Cooking Up a Revolution: Food Not Bombs, Homes Not Jails, and Resistance to Gentrification

During the late 1980s and early 1990s the city of San Francisco waged a war against the homeless.

Over 1,000 arrests and citations where handed out by the police to activists for simply distributing free food in public parks.

Why would a liberal city arrest activists helping the homeless?

In exploring this question, the book treats the conflict between the city and activists as a unique opportunity to examine the contested nature of homelessness and public space while developing an anarchist alternative to liberal urban politics that is rooted in mutual aid, solidarity, and anti-capitalism.

In addition to exploring theoretical and political issues related to gentrification, broken-windows policing, and anti-homeless laws, this book provides activists, students and scholars, examples of how anarchist homeless activists in San Francisco resisted these processes.