Members of the anarchistic mutual aid group Food Not Bombs have been arrested in scores of cities throughout the nation. Their crime? Providing free vegan food in public spaces. In this article I contend that the group's oppositional relationship to neoliberal charity provides a partial explanation for the state's hostility to the group; however, this is not sufficient on its own for explaining why certain cities have cracked down on the organization. Instead, Food Not Bombs' resistance to neoliberal charity makes the group's actions a serious threat to state power only given the right confluence of neoliberal economic development, austerity, urban gentrification efforts, and public visibility. In this article, I look at the impacts of neoliberal policies on homeless services, examine how neoliberal charities discipline and regulate the poor, and then analyze the way that Food Not Bombs activists see their actions as a form of resistance to neoliberal charity.
scite is a Brooklyn-based organization that helps researchers better discover and understand research articles through Smart Citations–citations that display the context of the citation and describe whether the article provides supporting or contrasting evidence. scite is used by students and researchers from around the world and is funded in part by the National Science Foundation and the National Institute on Drug Abuse of the National Institutes of Health.