As one of the co-founders of Food Not Bombs, a volunteer-run collective, Keith McHenry has been arrested nearly 100 times and spent over 500 nights in jail — all for feeding people without a permit.
His first arrest occurred on August 15, 1988, when McHenry and eight fellow volunteers were detained at Golden Gate Park in San Francisco for distributing free vegetarian meals to people experiencing homelessness.
The offense? A picnic ordinance violation.
“Right now there’s roughly over 50 cities that have actually banned or limited the distribution of free food in public,” McHenry told Responsible Eating and Living. “And it’s not limited to Food Not Bombs — but frequently Food Not Bombs is the target of these actions.”
McHenry said the laws surrounding food permits change constantly — and are severely limited in timespan.
“More recently we’ve seen new restrictions in Columbia, South Carolina where they are demanding we pay $125 a week for a permit,” McHenry said. “We have to apply for a permit every week to share food there. We’ve been sharing food there for decades.”
McHenry’s many arrests haven’t deterred him from his mission to give food to the people who need it most, including those displaced by war, political strife, and natural disasters. And he knows the work is far from done.
Nearly 40 years after Food Not Bombs was first founded, the organization now operates in 1,000 cities around the world. Though each chapter differs in size, scale, and operation, they are unified under the same mission statement: “Food is a right and not a privilege.”
A version of this article originally appeared in the 2025 Food Edition of the Goodnewspaper.
Header images via Food Not Bombs
