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Last Thursdays Food Not Bombs Soup kitchen had an international flavour with around 20 folk turning up to show solidarity & support with the collective following our recent brushes with the PSNI. It was quite a sight, tables & chairs where set up on Botanic Avenue summer salads & sandwiches served up & part of the street was reclaimed for an hour & a half in the name of people not profit.

As well as the usual well worn Belfast faces a large hungry crew turned up from the Tools For Solidarity International Workcamp. TFS another Belfast based collective collect & refurbish old hand tools no longer in use in Ireland, & provide quality kits of tools to artisan groups in Uganda & Tanzania. Check out the interview with Hamish from TFS from daaa zine.

TFS host several international workcamps a year in both North & South of Ireland. These camps give volunteers a chance to learn about development issues & give practical to people solidarity in Africa.The volunteers where keen to learn about FNB & some of them had done some lentil munching at FNB at home before. You can do international voluntary workcamps with all sorts of groups check out the Service Civil International website. There's a tale from a Food Not Bombs workcamp in Helsinki on this site from 'Squatting in the Bushes'.

We brought along a copy of the application form for a trading permit we'd received from the City Council so as people could take some time to read it & have some discussion about how to approach this situation.

The next Belfast FNB activity is a special Jam the War Breakfast outside the Belfast Magistrates Court on Thursday the 12th & Friday the 13th Aug to coincide with the trial of folk arrested during Bush's visit to Northern Ireland in 2003.