Posters & Documents

Wednesday, November 9, 2011

Occupy London: First Occupation Shut Down in Canada

It was a frustrating evening/morning yesterday. Police surrounded the site and took everything they could  tents, generators, personal items, food, other supplies and put them into garbage trucks where everything was compacted. Not only were people's personal items unjustly disposed of but plenty of community members', community organization's, and union's donations were simply wasted as well. We were able to save the library, a lot of cooking supplies, and other basic supplies. We have them stored in various locations at the moment so it is difficult to say what we are missing. We will be needing help restoring peoples lost goods and dampened spirits. Food Not Bombs will continue to support Occupy London and will try to work along with the community members involved to help run FNB more efficiently and hopefully more frequently across the city. The occupation is not going any where, the fire has been lit!

-Rachelle

Monday, November 7, 2011

October Update & Thank you!

Thank you to all of our donors and volunteers who have made such an impact on the functioning of Food Not Bombs. October was a very busy and wonderful month.


FNB was able to serve at the October 8th, Peace Rally, the 10th year anniversary of the Canadian invasion of Afghanistan. There were many great speakers, a lot of the public came out to listen, there was a lot of free literature available, and of course a wonderful meal! The desserts went off with a hit, Morgan made homemade cookies and Neil bought a bunch of pumpkin pies.


On October 15th several FNB members, along with many of London's community members went to Toronto to participate in the first several days of the occupation there. Morgan made a bunch of food and donated it to the Toronto FNB chapter who was managing the food tent, Robin also made some lozenges that were mighty tasty and we brought those as well! Everyone was really happy to connect with other FNB chapters, we even got connected with a group from St. Catherine's! The Toronto FNB was able to feed all the occupiers the first several days we were there, which was really excited seeing as there were so many people there!


With what we all learnt and saw at Occupy Toronto we had a week to prepare for the London occupation. We were able to get a large kitchen donated to us by a church in town and goodness was it ever nice to have ten burners and two ovens. Along with all of the helping hands it made the work go by so quickly and we were able to make a huge meal for London's first ever general assembly at Campbell Park. Not long after the GA we migrated to Victoria Park where tents flew up. The food station had tents donated to it from Our Street (http://ourstreet.ca/) and got all organized. It was amazing to see how many donations just kept coming in. From food, to dish ware, to propane fuelled camping stoves, not to mention everyone who simply wanted to lend a helping hand or give us monetary donations. Ryan has been working at the occupation and I had the pleasure of mentoring him and sharing some tips about FNB. He's a great co-ordinater and has so many amazing people who are consistently helping out. It is day 17 of the occupation now and there has been an abundance of support from the community members. We often get hot donations for dinner, which everyone adores. The spirits are high even as the temperature is rising!


We also had our monthly community meal on Sunday, October 30th at the East Village Arts Co-operative (http://www.eastvillagearts.ca/). A couple of us cooked up a storm and had a wonderful serving. Around ten people showed up and shared a meal with us, it was wonderful. Jeremy and Tom donated a nice loaf of homemade bread, it was splendid! Luckily there was an EVAC member meeting going on around the same time as the serving so we were able to talk to them about becoming a member, and safe to say we're now a proud member of EVAC! Horray!
Thank you once again to all of the people who help FNB run so well, thank you to all of our donors, to all of the places that let us cooks our meals at their locations, to the places that host our meals.


More news to come soon!


-Rachelle