After 20 years of service to residents of Peterborough, Food Not Bombs Peterborough celebrated their milestone with a hot vegan meal, "hot apple beverage," and a whole lot of cake on the snowy evening of November 10th.

Food Not Bombs Peterborough (or FnB Peterborough) is a local grassroots group dedicated to providing vegan and vegetarian meals to any and everyone. Founded on the ideals of the global Food Not Bombs momevement, they operate out of Confederation Park across from city hall, where they provide hot meals and a sense of community for all who come. 

Cindy Conner, a longtime member who’s been with the group since “almost its beginning,” says that at its core, Food Not Bombs is about feeding people.

“[It’s] about food sovereignty, not wasting food. And about feeding people who are hungry, but it's not a helping model. It's a community model, anybody can come and eat. We're really lucky in Peterborough, because we have the generosity of the farmers markets, both of them, who donate food that may not last,” she told Arthur.

Conner said the reason that she joined and stayed part of the group is that it’s “important to share food. I like to share food. I like to cook.” 

“It's a real community thing. And you get to know people. It's a variety of people, and anybody can come and you can eat together,” Conner said. 

What brings FnB Volunteer Will Pearson back week after week is “the sense of community that it develops."

"When I think about what's going to happen to us and our society and our planet over the next few decades, I don't know what's going to happen. Might be bad,” he said.

“But I know that we're going to need community to respond to whatever challenges come our way. I think that initiatives like this, that kind of foster community around a shared need for food, are really powerful,” Pearson told Arthur. “I like the way Food Not Bombs invites not just “poor people” to come eat, but anyone who's hungry, (which is everybody).” 

He also cites Food Not Bombs’ confrontation with the city over a by-law requiring a permit to hand out food and drinks in a public park as a reason for his continuing support. “The city had to rewrite its by-law to make room for Food Not Bombs," Pearson recalled. "And I think that's just an example of the way doing good work week after week is a way of amassing a kind of political power.”

Alongside the large gathering in celebration of their 20th year, Food Not Bombs also released a zine.

“I drew a 4-page manga that is one part surrealistic horror and one part burrito recipe,” contributor Jeff Chislett told Arthur. He was inspired to write the story after he discovered potato burritos after a Taco Bell controversy in 2020.

“I would not have been able to survive if Food Not Bombs did not exist. So I figured this was an easy way for me to give back to the community. And also, like on the political aspect of this is that capitalism has outlived its usefulness and is now a danger to humankind, civilization and nature itself,” Chislett said. 

“And so any vector for people to organize against that, to be radicalized against it, to consider alternatives, to meet with others in their community, to discuss these matters. Anything like that is a blessing.”.

One of the organizers and longtime volunteer Miles Conner has become a staple in FnB Peterborough through his years of service. 

“Radical organizations have been making zines since the mimeograph was first invented,” Myles said. “They're often very accessible means of getting your propaganda out to the people.”

“And the reason [Food Not Bombs put out the zine] is because… we make a lot of dinners, and we're here for an hour and a half each week, but it's nice to put some of the philosophy in writing, so that it's not just implied.”

“It might appear as though we're doing just a soup kitchen or a community food line or whatever, but what we do is we reorient the structure of our relationships by engaging in non-hierarchical, direct action,” Myles told Arthur.

“We take normal societal relationships that are based on hierarchies (and corrupt hierarchies mostly), and we make them about being based off of mutual benefit,” he said. “Where everybody has value just because you're alive and here. Food's this great uniter because everybody… hopefully everybody eats at least twice a day.”