BURLINGTON -- Upbeat music, colorful lights and delicious smells drew a crowd to a table set up at the corner of City Hall Park downtown Tuesday night.
Amid volunteers dishing out heaped plates of pesto salad and biriyani from a fold-out table was a man expertly folding and filling dough triangles with mixed veggies, while another fried them in a pan of hot oil set up on the sidewalk.
"Free food, free people, free speech," chanted a cheerful FaReid Munarsyah, a Burlington resident and co-organizer of The People's Kitchen, a volunteer-led community effort to cook and serve free hot food.
Well-known for his community activism, particularly around food insecurity, Munarsyah and the People's Kitchen banner are often present at local community events, such as the World Refugee Day celebration at Leddy Park in June.
When he heard about the recent struggles faced by Food Not Cops/Food Not Bombs -- another mutual aid free food distribution group in the city -- Munarsyah decided to join the effort to feed hungry downtown residents.
"Businesses and the City Council don't like us being here so we are here harnessing people's power," he said as he folded paper-thin egg rolls.
For many years, Food Not Cops/Food Not Bombs has served free lunch out of the Marketplace Garage downtown. This summer, 150 area businesses signed a letter alleging the effort "has had a negative impact on the area." They sent it to the mayor asking that the food distribution "be relocated to a more appropriate and secure setting."
The mayor's office did not respond to a request for comment.
That led to a counter letter signed by dozens of organizations and businesses expressing support for the meal program, followed by a protest outside City Hall before the May 20 City Council meeting. Sam Bliss, one of the organizers of the lunch program, also wrote an op-ed stating that Food Not Cops makes downtown safer.
Progressive Mayor Emma Mulvaney-Stanak signed a resolution allocating $10,000 to support the program's relocation "to a more accessible and better-resourced location." Bliss recently told VTDigger the volunteers have not collected the funds.
"There's not agreement within the group that it's a good idea to take the money," he wrote in a message.
The attention the issue has received led to "The People's Potluck Protest Picnic & Distro," hosted Tuesday nights by the People's Kitchen, according to flyers posted on social media. The group recently began serving hot food in a corner of the park off College Street three nights a week and plan to continue, especially through the winter, according to Munarsyah.
"The city needs to be taking care of its people, right? You want safety, then you start feeding people. People who are not hungry are less desperate," he said.
It was a slow night this week, but the previous two Tuesday dinners served about 120 and 150 people, he estimated.
This week's meal included a green salad, pesto chicken pasta salad, vegetable biriyani, seafood biriyani, and fresh peaches with whipped cream for dessert that was donated by a resident.
"It's delicious," said a woman who identified herself as Tanya and helped herself to two freshly fried, crunchy eggrolls.
She said she used to work at a soup kitchen her parents started in Brattleboro about 45 years ago.
"I worked there my entire life all the way 'til they died. Now I'm in need of food," she said. "I never thought that the tables would turn but here I am on the other side of the table."
Munarsyah, originally from the Phillipines, is known for cooking food and hosting dinners at his home where all are welcome to cook and eat. So not all who stopped by to volunteer or eat were unhoused.
Rep. Brian Cina, P/D-Burlington, was among the volunteers there. They said they first started helping during the Occupy Vermont movement in 2011, and continued serving food to the encampment at Sears Lane in 2021 and during the wave of evictions as the state's motel program was scaled back.
"We saw horrible things," Cina said, their voice cracking as they described people dying and freezing in the cold and having to call the hospital or arrange for blankets and emergency help.
People's Kitchen intends to continue serving hot dinner in the park three nights a week and provide essential supplies to those in need in partnership with other efforts, such as the Street Community Action Team of Burlington. It does so with the help of donors like farms and businesses, as well as public donations.
The recent attention Food Not Cops/Food Not Bombs garnered has Munarsyah worried about whether the city will target the volunteer-run effort for removal or impose permit and licensing requirements.
"I think they're going after the wrong people," he said. "Politicians, who were responsible for the housing crisis to begin with, are in no position to criticize people who are actually doing something about the housing crisis. And we're doing something. We're helping people who are unhoused and anybody who wants a meal, and it's free."
As volunteers packed up leftovers and cleaned the area, a plastic LED sign on the table continued to flash colorful messages: "Free food. Good Food. Good mood. 100% halal."