I’ve been putting in more time helping out at Food Not Bombs recently since I’m currently unemployed. If you’re not familiar, it’s an all-volunteer mutual aid organization that distributes food to anyone for free.
I’ve been really excited about mutual aid in the last couple of months, so I’ve been helping out by picking up food, sorting through produce, and distributing them at the park every Friday. But now that I have a lot of free time, I wanted to do a bit more for the org. I wanted to tell everyone in the neighborhood that there’s free food right here!
We had flyers printed recently, so I decided to put them up for people to see.
The first time I tried putting these flyers up didn’t go too well. I was just too nervous. I was sure that a cop would see me doing it and harass me for vandalizing! I got some wallpaper paste from the hardware store, put it on the flyer, and very quickly slapped it on whatever wall or pole I saw. I was too scared to smooth it out or find the right surface for it.
Of course, they fell off soon after.
A week later, I decided to try it again. But I wanted to do it right this time–I didn’t want these flyers falling off the next day! The first thing I did was make wheatpaste. It’s basically just flour and water (with a little heat), but it’s supposed to be really strong thanks to the gluten content.
Next, I made sure to look for smooth surfaces. Anything with staples or cracks were a no-go, so I walked around a lot trying to find the right spots.
I was thankfully less nervous this time so when I posted the flyers, I took my time putting liberal amounts of wheatpaste and smoothing out all the air bubbles from the paper.
I visited the flyers the next day and they look like they’ve been super glued on there pretty well. I also covered a good chunk of the neighborhood I think. Hopefully this translates to more people going to the food distro next time. 🤞
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