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Dialogues@RU is published
annually
by the
Writing Program at
Rutgers, The State
University of New Jersey
Volume Two
Spring 2003
Food Not Bombs: Community Breakdown
and Reconstruction - Page 1
by Nicole Wines
In his essay "Bowling Alone," Robert Putnam defines social capital as "features of social organization such as networks, norms, and social trust that facilitate coordination and cooperation for mutual benefit" (61). Noting that such social investment has decreased steadily, he refers specifically to civic engagement as an indicator of social capital and argues that there is currently an extremely low degree of civic engagement. Every year, fewer people have any connection to politics, associational groups, or even to what is going on in their own neighborhoods. Many grassroots and community activist groups, two types of associational groups, have felt the blow of decreased participation. Putnam attributes this to a number of reasons, including "the movement of women into the work force," "mobility" (easy and frequent changes in people's geographical location), and "the technological transformation of leisure" (64-5). It may also be a product of decreased awareness due to a broad range of reasons including the lack of free time and even self-absorption. These are only a few suggestions as to the causes of civic disengagement, but it is an increasingly complex problem having much to do with community, or lack of it.
Community involvement is the building block of civic engagement, yet most areas now have little or no sense of community, contributing to decreased levels of social capital. On the other hand, social capital is an important aspect of community building. Putnam asserts that the networks of civic engagement "probably broaden the participants' sense of self, developing the 'I' into the 'we'" (61). Even his definition of social capital contains evidence of the reciprocal nature of social capital and community, especially when he speaks of "coordination and cooperation for mutual benefit" (61). Though many grassroots and community activist groups are currently experiencing decreased membership, involvement, and awareness, an increase in community involvement can lead to an increase in social capital and civic engagement. The dual relationship of community to build social capital, and social capital to strengthen community, can be used by these and other associational groups to strengthen their own organizations and communities in which they function. One community activist group, Food Not Bombs Hoboken, has faced the extreme complexity of civic disengagement and is currently struggling to increase social capital and civic engagement in the Hoboken, New Jersey community. The origins of the Food Not Bombs organization and recent history of its Hoboken chapter can be examined to illustrate causes of a lack in civic engagement and demonstrate the reciprocal nature of social capital and community.
Food Not Bombs was born out of an act of street theater in Boston in 1980. An antinuclear weapons activist organization held a demonstration outside of a stockholder meeting at the First National Bank of Boston. The purpose of the demonstration was to inform the stockholders that their investments were being used by the bank's board of directors to invest in the nuclear weapons industry. Saying that those types of policies had contributed to the cause of the Great Depression, the group lined up over a hundred homeless people from a local shelter outside the bank to make the statement that another Great Depression could happen. While doing this, they fed the homeless people leftovers from a catering company and a produce market, food that would have otherwise been wasted. This strengthened the point that some of the money that was being used on nuclear weapons and testing could be more effectively used to solve other problems within society. According to Keith McHenry, one of the cofounders of Food Not Bombs, the people involved in the action decided "we should really do this, to organize on the streets against nuclear war and nuclear power all the time" ( Food Not Bombs News ).
Twenty-two years later, Boston Food Not Bombs, the first chapter, is still one of the strongest chapters. The eight founding members never thought that they were creating a model for an organization that would eventually have over two hundred autonomous chapters worldwide. They were doing what they enjoyed doing, creating art and using it to spread a message through the community. Today, many Food Not Bombs chapters focus more on the issues of hunger and homelessness. While this shift in focus was probably inevitable as nuclear weapons became much less of an issue by the end of the 1980s, in some chapters it was accompanied by more of an ideological shift. Instead of using art and community to get a message across, and having fun while doing so, some Food Not Bombs chapters focused solely on hunger and homelessness and functioned almost as soup kitchens. The shift away from being an artistic- and community-based group towards being a charity-based group actually drove away many people who had originally been attracted to it, often alienating or boring them so much that they decided to leave the group. This destroyed the ideal of creative community that Food Not Bombs was originally based on, and turned out to be a major problem for some chapters, even causing the end of a few.
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