Food Not Bombs St. Cloud Mission Statement

FNBSC seeks to increase the atmosphere of kindness and concern in the city of St. Cloud.

To this end it assembles here some concerns and the means which it has been taking and will take in the future to address those concerns.

-FNBSC is concerned about the amount of healthy and nutritious food that is going to waste in St. Cloud. In a world with limited resources and terrible inequalities in distribution we would like to see St.  Cloud moving in the direction of producing only what it needs.

-FNBSC is concerned that not everyone in St. Cloud can afford to make the economic and social commitment to eating healthy food. By healthy food, we mean a lot of things, but most broadly, this includes vegetarian and organic options. Our concept of health is not limited to the individual consuming the food but includes our cousins the animals and the earth we walk on and breathe.

-FNBSC is concerned that  many of the institutions that provide free food in St. Cloud, that is, food that is offered to any and everyone who shows up, free of judgment, do not do so with a concern for environmental and individual health. Some of these need to fill a quota for “mouths fed” or “bodies housed” in order to keep monetary funding coming, which tends to compromise ideals and quality.

-FNBSC is concerned that the Salvation Army does not serve on weekends and that many of the food and service distribution locations are concentrated in a small area on the East side of the river.

-FNBSC is concerned that participation in the customary legal channels would compromise our convictions as non-violent individuals, peacefully assembling. Complying with health codes and filing for non-profit status represents to us a level of involvement with an overly militarized and corporate controlled government that we, a group seeking to promote peace and health, do not wish to assume.

-FNBSC is concerned that conventional “feeds” reinforce a separateness and superiority distinction between food distributors and those who are eating the food by means of uniforms and attitudes and not eating together. o:p>

For these reasons and others, FNBSC intends to round up as much food that we ourselves would eat as possible, prepare it in a good way, and serve it in public. We in the organization are concerned about our own diets and their effect on the planet-most of us are vegetarians or vegans and buy strictly organic produce-and we can’t see any reason why we would feed someone else something we ourselves would not eat

We strive to make the fact of this public offering as widely known in the community as we can, by flyering  and solicitation of media coverage.

When distributing this food, we will bring our own dishes and silverware for everyone to use and wash them ourselves afterwards. We will attempt to put all our fliers on backs of one-side-used paper. We will make our photocopies at the locally-owned copy shop. We will transport the food from place to place via bike cart, and attempt to minimize our use of fossil fuels. In short, our operations will be permeated with a consciousness of concern, and we will strive to go beyond what we do already.

For the time being we have committed ourselves to serve at Lake George every Sunday. We recognize the importance of establishing a regular time and location in order to increase participation rate in the long run. But FNBSC need not be limited to this time and location.

At FNBSC we all eat together: cooks, hobos, grandmas, drunks, college kids, gutter punks, hippies. We talk too. Not infrequently, our conversation winds up being about making healthy food choices. FNBSC operates on the assumption that by putting a level of work into sharing and kindness  with leftover food that we can best communicate and co-evolve a better, healthier environmental and social consciousness in St. Cloud.