City Reimburses Food Not Bombs $15K For Legal Fees

From Daniel Schneidewind, Food Not Bombs

It has been almost two years since the City of Middletown issued a cease and desist order to Middletown Food Not Bombs and subsequently employed it to disrupt our weekly food sharing, cite and arrest participants and seize and destroy countless pounds of food destined for hungry bellies.

 Despite the threat of punitive consequences we never missed a meal, insisting throughout this period that both the morality and legality of this harassment was invalid and that we were being selectively targeted.

We regard the City of Middletown's recent decision to settle our First Amendment lawsuit and to pay $15,000 in legal expenses (half of which is being immediately donated by our attorneys to St. Vincent dePaul Place) as a long overdue acknowledgment that sharing food is not a crime.

 Despite our indirect role in its passage, our goal was never the statewide legislative reform which ultimately protected our activities and those of other grassroots anti-hunger activists from state intervention. Rather, our commitment has always been the to the elimination of structural inequality of which hunger is but a symptom, the abandonment of militarism and to the emergence of of voluntary mutual aid  as the essential characteristic of our social interactions.

We invite everyone to rejoice over full stomachs and celebrate healthy habits this and every Sunday at 1 PM on the corner of Liberty and Main.