Meeting Up

My dumpster dry spell was finally broken on Saturday, when we held the 6th "Dumpster Ride and Freegan Meal". It was a successful event. The ride was nice, the meal delicious. Thanks to our friend Eric Micheal and his  roommates for sharing their kitchen with the group. For more pictures of the event, click here. We hosted another pair of student journalists, this time from USC. The above photo comes from the project of one of the USC girls who tagged along. More pictures from her collection can be found here.

A friend of mine who visited the LACW last summer has started a new Freegan Meetup in her hometown! I was ecstatic when she let me know, because I was the one who introduced her to dumpster diving and Freeganism while she was in LA. It's so rewarding that she took charge like that. It seems like the group is doing well. Here's a bit of advice for anyone seeking to start dumpster diving meetings: just be patient and consistent. It may be a little hard at first to get attendance, but the more you just keep meeting and passing word of mouth along, the more regular members you will attract.

Here at the house, we've been gearing toward the upcoming 40th anniversary party! It's pretty inspiring that this Los Angeles branch of an immensely positive movement is turning four decades old. many intentional communities can't last even half that. Even more inspiring is that Jeff and Catherine have both been here, keeping order, for the whole lifetime of the LACW. Wow.

I've been in Los Angeles for an entire year now and am still enjoying the experience. Sometimes I yearn for travel again and know that I cannot stay in one place forever. But I feel confident that I belong in this place for now. When it's time to move on, I will know.

That's all for now. Peace!

Tag Teaming

Lately I have been too tired to go dumpster diving (gasp!), with my work and all the social activities we do. Eric has been so kind to me, letting me sleep while he goes out at 10 PM by himself or with a friend to rescue the free food. On Saturday night, he took our friend Gazi, a man who works in banking/finance and drives a BMW, on his second expedition. They came back with boxes of potatoes, hummus, ground beef, bread and more while I was snoozing on the couch. It's so cool that Gazi is as enthusiastic about dumpster diving as he is. His wife was surprised that he liked it so much, because she knows him as a conventional, clean, organized person. But he loves the idea of saving the food from landfill and getting it for free. I am pretty sure that he is as excited about the adventure of it as he is about the "ethics" behind it.

I haven't been out in a dumpster in almost two weeks! But that will change soon, if no sooner than Saturday. Our next dumpster ride is coming up. We are hoping to finally make this a monthly event. Hopefully, we can find a kitchen in time to keep the "freegan meal" aspect of the event. [yikes]

Til next time, let us tread lightly on the Earth!

Dumpster in Peace

Busyness condemns us all. (Don't ask.) Where does the time go?

Just a quick "catch-up" for you all:

Two weekends ago now, we had our last Dumpster Meetup. Unfortunately, these events have not been as frequent as I would like them to be. We shall correct that as soon as our personal lives are stable enough. Ha. The last event was a "success". We had a good turnout for a non-bike event (between 12 and 15 people), found a goodly amount of food, hosted a friendly pair of student journalists and had no security run-ins. We did discover that yet another of our favorite bins was locked. Publicity for the deeds of Freeganism is a double-edged sword. We hope that the public will begin to think about the ramifications of a consumer- and material-based society and that businesses will be pressured into facing up to their waste. But it also means that stores are going to take measures to keep people like us from exposing their dirty secrets. We won't be able to live off of the waste forever; one way or another, it will become unavailable to us. Our hope, of course, is that there will be no more waste to pick through because resources will be used in the most efficient ways possible. That goal, realistically, is a long way away.

Above, at right is a picture from that event (note the mic in the foreground). For more, click here.

That same weekend (an insanely busy one, it was), Eric [holding the "P"], his daughter Celina [hiding behind the "C"] and I [with the green "A"] attended the "Palm Sunday Peace Parade" in Pasadena. It was an enjoyable event, family friendly and very peaceful. :) Pictures for that here.

Dumpster in Peace, ya'll.

Photo of the Day

Pretty Veggies. Can you believe this sort of high quality, healthy product is thrown away in enormous quantities every day?

Sorry for the bad, grainy quality. This is cellphone camera technology here.

Just Living

I haven't been posting much recently, merely because I haven't had that much to say. I've just been doing the usual: serving the residents of Skid Row, protesting the wars, riding my bike, reading books and dumpster diving with the love of my life. Thinking deeply about life and all it entails has been a part of my recent activity, but I don't really know how to translate that into words at the moment. I also got a nasty sunburn from riding to the beach on Thursday, but who wants to hear about that?

Perhaps I will get the inspiration to write my thoughts soon.

Comments on My Last Post

I just wanted to say that, after I posted my last blog post, I thought back and noticed the hypocrisy there. In the first line, I mention that I was "hit with a traffic ticket". A few days earlier, I had posted a rant about the insanity of cars. So, I am a hypocrite of a cyclist... yes, I drive. I would like to defend myself, since I do try to take my bike or public transit as often as possible. However, I realize that I'm more likely to ride as often as is comfortable. :( We all get sucked into the culture of our enviroment, however much we try to go against the grain.

Enough beating myself over the head.

On a more positive note, I would like to post an update about Homeboy Industries. On Tuesday, I went to an event at their headquarters. Father Greg Boyle, the founder and head honcho of Homeboy, has just written a book. The reading and signing was well attended and inspiring. I picked up a copy of the new book, "Tattoos on the Heart" and had it signed for the LACW community. I have only read the first few chapters and would already recommend it to readers of this blog. It's a collection of stories from Father Greg's more than 25 years of working with the gang-involved youth of Los Angeles.

Peace out.

Homeboy Industries

Recently I was hit with a traffic ticket (ugh) and was assigned community service to pay the fine. Because the Catholic Worker is not registered with the government as a tax-exempt nonprofit (see second half of this post), I could not do my hours at my normal "job" (which is itself a community service). So I chose Homeboy Industries, a nonprofit I only knew a little about. The most I knew was that a branch of Homeboy makes all the T-shirts and keychains for the LACW.

I learned much about the nonprofit in my four Mondays there. It's a gang intervention program and much more. Here's a little snippet from the "history" section of their website.

Homeboy Industries traces its roots to “Jobs For A Future” (JFF), a program created in 1988 by Father Gregory Boyle while he was serving as pastor of Dolores Mission parish in Boyle Heights. Begun as a jobs program in 1988, offering alternatives to gang violence in one of the toughest neighborhoods in the city, the program soon grew beyond the parish.

With the addition of a small bakery in a run-down warehouse across the street from Dolores Mission, JFF had its own business, one where it could hire the most challenging, difficult to place young people in a safe environment. The hope was that they could learn both concrete and soft job skills, to make them stronger, better prepared candidates for permanent employment. A tortilla stand in Grand Central Market downtown solidified the evolution of JFF into Homeboy Industries.

Today was my last day of community service at Homeboy, and I was a little sad for it. I feel like I just started to get to know the place, in its many facets, and the great group of people who work there. I heard a testimony of one of the homeboys this morning, who told his life story with passion. It's still "therapeutic" for him, he told the group of white students he was leading on a tour of the huge Homeboy headquarters. He spoke of his childhood and his journey from there to gang-banging, in and out of jail and, eventually, to Homeboy Industries, where he was offered a job and a chance to change his life around. It was an inspiring story, to say the least. But Brian is just one of the hundreds of such stories to be heard at Homeboy. Kudos to the work of Father Boyle.

There are so many issues, so much pain in the world. What can we do to make some kind of small difference where we have the chance?