Sophie Davison

Food, Water, Peace, Shelter

For everyone. Forever.

Food, Water, Peace, Shelter (FWPS) is a global social movement to guarantee FWPS for everyone, forever. To be part of the movement, you must simply agree with the value, and do at least one thing each week to bring the world closer to FWPS.

There is nobody telling you what you should do in FWPS. Only suggestions.

Do the thing that you feel most excited about to guarantee food, water, peace and shelter for everyone forever. Whatever feels best for you probably is best: we trust you.

Download the FWPS calendar to form your habit and get some inspiration.

Here are some example activities:

General

• Join or create a group of FWPS people that meets regularly
  • coordinate your actions e.g. "oh now it makes sense to work on this election now there's enough of us to have a chance of winning"
  • share tips
  • support each other
  • get inspired
• Talking to people who might be interested about FWPS
  • This could be people you're close to, someone you vaguely know, or a total stranger
• Spreading the word using art, media and fun
  • Putting up posters or artwork with the FWPS logo or slogan
  • Write the FWPS slogan in your social media bio
  • Talking about FWPS on a podcast, radio show or tv programme
  • Writing articles about FWPS projects for local media
  • Make some art about FWPS e.g. a song, a play, a cartoon, a short story
  • Start or join a FWPS social media account
  • Start using the words 'fwoops', 'fwoopsy' and 'fwoopsing'
• Donations
  • Find a cool person or organisation that is doing FWPS things and give them some money
  • Fundraise: Host a party, a bake sale, an auction, a marathon etc. and use the money for FWPS interests. Make sure there's time for people to chat to each other - getting lots of conversations about FWPS to happen does a lot
  • Research which FWPS people or groups you could donate to, and spread the word
• Change policies
  • Write to your local politician with suggested changes
  • Help someone run for election who is FWPS aligned e.g. putting up posters, distributing flyers, making social media content
• Plan a FWPS takeover of your organisation
  • Get together a group of FWPS people within your organisation and make plans
  • Get FWPS goals passed through organisational decision making spaces e.g. boards, votes
  • Support each other to do FWPS activities within your organisation, even if there is a leader who disapproves of it e.g. the cashiers and security guard at a food store could agree to let underfed people take free food
• Help people improve their FWPS efforts
  • Analyse how well various FWPS strategies are working through interviews, surveys, online research etc.
  • Offer support to FWPS people using the information you've gathered (and be ok if they turn down your offer!)

Food

• Growing food
  • Plant some vegetables in your garden to share with people
  • Plant some vegetables in minimally used areas in your local area (e.g. a corner of a park, a disused railway)
  • Help on a farm run by FWPS people
• Distributing food
  • If you work in a supermarket, agree with your coworkers that you'll give free food to food insecure people
  • Strike a deal with a food store or restaurant to distribute their unsold food for free
  • Put food that you've grown yourself outside your home for people to take for free
• Create definitions of adequate food for your local area
  • Decide which food products are abundant and should be given for free
  • Work out what selection of food is needed to meet people's nutritional needs in your area
• Cook a meal for someone
  • Invite someone into your home for food
  • Volunteer in a community kitchen or soup kitchen
  • Make an extra portion when you cook your dinner and give it to someone

Water

• Reducing water pollution
  • Make a campaign for a local factory to change the way it operates to pollute less
  • Shame polluters
  • Get a place shut down that is polluting water unnecessarily
  • Get farmers to switch how they use fertilisers and pesticides
  • Plant trees and bushes in agricultural land
• Cleaning water bodies
  • Provide water purification equipment to people drinking impure water
  • Litter cleanups in water bodies
• Preventing water waste
  • Get a place shut down you think is misusing water (e.g. golf course, data centre, fast fashion factory)
• Distributing water
  • Help with a project to create wells in areas with minimal access
  • Install a pipe to somewhere that needs it

Peace

• Help people working in the weapons industry to quit their jobs
  • Offer support e.g. alternative employment, food, shelter, moral support, money
• Creating international alliances
  • Looking for or creating an international group of people who agree to demilitarise their own countries
• If you work in the weapons industry, find a way to reduce the number of weapons that are in existence
  • Work less efficiently
  • Go on strikes
  • Break things
  • Give away information that will help others reduce the number of weapons in existence
  • Quit your job
• If you work in something that supports the weapons industry, find a way to reduce the number of weapons that are in existence
  • Get your company to increase prices if they sell to weapons companies
  • Get your company to stop working with weapons companies
  • Write anonymously to the press to shame your company
  • Make intentional mistakes when doing something for a weapons industry client
  • Give away information that will help others reduce the number of weapons in existence
  • Make a plan to quit your job, asking for support from other FWPS people to make sure you're safe
• If you have savings
  • Ask your bank if they invest in the weapons industry
  • Switch bank if you're invested in the weapons industry
  • Pressure your bank to divest from the weapons industry

Shelter

• Give shelter directly
  • Offer someone your spare room
  • Help someone pay their rent
  • Reduce fees for renters if you have direct influence
• Support people getting their own shelter through rent strikes or squats
  • Share campaign leaflets
  • Give legal support
  • Donate
  • Making food for their meetings
  • Offer backup housing to people who are at risk of eviction
• Get an unused or underused building to be converted into homes for unhoused people
  • Turn an investment property that is sitting empty into housing
  • Turn an underused holiday home into accommodation for unhoused people
  • Take over an abandoned building and fix it up
  • Get the local government to ban holiday homes/investment properties etc.
  • Take a building away from an organisation that is counter to FWPS and turn it into housing e.g. an arms dealer's office
• Prevent rent collections and evictions
  • Avoid enforcing rent payments or evictions (relevant if you're a police officer, security guard, banker, bailiff etc.)
  • Physically block an eviction from happening

Top tips

Create feedback loops

I think that the best FWPS activities are things that create feedback loops, where something you're doing allows even more of that thing to happen. For example: Make a fundraising event that includes a workshop to help people start their own fundraising event If you're told not to talk about FWPS at work, do it anyway. The more people do it, the easier it will be for other people to do it Make a small group of people who will ensure that each other will have food and housing forever, allowing everyone to be less afraid of spending more time on FWPS activities such as growing the group

Not too scary and not too boring

Get the right balance between things that feel easy and things that feel scary. The middle ground is where you are learning and being creative, that leads to big results. If something feels boring, go more creative or ambitious. If something feels scary, go in smaller steps or choose something a little easier. If things are feeling exciting, interesting and fun, you're hitting the spot.

Trust your gut and keep going

Do whatever you think is the best idea in each moment. Maybe in a few weeks you'll stop liking it and wish you were doing something else. If that happens, switch to the other thing! Just keep doing whatever you think is best, and allow space for reflections. Listen to other people's suggestions, but trust your gut about whether that is a good suggestion for you. Nobody gets to decide what you do here.

Responses to objections

"People supported by FWPS will get lazy and not work hard"

• Evidence from universal basic income trials shows that this is not what happens when people have their basic needs covered:
  • “The evidence from diverse interventions in low-, middle-, and high-income contexts indicates minimal impact on aggregate measures of labor market participation with some studies reporting an increase in work participation. When reductions do occur, time is channeled into other valued activities such as caregiving.” - Stanford report
• Why do we think that the rich are best motivated by carrots, and the poor are best motivated by sticks?
• By the same logic, you should also currently be in support of a full wealth tax of the wealthy, because having accumulated wealth and the associated security will mean that they start getting lazy, regardless of what happened during a previous time period. By this logic, everyone should be teetering on the edge of homelessness at all times
• We can't predict the future

"If I as a wealthy person join FWPS, I’ll have to give a lot more than I get"

• In terms of receiving direct aid, you are probably right. You are likely to have less food etc. given to you than you give out. But if you expand what you ‘get’ from the promise, you’ll realise that you benefit so much from this:
  • Security that you and your loved ones will have this security net into the future
  • Security from war, which is feeling increasingly threatening worldwide and which nobody is safe from
  • Freedom from food and water insecurity, which is likely to worsen in the coming decades
  • Moral ease, that you are part of a solution to the world’s injustices, rather than a bystander who will regret not doing more
  • A positive legacy - be someone whose statue isn’t pulled down in a hundred years. Make sure your grandkids will always be proud of you
  • Better art, from all the artists that are now properly supported in pursuing their crafts
  • Better innovation, from all the entrepreneurs who are properly supported and more able to innovate
• To win from the promise, you don’t need others to lose. This is a win win situation
• Your aim doesn’t need to be to get things out of the promise. Your aim can be to help others. This is a valid aim

"Only food, water, peace and shelter? That’s pretty unambitious - people need a lot more than that. What about decent healthcare or friendship or access to art?"

• It is unambitious, but we hope that it will give people the time and security that they need to build these other things
• It is still an enormous improvement compared to the current state of the world, where many live without these basic needs being met

"Vigilantes might use the name of FWPS to do horrible things"

Let’s say that Ali, Josh and Sarah take an action that others see as wrong. For example, they might say: ‘it is right to kill a person’s dog because it is eating food that humans could eat otherwise’ If they try to take this action, they will likely be stopped by other parts of society e.g. police, neighbours etc. Other FWPS people probably won't support them with their decision.

"People might slack off from doing FWPS things"

• This is basically the same as it would have been anyway. Trying to spread FWPS doesn't harm anything
• There will likely not be very many of these people
• Even if they made up the majority of the population, we would still easily be able to provide everyone with food, water, peace and shelter
• You're still doing cool, meaningful stuff with your life. It's them that's missing out

"Not enough people will join FWPS for it to be effective"

• You should still join FWPS - if it doesn’t take off, you haven’t lost anything, you've just done cool stuff
• We should test how keen people are to join FWPS, but initial conversations have shown that it is widely supported by people with all kinds of worldviews

"FWPS will just be banned in countries that want to repress it"

• It's pretty impossible to ban a value
• FWPSers in other countries will help lift the ban
• At some point we will have the numbers to resist repression
• Many FWPS people will choose to carry out actions that won’t be punished, or where they know that other FWPS people will be able to prevent them from being punished

"But FWPS will distract me from other important work, such as providing health care to people in need"

• If it makes more sense to focus on those things, then do that. It's fine. Trust your gut, and discuss with others if you want help.