The anarchism behind the local Be Your Own Hero movement is about decentralizing leadership and giving everyone a say in group decision-making.

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“I think everybody is an anarchist, to some extent,” (Kristin) Henry said. “There are things they can do every day that are positive and community oriented, that are from the heart.”

Staff photo | Paul Stephen

The purpose of FNB is to divert food that would otherwise go to waste into the hands (and mouths) of hungry people. So we diverted some food. And we ate a bunch of donuts.

I went dumpstering with Lynn and two strangers (to me anyway). We drove to a number of places, grabbing bagfuls of stuff here and there. There was no real agenda…just find good food. We drove fast and talked very little.

We came back with a pretty good assortment of produce, donuts and bagels. Lots of various colored peppers and many, many pound of potatoes. Yeah, seventy pounds of potatoes is considered “many, many”, right?

We also found a bunch of squash, cucumbers and broccoli. Potato chopping goes on in the backgound.

Lots of radishes and cauliflower and onions…

A huge head of collards amongst the bags of donuts…

When it all comes back, there is plenty of prep work – washing, cutting, mixing, cooking. The fruit we found was mixed into two giant bowls of fruit salad. Watermelons, mangoes, apples, oranges, bananas, limes, cantaloupes, and pears all sharing the same space.

The soup had so many vegetables that I lost count as I washed them. Eggplant, cauliflower, broccoli, tomato, squash, kale, mushrooms, scallions, sweet potatoes, peppers. This was the epitome of Food Not Bombs soup…anything goes as long as it is a veggie.

Everyone took a turn on the giant potato masher.

At the end of the night we had twenty pounds of mashed potatoes, two bowls of fruit salad, six quarts of steamed collards, a massive pot of soup, two bags of donuts, and a bag of bagels. With this we fed about thirty people. Total cost – $0.00

As friends and strangers come together to make food to serve to hungry folks, all you can think about is that “this is community building”. No money exchanged, no arguments about who is in charge of what, no issues about food origins. This is Food Not Bombs.