Tucked away in the shiny, industrial kitchen at the back of Elmwood’s Unitarian Universalist Church, three volunteers—Megan, Amanda and Dave—are clanging and banging away, preparing a moveable feast. This particular feast—a steaming vat holding five pounds of spaghetti, several loaves of garlic bread, roasted potatoes, baked apples, fruit salad and piping hot tea—was considered trash only last night. Thanks to the work of these volunteers, this afternoon it will feed nearly two dozen people.

Megan, Amanda and Dave are members of Food Not Bombs (FNB), a worldwide activist group that got its start in 1980 during protests against Cold War militarization and nuclear proliferation. Despite the fact that the Cold War is ended, FNB’s message to the federal government to “spend money on food, not on bombs” is just as relevant as it ever was. Though the members of the Buffalo chapter of FNB don’t consider themselves to be politically active, their simple (not to mention democratic) gesture of turning junked food into nutritious meals available to anyone speaks volumes about the mixed-up priorities of our government and, at times, society as a whole.

It’s 10 o’clock on a bitter cold Monday morning when Megan and Amanda arrive at the Unitarian Church, three huge boxes of produce in tow. The fruits and vegetables, which were donated by the Lexington Co-op, are no longer good enough to sell, but most of them are still plenty good to eat. The boxes are overflowing with avocados, tomatoes, apples, oranges, potatoes, garlic and broccoli. I join them and begin the work of sorting through the boxes and picking out what’s good, what’s edible and what’s barely identifiable. The best produce—the plump, red tomatoes, crisp apples and sweet oranges—will be given away as they are, while the rest will be turned into vegan dishes or, in worst-case scenarios, tossed out.

This week’s donation—three boxes—isn’t great, but it’s enough to make a hell of a lot of food. In a more typical week, FNB might get 30 to 50 pounds of food from the Co-op.

Food Not Bombs members Amanda, left, and Megan put spaghetti into to-go containers before heading downtown to share it with strangers.

The process of creating the meal is fluid and dynamic, with volunteers deciding on the fly what they will prepare each week. This week, thanks to a large donation of pasta and sauce from folks who belong to the church, vegetarian spaghetti will be the entree.

As we work—me chopping tomatoes, Megan working on the potatoes and Amanda preparing the pasta—Megan talks about the local FNB chapter. She says it’s a loose-knit bunch, comprising whoever happens to show up from week to week. There’s a dedicated core of about five members, and the rest come and go as their schedules permit. More people tend to show up during the warmer months, she admits. “This time of year,” she says, “is warrior season,” and she and Amanda flex their muscles and grit their teeth comically. They’re health-conscious people who prefer to make vegan, or at least vegetarian, food as often as possible. Beyond that, they’re just happy to turn what would otherwise be wasted into food that they can share. They’re not preachy about their work, they just do it.

Before long there’s a knock at the back door of the kitchen. Dave, a quiet man with an exceptionally thick, red beard, has arrived. Before three minutes have passed, he’s engrossed in his work, chopping apples to put into a sweet, baked cinnamon-apple dish.

That’s how things work here, people filtering in over the course of the morning. There’s always a knock at the door, a new face emerges into the room, greetings are called out, and the new person quickly finds a job and wordlessly sets about it. Like bees buzzing around the kitchen, they fill in wherever they’re needed, chopping, squeezing, cooking and scrubbing. They’re having fun, but they also have a clear purpose, a duty.

Food Not Bombs has been a presence in Buffalo for the past 10 years, albeit an under-the-radar one. Tracing its history is a bit like piecing together a personal ancestry: Each volunteer remembers back a “generation” or two, but that’s it. When I inquire among the current membership about the Buffalo chapter’s origins, they give each other quizzical looks and each person mutters a name or two: “Paul? Albert? Paul might know about that.”

After a bit of digging, I was directed to local activist Albert Brown. Brown said that Christopher Albon—who now lives in San Francisco—was the founder of the local chapter, back in 1997 or 1998. “He was the first one who had the idea, and he asked me if he could hold meetings about it at the [now defunct] North Buffalo Food Co-op,” where Brown was a produce manager. “After the second meeting, I decided that I wanted to get involved.”

Six organizational meetings were held, and each was attended by a dozen or so people, confirming there was enough interest to get it off the ground. Brown says that some folks were scared at first, citing FNB’s reputation at the time for being arrested for giving out free food in city parks around the country. But momentum only lasts so long, so they gave it a shot. The Co-op allowed them to borrow the kitchen on Wednesday nights, and they collected food from wherever they could get it.

“The Co-op would donate stuff, other restaurants would donate stuff and some of the kids would dumpster dive,” Brown says. They cooked it up, reheated it on Thursday morning and gave it away on Lafayette Square, directly across from the Central Library.

“We’d play drums, we’d talk to people, we’d hand out political information and have political conversations.” And the people they shared food with were from varied backgrounds. “One minute you’d be having a conversation with a homeless person, and then the next minute somebody would stop by wearing a three-piece suit. It was pretty awesome.”

When I asked Brown about the political aspect of Food Not Bombs, he summed it up this way: “The whole idea behind it is that we spend so much money on war and aggression, and so little on education and people and housing. One of the main reasons that we have poverty is that the taxes that working-class people give to the government is never really allocated for human needs. It’s always been allocated for corporate welfare and the military-industrial complex, in large part. They always make us feel as if we’re somehow asking for something that’s not ours, but the reality is that the taxes come from us, and human needs should come before any kind of empire-building or profiteering.”

The local FNB has often found itself sharing food at rallies and political protests over the years, joining in the chants and, Brown says, “getting boisterous.”

That’s largely been the thrust of Food Not Bombs: For many volunteers, it’s simply a chance to get out into the streets, meet people and have conversations while giving out nutritious food. They’re all regular people with regular lives and jobs.

“How about Björk?” someone calls out. Jonathan, Megan’s kid brother, has shown up and is thumbing through his CD collection, trying to find suitable cooking music. Moments ago, he’d asked aloud, to no one in particular, “What do you want to listen to?”

But now it’s clear that he wants somebody to name a musician he feels like listening to. He yields when I suggest Hank Williams, and the mournful tunes float through the kitchen for the next hour or so, as the finishing touches are put on the meal and the kitchen is cleaned up.

Jon, as he calls himself, makes the garlic bread, a girl named Meredith makes hot tea from fresh-squeezed oranges and a mix of spices, and another late arrival, Chris, washes dishes. Megan and Amanda spoon some of the spaghetti into “to go” containers and the boxes are reloaded for the trip downtown.

When all of the food is prepared and one o’clock is drawing near, Amanda, who’s a bit of a character, takes a satisfied step back. “A box full of love,” she says, patting the big blue bin of prepared food, “that’s all I’ve got to say.”

A box full of love, indeed. Now it’s time to head downtown.

Food Not Bombs began in 1980 with a progressive activist named Keith McHenry and seven of his housemates. They were living in Cambridge, and began by giving away free food in Harvard Square and in the housing projects of Cambridge. Before long, they were doing it at rallies and protests. The name Food Not Bombs came to the group while they were protesting the Seabrook nuclear power project. In an effort to link nuclear power and militarism, they spray-painted the words “MONEY FOR FOOD NOT FOR BOMBS” on public buildings and sidewalks using stencils.

The movement quickly spread, and there are currently chapters on every continent, save Antarctica. McHenry has been arrested more than 100 times since its launch and spent more than 500 days in prison for giving away free food in public parks. The notorious San Francisco chapter’s members have been arrested more than 1,000 times for protests against what it considers that city’s “anti-homeless” policies.

While the various chapters of Food Not Bombs are likely to take up any number of political causes, their core message remains the same: Spend money on people and life, not on bombs and death and aggression.

Last week, Nobel laureate economist Joseph Stiglitz estimated that the total cost of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan to the United States is more than $3 trillion. FNB urges us to ask ourselves what we could have done with that money. Healthcare for every American, perhaps? Maybe subsidized higher education? It’s hard to say, really. That kind of money is hard to fathom.

FNB’s other point is that more food is discarded daily—by restaurants, stores and even the public—than is needed to feed every person in this country who doesn’t have enough to eat.

All those arguments are contained in the simple gesture of saving food and turning it into good, free meals.

Just before one o’clock, the food is loaded up and FNB races down to Lafayette Square. I arrive ahead of the group and pace about, unsure where they set up their tables. After a minute or two, I notice that a few people in the square seem as though they’re waiting for something. One man nonchalantly walks three entire circles around the perimeter of the square. Another woman sits down on a bench beneath the Soldiers & Sailors Monument, pretending to enjoy herself as she huddles against the biting wind. Across the street, a middle-aged couple sits on a planter, watching the square. They’re waiting for Food Not Bombs.

Two minutes later, the beige 1997 Toyota Corolla pulls directly out of traffic and up onto the concrete of the square. The move was carried out so quickly and smoothly that I don’t even notice it’s parked there until the lady gets up from the bench and pulls several empty plastic bags out of her jacket. Soon the table is set up, the food laid out, people and people gather. A woman named Bonnie (she calls herself “Bam”) shows up with several loaves of bread from an unknown source. She’s almost always doing that, and sometimes she volunteers in the kitchen. The people who come for the food come from all different socioeconomic backgrounds—black, white, Hispanic, poor, middle class, old, young, homeless—but they are all hungry right now. The FNBers are cold, but they’re happy. We eat some spaghetti to keep warm.

Around 1:30, an old lady approaches the table. She asks what they’re serving. John opens up the containers showing her the food and asks her if she’s hungry. She cranes her neck and carefully looks into each pot—spaghetti, apples, potatoes. “No,” she says finally. “I’m not hungry. I just wanted to tell you that this is a very good thing you’re doing.”

By 1:45 the food has run out.

Food Not Bombs gladly accepts donations of staple foods (e.g. pasta, rice and beans), which can be left for them in care of the Unitarian Universalist Church. They also welcome volunteers to come to the UU Church between 10:30am and noon on Mondays to help prepare food. Just come to the kitchen door at the back, and knock.