About Me
Please consider inviting Keith to give a presentation about Food Not Bombs to your community. To learn more visit http://www.foodnotbombs.net/speaker.html
As the global economy fails Food Not Bombs is there to help with the transition. Keith will share the history, principles and current activities of Food Not Bombs and show a video about Food Not Bombs in Africa. Inspire more volunteers and local actions for your local chapter.Food Not Bombs co-founder, Keith McHenry was born in Frankfurt, West Germany in 1957 while his father was stationed there in the army. His paternal great great grandfather was Dr. James McHenry, who signed the United States Constitution and served as a general in the Revolutionary War and as Secretary of War under George Washington he founded the U.S. military. His paternal grand father was ranger with the National Park Service. Keith's paternal grandmother Bona Mae (Ford) McHenry picked cotton as a child in the New Mexico Territory. Two of her uncles, Bob and Charlie Ford joined Jesse Jame's gang in 1882 and killed the famous train robber for a $10,000 reward. Her uncles were the subject of several popular folk songs. Keith's maternal grandfather was an intelligence officer for the U.S. Army during World War II and helped plan the fire bombing of Tokyo and the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. He also was a lawyer in the Massachusetts State Attorney General's Office. Keith's mother Martha got her degree from Wellesley College, raised her family and ran their farm on Cape Cod.Keith moved with his family to Logan, Utah in 1958 where his father worked for Morton-Thiokol testing Minuteman Missiles while he worked on his Masters Degree in zoology at Utah State. Coincidentally, C.T. Butler's father also worked at Thiokol in Utah during this time. However, Keith and C.T. did not meet until 21 years later at a protest of the Seabrook Nuclear Power Station in 1979. After leaving Thiokol, Keith's father worked for the National Park Service while Keith was growing up; so, Keith lived in the National Parks at Yosemite (CA), Yorktown (VA), Grand Canyon (AZ), Big Bend (TX), Shenandoah (VA), and the Everglades (FL).In 1974, Keith began studying painting at Boston University and worked afternoons,weekends, and summers as a tour guide and museum curator on the historic Freedom Trail in Boston. After college, Keith worked three years for the National Park Service, traveled across the United States working odd jobs, and made trips to Seabrook, New Hampshire to protest nuclear power.In 1979, he started an advertising firm in Boston. He designed calendars, ads, and brochures for the Boston Celtics, the Boston Red Sox, the Environmental Protection Agency, and a multitude of commercial and alternative businesses. He won several Clio Awards for his designs. His anti-nuclear war street art became the subject of an Off Broadway play called Murder Now! and a film called The Sidewalk SectorIn 1980, Keith and seven friends created Food Not Bombs. After eight years of serving free food and doing graphic arts work in Boston, Keith moved to San Francisco where he started a second Food Not Bombs group. Since then, Keith has been arrested over 100 times for serving free food in city parks and he has spent over 500 nights in jail. In 1995 Amnesty International and the United Nations Human Rights Commission joined thousands of supporter in working for his release. He faced 25 years to life after being framed under the California Three Strikes Law, because of his Food Not Bombs work.He also co-authored and illustrated the book Food Not Bombs: How to Feed the Hungry and Build Community which has sold more than 10,000 copies in four languages. The 20th Anniversary English edition was published in Tucson by See Sharp Press.His work with Food Not Bombs also appeared in Amnesty International's Human Rights Report in 1995, "No Trespassing" by Anders Corr, "Interviews With Icons" by Lisa Law and in Howard Zinn's A People's History of the United States. There is a chapter about him in "50 American Revolutions You're Not Supposed to Know" by Mickey Z and his role in the UnFree Trade Tour is featured in the book "Por el Reparto del Trabajo y la Riqueza" by Jose Iglesias Fernandez published in Madrid, Spain. He was the recipient the 1999 Local Hero Award by the San Francisco Bay Guardian. Keith was also a pioneer in the Low powered FM radio movement and a co-founder of San Francisco Liberation Radio. He is a co-founder of the October 22nd No Police Brutality Day protests and he helped start the Homes Not Jails squatters' movement in the United States. In 1997 Keith helped organize and participated UnFree Trade Tour of North America where the idea to shut down the World Trade Organization in Seattle in 1999 was first proposed. He has been maintaining the Food Not Bombs web site since 1994 and he still updates many of the movement's publications. Keith has been touring the world helping start Food Not Bombs groups and supporting existing chapters. He is also writing a book about the movement and his travels will be part of a documentary filmed and produced by Australian journalist Liz Tadic. Keith is also busy coordinating busloads of food and kitchen equipment to the areas devastated by Katrina. He is also focusing his attention on building the Food Not Bombs movement in Africa and resisting domestic surveillance ond political repression in the United States. In 2005 NBC-TV reported that the Pentagon classified a 2004 protest Keith helped organize against torture as an on-going, creditable terrorist threat. According to internal government documents the FBI's Joint Terrorism Task Force has been investigating and disrupting Food Not Bombs groups in Arizona, California, Colorado, Texas, North Carolina and many other states. Keith's name was in a New York Times article where they published a U.S. State Department list of the 100 people who were not free to travel outside the country to attend protests. Even so he still travels often and has visited Food Not Bombs groups all over Europe, the Middle East, Africa and the Americas.Still is main passion is painting, drawing, graphic design and illustration. You can learn more about Food Not Bombs at www.foodnotbombs.net
