Since 1996 Food Not Bombs (Omaha Nebraska USA) has been distributing food free of charge on the corner of 14th and Farnam at 2pm every Sunday. Rain, snow, or shine. We are one of hundreds (thousands?) of groups world-wide, please see FoodNotBombs.net for a map and contact information for groups around the world, and the history and ethos of the global organization.
We're a very small and scrappy band of volunteers. We hope you'll join us. :)
SaturdayAll volunteers are fully vaccinated against SARS-CoV-2. For many years, we were using Table Grace Cafe's kitchen to cook and clean, serving a meal on plates. We hope to get back to a kitchen model at some point. Douglas County COVID-19 Dashboard.
The group started in 1996 as a friend of mine and I had the idea to try to get FNB going in Nebraska. He was going to work on getting a Lincoln group rolling while I started up the Omaha group with a few friends. The Lincoln group didn't last too long, unfortunately, but the Omaha one stuck it out for the long haul. I was the only Creighton student who was involved in those early days. A couple of the others were still seniors in high school.
There were almost no internet resources back then, and we didn't know anyone in other FNB chapters, so what we used for inspiration and resources at the start was the FNB book by Keith McHenry and C.T. Butler. (I think this is proof that books, especially if they contain practical ideas, can lead to real change.) We hung photocopied fliers around town to spread the word about our meetings, which were held at McFoster's restaurant on Farnam because they let us use their upstairs event room. We started sharing food as soon as we found stores willing to hold back some unsellable produce for us to collect. We cooked large pots of soup/stew accompanied by whatever else we had and went down to Gene Leahy without fail with our folding table, plywood sign painted with "Food Not Bombs" and the hand/carrot emblem, and a stack of fliers explaining who we were and what we did.
At the meetings we discussed things like potential leads for food donations, plans for the weekly lunches at Gene Leahy, and sometimes things like outreach. We sometimes considered expanding to two meals per week, but it was generally agreed that it was behind our capacity. I was fairly satisfied that we always maintained our weekly schedule of picking up donations, cooking and sharing food each week, and dropping off any surplus food at a local shelter.
I stayed involved in the group but lessened my involvement in 2000 and 2001 as I did a little traveling and then permanently left Omaha in 2002. It's very gratifying to see that FNB Omaha has continued for over twenty-five years now.
-- Gregory Nipper, 2022