Food Not Bombs Roswell sues city over right to share food with unhoused people

City official cites residents complaining 'they don’t want them on the streets attracting more homeless people'

By Austin Fisher

A mutual aid group is challenging the city of Roswell in court after city officials banned them from sharing food with unhoused people on public property allegedly because of their anti-war political message.

Jocelyn Smith is a Roswell resident and mother of two who helped start the Gonzalez Hope Center as a food rescue operation: picking up leftover food from schools and events and serving it before it spoiled.

Smith said after the Hope Center closed in April 2024, she was still receiving food so she started a small, spontaneous mobile operation feeding roughly a dozen people who couldn’t afford to buy dinner in the evening or on weekends when other organizations were not serving food.

“We were trying to fill in gaps,” Smith told 505OMATIC in a phone interview. “I have a no-questions-asked policy on my program: I don't care if you have a home, are homeless, or have a million dollars. Food is food, and people need to eat.” 

That's when she found out about Food Not Bombs, a loosely affiliated national organization with local chapters throughout the country. She volunteered to serve food with a chapter in Austin, Texas and started researching its political message as she understands it: “Why are we spending so much money on these wars, and people are literally trying to feed themselves?”

So the group on June 19, 2024 began sharing free food with anyone who wanted to eat, twice per week. They set up tables on public property at Pioneer Plaza in the city of Roswell, a centrally located park on the city’s main street which sits next to a large courthouse, the city’s main public transit hub, and a food rescue center run by a coalition of churches called Harvest Ministries.

Food Not Bombs Roswell also displayed political banners, distributed printed flyers promoting their message that war is wrong and food is a human right, and engaged in direct conversations with the public about their political activism and social issues.

But then in June 2025 the Roswell city government began requiring the group to get a permit and liability insurance to continue serving food at the plaza, which is why they’re now suing.

According to the lawsuit filed on Smith and the group’s behalf by an Albuquerque law firm, the American Civil Liberties Union of New Mexico and the New Mexico Center on Law and Poverty, City Guest Services Supervisor Amanda Dickerson approached the group on June 6, 2025, asked if they had a permit, and asked them to move. Smith said Dickerson came out from the Roswell Visitor Center across the street from the plaza, “screaming at us about a permit.” The group refused to move, and after Dickerson left, a Roswell Police Department officer approached the group and asked them to move from a grassy area at the plaza to a sidewalk. The group complied with the officer and the officer left, according to the lawsuit.

The group didn’t apply for a permit and continued demonstrating but stopped on Nov. 8, 2025 because then-Deputy City Attorney Josh Nairn-Mahan emailed Smith and another advocate informing them their group “must obtain a permit and liability insurance” to continue distributing food, pointing to a Roswell city ordinance that governs selling goods on city property. The lawsuit argues the ordinance is unconstitutional because the city government’s permitting and insurance requirements function as a restraint on Food Not Bombs Roswell’s rights to free speech and expression.

And the city government's enforcement of the permit ordinance has been inconsistent, according to the suit. In January and February, two other organizations, Roswell Community Disaster Relief Services and a Boy Scouts of America chapter held demonstrations at the plaza without a permit.

Center on Law and Poverty Public Benefits Attorney Marco Alarid White told 505OMATIC in a phone interview that New Mexico courts have not yet dealt with expressive food sharing but there is a well-established history of federal courts in Florida and Texas upholding other Food Not Bombs chapters’ challenges to government enforcement of similar laws.

“We are very open to reaching a resolution with the city whereby the group can return to their constitutionally protected activity,” Alarid White said.

Nairn-Mahan, who is now the Roswell city attorney, did not respond to an email seeking comment on this story and the city of Roswell has not yet responded to the lawsuit. 

Smith said a big part of the local resistance to her and others’ efforts to feed people is to maintain the city’s perception as a tourist town.

“It’s the UFO capital of the world,” Smith said. “When they see a bunch of homeless people, they have a problem.”

Three days after Food Not Bombs Roswell stopped demonstrating at the plaza, City Councilor Christina Arnold wrote an email to three city employees describing the group as “a political resistance group that is making some kind of statement about capitalism and war,” according to emails obtained by the Center on Law and Poverty through a public records request and included in the lawsuit.

“While I appreciate them filling a food gap and do not want to stifle their free speech, my stance is rules are rules that apply to everyone,” Arnold wrote. “Also, while there is a group of them that feel this way, there is also a group of my constituents who have reached out to me to say they don’t want them on the streets attracting more homeless people. Always a toss up that requires balance.”

Smith said no one in the community should go hungry when there are enough resources to feed everyone.

“All we want is to get back out to Pioneer Plaza and keep eating and talking with our neighbors about how we can build a world where there is no more hunger, no more poverty, and much more peace,” she said.