We are the second chapter of Food Not Bombs in Orlando . The first one existed from the mid-1990s to 2002 and shared at Lake Eola Park and other downtown locations. The current Orlando Food Not Bombs (OFNB), one of hundreds of autonomous chapters in the international FNB movement, was started by a small group of friends in the local anarcho-punk community in the summer of 2004. We began regular sharings in January of 2005, and have shared every Wednesday since then (our first sharing was in August 2004 at an anti-war protest). The impetus for both chapters was Orlando and Central Florida's ever-increasing homeless population, and the fact that on any given day several hundred homeless individuals can be found in downtown Orlando. The city has a long and notorious history of using the police and municipal ordinances to harass the homeless, and to send them the message that their socio-economic status makes then unwelcome downtown. We abhor this classism and authoritarianism, and seek to oppose it through our activities.

Initially, the new Orlando Food Not Bombs (OFNB)shared at Heritage Square Park , in front of the Orlando Regional History Center, on Central Avenue in downtown Orlando. However, because of harassment from the museum, which did not want homeless people congregating in front of its building, we felt compelled to move to the Rosalind Avenue side of Lake Eola Park. Subsequently, to better serve the people with whom we share and at the request of park rangers and the Orlando police, we shifted to the park's picnic area (also on Central Avenue) in May of 2005.

In our brief existence, we already have shared hot, nutritious vegan food with thousands of hungry people–the homeless, the working poor, the general public and people attending events. OFNB shared food at VegFest 2005, a vegetarian festival held at Lake Lily Park in Maitland in October of 2005, and at the huge immigrant rights march held in Downtown Orlando on May Day 2006. (Members of OFNB, as a group and individually, also have participated in protests about farmworker rights, the war in Iraq and other issues.) Most recently, in March of 2007, we shared juice and coffee with participants in a local protest marking the fourth anniversary of the Iraq war. We anticipate sharing food with tens of thousands of more people in the years to come, both at our regular sharings and at political events such as protests and rallies. We do this as part of our belief that food is a right, not a privilege, and to express our opposition to social ills such as poverty, inequality, violence, war and militarism, prejudice and oppression, and environmental destruction. OFNB also works with other FNB groups around Florida, of which there are around a dozen, in St. Petersburg, Miami, West Palm Beach, Fort Lauderdale and other areas. This year, we also have created Carrot and Fist Collective, Inc., which will act as a fundraising and disbursement arm for OFNB and allied groups.

In September of 2006, members of Students for a Democratic Society (SDS), at the University of Central Florida, formed East Orlando Food Not Bombs and began regular weekly food sharings in east Orange County. In May of 2007 East Orlando and Orlando Food Not Bombs merged and became simply Orlando Food Not Bombs, with two weekly sharings–Sunday and Wednesday. OFNB continues to work closely with our comrades in UCF SDS on a variety of issues and projects.

For about a year, OFNB has been grappling with the greatest challenge it has yet faced. As inevitably happens with FNB groups, the State is attempting to use its police powers to hinder us in our mission of sharing food with hungry people in supposedly public spaces. The Orlando City Council, in July of 2006, passed an ordinance that, essentially, attempts to stop OFNB and other groups from sharing food in downtown public parks. This measure, championed by Orlando Mayor Buddy Dyer and City Commissioner Patty Sheehan, was prompted by class-based prejudice against the homeless and development and gentrification pressures in the Thornton Park neighborhood (where Lake Eola Park is located) and the adjoining Lake Eola Heights neighborhood. As a result of the ordinance and our resistance to it, OFNB continues to get an outpouring of support from within our community and nationally, along with coverage from local media such as the Orlando Sentinel, the Orlando Weekly, the Central Florida Future, El Nuevo Dia , WOFL-Channel 35, WFTV-Channel 9, WKMG-Channel 6, WESH-Channel 2, News Channel 13 and WDBO-AM (580). OFNB has gone from being an organization primarily known within Central Florida's punk and radical activist communities to being a living, breathing symbol of the local fight over civil liberties and issues of poverty and homelessness . We are fully prepared to continue fighting for our right to share food in public spaces. We are backed in this struggle by the Central Florida chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union, which, in October of 2006, helped us file a federal lawsuit against the City of Orlando seeking to have the "large group feedings" ordinance declared unconstitutional. We expect the trial in this lawsuit to be held in June 2008.

In July of 2006, OFNB joined with other groups and individuals to form S.T.O.P. ­Stop the Ordinance Partnership . This is a broad-based coalition–local homeless service providers; civic, religious, political and activist groups; and homeless individuals. S.T.O.P. opposes the ordinance and other government measures that crimininalize homelessness and that seek to hinder the life-sustaining activities of homeless individuals and the activities of grassroots groups that provide services, such as food, to homeless individuals. S.T.O.P. believes that local governments should treat homeless people with respect and dignity and as equals entitled to the full rights of citizenship. S.T.O.P. advocates for humane, effective and constitutional solutions to the problems of homelessness in our community, including medical care and mental health and substance abuse treatment, job training programs, affordable housing, living wages, and a drop-in center for homeless individuals where they can receive assistance to become self-supporting.

As part of S.T.O.P. and on its own, OFNB continues to exert political pressure on Mayor Dyer and other public officials to quit criminalizing homelessness and to respect the civil liberties and autonomy of the homeless and their allies. Most recently, on May 16, 2007, more than 50 OFNB members, homeless individuals and supporters staged a spirited and noisy protest against Dyer while he held a campaign fundraiser at the Urban Think! Bookstore, only a few hundred yards from the Lake Eola Park picnic area.

With some creativity and in what one of our lawyers calls a spirit of "civic irreverence," OFNB continues to share food in the Lake Eola area. After the ordinance first was passed, we shared a block away from the park (at the corner of Pine and Osceola), but in January 2007, after about five months at that location, we decided to go back inside the park. We were tired of the increasing police harassment on the street and we decided that we could not allow the City to get away with treating homeless people as second-class citizens by saying that food could not be shared with them inside public parks. Nor could we allow the City to keep infringing on our constitutional rights. This includes our right to express our political opposition to the social conditions that make groups like OFNB necessary, which we do by sharing food in public spaces, such as a park, with the people most affected by those conditions. We recognized that at some point, the City, in the hopes of stamping out the heinous "crime" of sharing food, would resort to arrests, citations or trespass warnings. This has come to pass twice now: On April 4, 2007, when OFNB member Eric Montanez became the first person arrested under the ordinance, and again, on May 9, 2007, when OFNB member Matt Houston was trespassed from Lake Eola Park as our food sharing was being broken up by Orlando police. (That trespass warning was subsequently rescinded.) We have not been deterred by these events anymore than we have been deterred by the regular police presence and videotaping and photographing of our sharings. The City through its actions has only increased our resolve to keep sharing food every week and to stand up for our rights and the rights of the people whom this society seeks to marginalize. As one of our banners says: "WE WON'T STOP UNTIL THE LAST BELLY IS FULL!"

Pictured above is one of the Orlando Food Not Bombs carts at the immigrant rights march. We shared vegan burritos, bread, bagels and juice with the march participants. This picture was taken toward the end of the post-march rally at T.D. Waterhouse Centre.

Update: Nov, 10, 2007: On Oct. 9, 2007 a jury acquitted Eric Montanez of the "crime" of feeding too many homeless people; his trial was the result of an Orlando police investigation that included the use of undercover officers to videotape our sharings.

In addition, on June 26, 2007, six members of OFNB were arrested under a City of Orlando noise ordinance during a protest outside a campaign fund-raiser for Mayor Buddy Dyer. The trial of the "Cruddy Dyer-rhea Drum Corps Five" likely will be sometime in the Spring of 2008. (The charge against the sixth person, a juvenile, was dropped in July.)