There are currently eight at least somewhat regularly working independent groups in Finland. These groups are located in Helsinki, Jyväskylä, Tampere, Turku, Lappeenranta, Joensuu, Mikkeli and Savonlinna. Couple of new groups are about to be set up in Lahti and eastern Helsinki. On the whole, at least one event has been organised in 12 different cities or towns during the four year history of FNB in Finland. So it has been a great success in such a sparsely populated country. One reason for this is that FNB links many things like military, social and environmental issues together.

Food Not Bombs in Helsinki

In Finlad social security has been slowly cut, over a long period of time during the 90s. At the same time military expenditures have remained unchanged or even gone up in some years. That is one reason why FNB activities were started and are still running here.

The first FNB event was held in February 1998 in the second largest city of Finland called Tampere, but first regularly working group was found in Helsinki the next April. Our group in Helsinki has so far organised over 40 events and there have been only two short breaks in its activity. Servings are organised regularly also in the winter although the temperature can sometimes be as cold as -30 degrees Celcius. One bigger event was a two week long international work camp, which we organised together with Finnish Branch of Service Civil International and Union of Conscientious Objectors last July.

About five to ten people are working within the group at the same time. These people are usually actively involved in other social and political activities as well, so it is possible to organise an FNB-event only once a month. That is a problem because one of our aims is to encourage self-organising of people and due to the month long gap it is hard to get a contact with the friends who come to eat. Events are always in the same place in the same time. The place was chosen because it is considered to be some kind of a proletariat and leftist area and there are also the head offices of the Finnish Social Democratic Party and the Central Organization of Finnish Trade Unions, for whom the real life in Finnish society has to be shown every now and then. During the work camp we also went for the first time to the eastern parts of Helsinki where more poor or working class people live. Normally 50–100 friends come to eat, but biggest actions have brought together over 200 people.

General principles and goals

Currently, we are lucky to be able to use almost solely recycled and organic food, which a couple of organic wholesales, shops and bakeries donate to us. Meals are always vegan but quite often we serve also non-vegan food supplies. In our opinion, groups should try to be as open and democratic as possible because the activity is supposed to criticise hierarchy in society. It means that you must actively deconstruct informal hierarchies in your group. Every group is independent and autonomous although they share the same ideas and issues.

There are three particular aims, which help to motivate our work. Firstly, FNB-action can be seen as voluntary social work. This can be criticised in the sense that our work is more or less symbolic in Finland; e.g. social benefits are still on average on a decent level compared to other Western European countries. Also, the amount of food, which we are able to serve, is small and quite symbolic.

Events are also good antimilitaristic demonstrations because they have both very strong symbolic and also concrete meaning. In Finland, many people respect the military very much and the dominating opinion is that everyone should go to the army. About 80 % of every male age group does military service, which is one of the highest percentage values in the world. Only about 7 % choose the alternative civilian service. Nowadays, the only prisoners of conscience which Amnesty International has adopted in the EU are the Finnish total conscientious objectors, who have refused to do both military and alternative service. The actual reason for adoptions is punitive length of civilian service.

Our broader aim is to promote self-organisation, solidarity and co-operation independent from state structures or capital. We have realised this to be very hard to achieve. During the time between our monthly actions practically nothing happens. This is a big problem in all Finnish groups and according to our perception also among other groups elsewhere. Still, we have tried to be more communicative, join different networks, e.g. ones that are working with homelessness, and also make publicity for different campaigns by choosing special monthly themes, e.g. campaign against institutionalised violence and commercialisation of violence services.

In any case, at least one bigger spectacle has occurred as one of the most popular hip hop artists in Finland called Avain ('Key') made an antimilitaristic tune called Ruokaa ei aseita ('Food Not Bombs') for his album Punainen tiili ('Red Brick'). The album shot directly to the top 5 and stayed in top 40 for 7 weeks last autumn.

Luckily, we have not faced any major problems with authorities and permissions have always been granted, when we just have asked them. One apparently everlasting problem has been transportation and finding a car to borrow.

If everything goes well, our group will organise a second two week long work camp in the end of July. You can ask for more information about the work camp from us.

Ruokaa ei aseita (Hki)
Rauhanasema
Veturitori
00520 Helsinki
FINLAND

tel +358-(0)9-140 427
fax +358-(0)9-147 297
rea.hki@kaapeli.fi
http://www.aseistakieltaytyjaliitto.fi/rea