We Need Help!!! Volunteers are needed to help assist with:

Food donation pick ups (from stores) We need people who can go to the store on Thursdays and Fridays to pick up food donations. We can usually get stuff from Wild Oats, but if you know of other places willing to donate food, by all means try them too!

Transportation a chronic problem since few of us have cars!

We cook every Saturday morning (11am) at Galloway Church - located at the corner of Cooper and Walker in Midtown. Join us! We can always use a few extra hands.

No experience necessary, it's easy!

We need people to help take the food downtown and serve it on Saturday afternoons between 2-4pm. The location is at Court Square which is located downtown on Court Street.

Make a donation (food, clothing, supplies)

Tell us about of possible food donors. We can always use more food. The demand usually exceeds the supply, especially in the winter when donations tend to fall off.

To help out contact us by email (fnb@midsouthpeace.org), by phone (901.725.4990), or send us a message on myspace.

Unintended Consequences: the following email was recieved on Christmas Day 2005. Food not Bombs is vital for many reasons, one of those is that we serve an invisible population in open public spaces. Some would like for us to forget our homeless brothers and sisters. By bringing the problem of homelessness out into the open we help prevent this. Plus, what is wrong with serving food to hungry people?

I applaud your intentions. I also hate war and think everyone should have enough to eat. But your feeding in Court Square every weekend causes real problems. First, people who spend their lives helping the needy in this community will tell you that merely giving food away does not help people. The people you are serving need more comprehensive help than you are providing. You are just allowing them to save the money they panhandle for drugs/alcohol to further deteriorate their lives. Organizations like MIFA, the Union Mission, and Calvary Street Ministry also give food away but they also actually help people turn their lives around. Second, you are attracting many drunk, drugged-up panhandlers to a tourist area and residential neighborhood. I live next to court square and don't appreciate being panhandled every time I walk down the street. Tourists are disgusted with memphis and scared to walk the streets because of the rampant panhandling downtown. This problem is much worse after one of your feedings. We are trying to turn downtown memphis into a nicer place to live
and visit, but you help deteriorate the quality of life here.

I urge you to redirect your good intentions. Give the food to the Union Mission or Calvary or some other organization that can use it to actually help people. Work with organizations that study these problems and know what they are doing. If you want to send a political message, do it in a way that does not ruin a neighborhood.

Because I agree with your political message, I'd be glad to help you with financial support or otherwise if you can redirect your efforts in a way that actually helps people and does not deteriorate the quality of life in downtown memphis. I'd love to talk to you in an effort to find creative ways you can help without doing more harm than good.

-Paul