use some clarity on: are you saying just that the sources are value-laden, or is there terminology in the article that you would also consider value-laden? If so, what terms would you describe that way? Spookyaki (talk) 01:57, 5 January 2026 (UTC)

Thanks Spooky for your response. Let me have a read. Gay & Gay is probably okay for that, I didn't get that was what you were using it to verify.

The use by others is helpful for Kauffman and lends credibility, but Dixon also identifying as an activist in the same vein puts a damper on things, and more importantly, analysis can be good, even great, and still be biased, impacting fact selection and narrative framings. I don't think you adequately grapple with that and I would expect some form of attribution here.

Clarifications: 20th century histories was referencing the history being discussed taking place in the 20th century, and the sources being sympathetic were purely the ones I looked at and described. Re; value laden, my point was a bit obscure sorry. For our purposes, the descriptors used ("direct action", "feminist", "decentralized" etc) are used by sources as positives, and are employed to contrast with the bad, previous organisational models. The point may be fussy and may amount to nothing, but it makes me nervous not knowing how sources outside this ideological milieu are describing the movements: for instance, would they use different descriptors? Would they focus on how they worked rather than their ideals? Would they focus on efficacy? Etc.

I'll look at the other sources later you give if you don't think the ones I looked at are representative of biases. Rollinginhisgrave (talk | edits) 02:19, 5 January 2026 (UTC)

Sure, fair enough. If you wanted to look at individual movements, Emanuel John Kallina II describes the Mayday Tribe (also discussed by Kauffman) as being "radical", "violent", and as using "guerilla tactics" while Lawrence Roberts describes their actions as "civil disobedience". Gary L. Downey describes the Clamshells as being a "direct action alliance" employing "nonviolent civil disobedience" and Neil H. Katz describes them as having a "decentralized organizational style". Ultimately, though, I don't think it's possible to focus on any aspect of these movements (taken as a whole) but their ideals and a few shared tactics. The fact is that they are decentralized: the way they work, the way their ideals play out in practice—it differs from the Mayday Tribe to the Clamshells to ACT UP to FNB to the hundreds of other movements that popped up from the early 1970s to now. I think detailed descriptions of individual movements and every writer's commentary on them would be inappropriate. The emergence of Seattle-style mass movement activism is a crucial part of understanding Food Not Bombs, but it's not the direct focus of the article.

That said, you are right that maybe attribution could help to ameliorate the issue? I'm not sure exactly how I would do it, though. Spookyaki (talk) 04:01, 5 January 2026 (UTC)

One other adjustment I could make is to say something like: This style was defined by its belief in decentralized structures, feminist-inspired politics, and use of anarchist methods like affinity groups and direct action? Spookyaki (talk) 04:09, 5 January 2026 (UTC)

Belief in would certainly help for me. Going further, I think it is unwise for me to try to advise you on anything until I look at sources more deeply. Maybe illuminating, I am looking at Lukes 2003 as an alternative narrative of 20th century left-wing activity. There, one man's decentralization is another's fragmentation. Rollinginhisgrave (talk | edits) 04:21, 5 January 2026 (UTC)

Sounds good, I'll go ahead and make the change. I think doing a deep dive on the sources has unfortunately hurt my back, so I might not be able to respond for a bit, but for what its worth, I think "fragmentation" is a way more tendentious term then "decentralization". I personally don't find "decentralized" to be a terribly loaded term at all (and I don't even think it precludes fragmentation per se), but are there any other words than decentralized or fragmented that could be used? Spookyaki (talk) 04:35, 5 January 2026 (UTC)

Yes, I think I agree in this on decentralization. As I said at the start, "will depend of course on the sources ultimately". Rollinginhisgrave (talk | edits) 04:37, 5 January 2026 (UTC)

Sorry for the delay here Spookyaki, I have been in part working up the energy to engage this and in part thinking about the best approach. I think for now I will just perform a conventional GA review rather than attempt to articulate under-developed ideas of attribution and use of sources that don't directly discuss the subject. At least one positive outcome is that I plan to write a few articles like this to get a more robust handling of neutrality for this class of articles. Picking back up. Rollinginhisgrave (talk | edits) 05:10, 7 January 2026 (UTC)

No problem, and I'm sorry if I've given you a bigger task than you might have anticipated! Spookyaki (talk) 05:14, 7 January 2026 (UTC)

No trouble at all! It's all on me. Rollinginhisgrave (talk | edits) 05:54, 7 January 2026 (UTC)

• Not sure what the quotes around street theatre are doing, can you clarify?
  • They're McHenry's words, but maybe that (and what they actually did) is a bit unclear in the lead. Should I clarify there? Spookyaki (talk) 06:53, 7 January 2026 (UTC)
• Can you explain your thinking around the use of houselessness when the sources appear to use homelessness?
  • And unhoused. Looking at the ngrams, I think the conventionally used language is more appropriate here. I can see this in a few places: feeding people rather than distributing food
    • Yes, it's because it's a less controversial term. Some people view the term "homeless" as being demeaning and inaccurate. Here's a discussion for reference. I think it's potentially more precise, as well, since many of the recipients of FNB live in tent cities (arguably homes, but not houses). Spookyaki (talk) 06:53, 7 January 2026 (UTC)
      • I am sympathetic to dealing with terms that can be perceived or experienced as charged by some groups, and I don't necessarily believe it's Wikipedia's job to just repeat the language sources use, but these are too uncommon to be appropriate. Imo, the average reader will be left confused as to what the deviation from homelessness and homeless is meant to convey which is best avoided per WP:ASTONISH. I have other thoughts on why we should be using other terms here, but I'll just hand it over to you here. If you still don't agree, I'll come back and see if I feel the same way.
• "Collectives have also been involved in controversies about their legal right to serve food in public spaces" I think you can state the meaning here more plainly/directly.
  • Could you clarify? What is the meaning that isn't being directly stated? Spookyaki (talk) 06:53, 7 January 2026 (UTC)
    • "Faced controversy over" etc should generally be avoided as it gestures at conflict but doesn't describe it. Something on how their cities have taken action against them, city's justifications, and food distribution as protected expression. More wordy than I imagine either of us would like sorry, but I think you can drop the contested locations to cut some wordcount. MOS:INTRO it's the idea of avoiding hinting. And, as something that may offer some perspective, framing around "the rights of FNB to serve food in public places" vs "the ability of cities to prevent food being served" may convey different things to the reader. I'm explicitly saying you should not do the second, just trying to illustrate the relevance of framing here.
• "Some scholars note the transgressive nature of FNB's activism." this too is quite vague
  • What aspect? It's elaborated in the body. Spookyaki (talk) 06:53, 7 January 2026 (UTC)
    • A few words can be spared on what is being transgressed.
• "challenged the nuclear power industry" and here
  • It says what they did, but I can see how this might be construed as loaded terminology. Went with "protested against" instead of "challenged". Spookyaki (talk) 06:53, 7 January 2026 (UTC)
    • I think you can make the text a bit clearer here how actions against one power plant (? I believe ?) constitutes protests against the industry at large.
• alliance faction could have a bit of a gloss here
  • A faction of the Clamshell Alliance. Would it help if I capitalized Alliance? Spookyaki (talk) 06:53, 7 January 2026 (UTC)
    • Oops nvm.
• "they sold pastries on the streets of Boston" perhaps too romantic, and I'm having trouble understanding what it means for a bake sale to encompass multiple streets.
  • I'm not entirely clear either, to be honest. Parson says "the activists dressed as generals and sold pastries on Boston streets..." (p. 22) Maybe I'll change "on the streets of" to "in". Spookyaki (talk) 06:53, 7 January 2026 (UTC)
• The soup kitchen being a commentary on the bank as responsible for homelessness? I think I understand, although I don't see the connection to nuclear power.
  • Added a sentence to hopefully add some clarity: They also handed out leaflets saying that contemporary government policies would lead to widespread houselessness. Spookyaki (talk) 06:53, 7 January 2026 (UTC)
    • It's just strange how we're talking about homelessness now when everything until now has been about nuclear. This feels like an important transition to iron out.
• "Between 50 and 70 people ate at the kitchen" isn't supported by the quotes you give if Parson doesn't give an upper bound on his estimate.
  • I don't see how it's not? Spookyaki (talk) 06:53, 7 January 2026 (UTC)
    • If Parson had said "at least 50 but not more than 70" the text would be supported.
• Can you expand on "prepared for the upcoming March for Nuclear Disarmament"?
  • Okay, I might actually need to adjust that part. McHenry says that they were "building momentum for the June 12, 1982 action" (p. 22) and then describes a few protest actions they participated in. I assumed these were separate (they were making preparations for the march at the same time that they were doing these other protests), but I think, on closer reading, that "building momentum" is referring to the protest actions. Anyway, changed to ...and participated in marches against nuclear weapons, including the March for Nuclear Disarmament in New York City. Spookyaki (talk) 06:53, 7 January 2026 (UTC)
  • Seeing a few places where "it helped organize", "prepared for the upcoming", "FNB also sponsored a". I don't get a good sense of the scale of their activities however, and to what extent they were a piddling presence or influential force. What I do see is descriptions of the scale of the events they were associated with: "the biggest protest in the history of the United States" / "occupation of the John F. Kennedy Federal Building". Can we better establish their role here?
    • Not clear from the sources. It'll depend on what is being talked about. Parson says "in working with the east coast anti-nuke movement, the group helped organize both the June 12, 1982, 'March for Nuclear Disarmament' in New York City, and the 'Free Concert for Nuclear Disarmament' in May of 1982 in Boston" (p. 22). For the Kennedy building occupation, McHenry just says "over the next several years, the Food Not Bombs collective also helped organize direct actions to end the war in El Salvador, including one where 500 people were arrested for holding a 'town meeting' in the lobby of the Boston Federal Building". (p. 102) The Daily Item confirms that this protest happened (giving a different number of arrestees), but does not discuss FNB's role (it just refers, broadly, to "protesters"). Spookyaki (talk) 06:53, 7 January 2026 (UTC)
      • Hm. This is what troubled me about source bias. I trust you to rewrite to not make any claims or implications of scale that we can't get from these non-independent sources.
• "this second collective was inspired by peace activist Brian Willson" inspired in what way?
• "This group became the third FNB collective" it renamed? Annoying q
• "Winter 2015, p. 54" In the copy I'm accessing which I believe is the same as you, Winter starts at page 59.
• Putting in a note that in my experience, "literature" is activist jargon for texts arguing for left-wing beliefs/writing from a left-wing perspective. Are there any descriptors you can add or alternatives you can think of?
• I have paused at "FNB San Francisco struggled to obtain a permit for its Haight-Ashbury kitchen, and on August 15, 1988, a group of 45 riot police arrested nine FNB activists for serving food without a permit.", hence my comment on Winter above. I pause here because I find the motives of the city unclear, which is always a red flag for WP:YESPOV/WP:OPPONENT when the perspective of one side is very clear and the other opaque. Looking at the sources, the bias in all of what is cited again troubles me, particularly from Winter who states he is writing a history from the perspective of FNB, as the municipal and police official "side has been amply documented in press releases and the popular press". Very troublingly, no such sources are cited in this entire section. The history is told only from one perspective, and I see much of the same throughout much of the history.

Sorry Spookyaki, I will use the euphemism here of "give this to someone else to review". The issues I see here are beyond the scope of what I believe can reasonably be fixed in a GA review and I won't in good conscience be able to pass this on neutrality any time soon. GA status really is just the opinion of two editors: a reviewer and a nominator, and I completely understand if you don't agree, and will understand if you hit renominate straight away. Despite this, I am impressed with your writing, research, and much of how you handle the sources you do use. I hope you take my comments as offered in good faith and consider them. Rollinginhisgrave (talk | edits) 09:30, 7 January 2026 (UTC)

Suggestions

• Around 1 thousand, see MOS:MILLION
  • Changed to numerals. Spookyaki (talk) 06:53, 7 January 2026 (UTC)
• Since its foundation, FNB
  • Removed. 06:53, 7 January 2026 (UTC)
• "group of 45 riot police arrested nine FNB activists" another one for MOS:NUMERAL in consistency between 45 and nine.

Rollinginhisgrave (talk | edits) 05:54, 7 January 2026 (UTC)

The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.