Upon arriving at the food bank, I did not know what to expect since I had never volunteered in this manner before. There are two large garage doors on the front of the building; I entered through a side door that led to the office. There I shook hands with Wes, who runs the warehouse. He led me to the warehouse which has an upper-deck where customers look at assorted items and choose what they want – there are no limits. The lower-deck consisted of many large shelves full of food items. The first thing Wes had me do was put packages of cans in a pile below shelves of other food. The work I performed was mainly heavy-lifting, including moving boxes of food around the facility and helping customers load their vehicles. I would also help sort items and put them in their proper places. The operation of the food bank runs very smoothly. Customers would come in and pick out which items they need, running at nineteen cents per pound, and place them on a skid. After they were finished, the skid was transported to a ledge and taken off of the skid. The customers would back in through one of the garage doors and pull up to the ledge. From the ledge, other volunteers and I would help load these items into the backs of their vehicles.

After helping a few customers, Wes came up to me and explained exactly what the food bank does; it sells food items to organizations and charities, such as food pantries (including church-based), the Women’s shelter, Teen Challenge and even day care centers. The food bank takes in food donated by food-drives and the general good will of people. While volunteering I noticed that a few times the staff was preparing to have a food-drive at certain places. They also take in items from grocery and convenience stores that are some-what damaged (such as a few cracked eggs) or close to expiring. Their official mission statement reads,

The Western Maryland Food Bank, Inc. is committed to reducing hunger by acquiring and distributing food and non-food items to local and regional organizations assisting those in need.

Now that I have described the operations of a food bank, let us see some statistics on worldwide hunger and poverty. In the world today, a recorded 842 million people do not have enough food to eat. About 827 million of those people live in developing countries and poor nutrition causes about forty-five percent of deaths in children under age five. In 2012, about 46.5 million U.S. citizens lived in poverty; 49 million lived in food insecure households, 15.9 million of them children. With a world population of about seven billion, 842 million people may not seem like a lot. But roughly imagine the combined populations of the United States, Indonesia, Russia, France, the United Kingdom, and Sweden without enough food to eat, while the rest of the world is living the good life. It always sounds much more shocking when describing statistics according to entire populations because, although more prevalent in developing countries, hunger occurs all over the world. It is much more camouflaged by the well-off when in developed countries because, if that is not the reality of the majority, then why show what only a minority go through?

I chose to volunteer at a food bank because I wanted to work within a place that deals with the issue of hunger, one of the most common and profound forms of violence. Hunger is an issue that is largely neglected by those in charge because they feel as though they have far more important priorities than making sure people, especially children, are not going hungry. Although most food banks receive government funding, they provide a good model of voluntary cooperation in order to help the needy. We cannot and must not wait for the state to “help” us. We must take care of ourselves and each other. Mutual aid is a simple way to help people overcome poverty in a peaceful manner. We must build our own facilities, such as food banks, and resources so that this may be possible and not let anyone tell us that it cannot be done.

Many conformists may see this as idealistic, and me an ideologue, but I see it as absolutely natural and desirable. Hunger is something that can lead people to commit acts of criminality out of desperation, such as theft or physical violence. A lot of people damn those who commit these acts, but many of them are put into a situation, such as poverty, where they are out of options. Poverty is, without a doubt, a cause of crime. Some may see certain people as inherently ugly, while I see them as beautiful individuals who are begging to be set free from whatever coercive powers are keeping them bound. I sincerely believe that peace is an absolute kept from truly coming into existence. No matter who I am speaking to, a brother, sister, friend, comrade, it is intrinsic that we knock down those barriers that keep peace from emerging and a free society from flourishing.

In 1844, American libertarian Lysander Spooner established a private mail delivery service to challenge the government-supported monopoly. His American Letter Mail Company delivered mail much cheaper than the government service could. The competition his company offered drove down federal postal rates until the government used legal measures to force him out of business in 1851. Thus the federal monopoly on mail production was secured by threat of government force.

Since then government, sometimes working with favored corporations, have monopolized transportation systems. Since it is usually not practical to build a competing subway line or road (even if the government actually did allow it), the problem might be best addressed by realizing that the trains belong the people anyway – they were built and maintained by wealth taken with the backing of government force, administered by the most powerful interests in society.

In Paris, subway fare dodgers have devised an ingenious method of competing against the government subway system. They offer an alternative method of price collecting.

Essentially, insurance funds for fare dodgers have been established. Henry Chu reports in the LA Times that for approximately $8.50 a month, an individual can participate in a fund that will pay your fine if you are caught dodging fares. At least one such group has been operating for years and several funds are now operational in Paris.

By contrast, a legal monthly pass costs about $74, and a single ride about $2, with fare increases scheduled for the near future.

While it seems unlikely that the government will respond by cutting overhead costs and lowering fares anytime soon, the insurance groups do reduce prices for those who participate in them. And unlike government, which forces people to obey the terms set by those who have politically maneuvered themselves to the top, the funds operate on the terms of those who choose to participate.

Those who forcibly monopolize things aren’t your friends. Cheating them means that wealth you would have given to a rigid coercive bureaucracy can instead be used on more productive things – like creating the organizations for a future of freedom.

Of course the success of such a venture would depend on the cultural context. At the least, one would need an idea of what kind of crackdowns the public will tolerate. Chu says that fare payers he interviewed were generally not concerned with efforts to cheat the system, and some even expressed support.

Other lessons can be drawn from the Paris experience. Whether or not the creators of fare-dodging funds have sound economic principles in mind, their experience shows that the concept of mutual insurance, not dependent on large top-down firms, can function at least on some level. Bold entrepreneurs could create fine insurance or even arrest insurance for those who operate counter to the establishment economy. And those who prefer other methods can compete against state services in less risky ways like carpooling networks or encouraging bicycle-friendly roads.

Wherever the state tries to exert control, there will be resistance or evasion. A society that functions by including people as equals, rather than by forcibly trying to arrange life according to the policy of the powerful, will be a society that centers on mutual benefit, not on power struggles. In resistance to authority we can see the freedom of tomorrow enacted today. Spreading anarchist principles can turn resistance into consistent action toward true liberty.