"With A Little Help From My Friends..."

Though I have been too busy to post much these days, I have been continuing my freegan lifestyle and outreach, with such things as the dumpster rides, interviews, personal bin raiding, and my work at the Hippie Kitchen.

 In my last post, I mentioned that I would be leaving the LACW this spring, to hit the road once again. I'm excited to get back to the nomadic lifestyle that has shaped my adult life.

At the moment, my friends and I have a van as a living space, but we're looking for more. We don't want anything extravagant, but just a small trailer (10' to 14') that can be easily towed by our vehicle.

It's unusual for me to ask for anything, but I am aware that people often have travel trailers or campers rotting in their backyards. If any of my readers has access to such an item (like the one on my graphic wishlist below) that they'd be willing to part with for free or cheap for the sake of a few free spirited freegans, please contact me! Any response is greatly appreciated. 

Happy Disappointment

Yesterday I went on a typical dumpster dive, by myself, in Pasadena. I was actually in the bin, digging around, and not finding much. Suddenly, a big white pickup truck pulled up next to the dumpster, which is in front of the loading dock gate (which was closed at this point). I wondered if the truck was that of a dumpster diver, or of somebody coming to pick up food. I didn't want to find out; if it was the latter, I could get in trouble when the employees opened the gate! So I made a speedy getaway.

When I was pulling out of the parking lot in Eric's car, I saw the big white pickup truck again, as it was leaving, too. The bed of the truck was full of bags of food. The driver had picked up a donation. That was the reason for my meager pickings. Instead of throwing away the good food, employees had given it to the driver of that truck.

I was never so happy to go away nearly empty handed as I was that evening.

Bittersweet Christmas + New Freegan Video!

Christmas was bittersweet this year, with the knowledge that several of our friends will likely not make it to Christmas next year. At the LACW, we make our house a home for people who are near the end of their lives. Many poor individuals have moved off the streets and into the hospitality house to live out their last days (or to live many years, too).

Right now, we have a man named Mike who is suffering from a malicious tumor in his jaw. His doctor told him that he may not see Christmas this year (thankfully he did!). We learn from him, and those in the past, how to die gracefully. Mike is a gracious and friendly man. We pray for his comfort.

In other news, a friend of Eric's and mine has directed and produced a mini-documentary about freeganism. The video follows a Los Angeles Dumpster Diving Meetup event and included interviews with Eric and me.

Watch the film here. This link is only useful to Facebook users. You have to sign in to see the video. I will post a public link or embed the video as soon as I get that information.

Dumpster Diving at the Bloomington Catholic Worker

Almost every Catholic Worker community has its own newsletter, and receives the newspapers of all the other communities. I hardly ever find the time to read the newsletters, but every once in a while a front page or an article catches my eye. This time, one of my fellow community members pointed out this article in the "Bloomington Christian Radical", because it made them think of me. I think it's fantastic and worth sharing.

On Dumpster Diving  by Laura Ertmer

Dumpster diving is not about trash. It is about waste.

Esteban grew up on the streets of La Paz. He knows about trash. It is a last resort for the homeless - offering little more than bones and other food scraps. In Lima, basureros pock through mountains of trash to salvage tin cans and plastic bottles to resell. In Buenos Aires, cartoneros collect and recycle cardboard. In Bloomington, we too collect from what has been discarded - but ours is a privileged scavenging. We are feasting on the absurdity of mass food production and mega stores. America is confused about trash. The wealth - and shame - of our nation is reflected in the abundance of usable, edible and wearable items that stores throw away.

We are exuberant, energetic dumpster divers. There is no delight quite as wholesome as salvaging pounds of food from the garbage. Imagine when the beam of your headlamp first plunges into the darkness of the bin and illuminates a radiant red bell pepper.  And then it falls on another. And then a yellow one. Oooh! Bags of apples. Broccoli. Ah, and there's some Brie! A fish fillet! A lime! A meal begins to take shape when the light shines upon some wine a peach pie. In this big metal box behind the grocery store, we forage for food and come out with a feast.

We win! We eat for free!! And yet, in our joy we recognize that this is sick. This system of production, consumption and waste is sick. Why are beautiful apples and fresh organic milk discarded? Have we lost all common sense? Do we not see food for food? Do we see food only as profit? Do we expect perfection in produce?

There is always more food than we can take. And we take all we can. We distribute it to friends. We throw dinner parties. We dry fruit, can tomatoes, pickle cucumbers. It's not enough. The dumpster is always full. Go. Take your flashlight. Drive around back and look in the bin. You will see the absurdity of the system. YOU can eat for free. This is the truth about the trash. If we ignore the waste of the system, we let it become trash. If we reclaim the waste, we eat for free.

America's food system is messed up. We do not pretend that we are changing it. We are, in fact, relying on the absurdity of the system for our sustenance. While we continue to to harvest from the dumpsters, we need to call attention to the waste. We need to ask stores to reduce their waste - or to redistribute their "waste" to social service organizations that depend on food donations. It is the cost we should assume when we are nourished by an immoral system. We cannot become complacent. This waste is wrong even when we benefit from it. 

 

 

 

 

A Record of Dumpster Diving

I feel rather disconnected from this blog, like it has become only a record of my dumpster diving adventures instead of a journal of my lifestyle and ideas. Unfortunately, I am not sure how to fix that. My life is so full that it is hard to articulate everything that goes through my mind.

I am so grateful to have Suelo and his traveling buddies around for the Thanksgiving weekend. Eric's house (the "RagaJazzFreegan House") has become its own intentional community, with 12 people staying in the small 3 bedroom duplex this weekend.

On Saturday, we hosted our November Dumpster Ride and Freegan Meal event, which was rained out. We still met, but watched a documentary ("The Power Of Community") instead of having a bike ride. After the movie, the group of us went dumpster diving and pulled out a mountain of holiday related goodies, including a whole frozen turkey and at least 15 containers of cranberry relish.

I continue to deliver dumpster goodies to the Hippie Kitchen. On Saturday morning, Catherine told one of our volunteers where some of the food had come from. The volunteer happened to be an employee at one of the stores that I like to dumpster dive at. She told us that her particular store had passed a mandate in 2010 saying that no food could be thrown out and that it all had to be donated. I didn't have the heart to tell her that her store was the one at which Eric found a whole case of wine a couple of months ago (it had been chucked out because one bottle was broken).

Freeganism as Civil Disobedience

Dumpster diving is a great way to get free food and to shock people into awareness of waste, but I see a lot more to it. It is true that the activity is mildly illegal, because it is often seen as a form of trespassing or even stealing (which is ridiculous to me, but that's beside the point). People shouldn't be fooled; even though it is rare to be arrested or prosecuted for bin raiding, there is a risk of that (and the risk that goes with the stigma associated with such activities). And because of the risk, people who dumpster dive should believe that it's worth getting in trouble for. I think that's where the principles of  Freeganism come in.

I personally see dumpster diving as a form of civil disobedience. I am violating the petty laws that protect trash (which is a representation of a wasteful society) in order to make a statement about the system that creates trash. Another part of freeganism is finding ways to reduce my own participation in that system. Dumpster diving provides a strategy for stepping out of consumer habits.

This topic came to my mind because of a recent police encounter. At our last dumpster ride event, we were confronted by the same officers who stopped us on our May dumpster ride (check the link for a recounting of that incident). During the first stop on our October ride, we where cornered by the police while we were behind the fence and in the dumpsters. We were caught red handed, trespassing! I have a problem with the way that authority holds the words of the law above the ideas that motivate people to break or keep the laws. The cops were also verbally abusive with us, assuming that we were less than them, merely because we were "breaking a law". How can they expect us to cooperate and keep our cool when they approach us with guns and sharpened words?

Even when stopped by authorities, it is rare to be prosecuted for such a "crime" as dumpster diving. We have not been contacted since the incident.

Things I've Been Up To

As usual, life has been busy since my last post. Big events and everyday life eat up my time as we pass through the moments we all live in.

"Jesus Was a Street Server"
from our LACW website:

On September 30th we joined the Los Angeles Community Action Network and other groups dedicated to serving the poor of Skid Row, in a protest/street meal calling for an end to police harassment of street servers. Delicious food was served and a good time was had by all! Check out our photos.

 Reverend Billy and the "Stop Shopping Gospel Choir" at RedCat theater

I finally got the chance to see this theatrical, anti-capitalist genius in action. Eric and I went to see Rev. Billy and his choir on their "Earth-a-lluia" tour stop in Los Angeles Thursday night. The odd thing is that we paid $12 for tickets... but the Rev embraced the irony with humor instead of shying away from it. From his website,  before the show:

The Choir and Rev kick off our tour in the Disney Hall. This church was founded on the discovery that MICKEY MOUSE IS THE ANTI-CHRIST so please come help us embrace our contradictions. (http://www.revbilly.com/events/cali-tour)

Eric and I fully enjoyed the hilarious and inspiring show, which focused more on environmental issues than on those of consumerism.

And here's an interesting article about him (including a little background on who and what he is), that I read in the LA Times that day: http://articles.latimes.com/2010/oct/21/entertainment/la-et-reverend-billy-20101021

Photo of the Day + "Garbage Revolution"

From our most recent meetup - "Back to school Freegan Video Potluck - Garbage""
Check out the movie we screened: http://www.garbagerevolution.com/

Quality Waste

We get a lot of food at the Hippie Kitchen. Most of the stuff is from donations through other organizations, like Little Sisters of The Poor. This is most often the food that stores would have thrown away, but diverted to food banks instead. And that's fantastic.

Some of the food we prepare to serve is brought by yours truly, straight from the trash (it missed a step). The other day, some of the volunteers were commenting that the produce in some of the boxes was in much better shape than usual ("The rotten vegetables aren't rotten today!" said one). And here's the thing: the better quality food is almost always from the dumpster, as in this case.

I have heard it said many times that people in the house eat better now that I live here to bring the freegan food.

What does that say about the waste in our society?

"That Money Thing"

Change of address: the URL for this blog is now http://funkyfreeganjournal.blogspot.com. I thought that it would make more sense that way.


The other day, Celina (my boyfriend's ten year old daughter), and Eric and I were talking together. She was sharing with us about the house she last lived in with her mom. Celina missed the old house, and knew that the rest of her family did too. "We were happier there", she said, "but we had to move because of that money thing. I don't get it". Her dad then tried to explain the difference in price between the houses they rent, and the necessity of moving out of the expensive place because of changes in the economy and their income. Celina was hanging on to her memories.
"Don't they want us to be content?"
Eric replied, "No, they want to make more money."

Isn't it the truth? Why does human society make things so complicated? I imagine a world in which people did care whether or not others (especially families) were content.

I just finished reading a book (called "Life is So Good") about the life of a Southern man (George Dawson) who lived for the entire 20th century. He didn't learn to read until he was 98 years old, as he had been forced by circumstance to work from age 12 to support his family. In his later years, while writing the book, he reviewed history (now being able to read it) with the young white man (Richard Glaubman) who helped him to write the memoir. In this passage I want to quote, they were discussing the Great Depression of the 1930's and the raised rate of suicides during that time.

I still didn't get it. I asked Richard, "Why did they have to kill themselves?"  

Richard said "They didn't have to, it's just what some people did when they lost all their money". 

"So they was rich to start with?" I asked. 

"Some of them were very wealthy on paper, but when their stock value fell they couldn't pay their debts."

"Wealthy on paper, huh. Yeah, back in those days, when you could get em, I would always take a silver dollar over a paper dollar even though they was heavier to carry."

Richard said, "Well,  I don't know how to explain it. Their paper wasn't even paper dollars. It was just pieces of paper that represented money. Their huge capital losses were really about losing money they never had."

I just looked at him.

"The more I think about it, I'm not sure I understand it so well my self."

I couldn't help myself from saying, "Tell me again how many years of schooling you've had."

Richard threw up his hands, "I never even took Economics 101".

"Well, I never did neither, but I wouldn't go killing myself about losing some money that I never had in the first place".

Richard asked me what I remembered of the '30's. I was there in the thirties alright, but I didn't know too much about a depression. Times was tough, but that's just how it was.

 

Getting Back Into It

It's been a little while since I last wrote. My last post was about July's Dumpster Ride, and we're going to be having the August one this weekend! Hopefully we will have scouted out some new spots by then...

I took a little break from things this month. It had even been a while since I had gone "bin-raiding" (another term for dumpster diving). Thankfully, I have been getting back into it, now that I am home from vacation. My blog is another thing that I need to get back into.

While I was away on vacation, Eric had been a busy freegan. He had found a whole case of "two buck Chuck" (cheap Trader Joe's wine). It's the same old story: one bottle of wine had broken in a case of twelve. They "chucked" the whole case out, leaving 11 unbroken bottles for my Eric to take home from the trash! He's been sharing them around with friends, hosting little dinner get-togethers and sharing his gardening skills. I didn't actually know a lot about composting until I starting dating Eric. :)

The other day, Eric and I took a friend bin raiding for her first time (another familiar story). We hit the dumpster in the middle of the day, being wary of employees. In less than five minutes, we hauled in two large bags containing a likely $200 worth of quality food.

Our friend's ten year old daughter (who came with us), was so excited about the excursion that she was bubbling about our dumpster food inside the store, when they went in to buy a few things they hadn't found outside. 

Dumpster Ride in July

On Saturday, Eric and I led our monthly "Dumpster Ride and Freegan Meal" event. I discovered that it has been one month more than a year since we started the dumpster tour ride.

This year's July ride was successful and fun. We had a group of about 15 riders, and they all stayed on through the end of the meal. Usually we start with a bigger group and about half of them drop out before we get to wherever we have the dinner. Everything went very smoothly. This was the first ride since our exciting May event in which we were followed by a police helicopter and briefly waylaid by officers after our first stop of the night. no such surprises popped up this time. We finished our raiding quickly, gathering a goodly amount of food for a tasty meal at Throop Church.

One trivial thing I noticed about the ride was that each stop was progressively better than the last. We went to three stores for our food. The first was a 99cent store in a residential neighborhood. The food was crap, but we found a couple of men's collared shirts and had general fun. Then we stopped at a nicer grocery store where we found lots of food, mostly packaged, processed stuff (but damn tasty). Our last stop was the best - a higher-end grocery store that carries a lot of fresh, organic produce. We got a lot of fresh fruit there. Posher stores have higher standards, and therefore throw away more, better quality food.

For dinner at midnight, we had great salads and other tasty treats. My favorite thing (besides the fresh watermelon) was the hamburgers that we cooked with mushrooms and served loaded with vegetables. YUM!

Photo of the Day

Here's a bountiful basket of beautiful fruit. Eric and I took two of the new LACW interns dumpster diving at our favorite Pasadena spot last night. We hauled home about ten boxes of fresh produce. I'm about to make dinner from it all, including the abundance of packaged mushrooms we scored.

My Alternative Fourth of July Weekend

I had a fantastic Fourth of July Weekend, and not because I like the holiday (which I truly don't). It was so great because spent it with wonderful people doing fun and (sometimes) meaningful things. Saturday started, as always, with work at the "Hippie Kitchen". Later, the LACW community went to a rockin' music party hosted by community friends, where I met up with Eric and his charming daughter. That full first day of the weekend ended with me picking up an old friend whom I hadn't seen in a few years (as he lives in Sydney and has just spent the last year traveling in Mexico). My friend Ash is also a former member of the Jesus Christians; he left that community a couple years before I did. He also happens to be one of the main people to influence me towards a freegan lifestyle. You may recognize his name (if you're a regular reader of this blog) from my repeated posting of this awesome freegan video. Below is another video (please be patient through the first 30 seconds of silence) about freeganism that Ash has appeared in. And click here to read an article by Ash that was included in a small booklet the JCs wrote about freeganism.



Anyway, Ash and I went with the LA Catholic Worker Community to celebrate the patriotic holiday on Sunday by mourning the deaths caused by our country's imperialistic foreign policies. We helped to set up the Arlington West - Santa Monica Memorial next to the pier. It was hard and sobering work. I have also mentioned this thing before - in this post from May 4.

The rest of the weekend was pure fun. We met up with Eric on Sunday afternoon. Instead of watching fireworks, we went dumpster diving (of course)! In reward for our hard work, we had a midnight snack/sushi feast. We said goodbye to Ash on Tuesday, wishing him well on his return to Australia.

I was proud to have spent the "birthday of America" doing things that pointed out the two main flaws in America's society - its violence and its consumerism-induced wastefulness.

Defining Freeganism Pt. 2

Since I am short on time, as usual, I will post another article that has caught my eye in recent times. This one was in the New York Times Magazine this month and is about a group Freegans in Buffalo, NY who have set up a community in a squat. I liked the article; it showed the great diversity in the types of people who adopt freegan ideals. It also showed the movement to be more than just dumpster diving. Quotable quote:

Kit is a freegan. He maintains that our society wastes far too much. Freeganism is a bubbling stew of various ideologies, drawing on elements of communism, radical environmentalism, a zealous do-it-yourself work ethic and an old-fashioned frugality of the sock-darning sort. Freegans are not revolutionaries. Rather, they aim to challenge the status quo by their lifestyle choices. Above all, freegans are dedicated to salvaging what others waste and — when possible — living without the use of currency. “I really dislike spending money,” Kit told me. “It doesn’t feel natural.”

The Article: "The Freegan Establishment"

Pictures from the article

"The Real Cost of Cheap Food"

Shortly after making my post yesterday, I ran into this fantastic article in Time magazine. The piece was written last August and is called "Getting Real About the High Price of Cheap Food". It's an excellent article about all of the important food issues of our day. I highly recommend that you read it!


quotable quote from the piece:

"But we don't have the luxury of philosophizing about food. With the exhaustion of the soil, the impact of global warming and the inevitably rising price of oil — which will affect everything from fertilizer to supermarket electricity bills — our industrial style of food production will end sooner or later. As the developing world grows richer, hundreds of millions of people will want to shift to the same calorie-heavy, protein-rich diet that has made Americans so unhealthy — demand for meat and poultry worldwide is set to rise 25% by 2015 — but the earth can no longer deliver. Unless Americans radically rethink the way they grow and consume food, they face a future of eroded farmland, hollowed-out countryside, scarier germs, higher health costs — and bland taste. Sustainable food has an élitist reputation, but each of us depends on the soil, animals and plants — and as every farmer knows, if you don't take care of your land, it can't take care of you."

(See pictures of what the world eats.)

Greetings from The Farm (Eating Right)

For the last few days, I have been on vacation from LA and that it entails. It's been a good time to slow down, to think and to recharge. My weekends are never times of rest when I'm at home because we're always busy doing something, whether it's community duty or "fun time" or dumpster meetup related.

I've been taking my time off in an organic farming community in Camarillo, CA called the "Abundant Table Project" or "Join the Farm!". There's a small group of girls ("interns") who live here to tend the farm and grow in community. They're very welcoming and friendly folks. I've really been enjoying my time here.

Something that I particularly love about this place is how well we eat here. We have full reign of the goodies that we harvest from the fields (they have roughly four acres of organic veggies) and the produce that the girls trade for at the local framers' markets. Since I have been here, I have been eating raw kale salads, fresh fruits, Swiss chard cooked with tomatoes and chili and fresh eggs from their friendly backyard hens. I have a deep-rooted feeling that this is how humans beings are really meant to eat. I'm sick of these over-processed foods that are shoved down our throats through aggressive advertising. How can anyone think of selling such unhealthy things to people? How many of our health problems could be reduced if we ate more healthily? How much easier would it be to eat right if we were sold the right foods (or if we grew them ourselves)?

I go home tonight, to a community in transition. It will be straight into the summer program, with two new interns to meet and instruct. 

                                     

Until next time, 

greetings from the chicken. ^

Defining Freeganism

In a recent post, I mentioned that my friend Marie started her own Dumpster Diving meetup group when returned to Grand Rapids after a summer visit to the LACW. Shortly after I posted that, she sent me a link to an article her local paper had done on the group, its purposes and its practices. This photo is from the online version of the newspaper article. Marie is the girl in the dumpster, doing the dirty work.

The article is a great piece to spread the ideals of Freeganism. Even the title itself is positive publicity (click the title to read the story): 

Dumpster diving with purpose: Grand Rapids Freegans make political statement by searching through trash

Unfortunately, the majority of user comments on the page are rather negative. Maybe some of my readers can go and change that...

"You People Don't Look Like Criminals"

As many of you may know, we hosted our 7th monthly "Dumpster Ride and Freegan Meal" event on Saturday. We rescued a lot of food, as usual. In fact, we filled up most of our cargo capacity (including the space in two accompanying cars) at our very first stop. The event was a success in all aspects. After the ride, we had a party at our gracious friend Eric Michael's house and enjoyed the bounty of our harvest (and the company of his pet boa, René). (more pics here)

But we had an extra element of excitement in our event this month. As we were leaving our first supermarket stop, some of us noticed that a helicopter seemed to be following our small band of about 8 cyclists. Less than a mile down the road, we paused at a stoplight and were surrounded by police cars! The issue was that an employee of the store was there when we were and he called 911 to report theft. He thought that we were stealing the stock that they keep behind the fence next to the dumpsters. We never met the employee, but the cops we talked to made sure he knew that we were not stealing.

The officer who confronted us asked one of our friends to open a wine box that was mounted on his bike ("That box looks familiar", the cop said). It was a classic moment when the opened box revealed not bottles of wine, but dirty potatoes and lemons. The encounter was a little tense at first, but it relaxed quickly after the cop shared our disgust in the amount of food that goes to waste. He told us that his brother, who works for a large food warehouse company, tried to start an organization to redirect his company's food waste to needy people. The effort crumbled because of tough legal requirements and food standards. Millions of tons of edible food are still wasted every day. In that light, the officer said he could understand why we were dumpster diving. He had to remind us, though, that trespassing is illegal (which I am sure we all knew). At the store we first stopped at, the dumpsters are locked behind a fence near the loading dock, where new stock is also kept. When we climb under or over that razor topped fence, we are incurring the law and suspicion of theft, even though we are careful to never take anything but trash.

One of the first things our officer friend told us was that "You people don't look like criminals". My haughty mumbled response was, "That's because we're not". (To which he replied with a lecture on trespassing laws). The scenario reminded me of a video in which my friend Ashwyn encounters a security guard while dumpster diving. The guard is telling Ash to leave, saying, "It's illegal". Ash counters with, "It should be illegal to throw some of this stuff out". Seriously, who are the real criminals here? The people who break laws about private property in order to make good use of edible waste? Or perhaps it's the corporations who are breaking laws of humanity by denying people food. The huge amount of waste has a negative effect on the environment, and keeps millions of people hungry.

On another note... What exactly did the cop mean when he said that we didn't "look like criminals"? Was he referring to the fact that we weren't hiding (since we don't feel that we do anything wrong, we allow ourselves to stick out like sore thumbs)? Or did he say that because we were a group of white people on mediocre or nice bikes? Just some food for thought...

Freegan Flowers

First, I would like to report that the LA Catholic Worker 40th Anniversary Party was a blast! There will be pictures of the madness, I promise.

But for today, I would like to "consider the flowers". Here at the house, we have beautiful flower gardens in our yard. When I enjoy them, I am reminded that a number of the plants in the gardens were actually foraged from dumpsters by myself and Eric. There are three wonderful permanent "guests" who tend to the yard and they always appreciate bringing new things to life.

This flourishing fuchsia is one out of a box of 12 that Eric and I found in a supermarket bin a couple of months ago. Even the planter is "freegan", thanks to Alberto's clever use and painting of an old coffee can.  

We found these roses in a different dumpster about six months ago. They have bloomed twice so far.

The beautiful plant at the right was dry and suffering when we brought it home in October. It's now growing rapidly.

Last, but not least, I will display the first pictures of Eric's and my vegetable garden. These are beet sprouts, with pretty red stems! It's really exciting, watching life sprout from the dirt. If only more people could experience this natural wonder.