Free State Food Drive

March 26, 2009 by Chris Muskus
Filed under: Outreach

When asked to describe a good anarchist, Karl Hess said, “Good neighbor, good lover, good friend.” If Free Staters could regularly display those qualities to the inhabitants of our chosen home, it would go a long way to dispel the image of wild-eyed bomb-throwing conspirators that some probably have.

With that in mind, I’d like to suggest making the first Monday of each month a special Good Neighbor Day. In addition to the FIJA pamphleteering at the courthouse, there are a variety of possible activities, from cruising Main Street with Robin Hood and her Merry Meter-Feeding Men, to volunteering at local charities. And if everyone participating wore a clearly marked Free State Project T-shirt, baseball cap, badge, button, lapel pin, hey, tattoos if you’re so inclined, it could make for quite a publicity coup.

To start things off, I’ll be collecting canned goods at the last Social Sunday of the month, and will drop them off at the Community Kitchen on the following month’s first Monday. And if you can’t make it to Vendetta, I’ll gladly come pick up a load if you just call me to schedule.

Chris Muskus
603-313-8633
Drop off 4 – 6 P.M. the last Sunday of each month at
Vendetta
43 Central Square in Keene

Comments

10 Comments on Free State Food Drive

lordmetroid on Thu, 26th Mar 2009 7:58 pm

Why would you want to wear the free state logo, I would rather see the promotion of anarchy.

Chris on Thu, 26th Mar 2009 9:10 pm

….I would rather see the promotion of anarchy.

Excellent! When will you be holding your food drive?

George Donnelly on Thu, 26th Mar 2009 10:08 pm

Great idea. Hope to join you on that in a few weeks.

Paul on Fri, 27th Mar 2009 1:21 pm

+1000!! We need more of this

Who needs forced government handouts when you’ve got Free Stater generosity?

ReverendRyan on Fri, 27th Mar 2009 7:12 pm

You guys are turning the outreach into an art form. Kudos.

Dan Steward on Fri, 27th Mar 2009 9:47 pm

If you want to also get some free publicity for the movement may I suggest the following:

If you can get those large cardboard barrels, then great, otherwise ordinary cardboard boxes will do fine. Print up some pages and tape them to the side of the boxes/barrels, advertising the source of your charity.

You’ll likely want to include a contact number on the attached pages for people who have them in their places of business to call when they are full of food. Then someone with a truck or van can pick them up and take them to the food pantry. Of course those curious about Liberty can also call the number for more info.

Take care to put the flyers on more than one side of the container to maximize viewing potential. Use larger type for your organization’s name and contact number. Since all of NH is in area code 603, skip the area code in front of the number except for any containers you (might end up) placing in MA, VT or elsewhere out of state, just to save space and make the phone number larger for better viewing.

You can place the boxes/barrels in grocery stores, churches, etc. The cool thing about it is that even people that don’t donate can get to find out about your organization just from reading the flyer attached to the side of the box/barrel, and you’ll collect more food, keeping your amount of work done per item collected to a minimum.

A local grocery store chain here in slaveland (Buehler’s Buy-Low) have been getting some degree of positive social karma, by placing some of those cardboard barrels in the front of the store for people to drop their spare grocery items in, after shopping.

I also recommend having someone approach the manager of a store, church pastor, or business owner for permission. Make sure your he/she is professionally dressed, polite, thoughtful and articulate while letting them know that you and the customers would do all the work for them. They in turn, get to pat themselves on the back for their “altruism” and “community spirit”.

If you really want to let the community know how much you are in tune with the needs of the poor, send out a press release to the media announcing when you are going to do a pickup of the groceries and have them follow you to the food pantry for a photo-op.

Having the viewers on your local tv stations see your people shaking hands with the director of your food pantry or homeless shelter, is having some very positive press, offered absolutely free that you just can’t buy anywhere.

Ian Freeman from the radio show freetalklive.com has mentioned that he has many media contacts and has in the past, offered to send out press releases for events. If it is still something that he is okay with doing, then please contact him for more details as to just what he is able or willing to help promote.

I don’t wish to claim to speak for him and what he would care or even have time to do, other than what he has told me when I called in to the show a couple of months ago with an activism idea I wanted to share with the listeners. His policy might have changed yet I am assuming that it hasn’t by typing this bit.

Good Luck,

Dan

Anton Lee on Sat, 28th Mar 2009 4:47 am

You’re the man Chris! This is the best idea I’ve heard yet!

I plan on coming out to social sunday at some point and I’m going to ask some of the local porcupines here if they’d like to all chip in and donate some goods.

This will be a great thing for some needy families. Who knew they could get food without putting a gun in someone’s face.

Patrick Shields on Sun, 29th Mar 2009 11:53 am

Dan, the community kitchen is an established organization here in Keene, and all of the local grocery stores, etc. already donate leftovers to the kitchen. It would be difficult to improve the working system. I’m still investigating, but I think the best way to help is to donate food or volunteer.

Dan Steward on Mon, 30th Mar 2009 1:26 am

Patrick Shields said:

March 29, 2009 @ 11:53 am

Putting a label on the cans of food is incredible! It never occurred to me & I really like the idea of the people who recieve the food learning who is responsible for it being collected.

I suppose there’s still the option of churches and charity offices as well as businesses as a potential drop off point if you still want to decide to keep your legwork down a minimum.

Great work, I’m proud of the work you’re doing up there.

Dan

Dan Clore on Mon, 30th Mar 2009 11:30 pm

This looks like a great idea. I would like to see the libertarian movement in general place less emphasis on for-profit businesses, and more on other sorts of voluntary activity. One great slogal that I’ve seen recently is this:

Free Trade AND Mutual Aid

You might also look around for groups like Food Not Bombs, with traditional (non-market) anarchists already undertaking things like feeding the homeless.

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