Food is a right not a privilege

You can go on a march, sign a petition or fight the police but my favorite form of protest against capitalism is to hand out hot homemade soup on the streets for free to anyone and everyone.

Food Not Bombs is an all-volunteer global movement that was born out of the anti war movement in the USA in the 1980s. By now it has groups all over the world and these loose-knit group of independent collectives serve free vegan and vegetarian food as a protest against war and poverty.

If governments and global corporations around the world spent as much time and energy feeding people as they do on wars, no one would be hungry. Food Not Bombs' ideology is that corporate and government priorities are biased towards allowing hunger to persist, even though there is more than plenty of food being produced. To demonstrate and highlight this issue, a large amount of the food served is surplus food from shops, bakeries and markets that would otherwise go to waste.

Solidarity with the homeless in Cardiff

There were already signs a month before the start of the Olympics in Cardiff that the police presence in and around Central Square and the railway station had been stepped up. Soon it became clear that the intention was to crack down heavily on street drinkers, beggars and rough sleepers before the Games started, a campaign of social cleansing to improve the image of the city for Olympic visitors. This only seemed to be confirmed by the indecent haste, just days before the first event, that the homeless were moved from their temporary hostel accommodation at the edge of the city centre to a brand new, purpose-built - but still unfinished - hostel complex safely just out of sight. A number of homeless people were then subjected to CRASBOs and excluded from the city centre area, and several were taken into custody for breaking the terms of those orders.



The local press published a timely article just before the start of the Games. A local jeweller David Hughes-Lewis, on behalf of Cardiff Retail Partnership, argued for using the 1824 Vagrancy Act against beggars and homeless people so that tourists would not be put off.

“If this is a law which is still in existence and South Wales Police aren’t making use of it then the question is why? If it’s there to be used and the Met are using it then so should we.”