Feed The People
From Social Justice Wiki
An excerpt from a journaled experience of working with Free the People on their Tuesday night Feed the People program at the Royal Peacock and talking with people active in the Prisoners of Conscience Committee organization. Written by A. Muma
"I'd never been to the Royal Peacock for any other purpose than to hear the next great underground artist try to blow up a mic, or to vibe a little bit on the dance floor to some reggae music I could never hear on the radio.
Being there on a Tuesday evening was quite different. I went because I wanted to see what this Feed the People movement and POCC were about, they'd come to speak to my GA State African American Movements class. I walked in alone, but I quickly got brought to speed by some of the other volunteers. I wasn't the only new person that day.
We used everything that was donated - apples and bananas, peanut butter and jelly, turkey and mustard, water, cheetos, starbucks pastries - you name it, we bagged it.
Everything had a purpose. Every bag of food was political - containing a written message of solidarity for the community, and a call to support some part of the struggle for African American liberation. The night I was there we wrote "Hands Off Assata" on every paper bag filled with food to distribute.
We divided up into groups, got into cars and started making the rounds. There were spots that the group regularly served: across the street from city hall, in that 25 dollar parking lot, behind Turner Field. We asked people how they were and what they wanted. We talked about what the Hands Off Assata message meant. And we gave what we had until it was gone.
After we ran out of food, we all met back on Auburn Ave. at the close of the evening to discuss the evening's experience and future actions. The meeting was conducted in a style similar to what I'd seen and heard of meetings in the 60s and 70s of youth activists. In fact, this particular meeting included a former SNCC field worker. There were also members of local grassroots community organizations, college students, small children, and others who simply believed in feeding people knowledge, as well as food. There was no "type." But the overall sentiment was that people had to try to change their community for the better - consciously, poltically, economically, intellectually, radically."
By May of 2005 the FTP program had made and distributed over 10,000 meals to homeless in the city of Atlanta. Organizers had been working in the area for less than 1 year.