Thanks for your interest in this. The fact is, people involved with Food Not Bombs in Middletown have been forced to be involved with the authorities. They have been arrested and fined, with food they cooked being taken from the hands of people eating and discarded. Trust me, they do not want to be involved with this.

But the city is disrupting their activities to such an extent that they cannot function as Food Not Bombs anymore.

They are filing the injunction because continuing to get food thrown away, pots and pans taken, and people harassed, arrested and fined – this is terribly disruptive and will not stop. This would keep happening week after week and nothing will progress.

In the beginning of this whole thing, months ago, the City of Middletown did not seek to learn more about FNB but instead drew conclusions about what the group was from national websites and unfounded hypotheses. For example, FNB in Middletown does not serve food they took from dumpsters. The City did not believe them when they told them that. Only after it became evident that the City did not want to deal with FNB in a diplomatic way did FNB decide to ignore the cease and desist order issued. They continued to serve for many weeks. And what happened? People were arrested and the food was chucked.

It was to the point where something needed to be stepped up a notch. The limited and seemingly one-sided dialogue the authorities wanted to engage in didn’t work. And ignoring the cease and desist order did not work. I’m not sure what other route they could take. Just to make this clear, FNB may be an anarchist collective, and some people may have in mind some stereotypes of anarchists, but as one of its main principles, FNB is nonviolent (hence the vegan food and the “not bombs” part of the name). So they’re not about to physically fight the people snatching the food – and that’s pointless because the cops are just enforcing this stupid policy. How else to get this to stop? The logical way to fight this crackdown from where it actually comes from was through the courts.

So, speaking for myself, I think that part of the message of Food Not Bombs is that it is utter insanity for a picnic and a community meal to be prohibited by law. If you do research, FNB chapters across the country have fought and won the right to be left alone.

This is my personal understanding of the situation and doesn’t represent Middletown FNB. But I hope this answers your question.

Anyway, I kind of feel like I’m repeating myself here.

The Middletown Health dept. spent several months investigating MtFNB to try and build up some sort of case against them and nothing more. Aside from that, they never came down to Main St to talk with anyone in FNB, and when they finally did after 7-8 months, they came bearing a cease and desist order, and later to arrest and ticket FNB members. I guess you could consider that “reaching out”.

*There was a brief moment that both sides almost reached a deal without compromising FNB’s principles, but that fell through because the Health Dept. tried pulling a fast one.

There is not much dialog to have with bureaucrats and authoritarians who think they are right and you are wrong.

It’s kind of like getting pulled over for speeding (even though you absolutely were not), and then trying to tell the cop your side of the story…they don’t care.

Again, I have no idea whether it would have been possible to work something out. All I said was that I haven’t seen any evidence that either side tried.

The Middletown Public Health Dept., in one of the articles, did say that they had attempted to reach out to FNB for several months – I have no sense of how true that is, or how genuine the offer was. Based on what Dave has said here however, it seems that FNB was not interested in that dialog. Which is FNB’s choice. And so here we are.

And, a shout out to Livingston, Adler, Pulda, Meiklejohn, and Kelly – a great group of people & legal minds.

Regardless of the outcome of the case, I think its safe to say that FNB will continue to do just that.

As far as what should have happened prior to the suit being filed; city (and possibly state) officials had already made up their mind and were not interested in hearing FNB’s side (hence the cease and desist order, citations, arrest, and confiscation of food). So I’m not sure what you think could have been resolved, but I am glad that you see the insanity of taking food from a hungry person’s hand.

Anyway, the law firm representing FNB is:

Livingston, Adler, Pulda, Meiklejohn, and Kelly