Your politics are what you do, not what you say
You can identify as liberal, libertarian, conservative, or anything else under the sun. You can quote at length the inspiring words of long-dead radicals. But if that is all you do, you don’t really have any politics, only an aesthetic.
We in Food 4 Solidarity don’t talk much. We don’t sell newspapers or prattle on about the social merits of entertainment on social media. But we believe that a single person without a home, a single person without a meal when they need one, is a fundamental failure of the body politic, and we act on that belief.
Every Sunday, come wind or hail, we distribute nourishing meals and household supplies to any of our unhoused neighbors who want them. As socialists, we understand that their precariousness is not a bug in the capitalist system we live in, but a feature. Their hardships are meant to scare you into working your miserable 9 to 5, and accept whatever measly wages you’re offered. I mean, you don’t want to be homeless, do you?
No one should be homeless. No one should go hungry. Distributing food doesn’t solve that problem by itself, and won’t topple the exploitative system we live under.
But it gets us together, and it moves us to action.
And that’s a start.
