AR-News: Interview Friday on Dumpster Diving and the politics of waste

[Adam Weissman, Wetlands Preserve]

I'll be doing an interview Friday at 8:30 am (Eastern) on 1500 AM 
WGHT on the program "North Jersey's Taking" dumpster diving as a 
means of reducing  personal consumption and as an act of resistance 
again the waste and destruction  that define our mass-consumption 
culture.  I'll be talking about the practice of recovering usable 
goods and about how  our economic system commodifies the lives of 
humans, animals, and the earth, viewing them as little  more than 
means to economic ends, and resulting in atrocities like  rainforest 
clearcutting, factory farming, and forced child labor.

Folks are encouraged to call in to the show at (973) 839-1500.


If you are unfamiliar with dumpster diving and "freeganism,," read 
this  excerpt of a definition  from from Wikipedia, the free  online 
encyclopedia


Freeganism


Freeganism is the practice of minimising one's impact on the 
environment by means of consuming food that has been thrown away by 
someone else (e.g. supermarkets).

Acting this way, a freegan has no responsibility for the material and 
energy resources used in the production process, since the goods have 
already exited the production-consumption cycle where money is used 
in exchange for goods.

In most developed countries, the quality demands and hygiene 
standards of consumers are so high that many foods stay perfectly 
edible for long periods of time after their expiry or "best before" 
dates. Naturally, the best seasons for freeganism are autumn and 
spring, when waste bins remain at refrigerator temperatures.

Freeganism in itself does not mean a person is following a certain 
kind of dietary behaviour, though it is common that freegans practice 
vegetarianism or veganism.

Many people practicing this diet have been forced into it simply by 
lacking the income necessary to purchase food normally, rather than 
making a conscious decision to sustain themselves by scavenging when 
other choices are available.



Here are  some of my thoughts on freeganism-- I'm referring to the 
FIRST type, NOT the type described in the last paragraph of the above 
definintion,


Civilization and particularly capitalism have reduced all things to 
commodities to be bought and sold. Civilization views  people, 
animals, and the earth in economic  terms, assessing their value  as 
they relate to  profit margins and not appreciating their intrinsic 
and interdependent value beyond monetary worth.

Our civilization is a mass collective state of denial of the 
unavoidable reality that it is dooming itself and much of the rest of 
life on the planet in the process.  As our populations expand 
globally, as we laud mass overconsumption as" economic growth," and 
the destruction of wilderness as "progress,"  we come closer an 
closer to reaching the carrying capacity of this planet that we are 
choking the life out of. Already millions of humans die of 
starvation. Already countless animal die as a result of the 
destruction of their native ecosystems-- forests cleared for timber or
cattle grazing land, mighty rivers dammed, fertile plains turned to 
deserts through punishing agriculture.   Already people set the Earth 
and her inhabitants of all species ablaze as oil barons and their 
pawns in government seek to expand their hegemony through imperialist 
wars.
Already animals are treated as living machines in factory farms -- 
not chickens, but "egg-laying units," fractions of statistics on a 
balance sheet viewed little differently than the workers who  handle 
them, poor people of color  who enjoy species privilege allowing them 
to not be the slaughtered, but lacking race, class, and often  gender 
privilege are nonetheless subjected to miserable conditions, poor 
wages, long hours,  sexual harassment, and little job security. 
These most miserably exploited of workers  are reviled and scorned by 
those when enjoy one degree more privilege than them, the white 
working class, fed a diet of right wing propaganda by their masters, 
taught to not question the master, but to blame immigrant workers and 
mothers of color for their economic hardship and the emptiness of 
their lives.

It is that  very emptiness that the charltans called televangelists 
and pornographers and marketing executives and military recruiters 
and racist and anti-gay hate mongers  seeks  to exploit, offering sex 
and control and power and toys and rage and someone to blame.  But 
their remedy is like sugar candy-- it may look good on the surface, 
it may taste sweet, but it offers no real fulfillment.  For this 
emptiness, shared even by those at the upper strata of political and 
economic power, is the emptiness of an animal  far from home 
separated from family and community, detached from a history of eons 
as beings who lived as kin with all life, as part of an ancient and 
eternal tapestry of life.   We hear faintly the call of that which we 
were part of, of that which we were, and maybe can be again.
But rather than answering it, we seek to silence it, drugged or boob 
tubed into a stupor perverting our interactions with the wild with 
dominance rituals like hunting, trapping, and fishing, and relishing 
and suspiciously guarding our own privilege and status by applying 
the boot fiercely to the next one down-- the Irish cop who brutalizes 
Latino youth, the son of a Holocaust survivor who orders the bombing 
of a Palestinian home, the immigrant worker who find entertainment in 
cockfighting.

Freegans say, enough of this.  We want no part. We reject it all-- 
the drive for status, the lust for wealth, the sense of power and 
accomplishment from the purchase of needless commodities.  We provide 
for our needs without feeding the monster.  In a system inextricable 
from oppression, our jobs will ultimately harm others, the money we 
spend will be cycled into an economy that harms others.  This is 
inevitable because it is this cutting of corners of consideration for 
others, this margin sliced out of equal sharing to provide for need 
that defines profit, that fuels this economic system.

We view the  commodities being marketed to us and see them for what 
they are-- misery and suffering well like and given a clean coat of 
paint.  In the most seemingly innocuous things we see dark and 
unspoken and unremembered truths. A pair of leather Nike shoes is a 
terrified cow, nostrils filled with the acrid stench of blood and 
dying, helpless in the knowledge that she is next, is a terrified 
teenage sweatshop worker who knows that standing up for basic 
dignity, challenging the toil and cruelty and starvation will mean 
firing and even greater starvation and hardship;

We look askance even at those "products"   sold to us as "socially 
responsible."  While others look at a "Tofu Pup" and view it as 
"guilt-free because it does not contain the flesh of animals, we 
recognize that the product is never made profitable from only one 
form of oppression, for capitalism NEVER considers the impact of its 
heavy hand-- conservative in the cutting of economic cost, the 
corporation NEVER seeks to reign in its social and ecological cost-- 
unless there's money in it.  And so, the freegan goes further than 
the vegan, noticing the plastic the pups are wrapped in, and thinking 
of fish and birds asphyxiating in slicks of oil in seas turned black 
with spilled crude;  The freegan sees the cardstock wrapper of the 
pup and things of the serene forest that stood, home to multitudes of 
living beings, erased from the future through economically efficient 
"liquidation logging,:"  The freegan looks at the white color of the 
cardstock and thinks of the millions of tons of carcinogenic 
organochlorides invading waterways, contaminating living flesh after 
their chlorine component has served its function as bleach. The 
freegan remembers the deer shot, and the insect poisoned for having 
the audacity to eat crops growing on lands that used to  be their 
habitat, crops that will be transformed into the pup's "natural 
ingredients." The freegan remembers the snake and worm and vole 
crushed by  the machinery that makes industrial agriculture efficient 
and profitable.   The freegan remembers the fish choking to death in 
deoxygenated water in a lake where nitrogen fertilizer runoff from 
the farm has caused an algal bloom.    The fregan remembers  the farm 
worker, underpaid, overworked, sending funds home to a country 
impoverished through imperialism by a government serving the 
interests of the wealthy corporate elite who could their earnings as 
they consider acquiring a mid-sized company making tofu hot dogs. The 
freegan remembers the forest that one stood on lands now controlled, 
lands only allowed to grow soybeans.

And the freegan knows that this system cannot be shaken at its roots 
by spending our dollars in one store or another, by buying one 
product or the next, by voting for one corporate-backed political 
candidate or another.

No, the infection runs too deep, the sickness as old as civilization 
itself-- as old as the first group of men who chose to assert 
dominance and power and violent control through the ritual of the 
hunt, as old as  the control and domination and shaping of lives 
through husbandry and agriculture,  as old as the idea that anything 
on this earth can be owned by one rather than shared by many, as old 
as the idea that living beings and slivers of the earth can be owned 
at all.

We want  no part of this civilization, other than to  take  part in 
its destruction, to tear down the barbed wire of its laws, the stone 
edifices of  its economic precepts,  to break the chains of its 
ideologies.

We harken  back to older ways, ways where people lived as foragers 
off the bounty of the earth, participants, not masters in the 
continuum of life.  We remember our nomadic, foraging ancestors. 
Seeing the cities and suburbs that have replaced the wild, we, too 
forage, recovering the massive quantities of usable goods wasted by a 
profligate society that values artifice and image over substance and 
value, a culture that views mass production of  waste as merely 
another opportunity for profit through garbage disposal.

So the freegan  rescues capitalism's castoffs from the jaws of the 
garbage truck compactor, defying capitalism's definitions of  what is 
valuable and what is worthless, refusing to let price tags and 
shelving displays fool us into overlooking the castoff bounty.    And 
while the freegan can enjoy the liberty of indulgence in these goods, 
she is also mindful to never be too charmed by their alure to forget 
their history and to  remember the ravages of the culture that 
produced them.  The freegan seeks to avoid developing the lust for 
commodities acquistion of the shopper, even when the good are free.

   The freegan liberates not only goods, but also the moments of our 
lives.  Hours not spend carrying our the hollow directives of bosses 
are instead spend free, for we need  not make money to acquire goods 
that we won't buy, are instead spent directly acquiring the things we 
want or need, enjoying our time, or working to create another world.

For we believe ultimately, that our consumption practice, while 
important, and even revolutionary if practices  en masse, must only 
be one small thread as we weave the fabric of a new society as we 
work to rend the garment of the old.

We envision and strive to create a  world where humanity recognizes 
that all sentient beings have the right to live their lives on their 
own terms in appropriate ecosystems, a world where people  in 
recognize kinship and solidarity with all life, recognize  that the 
earth, the home we share must be respected for the benefit of all of 
its inhabitants, a world where people   rejects the arbitrary 
boundaries that have been used as justifications for oppressions-- 
boundaries of species, boundaries of race, boundaries of gender, 
boundaries of sexual orientation,  and boundaries of age

We believe another world is possible  because another world is 
necessary-- because too much suffering has transpired for too long, 
and more awaits unless we change course.  And while we may not know 
the specific series of steps that can create this kind of change, we 
seek to live lives consistent with our beliefs, minimizing our harm 
to others while seeking to help, heal, and enrich wherever we can.

In truth freeganism is seeing-- it is seeing beauty and value in that 
which is ignored, seeing horror behind the lies of the powerful, and 
seeing an enduring vision of hope for a world alive, flourishing, 
and free.

  Free the trash!



-- 
How can you resist corporate  rule while mortgaging your body to 
their addictive chemicals? 
Wouldn't you rather die FIGHTING corporations instead of letting them 
profit off your illness and death?   Fight corporate power-- quit 
smoking!!


Recognizing the common roots of all forms of oppression, The Activism 
Center at Wetlands Preserve fights for human, animal, and earth 
liberation through protest, direct action, street theater, political 
advocacy, and public education.  We always new volunteers and 
interns! For more information call (201) 968-0595 or email 
activism at wetlands-preserve.org

AOL Instant Messenger SN: Adam of Wetlands

http://wetlands-preserve.org	  http://humanevoters.org 
	http://ftaareferendum.org   http://foodnotfur.org 
http://rainforestrelief.org