Food Not Bombs (Omaha) cooks and distributes free food every weekend in Omaha, Nebraska, USA. In this (very short) episode Jay asks some of the volunteers why they volunteer. In a very noisy kitchen. Without the best microphone for the task. :)

025.mp3 (8m 10MB)

Links:

Transcript (via OpenAI Whisper):

Hello and welcome to Jayflonce’s Ignorance, episode 25. Today we’ll be talking with Omaha Food Not Bombs volunteers. Every weekend in Omaha, Nebraska, USA, we do a food handout. Every Saturday morning, a local grocery store donates an entire truckload of produce to us. And then every Sunday at noon, we meet at Table Grace Cafe, downtown Omaha, Nebraska. We spend two hours cooking the food, as much of the food as we can, given whoever shows up as far as how many volunteers we have. And then at 2 p.m., we meet in front of the downtown branch of the Omaha Public Library on the Gene Leahy Mall, and we hand out the food for free to whoever wants it. I discovered Food Not Bombs Omaha back in episode 9 of Jayflonce’s Ignorance, where I was talking to Dave Kerber, and he told me that there’s volunteers down there every Sunday. So if you haven’t listened to episode 9, you might want to go back and listen to that one after you’ve listened to this one. It’s a great group of people, and we’re always looking for new volunteers if you’re in the Omaha area and want to come down. So that’s what Food Not Bombs is. I was down in Kansas City two weeks ago, and my father and I were walking around the neighborhood, and he asked me, well, why do you do that exactly? And I said, uh, I don’t know exactly. And he said, huh, I wonder why everyone else down there does that every week. Like, it’s a lot of time and effort. I said, yeah, yeah, it can be. I wonder why they volunteer. You should ask them. And so I did. So what you’re about to hear is me asking people at Food Not Bombs Omaha why they volunteer. If you want to volunteer, you can find us on our Facebook group. Search for Food Not Bombs Omaha. We’d love to have you every week, rain or shine, all year long. So here’s the episode. I hope you enjoy. So my dad wants to know, why do you volunteer for Food Not Bombs? Because people should eat. Yeah. And with no strings attached. We’ve got lots of food. People should eat it. Excellent. Good answer. What? Good answer. Thank you. And there are a lot of cool people here that I like. So. Hey. So why do you volunteer for Food Not Bombs? Oh, man. Uh, like, connecting with the community. Yeah. I like, um, reusing food that wouldn’t have gotten used otherwise. I don’t know. I don’t know either. That’s what I told my dad. Yeah. I don’t know. Why do I do this? Yeah. I mean, but you know what it is? It’s nice because we see the same folks every day and you get to really, like, connect with the folks that you feed and that eat with you. You know, I’m actually going for dinner with one of our older members for his birthday this week. So. Oh, we got cakes. We got cakes for Chad. We got cakes for Chad. And I’m taking Chad for dinner. Yeah. So for his birthday dinner. And so you wouldn’t really get that otherwise, right? You’d never get to be, make that connection. So that’s why I do it. Did you say yay? I did say yay. I think it’s awesome that they’re going for dinner because he’s a great guy. You have to say yay into the mic though. So I catch her. Yay. Not that loud. You clipped my mic out. Well, hello, sir. Why do you volunteer for Food Not Violence? Good question. Because people deserve to eat is why. And we’re helping do that. Make sure, even if it’s just once a week, we’re helping make sure people have food to put in their bellies. And that’s an important thing. So I don’t need to add anything else to that. Oh, you can go on as long as you want. Um, I mean, yeah, like on top of that, I think we just need to rethink. Food Not Violence is a way for me to like enact kind of my philosophy of rethinking the way we consider our resources and like who deserves to have what and just kind of cast it in a manner of everybody deserves to have access to the things they need to live and to live comfortably. So that’s all I have to say about that. Yeah. Good answers. We’re, uh, we’re washing dishes here. So I’m going to get some excellent audio of the dishwashing process. Can you hear the bubbles in the bottom of the dishwasher? Let’s see if this mic is waterproof. What do you think? Yeah. Hello, ma’am. Why do you volunteer for Food Not Violence? Because you told me about it. Well, I should tell more people about it then. I like to volunteer for Food Not Violence because, you know, I have a type of job where I help people, but I don’t get to help them in the way that I want to. And I like to be able to help people directly interact with people and know that my effort is appreciated and making a person’s life more enjoyable or better in that moment, instead of just sending them a notice saying they were approved. I get to see their face and I get to say, hey, enjoy, have a nice day. What did you think of it? And I like the cooking aspect a whole lot. Yeah, that’s awesome. It’s more a personal connection than from a, from a cubicle over the phone when you actually see their faces and they actually thank you in person, which doesn’t happen all the time, but when it does, it feels good to me. Right. Well, and then there’s also like the chopped aspect. It’s sort of like, you don’t know what you’re getting on a weekly basis in terms of food. So you get to be creative and come up with something that you normally probably wouldn’t prepare for yourself, but it’s really good. A lot of times this is the most nutritious food I cook in a week. So that’s also nice. So, so what are you making there? We’re doing roasted vegetables, mushrooms and potatoes and asparagus. Roasted vegetables always goes over really well. It’s easy to cook and people love a roasted vegetable. Excellent. And what is this over here? Did we figure out what hot honey is? Do we know what that is? Uh, we did not figure out what hot honey is. It’s not particularly spicy. This is sweet potatoes and apples. Oh, there’s the spice. Okay. So it’s, it’s, it’s got a little spice to it, but it’s not like major, but it’s roast, roast apples and sweet potatoes with honey. And I’m putting some ginger and some cinnamon in it so that we have like a kind of a sweet, savory, like a sweet and savory sort of side dish. What are you making? Is this more roast vegetables? No, I am making a stir fry with broccoli, bok choy, carrots, parsnips, and daikon radish. We’ll put some teriyaki sauce on it. Very, very tasty. How do you know it’s tasty? You haven’t tasted it yet. I didn’t make this at home. The same ingredient? It’s nutritious and it’s yummy. And if you had rice, it’s even better, but I don’t have ice today. But you will bring some rice. Excellent. Wow. Such a busy kitchen. So many volunteers. It’s going crazy. It’s off the chain or the hook or whatever the kids say nowadays. All right. We’ll check back in later. You have to be on mic to say that. Hello, sir. Why do you volunteer for Food Not Bombs? I do Food Not Bombs because it seems like the right thing to do. It’s a good avenue to unlike a lot of places that feed homeless people, I can kind of cook whatever I want here. And that’s kind of nice. I like that. I like that kind of there’s no hierarchy here. There’s no like, you just come out and help people. And it’s secular. And it’s secular. Even though I come here right after church. After a secular church? No. Yeah, I know. I saw you change out of the fancy church clothes. I like it a lot because it is secular because there’s no religious or political messaging behind it. Other than we want everybody to be fed and we want resources to be distributed to the people that need them without regard to whether they can afford it or not. Another good answer. But you don’t have to listen to the message to get the meal. Yeah, yeah. This is your roving reporter Jay Hanna for Jay Flonsdale’s Ignorance News. Signing off for now.