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"A WE CREATE DAILY": FREEGAN ALTERNATIVES

TO CAPITALIST IN CITY

BY

Kelly Ernst

Submitted to the

Faculty of the College of Arts and Sciences

of American University

in Partial Fulfillment of

the Requirements for the Degree

of Doctorate of

In

Anthropology

Chair:

Dr. David Vine

Dean of the College of Arts and Sciences ~ ~ ?J-, [\)\~ Date 2010

American University

Washington, D.C. 20016 AMERICAN UNIVERSITY UBAARV q :5 f; b UMI Number: 3406836

All rights reserved

INFORMATION TO ALL USERS The quality of this reproduction is dependent upon the quality of the copy submitted.

In the unlikely event that the author did not send a complete manuscript and there are missing pages, these will be noted. Also, if material had to be removed, a note will indicate the deletion.

UMI 3406836 Copyright 201 O by ProQuest LLC. All rights reserved. This edition of the work is protected against unauthorized copying under Title 17, United States Code. Pro uesr ------

ProQuest LLC 789 East Eisenhower Parkway P.O. Box 1346 Ann Arbor, Ml 48106-1346 ©COPYRIGHT

by

Kelly Ernst

2010

ALL RIGHTS RESERVED To Mom and Dad.

You have sacrificed for me, celebrated with me, maybe not always agreed with me, but

you have always, always supported me. "A REVOLUTION WE CREATE DAILY": FREEGAN ALTERNATIVES

TO CAPIT AUST CONSUMPTION IN

BY

Kelly Ernst

ABSTRACT

New York City freegans are a group of critical consumption activists dedicated to limiting their impact on the environment, consumption of , and participation in what they argue is an exploitive capitalist economy. Perhaps best known for their "trash tours" of garbage in the city's streets and dumpsters, freegans participated in a variety of actions to highlight , create community and reclaim urban space. Participants in include high school teachers, corporate lawyers turned bike maintenance workers, squatters, college students, freelance employees, bike messengers, and retirees.

Alternately defined as an anti-, global justice or primitivist movement, the goals of freeganism often appear inconsonant with their tactics. Is freeganism an example of a postmodern movement responding to changes in contemporary organizing and social concerns, or is it a symptom of the society of spectacle they are critiquing? The use of as the primary recruitment tool for anti-capitalist organizing was a way to display excessive waste while simultaneously displaying freeganism as a solution but did this tactic obscure or enhance their message?

11 Combining analysis of my participation in the freegan movement, interviews with freegans and an historical analysis of critical consumption movements in the United

States, I learned about the complexities and contradictions freegans face in their use of radical democratic strategies to affect social, economic and political change. Freeganism is a reaction to and a product of a postmodern society of spectacle and capitalist hegemony and freegans' experiences illuminate the problems and solutions faced by other contemporary movements.

Using direct action theory as a starting point, this dissertation uses the stories and experiences of particular freegans along with descriptions of their various tactics to better understand how contemporary activists organize and what obstacles they are working to overcome. Freegans imagine a world that is free of the market rhetoric and capitalist hegemony and though they face many obstacles, they are in the process of discovering what it takes to create a postmodern consumer revolution.

111 ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

I am incredibly lucky to have had the support and guidance of so many amazing people. First, I want to thank the freegans for accepting me and my notebook into their group. Thank you all for showing me everyday how much commitment, hard work and hope it takes to be an activist. Particularly, Janet, Cindy, Nora, Michael and Adam-you are inspirations to me and so many others.

I woul.d like to sincerely thank Paul Lusty for his support, kindness and letting me know that I always had a place to come back to. I can never thank you enough for all that you've done for me or express how much the last eight years at Lucky has meant. I'd also like to thank Tony T. and the Pug, for helping my transition back to D.C. and for promising to put my dissertation up on the shelf.

Thank you to the AU Dissertation Writing Group for helping me edit and organize my thoughts. Thank you, Jodi, for inspiring me to keep working and never questioning that I would. And to Becca-you have been incredibly supportive in ways too numerous to list. You were calming when I was stressed and you offered honest and constructive critique when I needed it most. You are an amazing friend, a brilliant academic and I hope you know how much you mean to me.

Thank you to my family for their constant love and support. Mom and Dad, you continue to teach and guide me and I am so proud to be your daughter. And Brian, I have

lV always and will always look up to you. You inspired me to trust myself because I trust you.

My committee, Dr. Brett Williams, Dr. Sabiyha Prince and Dr. David Vine, were incredible throughout this process. Thank you for your invaluable comments, edits and encouragement. You challenged me and supported me and I truly could not have asked for a better group of people to guide me. I am particularly indebted to and awed by Brett

Williams. The commitment, care and thoughtfulness you give to your students, colleagues and our work is beyond compare. I am humbled and inspired by your integrity and am forever grateful to you. You set an example of the kind of person I am working to be.

And finally, I'd like to thank Jeff Friedman. Everything I think of to way, to express how much you mean to me and how grateful I am for your support and love through the craziness of this process, just doesn't do justice to how much I love you.

v TABLE OF CONTENTS

ABSTRACT ...... ii

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS ...... iii

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS ...... v

Chapter

I. INTRODUCTION ...... 1

2. JANET'S STORY: "I'VE BEEN FREEGAN BEFORE I KNEW THE WORD" ...... 27

3. FEASTING AT CINDY'S: CRITICAL COMMUNITIES AND CONSUMPTION MOVEMENTS ...... 55

4. SOLIDARITY AND THE CITY: "ONE NO, MANY YESES" ...... 81

5. RACE AND REPRESENTATION: "YOU CAN'T INVITE PEOPLE TO DINNER AFTER HAVING RUN OVER THEIRLEGS" ...... 108

6. DEALING WITH DISSENT: DIFFICULTIES REACHING CONSENSUS ...... 139

7. CONCLUSION ...... 168

BIBLIOGRAPHY ...... 184

VI LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

Figure

1. Rescued Paper ...... 30

2. Organic Industry Structure: Acquisitions by the Top 30 Processors in North America ...... 43

3. Freegans Sit Down to Dinner ...... 71

4. Rescued Food ...... 75

5. Prepared Food at a Feast ...... 75

6. Freegan Calendar ...... 85

7. Freegan Bike ...... 87

8. Media at a Feast ...... 122

9. Really Really Sign ...... 146

10. The Market at St. Marks ...... 147

11. Bikes and Bites ...... 147

12. Checking Out the Goods ...... 148

13. Education and Outreach ...... 148

Vll CHAPTER 1

INTRODUCTION

We must rapidly begin the shift from a thing-oriented society to a person-oriented society. When machines and computers, profit motives and rights, are considered more important than people, the giant triplets of racism, extreme , and militarism are incapable of being conquered. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., April 4th, 1967

"What is freeganism?" Adam Weissman1 looked expectantly at the audience of 30 or so students sitting in neon plastic chairs scattered around the room. Several were still over by the food table, stacking their plates with crackers, candy and recovered from a local grocery store the previous night. Hands reached tentatively into the air.

"Free? Vegan?"

"Dumpster diving?"

"You won't eat anything unless it's free?"

"Sharing?"

"Living off the fat of the land?" a guy wearing a Che Guevara hoodie leaned back in his chair and smirked.

"A lifestyle where you try to not spend any ?"

1 Each freegan decided whether they wanted to use their real name, first and/or last, or pseudonyms. Versions of their real names were used unless a pseudonym is noted.

1 2

"Actually," Adam responds, "you're all a little bit right. Freeganism is about minimizing participation in . It's about meeting our individual and community needs while modeling an alternative to an exploitive economic and social system.

Freeganism is a set of beliefs based on recognition of the violence and oppression inherent in capitalist production and the constant complicity of consumers within the capitalist system." He paused for a moment, his hand absentmindedly running along the zipper of his jacket, eyes darting through the crowd in a way that hinted at the volume of ideas he was sorting through in his head. Adam had a way of speaking that seemed both well-planned yet off-the cuff. "Freegans choose to opt out of capitalism, out of participating in capitalism as workers and consumers, finding instead ways to meet their needs that are ecologically sustainable, , and socially responsible."

The origin of the term "freegan"2 is contested, but Adam, one of the original founders of the New York City Freegan movement, is often given the credit. Within the

NYC group, it is understood to be a compression of "free" and "vegan"3 although freegans participate in the economy to varying degrees and not all are vegan or even vegetarian. What they do have in common is a distrust of the current capitalist system and a desire to come up with alternatives that promote , foster individual creativity and strengthen communities.

2 The term "freegan" was named the winner in the "Most Creative" category of new words in 2003 by the American Dialect Society's. They defined the noun as: "person who only eats what they can get for free." American Dialect Society, "2003 Words of the Year." Site maintained by Grant Barrett at Double­ Tongued Dictionary. http://www.americandialect.org/index.php/amerdial/2002_words_ of_ the _yl (accessed December 1, 2008).

3 A vegan is someone who doesn't eat any animals or animal products. See chapter 1 for a longer explanation of "vegan." 3

As Adam gave statistics on current environmental, ecological, animal and workers' rights conditions, I took a moment to look around. I was sitting at a long folding table with five freegan activists, Adam, Cindy, Christian Wendy and Janet Kalish, in front of a group of alternately rapt and ravenous college students. They were really going after those cookies.

"I don't like to get a lot of processed , but they really go for them," Cindy confided earlier as she laid out packages of snack cakes, slightly "smushed" but otherwise perfectly edible in their wrappers. "And it's good-at least instead of going to waste, someone is eating it."

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4 Worldwide, there are over 1.02 billion people going hungry • According to Bread for the World, 49 million people-including 16. 7 million children-live in households that experience hunger or the risk of hunger. This represents more than one in seven households in the United States (14.6 percent). 5 According to the USDA's Economic

Research Service (ERS), in 2008, 17 million households, or 14.6%, were "food insecure," struggling to put food on the table for their families. These were the highest numbers the

ERS had seen since they began the national food surveys in 1995 and represented a massive jump from the year before, when 13 million, or 11.1 % of households,

4 Bread for the World, "Hunger Facts: International," http://www.bread.org/learn/hunger­ basics/hunger-facts-intemational.html (accessed February 24, 2009).

5 Bread for the World, "U.S. Hunger Facts," http://www.bread.org/learn/hunger-basics/hunger­ facts-domestic.html (accessed January 13, 2010). 4

experienced food insecurity.6 At the same time as millions suffer from hunger, a 1997 report on American food loss estimated that 96 billion pounds of edible food, about 27% of food available for consumption, was "lost" by food retailers such as supermarkets, food service establishments and consumers. 7 Examples of food loss include: dented cans, misshapen or blemished produce not deemed cosmetically appealing, overstocked or seasonal packaged goods. A 2007 CNN report states: "Such is the volume that according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA), if just 5 percent of Americans' food were recovered it would represent one day's worth of food for 4 million people. "8

Dealing with food waste is costing Americans an estimated $1 billion. The ERS report breaks it down: "If 5 percent of retail, foodservice, and consumer food losses in

1995 were recovered rather than discarded as solid waste, about $50 million dollars annually could be saved in solid waste disposal costs for landfills alone. If 10 percent of food losses were recovered, savings for landfill disposal costs would be about $90 million. These savings would increase to $200 million with a 25-percent recovery rate."9

The waste of edible food, particularly combined with rising food insecurity, was a major

6 Linda Scott Kantor, Kathryn Lipton, Alden Manchester and Victor Oliveira, "USDA Report Reveals Highest Rate of Food Insecurity Since Report Was Initiated in 1995," United States Department of Agriculture, In Food Review: From Farm to Table, FR-20-1, January 1997, http://www.fns.usda.gov/cga/PressReleases/2009/PR-0570.htm (accessed January 17, 2009).

7 United States Department of Agriculture, '"'USDA Report Reveals Highest Rate ofFood Insecurity Since Report Was Initiated in 1995," http://www.fns.usda.gov/cga/PressReleases/2009/PR- 0570.htm (accessed January 17, 2009).

8 Rachel Oliver, "All About: Food Waste." CNN com, January 22, 2008 http://www. cnn. com/2007 /WO RLD/asiapcf/09 /24/food. leftovers/index.html #cnnSTCText (accessed February 3, 2009).

9 Linda Scott Kantor, Kathryn Lipton, Alden Manchester and Victor Oliveira, "Estimating and Addressing America's Food Losses," United States Department of Agriculture. 5

concern for many freegans and much of their actions concentrated on highlighting unnecessary waste.

The freegans have been best known for organized dumpster dives. The majority of their over 600 stories, blogs and interviews since 2004 10 focused on the trash tours they hosted through various neighborhoods in New York City. Most of the dives were in

Manhattan, although they had recently branched out to and the Bronx. During trash tours they went through the bags of trash which notoriously line NYC streets and rescued still edible or usable items.

The leaders of the tours changed each week-the freegans practiced non­ hierarchical organization and consensus decision making. Dumpster diving is a freegan tactic aimed at public outreach and education; it is also a non-violent direct action aimed at social change. Direct action is a "form of action [in] which means and ends become, effectively, indistinguishable; a way of actively engaging with the world to bring about change," writes. 11 Groups that use direct action are, in the words of

Mahatma Ghandi, trying to be the change they wish to see in the world.

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Back in the NYU student union, Adam was trying to explain why freegans dumpster dove as well as counter stereotypes of freegans as opportunists. It's not about getting something for free, he said, but about educating the public about waste and the hidden costs of . "Our goal is to NOT be able to live off trash for much

10 The freegans were in the process of creating a database of their media coverage.

11 David Graeber, Direct Action: An Ethnography, (Oakland, CA: AK Press, 2009), 210. 6

longer. We want there to be less waste," he explained. Whereas dumpster diving, scrounging and gleaning are usually practiced as individual modes of survival, freegans were using the tactic to critique .

Dumpster diving is not a uniquely freegan activity- many people all over the world go through dumpsters, trash bins, rummage through the dump yard or glean leftover and in the fields. According to a 2009 report, scavenging is on the rise in Cote d'Ivoire, a country in West Africa, as slightly under half the population is living in poverty. 12 In Quetta, Pakistan, an estimated 10,000 children as young as five years old pick through the garbage, harvesting recyclables in order to earn money for

13 1 food for their families. In Delhi, India, every 100 h person earns a living from part of the country's 16 million truckloads of annual waste. 14

As waste becomes more pervasive and people pushed farther into poverty, many people all over the world are organizing. In March 2008, the Bogata Association of

Recyclers, which itself had over 18,000 members, hosted the First World Congress of

Waste Pickers. Funded by international non-profits, "informal trash recyclers" from over

40 countries gathered for the four day event. 15

12 United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, "COTE D'IVOIRE: Scavenging for food in rubbish tips," IRIN: Humanitarian News and Analysis, January 13, 2009 http://www.irinnews.org/Report.aspx?Reportid=82332 (accessed March 23, 2010).

13 Lion, Yuval, producer, "Young garbage pickers eke out meager living in Pakistan," World Focus, 7, 2009 http://worldfocus.org/?s=garbage+pickers (accessed March 17, 2010).

14 60 kilos, dir. Vishal Bhargava & Bharati Chaturved, 20 min., DVD; also available online http://hub.witness.org/60kilos (accessed February 4, 2009).

15 Teo Ballve, ": 21 '1 Century Profession," News America Media, March 21, 2008, http://news.ncmonline.com/news/view_ article.html?article_ id=fc67e 1bbecae25b050a5cef7 ea28ef9a (accessed March 17, 2010). According to the story, the next Congress was planned for 20 IO. 7

Rising levels of waste result from a combination of several factors, including increases in population and urbanization; 16 but it is also evidence of an increasingly globalized, though very uneven, practice of conspicuous consumption. "More often than people in less developed countries," historian Susan Strasser writes, "[Americans] discard stuff simply because we do not want it."17 Freegans lead organized trash tours through the city with the immediate effort to eat the wasted food, but also as part of a larger strategy to educate people on the effects of conspicuous consumption. They use the trash tours as an opportunity to discuss the interconnections between the items they found, the resources used in its production and distribution, and the conditions of the workers who made it.

The "average" plate of food in the United States is said to travel approximately

1,500-2,000 miles before ending up on our dinner tables. According to a report from the

Leopold Center for , the ingredients which make up strawberry yogurt (strawberries, milk and sugar) travel an average of more than 2,220 miles before reaching supermarket shelves. 18 "Most of us do have a big vision that it would be better not to be able to dumpster dive so well. It's a selfish pleasure that we could get all of our

16 Teo Ballve, "Waste Picker: 21 '1 Century Profession;" Susan Strasser. Waste and Want: A Social History of Trash (New York: Metropolitan Books, 1999)

17Susan Strasser. Waste and Want: A Social History of Trash, 4.

18 Rich Pirog and Andrew Benjamin, "Calculating for a multiple ingredient food product," Ames, IA: Leopold Center for Sustainable Agriculture, 2005. http://www. leopold. iastate.edu/research/marketing_files/food/food.htm#miles (accessed February 17, 2010). 8

food for free," Janet added. "That's not really our goal; it's just a step toward our goal, in which we'd rather not be able to find all this garbage."

During trash tours freegans discuss ways people can challenge and decrease their participation in conspicuous consumption through other events they sponsor such as the bike maintenance, sewing and craft workshops and informational sessions like the one we were speaking at that evening at NYU. The freegans, in cooperation with NYU'S Direct

Action Network (DAN) were participating in the second in a series of Freegan Forums.

These informational sessions explained who the freegans were, what they were doing and why. I glanced down at my notes-I was up next. My role that night was as the activist academic, placing freeganism amidst a long line of consumption that goes back to 1640s England when the original started several agrarian, egalitarian co­ operatives based on the idea that land should be commonly held, not privately owned.

Did I consider myself a freegan? ... Sometimes. As several others on the panel noted that night, freeganism didn't require adherence to a strict identity, but was rather a set of practices aimed for a safer, more equitable community. "At the heart of freeganism is an idea," Adam said. "But freeganism is lived, not just believed."

Freegan actions attempt to call attention to problems they have with capitalism: the exploitation of people, animals and the environment. They are trying to sustain an which focuses on cooperative communities and sustainability, but what exactly is that lifestyle and does everyone get to be a part of it? What is the lived experience of a freegan? How do the intersections of class, race and gender influence who can choose to opt-in to this community? Are their tactics in line with their goals?

************************* 9

Had you asked me five months earlier, as I stood excited but petrified during my first freegan meeting and trash tour, if I could have imagined sitting on this panel, I would have laughed. I couldn't have foreseen the openness with which most of the freegans welcomed me into the community nor did I quite recognize their acceptance as both a strategy and trait of direct action organizing. When I began my dissertation research on the NYC freegan movement, I wasn't sure whether or not they would agree to work with me, a graduate student based in Washington D.C.

To be fair, however, my experiences leading up to meeting the freegans made me both a fascinated observer and sympathetic participant. I officially began my fieldwork in

New York City in August, 2006, but really my background in freeganism began as a small child visiting my grandparent's house in Wilmer, Texas. A welder by trade,

Grandpa would often use spare parts to fashion decorations for the yard, light fixtures or extra seating on the porch. He and my grandmother would go to the local grocery store and come back with produce that was on its way to spoiling to feed to the cows and chickens they kept on their land. With six kids, ten grandkids and more seemingly always on the way, reusing and just made sense. I have fond memories of sitting with my aunt Evelyn in her Dodge cargo van early Saturday mornings, holding the days' paper between us as we made our way through the garage and estate sale ads. I remember rummaging through strangers' old books and reveling in finding a Babysitter's Club I hadn't read or a necklace they were practically giving away for a quarter. The old adage about other people's trash was not lost on me, even as a child. The class implications would interest me later. 10

As I got older and went away first to a small private Catholic University in Irving,

Texas and then the University of North Texas in Denton, I became interested in politics, particularly , human rights and the environment. I came to the discipline of anthropology from an interest in journalism and writing-people fascinated me and the study of seemed a great fit. I took classes in feminist and political anthropology, drawn to the ways people's life experiences shaped their world view and interactions with others. I still sometimes pause with awe at the thought that everyone else does not feel or think or react or smile or cry at the same things I do.

After having a vegetarian roommate for several years in college, and a fateful encounter with a possum who'd been hit by a car, I experimentally stopped eating a little before my 21st birthday. I researched the movement and factory farming and as I started feeling healthier and losing some extra weight, I looked into the health implications of eating meat. Soon I made the decision to permanently adopt a vegetarian diet.

My growing interest-in-animal-welfare-turned-consumption- sparked an interest in the way other people's choices reflected their own beliefs, and visions of a better world. The economic nationalism of the 1980s and 1990s "Buy American" campaign19 was a little too early for me20 and it wasn't until becoming a vegetarian that I really started to think about consumption as being about more than just sustenance, tastes or fads.

19 Dana Frank, Buy American: The Untold Story ofEconomic Nationalism (Boston, MA: Beacon Press, 2000).

20 Although I do remember that pretty much everyone in my family drove a Dodge. 11

It was during my graduate studies at American University in Washington, DC that

I learned about dumpster diving. I was conducting research on at Twin Oaks, an in Louisa, Virginia. "Intentional community" is an inclusive term for the variety of projects, such eco-villages, residential land trusts, communes, student or urban housing co-ops, etc. in which people choose to live together and work towards their shared vision of community. I was interested in ways people choose to live their politics and Twin Oaks was one of the last original 1960s utopian projects which were still functioning. While there, I met with several members who were involved with the Richmond, Virginia chapter of .

Food Not Bombs (FNB) originated in Cambridge, Massachusetts in 1980. The non-violent activist group handed out free vegetarian food to the homeless. It was a simultaneous protest of war and poverty and a direct action project that provided solutions through community action. Now there are chapters all over the world, in the

Americas, Europe, Africa, the Middle East, Asia and Australia. They recover food through dumpster diving and serve it to those in need. FNB also organizes food distribution and service to survivors of disasters including the 1989 earthquake, Hurricane Katrina, the Asian Tsunami and 9-11 rescue workers at ground zero.21

I was intrigued by the practice of dumpster diving as more than just a survival strategy.22 Why would people choose to rummage through rot and grime if they didn't

21 Food Not Bombs, "The Story ofFood Not Bombs: The First Thirty Years of the Food Not Bombs Movement," http://foodnotbombs.net/story.html (accessed March 10, 2008).

22 Lars Eighner, Travels with Lizbeth: three years on the road and on the streets (New York: Fawcett Columbine, 1993); Jeff Ferrell, Empire ofScrounge: Inside the Urban Underground ofDumpster 12

have to? In her analysis of dirt as it pertains to ritual and cultural beliefs about purity and danger, Douglas writes: "Dirt is essentially disorder. .. it exists in the eye of the beholder... In chasing dirt, in papering, decorating, tidying, we are not governed by anxiety to escape disease, but are positively re-ordering our environment, making it conform to an idea.'.23 So what ideas do people who dive into the dirt have?

While visiting some friends in Houston, Texas a few weeks after I left Twin Oaks,

I met up with a local FNB chapter and spent a few weeks working with and interviewing their members. The majority of the food handed out in downtown's Tranquility Park came from agreements made with restaurant and grocery managers to collect food that would otherwise have been thrown out. Most of the trash in Houston was placed in bins housed behind locked gates or inaccessible alleys. Some participants told me about getting into a bin, only to find that store managers had poured bleach on the food or mixed it in with bathroom trash to discourage divers. According to a 1988 Supreme Court ruling in California v. Greenwood, trash is considered public domain once it is thrown out; although divers can still be arrested if they enter an enclosed area, one marked

"private" or "no trespassing," or ifthe dumpster is touching the wall of a privately owned building. Although the FNB community in Houston was strong, dumpster diving was not strongly practiced as most of their dumpsters were enclosed by gates or in inaccessible areas.

Diving, Trash Picking, and Street Scavenging (New York: New York University Press, 2006); and Ted Botha, Mango: Adventures in Trash (New York: Bloomsbury, 2004).

23 Mary Douglas, Purity and Danger: An analysis ofthe concepts ofpollution and taboo (New York: Routledge, 1992), 2. 13

When I got back to DC, I continued looking into the practice of urban , a broader and in some ways nicer way to say dumpster diving. I scoured websites, biogs, newspapers and books. My research continually brought me to the same site: freegan.info, the NYC freegan site that Adam, Wendy and two other members began in

2001. According to the webpage, freeganism was defined as a movement of people dedicated to "limiting their impact on the environment, consumption of resources, and participation in an exploitive capitalist economy."24 In the news articles I read, freegans were often depicted as a group of elite, privileged, white kids picking through the trash and then heading home to dorms or lower east side condos subsidized by their parents. 25

But was this, as the media bilaterally opposed it, merely the whim of a privileged few or a legitimate, potentially transformative movement? "Are they a fringe group reminiscent of our primitive past," Newsweek's Raina Kelley asks, "or are they our carbon-neutral future?"26 Does it have to be either/or, or are the motivations and dynamics of social movements more complex? How does a group tie social justice issues of race, class, and gender into a critique of capitalism? And why was this so big in New York City?

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There is a lack of analysis which looks beyond the spectacle of freegan dumpster divers. Although there has been some social scientific interest in anti- or counter-

24 Freegan.info: Strategies for Beyond Capitalism "What is a freegan?" http://freegan.info/?page_id=8 (accessed August 2, 2007). This page used to be the on the main page of freegan. info.

25 Caroline Virr, "Meet the freegans," The Express, UK Edition, 30, 2005, www.lexisnexis.com (accessed October 26, 2006); Kamilla Pietrzyk, "Freeganism: Food for Mind, Body and Soul," London , http://londoncommons.net/node/594 (accessed September 22, 2006).

26 Raina Kelley, "Freegan Ride," Newsweek, From the magazine issue dated Oct 1, 2007, http://www.newsweek.com/id/4 l 780 (accessed February 3, 2008). 14

consumption activities, particularly dumpster diving,27 there has yet to be an anthropological analysis of NYC freegans as a direct action movement engaging in strategies which, if successful, would "render themselves extinct."28 I chose to do my dissertation research on the NYC freegans in an attempt to understand freeganism within the larger context of US consumer and social movements and the importance of its particular urban locale. There had to be some reason that dumpster diving was a frequently practiced tactic in New York, while nearly impossible in other big cities like

Houston. What kind of people practice freeganism? What are their goals? What are their strategies? What concerns are they addressing and what might they be missing?

Alternately defined as an anti-globalization, global justice or primitivist movement, I argue that freeganism is an example of contemporary radical politics; it is a direct action movement based on anarchist principles. In "Theorizing Movements: Direct

Action and Direct Theory," Noel Sturgeon uses a critical hermeneutical29 approach to show how the strategies, structures and actions of antimilitarist movements since the

1970s formed an as-yet under-theorized movement. She argues that direct action social movements "figure militarism as the apex of interlocking systems of dominance that include racism, sexism, environmental degradation, hierarchy, and economic

27 Ferrell, Empire ofScrounge, 2006 and Pietryzyk, Freeganism, 2006.

28 Jeff Shantz, "One Person's Garbage ... Another Person's Treasure: Dumpster Diving, Freeganism and ," VERB Vol 3, No I (2005) http://verb.lib.lehigh.edu/index.php/verb/article/view/19/l 8 (accessed October 26, 2006).

29 Critical hermeneutics looks at cultural moments as a kind of text whose "reading" or analysis is an interpretation open to debate. Critical hermeneutics searches for a deeper meaning while understanding that meaning is contextual, personal, cultural and non-static. 15

exploitation."30 While a critique of the military-industrial complex does figure in to the freegan critique, they view our current capitalist system as the central cause of systems of dominance and oppression. Freegans see aggressive militarization as a symptom of an economic, political and social system that exploits people, animals and the environment, by valuing monetary profit above all else. Freeganism builds upon previous direct action social movements whose "choice of particular organizational structures and political strategies are a form of theorizing about political problems of consent, authority, the construction of knowledge and identities, and the process of social change. "31

Characteristics of direct action movements include affinity groups, consensus process, nonviolent direct action involving civil disobedience and radical democratic politics.32 The concept ofradical democracy, first articulated by Ernesto Laclau and

Chantal Mouffe, is based on the idea that difference and dissent should not just be tolerated but encouraged. 33 Radical democratic politics seeks to uncover and challenge structures of oppression, and help people come together around their intersections of difference rather than be separated by them.

Direct action movements are non-hierarchical, with facilitators instead of leaders-facilitators which are non-sexist, unfixed and democratic. "A movement participant has membership in concentric or affinity groups, spokes councils,

30 Sturgeon, Theorizing Movements, 35.

31 Ibid, 36-37.

32 Ibid.

33 Ernesto Laclau, and Chantal Mouffe, Hegemony and Socialist Strategy: Towards a Radical Democratic Politics (Verso: London, 1985). 16

clusters, organizing groups, and regional affiliations-- alternative political associations existing alongside but unconnected with the legitimized dominant institutions of party politics. "34 Participants of non-violent direct action are interested in excluded politics, not excluded groups; in the case of the freegans, they are trying to organize around an alternative politics of consumption. They were "attempting to articulate radical democratic notions of participation, consent, authority, and equality as a strategy for

35 opposing domination, resisting the state and changing social relations. " . Viewing freeganism as a direct action movement highlights the ways it uses direct action tactics to uncover, critique and challenge the systems and structures that maintain inequality while also working to include a variety of voices and (sometimes conflicting) concerns.

For many participants, freeganism represents a rejection of neoliberalism in favor of . Neoliberalism is a "re-embrace of classic 's faith in the economic, social, and moral attributes of unhindered competition and unregulated markets in the context of welfare state retrenchment."36 Neoliberalism's proponents of the economic, social and moral attributes of unhindered competition and unregulated markets has been rejected by those who see competition for resources as a detriment to our environment specifically and our society overall.37 Marked by privatization, welfare

34 Sturgeon, Theorizing Movements, 41.

35 Ibid, 43.

36 Judith Goode and JeffMaskovsky, ed., "Introduction," in The New Poverty Studies: The The Ethnography of Power, Politics, and Impoverished People in the United States (New York,: New York University Press, 2001), 8.

37 Christopher D Cook, Diet for a Dead Planet: How the Food Industry is Killing Us (New York: The New Press, 2004); Cynthia Hamilton, "Industrial Racism, the Environmental Crisis, and the Denial of Social Justice," in Cultural Politics and Social Movements, ed. Marcy Damovsky, Barbara Epstein, and Richard Flacks (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1995), 189-196; Brian Halweil Home Grown: The 17

reform, free trade and the increased power of multinational corporations over nation- states, defenders of neoliberalism have been criticized for privileging the global as opposed to the local; or more specifically, for focusing on the globalization of capital as local communities, and their environments, suffer.

Although I use "anarchy" with a bit of trepidation-the tendency to dismiss anarchist groups as either misguided, dystopian, or delusional is pretty strong in academia and popular culture-it offers an important analytic lens to view freeganism. (It is also a term many freegans self-identity with. "The basic principles of anarchism-self- organization, voluntary association, mutual aid," are the same basic principles of direct action movements, as is the belief that "one's means must be consonant with one's ends; one cannot create freedom through authoritarian means."38

One main anarchist element of freeganism is its belief in possibilities; in the potential to create sustainable communities, free of oppression and domination. (Anarchy literally means "without rulers," not without laws or social mores.) Freegans, writes sociologist and scrounger Jeff Ferrell, "quite consciously withdraw from a global economy founded on the twin demands of alienated work and ongoing consumption, and try to invent an everyday politics of survival that can undermine these foundations one

Case for in a Global Market (Washington, DC.: WorldWatch Institute, 2002); Paul L. Knox "The Restless Urban Landscape: Economic and Sociocultural Change and the Transformation of Metropolitan Washington, DC.," Annals ofthe Association ofAmerican Geographers 81, no. 2 (l 99 l ): 181-209; Peter Marcuse, "Not Chaos, but Walls: Postmodemism and the Partitioned City," in Postmodern Cities and Spaces, ed. Sophie Watson and Katherine Gibson (Cambridge, MA: Blackwell Publishers, Ltd., 1995), 243-253.

38 David Graeber, Fragments ofan Anarchist Anthropology (Chicago, IL: Prickly Paradigm Press), 5-7. 18

Dumpster at a time."39 For most participants, freeganism was a critique of capitalism as well as a potentially prescriptive alternative to the alienation of production and consumption. "[Freeganism] is not simply a way of washing one's hands of destructive consumerism," Adam said to me during an interview many months later. "It is in fact a direct strategy for undermining capitalism by removing participants from it and by defining and building a viral community so that people are freed from the draw of capitalism and can build effective social structures and networks of mutual aid to the point where capitalism becomes irrelevant."

This type of "living utopianism-the idea that radical alternatives are possible and that one can begin to create them in the present"40 inspires and legitimizes folks who don't believe neoliberal policies are inevitable, legitimate or truly democratic. The imagination plays a central role both as an avenue of hope, allowing people to imagine a globalization of people and ideas rather than finance capital, and a tool for creative, non- violent forms of protest, such as the "white overalls" campaign, organized by Italian Ya

Basta! 41

The variety, or scale, of opposition to capitalism and appropriation of anarchism by some freegan members, combined with their organization and choice of direct action tactics, are aspects of a postmodern movement. Postmodern is a complicated term to use:

39 Jeff Ferrell, Empire ofScrounge, 170.

40 Graeber, Direct Action: An Ethnography, x.

41 During the protests against the IMF/World Bank meetings in Prague on September 26, 2000, Italian Ya Basta! organized the "white overall" action in which protestors dressed in inner-tubes, inflatable suits or puffy jumpsuits and carried water guns or inflatable bats. The tactic protected the protestors while calling attention to the violence perpetrated against dissenters. 19

it implies a break with a modernism and a linear progression of history; although there are a variety of ","42 use of the unified term suggests that there is one, simple definition. Several years ago I taught a course on to undergraduate anthropology students and the one question I got over and over was "So, then what is postmodernism?" They desperately wanted one, straightforward characterization, preferably in five words or less. Postmodern theory, however, is postmodern precisely because it embraces and celebrates difference, complexity and contestation.

Postmodernism is a social theory of context, positionality and power. Postmodern theory emphasizes "the local and particular as opposed to modernist universalism;"43 it argues that knowledge is a construction of power44 that functions as a commodity- what we know and how we know it serves the status quo. Freeganism, like postmodern theory is a reaction to the "postmodern condition," the highly commodified, a-historical, spectacle driven, technological, economically globalized culture.

Through my participation in the freegan movement, interviews with participants and an historical analysis of critical consumption movements in the United States, I evaluated the potential of the freegans' critical consumption movement against neoliberal capitalism; in particular, their use of radical democratic strategies (highlighting waste,

42 Richard Appignanesi, Introducing Postmodernism (New York: Totem Books, 2000).

43 1bid 116.

44 Michel Foucault, The Archaeology ofKnowledge, Trans. A.M. Sheridan Smith. (London, Tavistock Publications, 1974). 20

creating community and reclaiming urban space) to affect social, economic and/or political change. I was concerned with the actions these urban activists employ to destabilize hegemonic45 values regarding consumption and commodity fetishism46 and in what ways these people and their actions are evidence of a direct action critical consumer movement.

The first few chapters focus on context and history: examining the United States' evolving relationship to consumption and the importance of to the freegan community (chapter one); the history of consumer and environmental movements in the

US and the creation of freegan.info (chapter two); and the story of New York City's tumultuous history with squatters and the move to reclaim public space (chapter three).

The final chapters build on some of the concerns with stereotypes introduced in the third chapter, examining the internal dynamics of freeganism and ways they do or do not work to overcome hurdles: how freegans struggle to control media representations of themselves and how those representations conceal underlying problems of whiteness and privilege (chapter four); and the difficulties of consensus decision making and the clash of strong personalities with disparate goals (chapter five). Along the way we'll look closer at the variety of freegan actions, such as the bike maintenance workshop and the

Really Really Free Market, as well as several core freegan members. The concerns of

45 Hegemony is a theory put forth by Antonio Gramsci which argues that power is a constant ideological struggle in which those with power often maintain consent of their position from the wider population by manipulating them into believing that they share the same interests.

46 In his discussion of production and commodities, Marx argues that "the utility ofa thing makes it a use value ... it has no existence apart from that commodity." However, he goes on to note that society has placed certain meanings, often arbitrarily, on particular commodities to the point that they become fetishized. Karl Marx "The Fetishism of the Commodity and Its Secret," in Social Theory: A Reader, ed. Jonathan Joseph (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2005; reprint, from Capital, vol. 1, tr. Ben Fowkes, Hormondsworth: Pelican, 1976), 20. 21

each chapter are organized around their stories: What is the world they imagine? What alternative social structures are they trying to create and do we all get to live there?

In many ways, this dissertation is also a documentation of my own exploration of freeganism. It involves much of my own analysis of consumer culture in America, ideologically and materially, and often the lines between ethnographer and activist become blurred. "We are human beings studying other human beings, and we cannot leave ourselves out of the equation," anthropologist Sally Slocum writes. "We choose to ask certain questions, and not others. Our choice grows out of the cultural context in which anthropology and anthropologists exist."47 My choice to be an activist academic has implications for my research and writing; the goal is that the blended layers of the professional and personal ethnography enhance the work and provide ideas for future activists and researchers.

*************************

Back in the fluorescent lit student union, Christian, a 30-something freegan, was speaking about being a squatter. "My life revolves around living outside of capitalism," he said. "I used to be an investment banker, obsessed with money." Several freegans I met had given up financially lucrative careers in a desire to live outside the system.

Madeline Nelson was an executive for almost 20 years before quitting and becoming an activist. Most, however still held down full or part time jobs. Janet was a high school

47 Sally Slocum, "Woman the Gatherer: Male Bias in Anthropology," In Anthropological Theory: An Introductory History, ed. Jon R. McGee and Richard Warms (Mountain View, CA: Mayfield Publishing Co. 2000), 420. 22

teacher, Cindy taught art classes, and Michael Foster was an environmental scientist at a museum.

Christian admitted to the difficulties of trying to live outside of capitalism." It's hard, but possible," he said. Eschewing capitalism requires a solid community and information network. Many squatters have to learn skills in plumbing, carpentry and electrical work to make buildings livable. Christian preferred the nomadic, simplistic lifestyle to the material excess he had before, he said. He'd begun to question conspicuous consumption and alter his lifestyle before he met up with the freegans, but it was among them that he found kindred spirits. He jumped right in, offering to host a freegan dinner. (Dinners were typically held once a month, following a trash tour. It was a social event that media was allowed to attend.)

"I remember when Christian joined us," Janet later reminisced during an interview. "From the very first day he joined us, he talked about hosting a freegan dinner.

I think those who remember that and most of us who were involved and active in organizing our meetings remember how wonderful it was to have someone join us right away and really become a part of us and so active and helpful and willing. So then when

Christian later talked about his bike workshop, we knew that he's someone who does follow through and does want to be involved and has not just vision but practical ways of putting it through."

The bike maintenance workshop, originally located in and later relocated to Brooklyn, was similar to the trash tour in that it offered both a critique and a solution to the environmental and health consequences of conspicuous consumption. In

Brooklyn, the workshop was a place for local kids to learn and practice bike maintenance 23

as well as a safe space to hang out. The shop, known as the 123 Community Space, was a non-profit that also housed a free library and computers for the community, especially kids, to use. 48

As Cindy explained to the NYU students during her talk: "Freeganism speaks to basic needs. It's not just about food." She described other freegan-esque projects such as

49 50 recycling, Really Really Free Markets , community gardens and wild food tours. Many freegans were also members of groups such as Time's Up, a direct action environmental organization, and ABC No Rio, a collectively run artist and activist center. Concerns about the earth, animals and human potential undergird freegan rhetoric and actions.

Freegans view capitalism as destructive to our basic needs: capitalism confuses us with advertisements for things we don't need; obscuring the origins and processes of what we buy; sacrificing health for profit; and naturalizing neoliberal capitalism to such a degree that questioning it seems positively un-American.

After all the freegans spoke, the floor was opened up for questions. Despite the range of issues discussed during the forum, almost all the questions dealt with dumpster diving. They reflected many of the concerns and confusions I encountered not just during my research, but any time I tried to explain my dissertation to a curious stranger. The answers the freegans provided reflected the variety of strategies and solutions to the problems raised by capitalism.

48 As of October, 2009, the 123 Community Space closed.

49 See Chapter 5 for a description and discussion of the Really Really Free Markets.

50 See Chapter 3 for a description and discussion of the wild food tours. 24

One student stood up to speak. "The products are still part of the system, even reclaimed. Why not just move out to the country and grow what you want?"

"It's tempting," Janet answered. "But the country life demands more dependence on fossil fuels, being isolated. The city is ironically the best place for a naturalist or a simple liver." Additionally, she said freegans are more visible in the city and can set an example for how to challenge consumer waste and "teaching others a conscious way of living," Cindy added.

"I consider myself a primitivist, just taking enough to need, not to damage the earth, but there's so many people it's hard to do that. We couldn't sustain ourselves,"

Cindy continued."

The question belied a common understanding more applicable to the problematic term "" of the 60s' -the idea that radicals are opting-out of some monolithic mainstream culture. Freegans do not want to opt-out; rather they are hoping to encourage others to "opt-in" to an alternate economic and social model. Most utopias the freegans envision are small-scale, environmentally sustainable communities: Janet's had a community garden and neighbors shared what they grew; Nora's51 would include a working knowledge of local herbs and medicines.

"What about hygiene products?"

The longer you're freegan, they explained, the easier it is. Wendy told a story of finding box full of toothpaste and bringing it to a freegan meeting for the other members.

Sharing is an essential component of the movement. In addition, "dorm dives," when

51 Pseudonym 25

college students move out of their housing each semester, is a virtual of toiletries. (As well as iPods, kitchen utensils, furniture ... )

"What about your family? How do they deal?"

Wendy's dad worried about her safety, particularly diving at night and Janet's family, although reticent at first, hfve come to accept and even participate in dumpster diving. Regarding eating reclaimed food, Cindy said she also liked to show by example.

"When they see you're eating it, eventually they try it.

One student asked the freegans' opinions on magazines such as Real Simple and

Dwell, which encourage you to live simply.

"Real Simple simply annoyed me. There's so much ; it was all still about consuming but 'in a simple way."' Janet waved off the idea with her hand.

Adam said that he was disturbed by the reliance on creating new technology to fix social and environmental problems. "Capitalism is trying to find ways to fill markets and cravings for commodities by putting out message that technology can fix it, rather than fundamentally questioning the system and economic model," he argued.

"How do you pay electricity? How do you cook?"

Christian lived in a rent before . His old landlord is suing for

$30,000. "In squats," he said, "we work around meters."

Cindy, who rents an apartment near Rockaway Beach, re-iterated a point made earlier. "Freeganism is a process, not a set of rules. Some freegans live in rentals, some own houses. A friend just bought a house but is using solar panels for electricity."

"How do you perceive the difference between dropping out of society and working to change society?" 26

All the freegan panelists moved to respond.

"I want to reach people," Janet leaned forward. "If I live in a perfect world but if everyone else is living in a polluted world, that wouldn't be good."

"The key to creating change is creating things; people aren't going to relish the absence of something, but the creation of viable alternatives," Wendy said."People are not attracted to anger but solutions."

During his concluding statements, Adam makes a call to action. "We need a revolt, not about future utopias, but a revolution we create daily." CHAPTER2

JANET'S STORY: "I'VE BEEN FREEGAN

BEFORE I KNEW THE WORD"

"It's selling for the sake of selling," Janet Kalish lamented. "I see a lot of crap ... where they just make something for a school club or there's an event and they'll create a

T-shirt that people will wear on one occasion, one special day, and then probably put it in a closet." She paused, her fingers gently raking through Bouncy's dark fur. We were sitting cross-legged on the living room floor of her 2-story apartment in Queens, New

York City, playing with her three cats. "So all these things get made for single events -

Jeremy's bar mitzvah! And every little boy or girl gets a T-shirt saying 'I was at Jeremy's bar mitzvah' ... Or all the tourist things, all the 'I love New York' and every other city in the world. Stacks of shirts," she gestures to the ceiling with her hands. "T-shirts to me seem like a good metaphor for a big problem: Selling for the sake of selling."

The first time I met Janet she offered me a mismatched pair of mittens and a green knit scarf she had recently rescued from the street. It was a blustery October day and the freegans were holding their bi-monthly meeting in Bryant Square Park; the sun had just set and I was ill-prepared for the weather when Janet offered me a bit of warmth and a smile. "I find hats and gloves on the street and take them home and wash them and give them to my friends. If you keep your eyes open, you never have to buy any new winter

27 28

clothes in New York City, it's all over the streets," she explained later.

Janet's home was filled with things she's found on the streets. When I went to her house for our interview, she gave me a tour. She pointed out the cherry wood bookcase she found on the sidewalk, it was lined with paperbacks she picked up in bins from

Williamsburg to the upper west side; above her guest bed hung a painting of a field of daisies she found at Chelsea Piers; in her room, a chair she rescued and repaired near

Times Square; knick-knacks decoratively documented her past several years exploring the discards of New York City. I had recently moved into a new place in Brooklyn and she asked if there was anything I needed, she had more than enough stuff to go around.

Janet's generosity of both objects and spirit has made her a popular subject for various journalists and students interested in freeganism. Her openness about her beliefs and activities combined with her willingness to invite people into her home made her one of the more recognizable faces of the freegan movement. She has been featured in print, radio and television stories in the LA Times, Salon.com, Good Morning America and the

ABC Nightly News.

Although many students and faculty at the elementary school where she taught

Spanish knew she was freegan she said she didn't think it was common knowledge. "A lot of kids know about it because I've been interviewed and if you Google my name you'll find me in various articles on freeganism and once in a while I'll appear on television or in ... So maybe most of my classes know that. And I don't mind telling them about freeganism, except I can't manage to do it and teach a full

Spanish lesson. It would be quite distracting to mention that [I am a freegan] and then say

OK, on with the lesson!" she laughed. 29

Janet was involved in several different projects at her school; she served as an advisor for the now defunct environmental club and advised Youth United Through

Global Action and Awareness, which looked at the effects of poverty and exploitation on children. Upset by the amount of paper waste, Janet started a recycling program. "Every day you get a piece of paper in your mailbox telling you some piece of nonsense ... sometimes it's someone retiring, sometimes it's remember to fill out some form. You look at it once and it's sometimes not even relevant to you and even if it is, it's a huge waste of paper for 250 people to receive this, look at it once, throw it in the garbage," she explained, rummaging through the cabinet behind her. "You know, to most people it's no big deal and I'm sure it doesn't cross their mind to look at the waste of paper- they just think, 'Ahh, I'm not going to the party .... ' But I'm always thinking about the waste of paper. So I've started to save those and I've used them for years now, probably 15 years,

I've been using the back of paper and giving it to my students."

Turning back to face me, she pulled out several stacks of envelopes she had collected over the years: some were return envelopes from various animal shelters and charity organizations she's donated to; some were utility envelopes with stickers covering the Pepco logo and address, a clean slate for a new addressee. Janet calls her reclamation of objects like envelopes, the backs of paper, even lost articles of clothing rescuing.

************************* 30

Figure 1. Rescued Paper: On the left, a salvaged cabinet where Janet keeps rescued envelopes and papers. On the right, Bouncy perches on an open drawer overflowing with stamps and stickers.

The act of rescuing items has a long and complicated history in the United States.

Susan Strasser traces the evolution of American society from one grounded in to what has become a "throwaway culture." Strasser writes: "Throughout most of our history, people of all classes and in all places have practiced an everyday regard for objects, the labor involved in creating them, and the materials from which they were made. Even as nineteenth and early twentieth century Americans eagerly adapted to a consumer culture, they mended, reused, saved and made do."1 I can remember my own grandmother talking about "making do" with what we already had: mending clothes, repurposing broken pots into planters, too thin sheets became pillows, and scraps from dinner were given to the animals in the pasture. My grandfather would save metal that couldn't be used for his work to fashion beautiful metal trees for hanging , old tractor seats were scattered around the yard for extra seating. With a large family living on one income, reusing was just common sense. Strasser continues:

1 Strasser Strasser, Waste and Want: A Social History of Trash, 22. 31

Everyone was a bricoleur2 in the preindustrial household of the American colonies and, later, on the frontier ... Cloth, woods, and food could only be obtained by arduous spinning, weaving, chopping, sawing, digging, and hoeing, by bartering with other products of strenuous work, or by spending scarce cash. Whether things were purchased at stores or crafted on farms and plantations, the value of the time, labor, and money expended on materials and their potential value as useful scraps were evident to the people who worked with them. 3

Household advice in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century stressed saving and taking care of household items, for example, collecting cooking grease to make soap or re-using cotton flour sacks as dishtowels.4 But although practicing thrift was important for cash-strapped families, "thrift was not one of the central of ideal-middle class womanhoods, nor in itself a primary focus of most household writing, which was generally more intent on promoting other qualities of domesticity."5 Consumption, and thus reusing, was moving away from what it did (save money) to what it said (about social positioning).

Writings noting American wastefulness appear as early as the 1870 in various journals and newspapers: some chastising the new country for its extravagance and not continuing the of their ancestors while others argued that waste was an outcome of lack of knowledge on how to reuse and repurpose. 6 Most people didn't have much, particularly by today's standards, but with twentieth century industrialization, urbanization and economic growth, people began to buy more and mend less. Mass

2 Sort of a "jack of all trades" or "Renaissance woman."

3 Susan Strasser, Waste and Want, 22.

4 Ibid., 111.

5 Strasser, Waste and Want, 27.

6 Ibid., 25. 32

production, along with the growth of the advertising and credit industries, was the infrastructure of a mass consumer culture in which was seen as "a necessary aspect of progress under capitalism."7

Consumption has always been more than just about sustenance or need; not just practical or economic, but ideological-a value tied to our ideas about what it means to be a citizen, an American. Ideology is defined as "institutional practices which people draw upon without thinking [that] often embody assumptions which directly or indirectly legitimize existing power relations." Linguist Norman Fairclough writes: "[p]ractices which appear to be universal and commonsensical can often be shown to originate in the dominant classes or the dominant bloc and to have become naturalized."8 Consumptive behaviors, styles and abilities are tied to our ideas about class, gender and race. They are not static and they are indicative of larger social structures and values.

In 1899, Thomstein Veblen wrote The Theory of the Leisure Class, in which he talked about the ways in which commodities and consumption connotes social class. He called the excessive consuming in order to show others your status "conspicuous consumption. "9 (He also had some critical things to say about , as well.) In the early 1900s, there was a shift, away from the moral attributes of thrift and towards the social status of consumption of new things.

7 Ibid., 274.

8 Norman Fairclough, Language and Power (Essex, England: Pearson Education Unlimited, 1989), 33.

9 , The Theory ofthe Leisure Class (New York: Penguin Books 1994; reprint 1899). 33

As more people moved into the city for jobs, reusing became difficult partly in terms of space but it had implications for consumer ideology. "Reuse was easier in the country" where composting was typically practiced and sheds, basements or attics and,

Strasser notes, it was considered more and more "old-fashioned" as urban city dwellers began to participate in conspicuous consumption. 10

In the last century, the United States became an increasingly industrialized and urbanized nation and class differences in terms of reusing widened; being thrifty lost its social heft and the necessity ofreusing old items gained negative class associations. In many ways, rescuing and reusing has become an ideological tool that promotes racial, class and gendered distinctions. Who "gets" to reuse as an aspect of identity or who "has" to in order to survive tells us a lot about our society.

Middle and upper classes get to choose to recycle and reuse: neatly, and in specifically-colored plastic boxes, or in fun living room swap meets complete with cupcakes and tea. 11 Lower classes, however, for which the Three R's are a necessity, are still viewed negatively, their participation in the thrift culture ignored along with real discussion on poverty. News stories focus on the fun and spectacle ofrescuing rather than the harsh realities of poverty or consequences of over-consumption. 12

10 Strasser, Waste and Want, 24.

11 Lauren Hayes and Angela Storey, "The 'New' Old Style: Women's Clothing Swaps and the Re­ formation of Social Relationships," paper presented at the annual meeting of the American Anthropological Association Meeting (Philadelphia, PA; December 3, 2009).

12 Raina Kelly, Freegan Ride, 2007 and David Rowan, "The Next Big Thing," Times Magazine, London, (accessed September 17, 2005). See Adam chapter for a larger exploration of media coverage. 34

While the practice of reusing has long been part of life among the poor and is rising among those who lost homes and jobs during the economic downturn of

2008/2009, the act ofrescuing has undergone resurgence in popular culture. Many members of the middle and upper classes practice the Three R's (reduce, reuse, recycle) with a nod to irony and a touch of kitsch. 13 Some thrift store consumers straddle the line between accessory and necessity: one study of thrift store customers in Valley,

Utah, found that middle class customers increasingly shop at Goodwill or the Salvation

Army to maintain their standard of living and class distinction. As the cost of living has risen, real wages have declined and the debt industry has pushed more and more people towards bankruptcy. 14 Thrift, including mending and recycling, has become popular again, a novelty for some but a necessity for an increasing number of others.

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Even though rescuing, has moved farther away from the fringes, Janet still saw herself as an outsider- and an occasional annoyance. "I think it's almost like I'm a walking recycle sign or a conscience for people at school. In a lot of cases I guess it's

13 Lauren Hayes and Angela Storey, "The 'New' Old Style: Women's Clothing Swaps and the Re­ formation of Social Relationships;" Angela McRobbie, "Second-hand dresses and the role of the Ragmarket," in Postmodernism and Popular Culture (London: Routledge, 1994), 135-154.

14 Claudia H. Deutsch, "US: Poll Shows Americans Distrust Corporations," Corp Watch, December 10th, 2005 http://www.corpwatch.org/article.php?id=l2863 (accessed January 23, 2008); Spencer James, Ralph Brown, Todd Goodsell and Josh Stovall, "Where will the Middle Class Survive?­ Thrift Stores and Yard Sales as a new Shadow Economy," Paper presented at the annual meeting of the American Sociological Association, New York, New York City, Aug 10, 2007; also http://www.allacademic.com/meta/p 184699_index.html (accessed March 25, 20 IO); Brett Williams, "What's Debt Got to Do with It?" in The New Poverty Studies: The Ethnography ofPower, Politics, and Impoverished People in the United States, ed. Judith Goode and JeffMaskovsky, (New York: University Press, 200 I), 79-102. 35

just sort of a little joke to people, not something to take seriously or to be concerned about all the waste," she said.

Although as an adult Janet was extremely involved in several progressive causes, especially regarding animal rights, she hadn't always been such an activist icon. Her boisterous friendliness and infectious enthusiasm belies an introverted youth. "I was concerned about issues, but shy." The petite New York native, now in her mid-forties, was originally concerned with animal rights.

She became interested in vegetarianism at an early age but didn't start to cut meat from her diet until her twenties. "I always knew I would be a vegetarian. I tried to be one as a child. There were not very many vegetarians then and it wasn't considered a healthy lifestyle in general. I think now people recognize vegetarianism is healthy, and that cholesterol is bad and that there are all sorts of illnesses associated today with meat," she said.

According to the American Heart Association, "(m)ost vegetarian diets are low in or devoid of animal products. They're also usually lower than non-vegetarian diets in total fat, saturated fat and cholesterol. Many studies have shown that vegetarians seem to have a lower risk of obesity, coronary heart disease (which causes heart attack), high blood pressure, diabetes mellitus and some forms of cancer."15 In a study conducted in

2002, Canadian researchers found a vegetarian diet to be an effective, drug-free way to

15 American Heart Association, "Vegetarian Diets," http://www.americanheart.org/presenter.jhtml?identifier=4777 (accessed November 4, 2009). 36

lower cholesterol. Participants in the study reduced their cholesterol levels by almost one- third in a month. 16

Although the health benefits of limiting and eliminating meat from our diets are fairly well documented, when Janet was growing up, nutritional knowledge was not as advanced. "It wasn't considered very healthy. I tried, when I think I was 13 ... and I wasn't knowledgeable, I don't think any of us were knowledgeable about nutrition enough to realize the variety of proteins," she said.

During college, Janet spent a year in Spain where she had a lot of difficulty attempting a vegetarian diet. "That was impossible. Everything was meat. And I wasn't thinking of it at that time. I was just thinking 'bull fighting is bad,' that's like as animal rights as I was getting then," she laughed. When she returned for her senior year, she lived in a co-operative dorm. "I met plenty of vegetarians, and we always had a vegetarian option and I said 'I will be a vegetarian.' And I became a vegetarian in my senior year of college in 1984." A little over ten years later, she stopped eating food that contained any animal products, including eggs and dairy, a diet commonly known as .

People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) estimates that 3% of

Americans are vegetarian; a significantly lower number than other parts of the world; in

India, an estimated 30% of adults eat a vegetarian diet. There are several different types of vegetarian diets and people choose them for reasons ranging from a concern about the ethics of eating sentient beings, health and environmental effects and factory farms.

16 BBC News, "Vegetarian diet 'cuts heart risk,"' December 15, 2002, http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/health/252689 l .stm. 37

There are also many different types of vegetarians: people who don't eat beef, pork or chicken but eat fish are called pescatarians; those who don't eat any meat or fish but do eat eggs and dairy are known as lacto-ovo vegetarians; folks who eliminate all meat, fish, egg and dairy are vegans. Many, but not all, vegetarians choose not to buy new leather or animal products, such as shoes, silk ties or fur jackets. Some will continue to wear products they had purchased before altering their diet in an effort to either make sure the animal didn't suffer in vain or to not waste commodities.

Recently many governmental and private agencies have recommended limiting the amount of meat in your diet as a way to lighten your carbon footprint. Factory, or industrial, farms have been shown to be hazardous both in terms of the amount of pollution and soil damage. 17 Following a study conducted by the British Department for

Environment, Food and Rural Affairs on animal agriculture, an official for the agency said adopting a vegan diet could significantly help combat global warming. 18

Industrial farms, which often practice , or single crop planting, have replaced polyculture farms which rotated crops, animals and grasses. Relying on just one crop has changed the landscape of American farming both physically and figuratively; many farms are forced to shut down while others survive on government subsidies to stay afloat. Massive factory farms or Concentrated Animal Feeding Operations (CAFOs) for

17 , Omnivore's Dilemma: A ofFour Meals (New York, NY: Penguin Books, 2006); Eric Schlosser, Nation: The Dark Side ofthe All-American Meal (New York: HarperCollins, 2002).

18 Avril Ormsby, "Government Says Eat Less Meat to Save Planet," Reuters: UK, May 30, 2007, http://uk.reuters.com/article/scienceNews/idUKL3044053120070530. 38

cows, pigs and chickens pose health hazards for animals, humans and the environment due to cramped living conditions and polluted waste.

Concern has also been raised over the treatment of animals on factory farms by animal rights groups. In September of 2008, the Associated Press reported on an investigation underway in Iowa based on a PETA (People for the Ethical Treatment of

Animals) video of workers at Hormel CAFO kicking and beating sows with lead pipes and slamming piglets headfirst onto the ground. 19 Consumer outrage led to a boycott of

Hormel products although currently the investigation is still pending.

The animal, social and environmental impact of factory farming of plants and animals has been documented and challenged by various journalists and industry experts.

In his bestselling investigation into the ubiquitous nature of the fast food industry first,

Eric Schlosser writes: "There is nothing inevitable about the fast food nation that surrounds us - about its marketing strategies, labor policies, and agricultural techniques, about its relentless drive for conformity and cheapness."20 Books providing alternatives to such methods, particularly for consumers, have had resounding success. Barbara

Kingsolver's Animal, , Miracle21 and The Omnivore's Dilemma by Michael

Pollan22 were on the New York Times Bestseller List and Dilemma was named one of the best books of 2006 by the Times. Both books suggested that one major aspect of the

19 Associated Press, "Video shows workers abusing pigs at Hormel supplier," Austin Daily Herald, September 16, 2008, http://www.austindailyherald.com/news/2008/sep/ 16/video-shows-workers-abusing­ pigs-hormel-supplier/ (accessed December 3, 2008).

20 Eric Schlosser, Fast Food Nation: The Dark Side ofthe All-American Meal, 260.

21 Barbara Kingsolver, Animal, Vegetable, Miracle: A Year ofFood Life (New York: HarperCollins, 2007).

22 Michael Pollan, Omnivore's Dilemma: A Natural History of Four Meals. 39

consumer's dilemma lay in the disconnection we have with our food in terms of its origin, ingredients and journey from the ground to our table. "To go from the chicken ... to the Chicken McNugget is to leave this world in ajoumey of forgetting that could hardly be more costly, not only in terms of the animal's pain, but in our pleasure, too,"

Pollan wrote. "But forgetting, or not knowing in the first place, is what the industrial food chain is all about, the principal reason is so opaque, for if we could see what lies on the far side of the increasingly high walls of our industrial agriculture, we would surely change the way we eat."23

Changing the way one eats can be a daunting, often intimidating task; what we eat is tied to our family, our culture and even our identity. Food is a "social marker;" food in the United States defines our senses of individuality and place in society. 24 It wasn't until

Janet met some vegans that she began to see the lifestyle as a possibility rather than a daunting task. "I do remember meeting my first vegan way back in college 1984 or 1983.

And I was very impressed and amazed that somebody could be vegan. And I don't know ifthe word existed, I guess the word existed, but it wasn't a common word, but I was amazed that she's not eating any dairy products. How could you not eat dairy products and also not eat meat? 'Cause I was probably compensating a lot with dairy products then, eating omelets, lots of cheese, and pizza was sort of a common food in college. So it was hard for me to picture but I respected it a lot," she paused to scratch Bouncy behind the ears. "And (later) I met, and I started working with kids in clubs and animal-

23 Michael Pollan, Omnivore's Dilemna, I 0.

24 E.N. Anderson, Everyone Eats, Everyone Eats: Understanding Food and Culture (New York: New York University Press, 2005). 40

rights clubs, and I met a vegan student and I was vegetarian thinking I'm doing okay as a vegetarian. And I saw that a student in high school could be a vegan and I just decided I could do it too," she said. After doing more research on industrial dairy farming and the antibiotics and hormones given to cows, "eating dairy didn't make sense anymore." The

PET A film, "," which featured chickens and egg harvesting further cemented her resolve to eat a vegan diet. "I just realized I can't- it's just as cruel to eat eggs and eat dairy as it is eat meat. It's the same thing," she said.

Also around this time, in the 1970s and early 80s, it became a lot easier to be vegan; brands such as Toffutti,25 which made cheese and dairy alternatives including cream cheese, sour cream and ice cream, began to fill the market niche. Vegan convenience foods made it much simpler and quicker to eat a based diet and helped many feel less deprived of their favorite foods. "I realized there's still dark chocolate; there's still junk food!" she said.

Still, Janet recognized the difficulty of moving straight into veganism. "I think also having already lived with this restriction as a vegetarian it's just another step. It's not so hard; I think it would be very difficult to go from regular omnivore to be in. It would feel like you might be depriving yourself too much, but I'd been already 10 years living as a vegetarian. And I remember well. I remember I was worried that I would miss

25 Tofutti creator and owner David Mintz first began experimenting with so as to offer customers at his kosher deli a way to enjoy beef and dairy flavors without violating religious law. Mintz once remarked "Discovering tofu was like discovering America; it opened a whole new world of possibilities!" Joseph J. Fucini and Suzy Fucini, Experience, Inc.: Men and Women Who Founded Famous Companies After the Age 40. New York: The Free Press, 1987. (available from http://toffuti.com/Toffutti­ Story.pdf, accessed on December 3, 2008). 41

M&Ms and pizza and I was a little worried, but it wasn't so bad," she laughed and shook her head.

The move from vegetarian to vegan to freegan is a familiar trajectory for many freegan activists and most, but not all, freegans practice some form of vegetarianism.

(Some members won't eat meat but will rescue it from the trash to feed to their pets; others revel in finding still frozen salmon or pepperoni pizza.) Cindy, like Janet, made a similar progression from an interest in the ethics of edible consumption to a more macro concern in conspicuous consumption.

When Cindy was sixteen, she became a vegetarian after a visit to the Wisconsin

State Fair. "I was president of the animal rights club and I wasn't a vegetarian. And I knew in my head, [vegetarianism] was the right thing to do but I couldn't even like, I didn't know any vegetarians! I never met a vegetarian and it was so far-fetched that I couldn't even imagine doing it. And I went to the State fair, and I saw some pigs and stuff and its like, these prized pigs that kids are raising and they are going to be slaughtered! So I met a couple of lambs and goats there and my first step was to give up lamb which sounds really silly, but I used to eat gyros a lot," she said.

It was her continued concern over and rights that caused her to eventually adopt a vegan diet and it was the ecological impact of consumption that led her to freeganism. The connections between the two, as well as worker's rights abuses, highlighted the generally held freegan belief that we live" in a complex, industrial, mass­ production economy driven by profit, abuses of humans, animals, and the earth [which] 42

abound at all levels of production (from acquisition to raw materials to production to transportation) and in just about every product we buy."26

Many consumption activists concerned with animal rights have turned to vegetarianism or veganism and the market has responded with a variety of products to satisfy that niche. A lot of the most popular vegetarian brands also boast organic or

"natural" labels, leading to a compression of vegetarian/veganism with a larger health concerns. But how much is known about these vegetarian organic brands, anyway? Does the money from a Boca burger go to an animal friendly company intent on reducing meat consumption? Not really. It goes to Kraft. As do the profits from its other product line,

Oscar Mayer. Dr. Phil Howard, an assistant professor at Michigan State University, compiled data that charts the acquisition of organic brands by larger corporations (see next page).

The graphic serves as a visual explanation of the freegan critique of vegetarians, vegans and other specialized consumers. Even though people buy vegetarian products hoping to save animals' lives, their money still ultimately goes to corporations which practice animal cruelty. The counter-argument is that vegans are building up a market segment that doesn't use animal ingredients and thus allowing the vegan market to expand-buying a Boca burger could eventually mean that Kraft will put more money into vegan products and away from meat or dairy lines. But, according to many freegans, building another niche market just continues the vicious cycle which privileges monetary profit above all else; in other words, it doesn't challenge what they see as the problems

26 Freegan.info: Strategies for Sustainable Living Beyond Capitalism, "What is a Freegan?" http://freegan.info/ (accessed June 4, 2006). See the conclusion for a discussion of how the definition changed after my fieldwork concluded. 43

and consequences of neoliberal capitalism. While vegans avoid products which they find harmful or exploitive of animals, their participation in the market economy can be harmful and exploitive of the environment, workers and ones' health.

Organic Industry July 2008 Structure: AtquisiHons by the Top JO Food Procuson in North America

Phil Hawa!d,As'!ii:atant Ptofes:sor raJ, Agric'l.lffure, AllNlm:an!:;alis..iict JtC>;;C~\l::>Ft>(!d Aecraa.1Jon and Ae1iource S1ud;.es. P!l!Ctllal!'l!):~I, Michigan Stat.e UniYersity :?007

Figure 2. Organic Industry Structure: Acquisitions by the Top 30 Food Processors in North America. 27

27 Dr. Howard also has similar charts which note the introduction of organic labels under these corporations, as well as a list of major independent organic companies and their brands. Philip Howard, "Organic Industry Structure" Michigan State University, http://www.msu.edu/%7Ehowardp/organicindustry.html (accessed August 3rd, 2008). 44

Under the title "Why Freeganism?" an explanation written and distributed anonymously by the Death Metal Militia Distro/Green Monkey Collective28 in 2000, explains:

The vegan consumers are flexing their monetary muscle and "voting with their dollars" for the products that don't injure animals. These dollars are voting for coca-cola, big corporate grocery stores, greasy-fast food (we all know Taco Bell vegans), and worse. Shouldn't truly conscientious folks seek something more? I don't vote because no matter who I vote for, the government always wins and when you "vote with your dollars", consumerism always wins, capitalism always wins. So .... make a list of all the unethical practices that really piss you off and make a list of all the corporations and products you want to boycott. Veganism is a good first step, but is your only concern animals? I made this list and when I was done, I couldn't really justify buying anything, I couldn't get behind any aspect of the corporate death consumer machine so I decided to boycott everything. I still spend money sometimes (I love going out for Thai food) but I try to be very conscientious about my consumption. Besides the concern that veganism as an ethic for eating stops short, it is also still a very high impact lifestyle. The packaging from vegan food doesn't take up less space in the landfill or consume less resources just because the food is vegan. The whole produce and consume dynamic is still played out, but the setting is a fancy health food store instead of a supermarket. Veganism is not a threat, or a challenge to the wasteful practices of our capitalist society.29

For Janet, Cindy and many other freegans, participation in the market, even as a vegan, ultimately doesn't contribute to a sustainable earth- in terms of the environment, human or even animal rights. That doesn't mean they are dogmatic, however; most freegans admit to buying products to supplement what they find in dumpsters.

During one freegan feast, a group of us sat around the dinner table, talking about how the media usually asks questions trying to prove how authentically freegan a

28 The was once part of the Wetlands Activist Collective but appears to have either disbanded or gone underground.

29 Freegan.info: Strategies for Sustainable Living Beyond Capitalism, "Why Freegan?" http://freegan.info/?page_id=l 82 (accessed August 2, 2007). 45

member is."They always want to see my refrigerator and know what percent comes from the dumpster," Janet sighs. The idea is that the more freegan you are, the less you'll buy, although there are a variety of ways people participate in freeganism without dumpster diving.30

"There are some convenience foods that I still buy, like and soy products, but there are other goods that I won't compromise on. Most of my produce I dive because it just makes sense," Cindy adds.

Many people nod their heads in agreement. No one chastises her for not being

"freegan" enough. Freeganism is an "an effort to abstain from capitalism. To step outside of the capitalist culture .. .it's a process," Cindy said. "It's not either or. It's a process of trying to step away from capitalism." By defining freeganism as an activity, an effort, a process, which is about intent rather than a static object or identity, she is able to make freeganism work in a capitalist world.

Although in some ways the extremity of trying to opt out of capitalism as we know it can feel extreme and alienating, the goal for many freegans is exactly the opposite-rather than the distance people feel from their food and each other which has been aggravated by conspicuous consumption, people should embrace their connection to the earth and to each other. "As long as we're considering ourselves not part and parcel of the natural world," Cindy argued, "we're not going to be able to do all that much better for the planet."

30 The bike workshop, Really Really Free Market, wild food tours, for example. 46

Some freegans, like Nora, the NYU college student who helped organize the freegan forum, eating local, sustainable food from area farmers is a viable alternative to participating in the globalized marketplace. Nora said she dumpster dove to call attention to and make use of all the "devastating" waste, but ultimately she recognizes that diving is not (and should not be) a sustainable act. "I also love the community that happens in a farmers market," she said. "And I've been taking my to Union Square, and it's really cool to take this old food crap, scraps and know that it turns into dirt and that all the food around me comes out of dirt ... and just feeling connected to that food process."

Regaining a sense of connection to food is a common reason many people give for becoming involved in the and local food movements.

Originally founded in in 1989, the Slow Food Movement has taken hold in many parts of the United States and Slow Food USA boasts over 200 chapters and thousands of members. It began as a way to "counteract fast food and fast life, the disappearance of local food traditions and people's dwindling interest in the food they eat, where it comes from, how it tastes and how our food choices affect the rest of the world."31 This growing interest in local food, including farmer's markets and Community

Supported Agriculture (CSA) shares, in which individuals and families pay for a weekly portion of a local farms production, evidence a renewed interest in understanding where food comes from and the ways in which is it produced and consumed. Local Harvest, a

Santa Cruz based website for local and organic food, has over 20,000 members and over

3,400 farms with CSA programs.

31 Slow Food Times, www.slowfood.com (accessed January 3, 2009). 47

According to a 2006 USDA survey, 61 % of farmer's markets surveyed accepted accept food stamps and vouchers, however "government programs had varying degrees of impact on vendor sales at farmers markets. The Women, Infants, and Children Farmers

Market Nutrition Program (WIC FMNP) had the largest effect, showing average monthly sales of $1, 7 44 nationwide. "32 Specialized consumption such as CSA' s and farmer's markets is more accessible and widely used by middle and upper classes.

In many ways, Janet recognized that it was her privilege that helped her eschew the allure of conspicuous consumption. "It's easier to not want if you don't need. I was lucky. I wasn't rich but there was never hunger and there was never a question of whether

I was going to get clothes." Growing up as the youngest, and only, girl amongst two older brothers, Janet's parents attempted to spoil her rotten. "My mom was thrilled to have a daughter and she told me I could have anything in the store. And I think because I always had that message, anything you want ... it was like a constant message, 'Anything you want. Just tell me what you want!' but I didn't want anything. It seems strange to have anything I want, and so instead of making me spoiled it had the opposite effect. It made me uncomfortable to want things," she shrugged and hopped to her feet.

"Would you like some tea?" she asked, heading for the kitchen. I jumped up to help but she shooed me into a seat at her table. Chamomile, green, black, sleepy time ... many of her teas were either given to her by friends and co-workers cleaning out their pantries or found while diving at coffee shops.

32 Edward Ragland and Debra Tropp, "USDA National Farmer's Market Survey 2006," United States Department of Agriculture, May 2009, http://www.ams.usda.gov/ AMSv 1.0/getfile?dDocN ame=STELPRDC5077203&acct=wdmgeninfo (accessed January 17 2010.) 48

"I was very un-consumerist and un-materialistic from a very young age. My mom would ask me what I wanted my for birthday and it was a strange question to me," she said as she put the kettle on. She talked about wearing hand-me-down clothing and not minding that her flannel shirt was eight or nine years old. She said she was continually awed by the importance of "wanting" things as she grew up. Even though she was Jewish and never celebrated Christmas, she said that the concept of a Christmas list always struck her as strange. "It never occurred to me to want things like that. Just to find things that were advertised and want them the way that our culture is encouraged to."

Janet's early questioning of the "naturalness" of conspicuous consumption was one predisposition that made freeganism a good fit; another was her love of community, teaching and sharing. "Freeganism is a reaction to over-consumption. (It's an) attempt to consume as little as possible and to spread a similar message to others," Janet explained.

Freegans place a major emphasis on sharing, both as a means to reduce consumption but also to strengthen community. Many critics of market capitalism argue that its emphasis on individuality and competition extends from the financial into the social realm, privileging selfishness over cooperation and community and blaming individual shortcomings for structural inequalities.33

There is a subtle difference here between talking about individuality and -individuality is a celebration of uniqueness whereas individualism is an elevation of the self over all others. (Individualism is championed by neoliberals as it is necessary for free-market capitalism to function.) Freegans and other critics of capitalism

33 See Judith Good and JeffMaskovksy's edited volume, The New Poverty Studies: The Ethnogrpahy ofPower, Politics and Impoverished People in the United States for many great examples. 49

argue that elevating individualism, making more and more profit for yourself at the expense of your community, often undermines and stifles individuality. It's confusing because, as many critiques argue, "individuality" has been co-opted by corporations and used as a marketing tool.34 (Selling individualism at the expense of individuality.) It's often hard to talk about individuality without resorting to consumable markers: what kind of shoes you wear, what car you drive, is your floor plan open concept, do you buy organic fruit or only get dairy from the farmer's market?

Fredric Jameson notes that we have surrendered ourselves to the market, i.e. the market has become so naturalized that it is associated with human nature. Thus the way we understand everything from education to marriage is organized via the perceived logic of the market. Inherent in this conflation is the identification of the commodity with the image. This condition ofpostmodernity, in which Americans' worldview is dominated by market ideology, is a product of our cultural and political context and a catalyst for freegan activity.

Many freegans shared a similar questioning regarding the naturalization of the market and conspicuous consumption. "Freeganism to me- it's funny ... to me it's just a title for a behavior that's existed forever," Michael explained during a dive a few weeks later. "You ate everything until it became hog waste, or whatever, and then they ate it, and then they made bacon for you. It's so common sense. This is one of the things that's intuitive that is common sense - because a lot of things people think are intuitive are not."

34 Frank and Matt Weiland, CommodifY Your Dissent, ed. Thomas Frank (New York: The Baffler Literary Magazine, Inc.) and Joseph Heath and Andrew Potter, Nation of Rebels: Why Counterculture Became Consumer Culture (New York: HarperCollins . 50

*************************

Rather than talking about their ideal communities in consumable terms, freegans talk about creating a sustainable culture that would allow more free time for art, music, family and fun. If people worked together and shared rather than competed for and hoarded resources, the entire community could benefit.

Describing her ideal community, Janet focused on sharing and reciprocity. "I would have in my backyard some squashes, I'm good at growing that, and my next-door neighbor would have tomatoes and maybe some mint and we would have different people, like, to grow stuff, and we would have a Saturday where we would all come out and bring our stuff and say 'Hey, everybody, here's all the potatoes that I grew that I don't want ... help yourselves!' Just that idea of 'help yourselves"' she paused, a big grin on her face. "And I love that we freegans do this all the time, that we just accumulate stuff and find stuff and put it on the table and no body's counting, 'Oh, you took one toothpaste, and she took three.' And everybody takes what they want and what they have in mind that they can go and share." Janet and other freegans would often take the leftover finds, ranging from toiletries to shoes, to friends, co-workers and homeless men and women on the streets ofNew York City.

"Where my idea of utopia is heading," Nora, told me a few weeks later, "is based on these small collectives I see sprouting up ... learning intentional communities. Or this idea of 'let's have an intentional community in our neighborhood,' you know, we don't have to go off into a in the woods to do that, let's do that here in the city," she said. 51

For Janet, one of the most important features of freeganism is the emphasis on community. The connection she found with others who shared her concern about animals and the environment served as a comfort while further galvanizing her outreach to others.

Activism can often feel alienating, at the very least frustrating, when your beliefs and actions are marginalized by others.

"For me it's really inspiring just to meet other people like this. I've been feeling pretty alone with in a public city school where I see so much waste ...

I've met other freegans and it's just a relief to find other people that are as concerned as I am about the destiny of what we handle when we're done with it," she sat the steaming tea cups on the table. "And I think also that it gives me a little more confidence to feel justified to talk that way to other people," she continued, referring to the trash tours she frequently leads for people interested in freeganism and curious passers-by.

Now Janet is one of the first to engage strangers in discussions about waste and ways to reduce it, but dumpster diving used to make her self-conscious and uncomfortable. She described feeling apprehensive when she first started diving by herself: "Yeah, it was scary. I remember feeling anxious. I felt my heart pounding and I felt much more nervous that I had to scope out the area to make sure there were not passersby' s that were judging me," she fiddled with the edge of the rug on the floor.

During meetings held right before a trash tour, freegans volunteer to fulfill a number ofre-occurring "roles:" crowd control- the person(s) responsible for making sure that everyone kept up with the group and that they were staying out of the way of regular sidewalk traffic; welcome- the person(s) who gave the initial speech and rules to the trash tour; contact person, responsible for handing out the freegan calendar and getting new 52

attendees to sign up for the freegan listserv; and "wave the banana." (Roles were often combined depending on attendance.) The "wave the banana" speech was usually the most complex as the Waver had the responsibility of connecting dumpster diving to critical consumption and capitalist critique. Bananas were one of the most prevalent items found in the dumpster and you could always count on uncovering several lightly spotted fruits in each tour, which made them a great starting point for discussion

Some folks are still coming up but I want to say just a few words about what's here. We're seeing just a very small amount of obviously of what's going on at this one supermarket tonight. We've seen everything from fresh produce to magazines that obviously should be recycled we're also seeing tofu. So what's the problem here? It's just a little bit of waste. Well we would say no, that it's not just a little bit of waste; that these products have entailed resources all the way down the line, from the inoment where a forest, or even a rain forest, in the case of some of this produce, was chopped down to make land, to the workers who are on the agribusiness farms and don't own the land and aren't growing for their own needs. To all of this produce being shipped to the United States, using fossil fuels. When you look at a product like this salad ... look at the amount of plastic being used here. The plastic itself is made from petroleum products. Huge amounts of water and electricity are used to make a completely washed and packaged salad. Inside this there is more plastic. There's a fork. There's a package of salad dressing. How much does this cost? It probably sells for about $5. And the idea is that when you look at this, this is not what we should be doing. This is not, as a society, what we should be supporting. And what the freegan group is doing here is just raising awareness about what is going on with this, and also saying, no, we want to live outside of this. We want to live without supporting the kind of companies that produce this kind of waste and cause this kind of harm throughout the world. 3

Janet's convictions about rescuing food and spreading a message of conscientious rather than conspicuous consumption kept her going despite her nerves. "I think it's become easier for me to do this without my heart pounding because I know I'm looking for good food and I'll probably find it. And whenever people pass by and look at me

35 Trash Tour Speech, given by Madeline on Thursday, December 13th 2007. 53

funny, I know I'm finding good food that doesn't belong in the garbage. It's more of a real mission," she said. "It doesn't matter anymore what people see."

For many freegans, shrugging off the rush judgments or harassments from strangers is one thing, but dealing with the reactions of family members can be another hurdle. Most activists I spoke with had supportive family and friends, although not all of them started off that way. Like the passerby, they said it was about explanation and education.

Janet described a phone conversation she had with her sister-in-law:

'Well, I can understand that you want to help other people, but why would you eat that yourself?'

'Because it's good food and it should be rescued. '

'Well, rescued perhaps to give to other people but what about yourself?'

"And she kept insisting that she had this different attitude separating herself from other people," Janet said. "It's great to give to charity, but it seems strange to her that you would actually eat this yourself. And I'm explaining it's good, it's good food, and if I would give it to other people, then why shouldn't I give it to myself?," Janet paused for moment. "I'm not better than other people; I'm not worse than other people. I'm like other people. We all need to eat, so ... she was really disgusted by it but she was trying to put it in nice terms with me. "My brother described her talking about me as "sick." It's

"sick" what I'm doing, going into the garbage."

"Well, I knit baby infants, premature infants, I knit them caps,' her sister said.

" ... that's wonderful. " 54

Janet paused. "As if she was saying there are things you can do you for people that don't involve getting dirty. And I didn't dispute that what she did was nice. And I do something different," she laughed, her voice regaining her usual playful lilt.

"So I don't knit."

Months later, we were invited to speak as part of Dr. Robin Nagle's class,

"Invisible Metropolis," a paper-less course on urbanization. Adam, Janet and I sat in an empty office waiting for her students to gather. As we went over our notes and discussed talking points, I looked over at Janet, whose head had disappeared under the desk.

Puzzled, I turned to Adam, who shrugged. Seconds later Janet's face popped up as she hauled a black trash can onto her lap. Mostly just paper waste, she still found a couple of unused stamps and an elastic hair tie, which she handed to me so I could keep the hair off my neck. The office was stuffy and I gladly accepted it, sweeping my hair into a makeshift bun.

Later as we stood in front of her class, Dr. Nagle introduced the freegans as

"activists and inspirations." I wondered what her sister-in-law would think of that. CHAPTER3

CINDY: CRITICAL COMMUNITIES AND

CONSUMPTION MOVEMENTS

A seagull shrieked overhead as I neared the end of hot sticky pavement. Squinting into the sun, my eyes searched the shore for someone waving, some person smiling, someone familiar. The sky was clear and the beach was sparsely dotted with various shades of pale: older men and women, their shoulders hunched, bright pink, scuttling around like crabs; young children in soggy swimsuits squealing with glee as they ran to and from the crested waves. Far Rockaway Beach was first developed in the late-1800s and "catered to the growing middle class of the New York City area."1 Although according to the 2000 consensus, Far Rockaway, Queens was over 70% Black, Hispanic and Asian, beach-goers appeared uniformly white even beneath sunburned skin. As my foot sank into the warm sand, I spotted Janet and Sima just a few feet from the shoreline-half a dozen seagulls danced in circles around their reclined figures.

Cindy walked up from the water as I made my way down from the asphalt road- her feet covered in wet sand, her long dirty-brown hair dripping salty water halfway down her back. The Kool-Aid red streaks she'd put in a few weeks ago had begun to

1 Vincent Seyfried and William Asadorian, Old Rockaway, New York, in Early Photographs, (North Chelmsford, MA: Dover Publications, 1999), 54 (accessed from electronic book at http://books.google.co.il/books?id=SZ8QlXHxPROC&printsec=frontcover&source=gbs_summary_r&cad= O#v=onepage&q=&f=false December 4, 2009).

55 56

fade, the maroon locks now tangled like seaweed across her shoulders. Cindy was a core member of the Wetlands Activist Collective and a founding member of the New York

City Freegans. The freegan movement began as a Wetlands dumpster diving project but

Cindy is one of a handful of activists involved in both groups. Clad in a sporty, dark blue racer-back swimsuit, she appeared more interested in swimming laps in the surf than evening out a tan on the beach.

Cindy was hosting that night's freegan dinner, a BBQ at her apartment-a cluttered but light filled one bedroom just blocks from the beach. "Did you have any trouble finding it?" she asked. It was just a little over an hour commute from my apartment in Bedford Stuyvesant (Bed-Stuy}-a subway ride to the end of the line and then transfer to a bus which dropped me off a few blocks from the beach. "No your directions were great." I spread my blanket to the right of hers and settled in.

The first time I met Cindy had been almost a year before at a freegan meeting in

Bryant Park. A bandana around her head and a hiking backpack at her side, the 5'9 woman.radiated a tough but quiet strength. In her early thirties, she had an earthy, granola kind of vibe and only the faintest of laugh lines around her mouth. She didn't always say much, but when she did it was thoughtful and constructive, adding to rather than distracting from the discussion. Cindy had a no-nonsense way of hacking through the most muddled and contentious thorns of freegan debates like how to deal with media during trash tours or ways to better engage bike maintenance workshop attendees at freegan meetings; this was not the kind of woman who spoke just hear herself talk.

Michael, a freegan who also works as a scientist for a major museum in the city, once 57

referred to her as a "meeting SIM dominatrix" following Cindy's particularly productive facilitation of a meeting.

Half a package of crackers in her right hand, Janet used her left to wave me over.

"Are you hungry? Kelly wanna cracker?" Her grin crinkled the skin around her eyes as I shook my head, "No thanks." I settled on the beach as Sima headed back out to the water.

Originally from , she was staying at Janet's house for a few months while she interned with an international environmental rights organization.

We'd all arrived earlier than the usual 5:30 p.m. food prep time to enjoy the ocean and soak up a bit of New York's lesser known attraction. (When I thought of the Big

Apple I didn't really think of squawking sea gulls and water-proof SPF 30.) An , animal and human rights activist, Cindy said she loved living so close to the water. Although the commute into Manhattan could take up to an hour and half, the perk of her location made it worth it.

"I couldn't live in the city. Every few months I have to go off to the mountains

(of Montana)," she said of her travels with an environmental group during an interview months later. The group, made up largely of communal primitivists,2 planted trees in deforested areas while sharing ideas and experiences for more environmentally conscious living.

Cindy first delved into activism while just a teenager. "I was involved in very limited activist type stuff in high school. I did the school animal rights club and environmental club which mostly entailed doing the school's recycling and a sleep out

2 Primativists are interested in creating communities which seek to live in Nora with each other and the physical environment, including abolishing unequal power structures that dominate and subordinate humans and nature. 58

for the homeless once a year or something. Pretty mainstream type of stuff. The first time I was involved in any direct action type of group was Wetlands," she said.

The Wetlands Activist Collective is the outspoken spawn of the now-defunct

Wetlands Preserve, an activist center and music venue founded in 1989. "Wetlands was a new frontier. It was setting aside what turned out to be between $80-100,000 a year as an overhead expense to fund a fulltime environmental and social justice organization," founder Jim Bloch explained in a documentary.3 The Wetlands Activist Center was staffed by four part time employees and numerous volunteers and interns, many of whom could earn school credit for their work with Wetlands. Through direct action, petitions and letter writing campaigns they successfully lobbied the New York Times and Home

Depot for more environmentally sustainable paper and wood use. The freegans' organized dumpster dives began a Wetlands project intended to draw attention to waste.

Originally located in TriBeCa, the site also gained notoriety as a popular venue for the Jam Band movement, hosting Phish, Blues Traveler, Dave Matthews Band,

Widespread Panic and the Spin Doctors. "In an age where clubs are designed to cater to a niche demographic, Wetlands welcomed everyone without the ego of a velvet rope at the entrance,"4 their final press release reads. The all-ages club was the often the first NYC gig for bands like Pearl Jam, Erykah Badu, Sublime, The Roots, and Counting Crows.

Open every day of the week, the eclectic venue played rock, punk, hardcore and hip hop to reggae, jazz, folk and ska. The 13 year run included performances from Rage Against

3 Wetlands Preserved, dir. Dean Budnick, 93 min., A View of You, 2008, DVD.

4 Wetlands Press Release, "NYC's Legendary Wetlands Preserve Rock Club Forced to Close Its Doors After Almost 13 Years," Monday, July 30· 2001, http://www.remyc.com/savethewetlands.html (accessed March 14, 2007). 59

the Machine, Macy Gray and Ani DiFranco.5 Despite Wetlands' renown as an activist haven and musical hub, the club shut its doors on October 151, 2001. The building was bought and turned into apartment lofts as part of the gentrification furor that had hit other parts of Manhattan like the East Side and SoHo years before.

After the loss of a physical meeting place, the Activist Center, led by Adam who was then serving as the environmental director, became the Wetlands Activist Collective and continued meeting and organizing various actions in the city. For years the nomadic team met weekly or bi-monthly outside in Bryant or Washington Square Park, or in the harsher winter months they would gather in the upstairs seating at various delis and grocery stores around Manhattan. In 2007 they acquired space in the Bedford-Stuyvesant neighborhood in Brooklyn. The new site hosted films, fashion shows, and forums on housing, trade and waste to name a few.

According to their website, the Wetlands Collective "recogniz(es) 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." The volunteer-led collective has been involved in a variety of campaigns that address the local ramifications of corporate policies for workers, animals and the environment. Wetlands helped found the NYC People's

Referendum on Free Trade, a coalition in NYC that highlights the negative impacts of free trade agreements and lobbies to keep new free trade legislation from passing. The website www.freegan.info, which was the starting point for the NYC

5 Ibid. 60

freegan movement, began as a Wetlands project intended to disseminate information on how and where to dumpster dive.

Cindy first discovered Wetlands by accident. "They used to do eco-saloons every

Tuesday night... It was also the night they had the Rainbow Night with these drummer . I actually went down to see the drummer hippies and saw that there was some kind of meeting going on, and I didn't stay for it then, but I realized later on that it was an activist meeting," she said. Eco-Saloons were weekly discussion forums hosted by the

Wetlands Activist Center. The topics focused on social, political and environmental concerns and were hosted by various activists. Some of the more famous (perhaps even infamous) hosts included , an icon of the 1960s counterculture movement;

Julia Butterfly, an environmentalist best known for living in a tree for over 200 days to protest the destruction of a redwood forest; Jello Biafra, a musician and activist who ran for the Green party presidential nomination in 2000; and poet Allen Ginsburg, known for speaking out against the excess of materialism.

"At Wetlands, I mean, we were doing a lot of corporate accountability campaigns and just protesting one corporation after the other, after the other and, you know, we had some great successes in that, but there was always something else. You'd often find you were protesting one corporation on a whole bunch of different issues, and you begin to realize that it wasn't a matter of boycotting one thing, or the other, or boycotting one company or the other it was actually the whole system that was the problem," Cindy explained. "And that was definitely a revelation for me because I was never-I never grew up with any kind of anti-capitalist questioning or anything like that so that was interesting. That led me to be someone who was against consumerism, who was working 61

on anti-consumerist activities. We would do the every year and talk about over-consumption and eventually that sort of lead to freeganism."

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The first Buy Nothing Day was held in September 1992 in , Canada as a way to "participate by not participating."6 The goal was to raise awareness of over- consumption and in 1997 it was moved to the day after , the biggest shopping day in the U.S. The consumption-consciousness campaign is an international phenomenon, with over 65 nations including Israel, , and the U.K. participating.

Cultural theorist argues that we need to deconstruct our

"unconscious social logic"7 in order to better understand the ideology of consumption

(and thus to better understand ourselves). In the late summer of 2008, Discover card ran a that presumably follows the morning opening of a shiny, classically uniform mall, tuning in and turning on for the day: lights illuminate a wall of men's shoes, a quick flash of a store room full of sports coats, a manager turning on a row of flat-screen TV's. The voice-over calmly and confidently asserts: "We are a nation of consumers ... and there's nothing wrong with that." Shots of shoppers filing into stores are interspersed with images of women trying on sunglasses, interracial couples eyeing furniture through a window, smiling women trying out the newest phone/mp3

6 Adbusters Buy Nothing Day, "A 24 hour moratorium on consumer spending," http://www.adbusters.org/campaigns/bnd (accessed April 2008).

7 Jean Baudrillard, "The ideological genesis of needs," in The Consumption Reader, ed. David B. Clarke, Marcus A. Doe) and Kate M.L. Housiaux.( New York: Routledge, 2003; reprint from Cahiers Internationaux de Sociologie, 1969), 255-258 (page citations are to the reprint edition). 62

player/camera gadget and two kids quietly playing in the back of a mini-van, each pleasantly subdued by their personal mini-computers and headphones. "After all," the voice assures us, "there's a lot of cool stuff out there."

We are indeed a nation of consumers- consumption is intricately tied to our national identity, culture and politics, not to mention our economic system. Consumption has been called our national pastime and it is the very foundation on which the American

Dream is built. But it hasn't always been that way and whether or not there is anything wrong with conflating nationhood and consumption remains a contentious debate. As historian James B. Gilbert said "While American society is the most consumer-oriented in the world (in terms of the sheer number of material objects), it is also a society that quizzes itself endlessly about the effects of materialism, of inauthenticity, of defining oneself in terms of consumer objects."8 Those, like freegans, who attempted to challenge the discourse of consumption, took on a lot more than just people's buying habits at the store; they were questioning our beliefs in the connection between citizenship and consumption.

The United States hasn't always had such a clear orientation towards consumption and has even had an ambivalent disregard for many consumers as part of the larger

9 American political, social and even economic landscape • Although the previous chapter

8 Glickman, Lawrence B Glickman, ed. "Introduction: Born to Shop? Consumer History and American History," in Consumer Society in American History: A Reader (Ithaca, New York: Cornell University Press, 1999), 1.

9 Glickman has a great two page summary of the history of in the introduction to the Reader (see above.) 63

demonstrates that the display of social status via consumption10 has always been a preoccupation of the wealthy-the recognition of "consumer" as an important agent of public interest is just a little over 100 years old. 11 Americans' understanding of consumption as tied to nationhood has gone through several transformations.

1 Around the tum of the 20 h century, consumers' moral obligation was no longer to work and consume wisely, but to work and contribute to the economy: keep the market moving. 12 During the 1920s, "Americanization," or the process of enculturation for immigrants, was recognized by manufacturers and advertisers as "an opportunity for expansive consumption." 13 "By the end of the depression decade, invoking 'the consumer' would become an acceptable way of promoting the public good, of defending the economic rights and needs of ordinary citizens," Cohen writes. 14

The expanded importance of consuming also offered an avenue for groups to affect social change through boycotting. Particularly for marginalized groups like white women and all African Americans, who were often left out of the more "legitimate" political participatory routes such as holding office or voting, consumer revolts offered opportunities to organize their local communities and get their voices heard. In the early

10 "Consumption" here references Thorstein Veblen's model that assumes that consumption functions as a sort of social signal to convey status and class. Thorstein Veblen, The Theory ofthe Leisure Class (New York: Penguin Books 1994; reprint 1899).

11 Lizbeth Cohen, A Consumer's Republic: The Politics of Mass Consumption in Postwar America (New York: Vintage Books, 2003).

12 Ibid.

13 1 Michael Kammen, American Culture, American Tastes: Social Change and the 20 h Century (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, Inc.), 66.

14 Lizbeth Cohen, A Consumer's Republic: The Politics of Mass Consumption in Postwar America, 23. 64

1900s, the creation of the New York Consumers League (1890) and the National

Consumers League (1899) helped politicize consumers, particularly middle-class women.

Boycotts of kosher were organized by Jewish housewives in 1902 and strikes against rent increases and cost of living protests were also planned by women in the early-1900s. The gendered nature of consumption became even more pronounced at the tum of the century and then again during the Great Depression as more and more women, already the primary shoppers in most families, entered the work force and began to earn a more disposable income.

During the 1930s, consumer organizations developed such as the League of

Women Shoppers (they urged their members to "Use your buying power for justice") and in 1933 the National Recovery Administration created the Consumer Advisory Board, made up of consumer, labor and business interests to help with various New Deal programs. This was also a time in which expanded, offering goods and services such as food, housing, medical care, utilities, and credit unions. 15

According to historian Lizabeth Cohen, it was during the New Deal that consumers began to be seen as a "self-conscious, identifiable interest group on par with labor and business whose well-being required attention for American capitalism and democracy to prosper." 16 During Franklin Delano Roosevelt's 1941 State of the Union address he outlined the "Four Freedoms" as including "freedom from want," which called

15 Lizbeth Cohen, A Consumer's Republic: The Politics of Mass Consumption in Postwar America.

16 Ibid. 23. 65

for "the enjoyment of the fruits of scientific progress in a wider and consistently rising standard of living."

Cohen notes a shift, however, following WWII, away from consumption concerned with the public good and towards the survival of the marketplace (concerns which have now almost become synonymous). There was, she argues, a shift in the ideology of consumption. The increased privatization of government programs, urban and suburban space and social services along with the burgeoning niche markets brought about from the Women's and Civil Rights Movements caused a shift in the role that consumption played in American consciousness. Consumers now "entrusted the private mass consumption marketplace, supported by government resources, with delivering not only economic prosperity but also loftier social and political ambitions for a more equal, free and democratic nation."17 The market replaced the government as the arbiter of freedom and democracy. It shifted the onus of democracy from the citizen to the consumer. "The first represented the public interest, the second the marketplace," writes cultural critic Vince Carducci. "The first had rights, the second demographics."18

Rather than relying on the government to ensure democracy through policies and laws, or on people joined together as communities, the success of the United States was now reliant on the market. This move towards privatization and reliance on the market became primary features of neoliberal policies which began in the 1970s. In a recent interview for Logos, an online journal, David Harvey remarks:

17 Ibid., 13.

18 Vince Carducci, review of A Consumer's Republic, by Lizbeth Cohen, Pop Matters, July 2, 2003 http://www.popmatters.com/books/reviews/c/consumers-republic.shtml. 66

The strength of the neo-liberal ideology, on a popular level, is its emphasis on individual , freedom and personal responsibility. Those have all been very important aspects, of what you might call 'American Ideology' since the very inception of what the U.S. has been about. What neo­ liberalism did was to take the demand for that which was clearly there in the 1950's and the 1960's and say "We can satisfy this demand, but we are gonna do this a certain way, we are gonna do it through the market, and you can only achieve those goals through the market. We are gonna do it in such a way that you have to forget about the issues of social justice." It seems to me that the movements of the 1960's were about combining individual liberty and social justice. What neo-liberalism did was say "we'll give you the individual liberty, you forget the social justice." For that reason it has been very powerful in the United States as an ideology, because it can appeal to this long tradition of individual liberty and freedom. 19

In most times of crisis, this connection between being American and spending has been reiterated. Sometimes even just heralding American values like "democracy" or

"freedom," as was the case with the encouraged consumption of goods from US allies during the Cold War, 20 was enough to encourage the connection between patriotism and the market. In the aftermath of the September 11th attacks in New York City and

Washington, D.C., President George W. Bush called for "continued participation and confidence in the American economy,"21 which, he repeated in his 2002 State of the

Union address, "would be greatly appreciated." Unlike during WWII, when frugality was the key to helping America win the war, putting money into the economy was viewed as a way to fight back against the terrorists.

19 David Harvey, "A Conversation with David Harvey," Logos Journal, Issue 5.1, Winter 2006 http://www.logosjoumal.com/issue_5. l/harvey.htm (accessed January 23, 2008).

20 Robart. H. Dugger, "Cold War Roots of U.S. Economic Problems," The Globalist, July 2, 2008 http://www.theglobalist.com/Storyld.aspx?Storyld=7077 (accessed February 13, 2009).

21 September 2ot11 2001. 67

The importance of the market to the survival of the nation has become naturalized to such a degree that is seen not as a world-view but rather as the way the world works.

Thus, to question the market now, particularly to question capitalism, is seen as un-

American, so tied is our understanding of consumption to our sense of nation and self.

Those who do tend to remain on the fringes of the cultural and political radar. Some, but not all, freegans believe that that the complicity between the government and the market make traditional channels of political change, like letter writing or advocacy groups, problematic.

In the 1960s, consumer interest in the ethics of production, marketing, and distribution, particularly in reference to the environment, led to major changes in consumption discourse and practice. In the 1960s, the concept of "countercuisine"22 gained prominence and health consciousness moved from the fringes of freakiness to become a major marketing strategy. In 1966, in the Haight-Ashbury district of San

Francisco, a group of improv actors calling themselves the Diggers (after the 1640s

English communitarians) used "food as a medium [to develop] collective social consciousness and social action. "23 The Diggers used food, property and space to challenge distinctions between personal and private, self and community, yours and mine.

They opened a free store, gave away clothes and handed out pamphlets condemning marketing and espousing a back to nature ethic of existence. Food, Belasco writes "is a strong 'edible dynamic' binding present and past, individual and society, private

22 Warren Belasco, Appetite for Change: How the Counterculture Took on the Food Industry 1966-1988, (New York: Pantheon Books, 1989).

23 Ibid., 17. 68

household and world economy, palate and power."24 It is a lot more than nutrition- building strong teeth and bones-food is symbolic of our larger relationship to the rest of the world and it is not static. Although the Diggers lasted only a few years, the concept of using food as a symbol for larger social ills, including ecological concerns, had taken hold.

Freeganism, and its focus on understanding the origins and processes of what we consume, also owes a great deal to the ecological/environmental movements of the late

1960s/early 1970s. Ken Goffman describes a countercultural movement that advocated a return-to-nature lifestyle in opposition to an increasingly technocratic culture. "Early- seventies ecological theory described nature in terms of whole systems that need to be understood and respected, as opposed to exploitable parts that can be used and discarded any which way," he writes. "New tribes of neo- 'eco warriors' began to spring up to organize politically to defend wild nature against the ravages of greed and industrialism."25 Greenpeace, one of the most well-known environmental organizations, began in 1971 as a peaceful response to nuclear testing. Originally called the Don't Make a Wave Committee, they sent a chartered ship from Vancouver to block and "bear witness" to U.S. nuclear testing on Amchitka Island.26

In reaction to growing environmental concerns, Congress passed the Clean Air

Act in 1970 with the goal ofregulating all air pollutants by 1975. Two years, later it

24 Ibid., 5.

25 Ken Goffman, Counterculture Through the Ages: From Abraham to Acid House (New York: Villard Books, 2004), 362.

26 Greenpeace, USA, "History," http://www.greenpeace.org/usa/aboutlhistory (accessed November 6, 2009). 69

passed similar regulation to clean up the nations' waterways. Prior to the Federal Water

Pollution Control Act Amendments of 1972, monitoring lakes, rivers, streams, watersheds, etc. was federally financed but otherwise left up to individual states to determine and enforce quality standards. The Clean Water Act, as it is better known, was the first time that water regulation was determined to be a matter of national interest. 27

This ideological shift was part of a broader concern about the environment that was beginning to move from the fringe into the mainstream.

Concern about the environment and the importance of nature was also on the rise in certain feminist movements. "At the hippie edge of this trend," Goffman continues,

"new pagan (nature religion) evolved along feminist lines, expressed as

Goddess worship. (This equation of women with nature has been vehemently opposed by other feminists as just another reduction of women to a highly sexualized, non- intellectual, primitivistic force.)"28 Some theorists, known as ecofeminists, interrogated the correlations between the degradation of women and the exploitation of the environment. They argued that there is a binary opposition which places women/nature against men/culture, elevating the latter and allowing for the continued domination of the former. Stacy Alaimo writes: "Women's bodies, experiences, and labor have long been denigrated for their supposed proximity to a degraded natural world ... we must transform the gendered concepts-nature, culture, body, mind, object, subject, , agent and others-that have been cultivated to denigrate and silence certain groups of humans as

27 Jeanne Nienaber Clarke, "Clean Water Act," Water Encyclopedia: Science and Issues, http://www.waterencyclopedia.com/Ce-Cr/Clean-Water-Act.html (accessed July 2009).

28 Ken Goffman, Counterculture Through the Ages, 362 70

well as nonhuman life."29 Although the often-simplified and essentialized tendencies have been noted by critics, was integral in helping us think about the complicated, gendered relationship of "nature" and "culture" and how both can function ideologically. The feminist and postmodern concept of "situated knowledge,"30 that is the recognition that what we consider knowledge is based on an intersection of a variety of identities, histories and experiences which make up a particular discursive landscape, is helpful in interrogating how and what we think of consumption.

A concern about the environment, including the humans and other animals that inhabit it, was the rallying point for freeganism. It was a practical and ideological challenge to the ways and reasons behind how we consume. Freegan feasts, in particular, attempted to challenge the naturalization of the market, of food, conspicuous consumption and the elevation of private over community use. When coming together for a meal of rescued food, freegans are participating in a critique but also offering a solution. "We are trying to build sustainable local communities," Cindy explained.

29 Stacey Alaimo, Undomesticated Ground: Recasting Nature as Feminist Spaces (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2000), 9-13.

30 Donna Haraway, Simians, Cyborgs, and Women: The Reinvention ofNature (New York: Routledge, 1991 ), 111. 71

Figure 3. Freegans Sit Down To Dinner: Cindy cuts a slice of banana bread at a freegan feast held at Madeline's house in Brooklyn.

The way freegans were working to build such communities was by employing direct theory. Direct theory, the approach of direct action movements, is the "lived analysis of contemporary domination and resistance."31 It is the basis for direct action social movements. Analytically, direct action theory is born from two prominent theories: resource mobilization (RM) and new social movement theory

(NSM). In the late 1960s and early 1970s, sociologists in the United States began to reject analysis which assumed social movements were irrational or deviant, an analysis which often relied on a great deal of psychologizing about participants, and instead

31 Noel Srurgeon, "Theorizing Movements: Direct Action andl Direct Theory," in Cultural Politics and Social Movements, edl. Marcy Damovsky, Barbara !Epstein and Richard! flacks (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1995), 36. 72

looked at social movements as rational, systemic, collective actions. RM is an historical and comparative approach concerned with the materiality of movements; RM theorists view social movements as rational, hierarchically organized reactions by excluded groups that have gained sufficient resources to mobilize and they evaluate the success of the movement in terms of how well the group is embraced in the current political processes or structure.32

In Europe, however, theorists were more interested in the cultural impetus behind social movements.

NSM theorists argued that movements have social meanings irrespective of their strictly political impacts. Feminism, environmentalism, and other movements that aim at reconstituting aspects of everyday life demonstrated that large-scale social change is accomplished in face-to-face relations, as the level of personal identity and consciousness, in the household and neighborhood, whether or not such change is enunciated in public policy and macro-level power relationships.33

These movements, which included identity politics, were surprising to theorists because they seemed anti-organizational, uninterested in issues of state power and without socialist goals.34 "Just as these new movements challenged the primacy of the labor movement and socialism as frameworks for social progress," they continue,

"'NSM' theory' was seen as a lever within academia for dislodging Marxian theory as the

32 Lisa McGirr, Suburban Warriors: The Origins of the New American Right (Princeton, NJ.: Princeton University Press., 2001).

33 Marcy Damovsky, Barbara Epstein and Richard Flacks, ed., Introduction, in Cultural Politics and Social Movements (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, I 995), xiv.

34 Ibid. 73

master framework for interpreting contemporary society."35

There has been a transition in revolutionary analysis from "big-state Marxist" types to intentional-community focused anarchism.36 David Graeber asserts that Marxism

"has tended to be a theoretical or analytical discourse about revolutionary strategy ... anarchism has tended to be an ethical discourse about revolutionary practice."37 Direct action movements view class as one, not the one, organizational strategy and rejects the use of violence as necessary for revolution.

Direct action social movements embody their goals through choices in organization and structure. "Movements," Sturgeon argues, "are also movement theorists ... For instance, the choice of affinity groups has to do not just with resistance to the centralization and bureaucratization of dominant political structures but also with a critique of the essentialized identity politics of the sixties movements."38 The self referential nature of direct action movements (for example, how they practice rotating leadership as a way to critique power and hierarchy in the larger culture) help them stand apart from their predecessors, both analytically and practically. They are anarchist in their desire to create smaller scale, sustainable communities.

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35 Ibid. For examples, see Stewart Bums, Social Movements ofthe 1960s: Searching/or Democracy (New York, NY: Twayne Publishers) and Stephen Duncombe, Cultural Resistance Reader (London: Verso, 2002).

36 See Chapter 3 for more discussion of the differences and similarities between anarchism and Marxism.

37 David Graeber, Fragments ofan Anarchist Anthropology (Chicago: Prickly Paradigm Press, 2004), 6.

38 Sturgeon, Theorizing Movements, 44. 74

After spending an hour on the beach, we headed back to Cindy's apartment, a modest one-bedroom located on the ground floor of what once was a one family home.

We quickly got to work, sorting and washing the food gathered from the previous nights' dive.

The water faucet in the kitchen was on the fritz so my job of washing produce was a bit frustrating; sometimes I had to tum the water off and on seven or eight times before

I could even get a trickle. But the conversation and laughter which filled the remaining few inches of free space in the room made the process of waiting barely noticeable.

Some of my best memories growing up in Texas usually took place in the kitchen.

Even when all the dishes were in the oven or the food had been placed on the table, we gravitated back to the familiar warmth of the stove, the quiet hum of the refrigerator. I've noticed this phenomenon at parties at my home as well. Even with chips and salsa on the coffee table or a keg on the porch, many people still find excuses to hang out in the kitchen.

Cindy's kitchen wasn't all that big, but it was long enough to fit six or seven people comfortably wheeling vegetable peelers aimed at the plethora or cucumbers and carrots scavenged from the night before. The deep purple globes of the eggplant were a nice contrast to multiple packages of saltines stacked on the table. Bags of lettuce, their clear plastic wrappers shiny and slick, lay on the floor. They would be the easiest and thus the last food anyone would deal with.

When eating food from a dumpster, there are a few rules one should follow­ washing produce being chief among them. Often you'd find perfectly good vegetables or 75

Figure 4. Rescued Food: Items I recovered from a freegan trash tour in Brooklyn.

Figure 5. Prepared Food at a Feast: At the freegan feast held the following day, the reclaimed items were turned into a variety of dishes including: tamale pie, stuffed squash, guacamole, salad, and soup. The goal was use primarily dumpstered food from the night before, but members would often bring items they had previously found, necessary staples that proved more scare to find, such as flour, and . fruit but they were in a bag with a yogurt container that had broken open or a smashed tomato that was just past too ripe. More often than not I would find eggplant with a glaze of melted ice cream or a bunch of parsley with a few mushy brown sprigs. Anything that 76

isn't in a package is always washed (and preferably cooked) the day you dive not only to stave off any bacteria but also to wash off any residual that come from industrially farmed agriculture.

It's interesting looking back on my first freegan trash tour; I'd never dumpster dove before, but the freegans had set up the tour in a way to encourage and cultivate newbies like myself. I was still nervous. 39

We hit D' Agostinos on 3rd and 35th first; a group of five of us walked together from the park which was just a few blocks away. As other folks began to gather, I counted about ten or so? Janet raised her voice and asked us all to come together so she could over the guidelines: "Please keep the sidewalks clear so people can get by us," she said. "Close the bags back up before we leave so that the establishments don't get in trouble for sanitation." [Don't bite the hand that feeds you, I wondered?]40 An older, possibly homeless woman who wasn't at the meeting, interjected that we should also watch out for broken glass. Janet thanked her for an important point about safety. She then went on to talk about walking the line between not letting food go to waste but not taking stuff "just to take it," that we should also leave some stuff for people who might want to scrounge after us. [How very archaeological that sounds, I thought, and how that was kind of what we were doing, artifact recovery ... ] She asked if anyone had any questions. No one did. So she bent down over a bloated, black plastic bag and grasped the knot on top. (I looked at the people around me. It's now or never, I thought.) Nervously I pulled at the wrist of my sleeve, making sure gloves were on tight as I stepped over to a bag Cindy already had open. She was pulling out containers of what appeared to be yogurt. Looking closely, it was unopened and not even past its expiration date. "They probably tossed it because some new product came in and there wasn't enough room on the shelves," she shook her head. Although only the first site on the tour, there was a veritable cornucopia of food. The cold weather acted as a refrigerator and made a lot of the items (particularly the dairy) much more appealing than I imagined they would be in the

39 Trash tours typically follow freegan "business" meetings. I had to go through an approval process to be allowed to take notes during meetings as no media or researchers are usually allowed.

40 Items in brackets are questions, comments, ideas I had while I was typing up my notes at home later that night. 77

dead of summer. I took two bread rolls, some packaged romaine lettuce and an apple. We stopped next at Gristedes and then at a bagel store. 41 I definitely would've gotten more if I didn't have to head back to DC in a couple of days and Jason's fridge wasn't already full. 42 Even with all the research I'd been doing, I was blown away by the amount and quality of food we found: kale, pineapple, watermelon, bananas, enough lettuce to eat a salad with every meal, bags of perfectly soft breads, bagels, donuts, soymilk, dairy milk, yogurt (soy and not), , sandwiches, muffins, tortillas, jalapenos, chives, lemon juice, candy bars, bubble gum, mushrooms, zucchini, eggs upon eggs upon eggs. Reading statistics on waste [an 43 estimated $20 billion worth of food is thrown away by supermarkets each year ], 44 catalogs of items found from other dumpster divers and scroungers , all the prep work I had done before ... reading the words was no substitute for being face to face with a knee-high mound of food on the sidewalk. [Similarly, what I read on freegan.info, NYC's freeganism website, was a two-dimensional substitute for meeting and hanging out with the members themselves. I was able to put faces to names I'd read in news articles: Adam, Janet, Cindy; as well as met some new folks who seemed really involved in the group: Michael, Nora, Sam (recently known as Stephanie, remarked: "I've always preferred non-gendered names.")] As the tour came to a close, I looked around for a subway station. I was pretty sure we'd walked less than a dozen blocks, but I'd only been in the city for a few weeks, and very little of that was spent in the upper west side. People were starting to disperse, forming little groups headed in various directions. I raised my voice and asked to no one in particular "Anybody know where the F train is?"

41 The bagel store was a staple of the freegan trash tour. It was a great place for folks new to dumpster diving as well as a good photo op for the media, several freegans would later tell me. The bagel stores always separated their bathroom trash, devoting at least one but usually two or three bags to the bagels; it was a more appetizing, thus easier "to swallow" presentation than traditional grocery stores which also required more work to salvage the food.

42 I was splitting my time between work in DC and research in NYC. At that time I was alternately staying in my friend Jason's squat near Thompson Square Park and another friends' condo on the Lower East Side.

43 Lyric Wallwork Winik, "What Grocery Store Waste Costs You," Parade Magazine, July 20, 2008, 12.

44 Lars Eighner, Travels with Lisbeth, 1993; Jeff Ferrell, Empire of Scrounge, 2006; John Hoffman, The Art and Science of Dumpster Diving (Port Townsend, WA.: Breakout Productions, 1993) and Dumpster Diving, The Advanced Course: How to tum other people's trash into money, publicity, and power (Boulder, Colorado: Paladin Press, 2002); and Edward H. Romney, Living Well on Practically Nothing (Boulder, CO: Paladin Press, 200 I). 78

Janet turned around and waved me over. She and Evelyn were headed to the station and I was relieved to tag along. Along the way Janet talked about the diving prospects in the neighborhood we were walking through (little Korea), pointed out places where store managers threatened to call the cops on them before. (Evelyn dared her to dive as we walked by and she did, we all did, no managers came out though and we didn't really find anything, mostly paper trash.) Janet told me about how Barnes and Noble throws out perfectly good books so sometimes they dive there, and about a health food store where some guy who sweeps the floor ("he's not even a manager") saw them diving one night and told them to come back at close and they went in and just filled to go containers with salad bar stuff and walked right out with it. When we got into the station we parted ways, they were headed to Queens and I was Brooklyn-bound. Janet hugged me and said she hoped to see me again soon. As I sat on the bench to wait for my train, I pulled out the baguette and bit off a huge chunk. It was delicious.

Even after just one dive, I was beginning to see why freeganism was more prevalent and organized in NYC as opposed to other cities like Houston or DC. The pedestrian nature of the city and the lack of back alleys to hide trash in allowed for a visibility of waste uncommon to most of the nation. "The answer to world hunger can be found in the trash of New York City," Adam said. Not literally, of course; but rather he was pointing out how our food systems are connected and how what we throw away has an impact on what others can or cannot consume. Freeganism was a reaction to and a product of New York City-the commerce, the waste, and the history of activism-and also a response to an international problem of hunger, inequality and oppression.

NYC serves as an example of their critique of conspicuous consumption, not just in the wasted food found on the streets, but in the ubiquitous advertisements that climb high into the sky in Times Square, in the buildings that remain empty while people sleep cold and alone on the streets. The freegan critique resonates with residents when they see 79

the trash on the streets every day, are choked up by the smog from the cars and blinded

by neon signs advertising the Lion King and Hershey chocolate.

Harvey talks about the city as a theatrical space, a compression of time and space under the conditions of production, exchange, and circulation of late capitalism. 45

"Harvey's postmodern city is in effect that habitat of the consumer, who in tum is a puppet manipulated by more powerful forces."46 There are various theories about the city as confusing;47 texts;48 a market and marketing tool;49 a commodified space;50 and a gentrified place51 that are helpful in understanding how the particulars of New York City serve as an example and an enabler of freeganism.

45 David Harvey, The Condition ofPostmodernity: An Enquiry into the Origins of Cultural Change (Oxford: Blackwell, 1989).

46 Paul Patton, "Imaginary Cities: Images of Postmodernity," In Postmodern Cities and Spaces ed. Sophie Watson and Katherine Gibson (Cambridge, MA: BlackwellPublishers, Ltd., 1992), 116.

47 Fredric Jameson, Postmodern ism, or, the Cultural Logic ofLate Capitalism (Durham: Duke University Press, 1999).

48 Anthony D. King, ed. "Introduction: Cities Texts and paradigms." In Re-presenting the City: Ethnicity, Capital and Culture in the 21st Century Metropolis (New York: New York University Press, 1996), 1-22.

49 Lily M. Hoffman, "Revalorizing the Inner City: Tourism and Regulation in Harlem." In Cities and Visitors: Regulating People, Markets, and City Space (Malden, Blackwell Publishing, Ltd., 2003), 91- 112.

50 Mark Gottdiener ed. "The Consumption of Space and the Spaces of Consumption," In New Forms of Consumption: Consumers, Culture, and Commodification (Lanham: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, Inc., 2000), 265-286; John R. Logan and Harvey L. Molotch, Urban Fortunes: The Political Economy of Place (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1987); Phillip Lopate, Waterfront, A Journey Around Manhattan (New York: Crown Publishers, 2004) and Sharon Zukin, Landscapes of Power: From Detroit to Disney World (Berkeley, University of California Press, 1995).

51 Paul L Knox, "The Restless Urban Landscape: Economic and Sociocultural Change and the Transformation of Metropolitan Washington, DC," Annals of the Association ofAmerican Geographers 81, no. 2 (June 1991): 181-209; Margaret Kohn, Brave New Neighborhoods: The Privatization of Public Space (New York: Routledge, 2004); Peter Marcuse, "Not Chaos, but Walls: Postmodernism and the Partitioned City." In Postmodern Cities and Spaces, ed.Sophie Watson and Katherine Gibson (Cambridge: Blackwell Publishers, Ltd., 1995), 243-253; Alexander Reich!, Reconstructing Times Square (Lawrence: University 80

Space is neither neutral nor homogenous52 and cities are not blank slates. What is interesting about New York City, and what I think makes it a prime location for a burgeoning freegan movement, is the lack of back alley dumpsters, the discarded wrappers and bags which clog the drains on the street- basically the overt dirtiness of the city. Trash in the Big Apple is generally placed out on the sidewalks for pedestrians to walk past, step over, or sometimes, dive through. It is the particulars of this cosmopolitan city, an overcrowded island which never sleeps, which help freegans showcase the pervasive amount of waste from supermarkets, restaurants and college dorm rooms in its trash tours; condemn pollution from the forever deadlocked cars at the bike maintenance workshops; and discuss ways to subvert the saturation of advertisements in their meetings, which are often held mere blocks from the glaring lights of Time Square.

Later that night on the outskirts of the city, we all gathered on Cindy's front porch for dessert and took turns using Quinn's telescope to look at the stars; the importance of communities connected by a shared respect for nature was as clear as the cloudless night sky. This was a group of people looking to move away from an economic and social system that they see as violent to humans, animals and the earth. They aren't looking to opt out of society; they're looking to save it.

Press of Kansas, I 999) and Neil Smith, The New Urban Frontier: Gentrification and the Revanchist City (New York: Routledge, I 996).

52 Hilda Kuper, "The Language of Sites in the Politics of Space," American Anthropologist 74, no. 3 (June I 972), 4 I 1-425. CHAPTER4

SOLIDARITY AND THE CITY: "ONE NO, MANY YESES"

The freegans were meeting at Bryant Park. It was mid-August and by the time I arrived, anxious and early, night had fallen. I walked around, unsure as to what I was looking for. All I then knew about the freegans came from their website and meetup1 group and though I had seen pictures of a few of their members, I wasn't sure I could literally pick them out of a dark park.

Eventually I stumbled on a sign: "Meetup.com: Freegans." There were a handful of people at the lattice-work picnic table. Only one of them, Cindy, was a freegan member; most others were like me, curious, academic, or both. Eventually more members arrived. A good bit after 7 p.m., operating on what I would later term "freegan time,"

Nora jogged up, her arms full of paper.

"Sorry I'm late," she said, sitting in the nearest available seat. "I was copying the agenda." She took the top copy off the pile and handed it to her right. Nora, a young white woman with dirty blond dreadlocks piled in swirls on top of her head, smiled wearily at the group. She had on a flannel shirt over her sweater and bright orange tights.

She was the spitting imagine of the activist stereotype I'd had in my head-white, kind of

1 Meetup.com is a website where people form groups based on interests, geographic locations, age, etc. Their tag line: "Do Something-Learn Something-Share Something-Change Something." The NYC freegan.info meetup serves as an online hub for members to learn about freegan events such as trash tours, forums, free markets and feasts.

81 82

hippie, kind of young, a neo-crunch straight out of The Hipster Handbook.2 And, I later learned, she fit the activist stereotype in a couple of ways-she was about to graduate from NYU with a degree in social historical inquiry, a division of sociology, and she lived in a basement apartment on the lower-east side that her mother owned. For Nora, like most if not all NYC members, freeganism was a choice; necessary, perhaps, for the survival of the planet and the betterment of living things, but not a personal necessity.3

"There is a privilege in taking the time to dumpster dive," she admitted as we talked one afternoon in her apartment, noting that she was making the choice to do something that other people have to do out of necessity. "Poor people have always learned how to take care of themselves because they didn't have options. They've always sewed their own clothes and fixed their own stuff." Freeganism, she argued, is an act of solidarity with groups that suffer most from capitalism as well as a way to celebrate alternative economies and traditions.

For example, instead of giving more money to pharmaceutical companies, Nora was learning about traditional herbal remedies. "People have always been, from a health perspective, they've always been like, let's go ask the old lady down the street, or let's learn about herbalism ourselves, or all the old wives' tales that have been passed around, like among poorer communities and black and Latino communities." Freegans celebrated ways of living outside of capitalism that honored different histories and traditions, she

2 Robert Lanham, Hipster Handbook (New York: Anchor Books, 2002).

3 It would be easy to rely on a division of choice and need in individualistic terms, however for many freegans, freeganism is a necessity because of their connection with the national and international community. 83

said. Most active NYC freegans, however, were middle-to-upper class white people and the rhetoric belied an essentialized and romanticized view of the poor and minorities4 and, some argued, dumpster diving took resources from needy people who couldn't fall back on buying items at the store.

*************************

Just a few weeks earlier, I'd interviewed Kathy,5 a woman who lived in one of the eleven legalized squats on the Lower East Side. She repeated the image of freegans that

I'd seen portrayed in news stories. "They're all young ... a bunch of young kids. I think a lot of them live with their parents. I kind of think it's an ego thing that makes them feel better about themselves. Middle class white kids," she said with more than a bit of disdain.

Kathy described freegans as "younger, more idealistic. Freegans are very vocal, very visible; they're turning it into a political ideology, when it used to be survival.

They're taking food out of the mouths of people who really need it ... I don't think they're thinking it through all the way."Although only 27 years old, Kathy considered herself part of the elder generation of squatters, distinct and distrustful of the freegans.

"The squatter scene in lower Manhattan is a lot older ... people are still around from the

70s' ."The age and experience division is also a matter of practicality versus idealism, she added. People who chose to dumpster dive are taking away already scarce resources from

4 See Chapter 4 for a more nuanced discussion of race among freegans.

5 Pseudonym. 84

people who have to dive as a matter of survival, she argued; for the homeless, dumpster diving is a necessity, not necessarily an ideology.

Distinguishing between "legitimate" homeless and needy people and freegans who chose the lifestyle to make a social and political statement relies on a an individualist definition of "need" and obscures the freegan activities that take place out of the media limelight; particularly those less glamorous activities like "wild food" foraging, bike maintenance and sewing workshops and squatting. Much of what freegans do revolves around educating others on ways to live outside of a consumerist lifestyle.

Nora talked about needs in terms of communities and the importance of offering alternatives in addition to critiques. "The part I love about freeganism is the idea of dual power, the idea of rather than just saying I'm anti-mainstream media, so I'm just going to stand outside Fox News every day and protest, being like, hey, we can go create indie media. I'm anti-capitalism, but I'm not just going to stand here and say I hate this, I hate this, but instead create something, called freeganism. [It's like how the] Zapatistas talked about one no and many yeses," she said. "There are so many ways of doing that but I think it mostly comes down to learning how to take care of ourselves and providing for our own needs and looking at things as needs [rather than wants]." Although dumpster diving was their primary and most visible project, freegans were involved in a variety of actions to help people learn to provide for themselves outside of capitalism.

At each event freegans handed out monthly calendars which listed upcoming and ongoing events, composting and recycling resources as well as offered a basic definition of freeganism. 85

"Wl,at's j-9a1\lno.? rrceganlsm =living beyond ci.pltlflsm. In a society of~ ovcm:wumptlon, enonnmu: qµanlltt:cs of ~ble resources Ff' lo ...... ,. Through dump.llon, & """"i 1>Me r

C""ll'o1til\!I lm1Cf EMI Si& &o1ogyca11eraccUng (fruit and~ peel!fl&'. cotr.e grounds and IOI hap. egg and nul Jhel1'. Ol1 flowtrn. and slmllar orpinlc m.tcrlaf>. ILSE<: has droj>-olT bi"' >1 the Union Sqyarc ~marl:d (Mond'!Y. Wednesday. fl1d:!y. •nd Saturday from 8""' In S pm). For o.s Pa-Srlkm:rls a recydlng fac.111~ In lht Hunt.s Point section of the 8roro: that alkM$ lndMduaL, to drop off up to S pieces of rnkfentJal computer & clectronlc C®lpment. Th9 aca:pl rC'llidcnli>d CQ!Jlpmtnl Monday to Friday rrom ?am to 4pm at lhdr Bronx radllty al 1231 Lafayette Ave. More info: www.perschalns.org UJrKY East Skk EcologCcnteralso host.s dedrontcs n:t)'dlng cvenl.l. Their next CYetit b S.C, Dec. 9. Sam ID 4pm at PS 321. 180 7lh /We., bh.TI. Isl & 2nd 515. Park Slope. Brooklyn. For more lnro see www.lcscoologyrenter.org 'W.. 'liliJ ilk• '!kjiail' 'Workslio)il "'11 °f'hi\.S 'Up! All workshops arc at '\51 E. Houston St. (btwn, Motl & Mulbmy) In the lmcmenl. ~· Blcydc RqJ3/r N'1$111: Every Monday. 6:l0pm. No previous ~pcrlence with bkycfu repair rt\Ullred or Cltpedcd. Bite Repair H'btts6qm: EYCfJ Tuesday. 6:10pm. Come learn how to nx bike1, do simple maintenance and lune·ups at the bike mi:chanlc sklll share. Fix lt1ur Btie »Md/op: E'<'try Thursday. 6:l0pm. Share skllls with other cyclists while you nx up your own bikt. For more lnformatkm about Time's Up!. vtsll www,Urnes-up.org 'Wtla t..a. T~ •Wildman· Stew Brill holds freq,uenl tours where .)'OU c.an team to nnd and harvtst Mid groo1ng plants for food and medicine. The fee Is Sl2 ($6 for children under 12) didlng scale, but no one ls l!Yl':r turned 3W3J for lack of ~Ch~ut1~i,Ww.wwl'1mansteo

A most~ frcegan dinner for strangers and co·consplrators In a rel:ued cnvirDnmtnt. There b no charge bul donations an: rcqµested. Orgmnl7..ecl by In Our Hearts and T~ Shap OJ0cctlvt5. Held the Isl and lrd Sunday of every month ;;it Rubulad, ])8 Flushing Avenue (btwn. Cla~ & Ta.iiffc near the N

Figure 6. Freegan Calendar: Pictured side by side, this is actually the front and back of a freegan calendar. The left side lists freegan specific events, such as meetings and feasts, while the right catalogues "events by other groups that promote sustainable or freegan living."

A major tactic of direct action organizing involves coalition building. The calendar evidences how freegans interact with and rely on other progressive issues and groups, emphasizing solidarity in causes of social justice rather than one primary agenda. All of the events except one are free, "Wildman" Steve Brill's foraging tour. It is the freegans' policy not to include anything on the calendar that costs money, but Steve has a sliding scale policy and won't turn anyone away if they can't pay. The tours complement the freegan desire for sustainable living outside of capitalism and help retain knowledge about natural foods and medicines. 86

One of their most successful and diverse events is the bike repair workshop. At the time of this calendar's printing, the workshop was held in its original location in

Manhattan on the Upper West Side. The first level of the multi-story Hell's Kitchen building was the garage for deliveries and storage for the business above. During its couple of years there, the bike workshop primarily attracted bike aficionados: couriers, critical mass participants, folks who knew a thing or two about bikes already and went to the workshops to gather parts, upgrade or just hang out with like-minded cyclists.

Newbies like me could and often did come in-with all the accumulated parts that the bike workshop had amassed, it was possible to build your own bike from scratch.

Christian, the bike workshop founder, was always on hand to help out; the vibe was very informal, no leader at the podium walking through step by step instructions, but rather individuals or small groups scattered around the shop, switching out brake pads, adding a bike rack or straightening out a bent wheel.

My first time at the bike workshop was intimidating. I didn't know anything about bikes really-my rarely ridden mountain bike was still in a dusty storage locker in DC.

When I walked into the garage, I only recognized one person, Sam, from a dumpster dive a few weeks ago. She was engrossed in a conversation and didn't seem to recognize me anyway, so I started to walk around, hoping to bump into Christian.

Around the comer was a large cage structure that housed all the bikes and bike parts-rows of tires, bundles of tubing and coffee cans full or washers, bolts, even bells.

There was a basket of stickers and some cans of paint to personalize the bikes; there was so much stuff in the room that a wooden loft had been built for even more storage. From 87

below I could see bike frames stacked on top of each other, road bikes and mountain bikes in all different sizes and in various levels of disrepair.

Christian poked his head over the ledge of the loft.

"Hi!" he smiled through a light layer of grease and sweat. "Can I help you with ...

Oh, hey! Glad you could make it!" He dropped the wrench onto the soft pillow of tubing below him before starting down the ladder. At a dumpster dive a few weeks before, I'd told Christian that I'd wanted to come and check out the workshop, but that I didn't have my bike with me. I don't know much about bikes, I explained, but I really want to learn and be able to do basic maintenance. He encouraged me to come as soon as I could, that they had plenty of bikes for me to work with.

Figure 7. Freegan Bike: Above is a picture of one of Christian's bikes at a dumpster dive. He covered the entire frame in price tags he'd found on recovered products.

There were a lot of people there, a couple of dozen in the tight garage, but

Christian quickly found Mike, another newbie who just started coming to the bike workshops the previous week. "The best thing to do if you don't know much about 88

bikes," Christian explained to us, "is to take one apart and put it back together again." I started to laugh but then realized he was completely serious when he wheeled over a beat-up blue road bike with uneven handlebars. "This one should be good," he said, laying down a couple of tools to get started. Anything else we might need, like a different wrench or screwdriver, we should just ask around, someone would let us borrow it, he said, heading back towards the storage loft.

Mike and I looked at each other, bonding quickly over our lack of comfort in the endeavor. Dismantling something, that was the easy part. Putting it back together again ...

In the end, we were able to mostly accomplish our task with the help of others. It took us several weeks but we did learn a lot more about bikes, and tools, than we started with.

And it was a good lesson- to really be able to fix something, you have to truly understand how it works, and sometimes that means taking the whole damn thing apart.

In 2007, the occupants who donated the space lost their lease, and the bike workshop moved from its first home in Manhattan, to a community space in Bed-Stuy,

Brooklyn. The 123 Community Space was not just a change of location, but also a broadening of the educational goals of the workshop. Prior to adding the bike program, the space was home to after-school programs for neighborhood youth where kids had access to a community library and computers. The bike workshop became an extension of

123's social and political agenda, introducing kids to bikes and the environmental concerns around alternative transportation. As such, the make-up of the workshops became much more diverse in age, race and level of expertise. Soon, the community space became the site for more and more freegan activities-there was a kitchen which 89

made it a great place to host freegan feasts and the large main room was the staging area for activist performances and freegan fashion shows which highlighted rescued and repurposed clothes. 6

The bike maintenance workshop was born from the freegan desire to minimize participation in the traditional economy and reduce use of limited resources, but the initial idea was Christian's. Years before joining up with the freegans, Christian had been a successful investment banker. Unhappy with his consumerist lifestyle, he gave up his paycheck and apartment and began squatting in abandoned buildings.

Squatting, or taking up residence in an abandoned building in which one does not have permission to use either via ownership or rental, is both a survival tactic and a political statement, depending on the squatter. Christian had been kicked out of several places and at times took up residence in the Wetlands Preserve offices. Squatting for him was a choice, but one he saw as a logical step away from a consumerist lifestyle. For some freegans, it was part of a larger concern about the commodification of space; buildings would sit locked and empty while people suffered on the streets.

Writing about young squatters in Berkeley, CA, writer and filmmaker Claire

Burch includes part of an underground pamphlet outlining suggestions, etiquette and safety tips for squatting as well as the reasoning behind the reclamation of buildings by squatters:

6 In May, 2009 the 123 Community Space was officially evicted. The bike maintenance workshop is still looking for a new home. 90

Why Squat? There have been squatters for as long as there's been the concept of owning land, and squatting on land or in buildings which officially belong to someone else, takes place all over the world. For millions of working class and poor people, it is absolutely basic to their survival. There are probably as many reasons for squatting as there are squats, but one thing all squatters have in common is poverty. The private rental market is controlled by real estate agents and land owners who often discriminate on the basis of age, race, gender, marital and employment status. The extra high rents demanded often make it impossible for low income people to afford. And yet, many privately owned houses remain empty. After exhausting all other possibilities, many people turn to squatting as a solution to their housing problems, either temporarily or on a long-term basis. It provides immediate shelter and frees up money (usually paid out for rent) to go to other necessities such as food and clothing. 7

Housing discrimination is not a new phenomenon; the practice of redlining can be traced back to the 1930s. During the Depression, banks were extremely reluctant to make home loans; mortgage rates were through the roof and most people didn't have the up to

50% down payment that they required. As part of Roosevelt's' New Deal, the Home

Owners' Loan Corporation (HOLC) was created in 1933 to help refinance loans of borrowers with mortgages in default or held by distressed institutions. In addition, HOLC also conducted city surveys intended to help banks determine which areas were "safest" to provide loans. 8 Real estate appraisers "looked for signs of decay or neglect that might indicate a neighborhood was in decline. Surveyors also looked for any signs of minorities. This included not only African Americans but also Jews and 'foreign born

7 Claire Burch, Tales of Young Urban Squatters plus How to Squat (Oakland CA: Regent Press, 2003), 156.

8 Preservation Association of Central New York, "The Home Owner's Loan Corporation," Syracuse Then and Now, http://syracusethenandnow.org/Redlining/HOLC_Maps.htm (accessed September, 2009). 91

whites' such as Poles and Italians. Even a single home occupied by a minority family in a distant comer of a neighborhood could cause the entire area to be downgraded for mortgage insurance."9 Areas that were graded D, the lowest rating which indicated the most risk for lenders, were marked on HOLC maps in red; although the red demarcation also indicated other factors of development, near the city dump or train tracks perhaps, it was largely seen as a big stop sign against investing in minority areas.

Today, redlining, shorthand for racist lending practices which disinvest in minority areas, is explicitly illegal, although most development strategies engage in implicit disinvestment in non-white neighborhoods-at least until they are gentrified and poor people are booted, that is. One study on development strategies on the Lower East

Side found strong evidence that landlords purposefully allowed the physical deterioration of their buildings in order to expedite the removal of their tenants before making upgrades or selling the building; it was "an integral part of the reinvestment process."10

According to geographer Neil Smith, gentrification is a development process in which "poor and working-class neighborhoods in the inner city are refurbished via an influx of private capital and middle-class homebuyers and renters-neighborhoods that had previously experienced disinvestment and a middle class exodus."11 In many ways, this doesn't sound like a bad thing; revitalization is good, right? But what neo-liberals

9 Ibid.

w Frank DeGiovanni, "Displacement Pressures in the Lower East Side," working paper, Community Service Society Society of New York, 1987; quoted in Neil Smith, The New Urban Frontier: Gentrification and the Revanchist City (New York: Routledge, 1996), 195.

11 Neil Smith, The New Urban Frontier: Gentrification and the Revanchist City (New York: Routledge, 1996), 32. 92

called revitalization, others, mostly the residents, called marginalization and disenfranchisement. A key strategy of gentrification involves revitalization through the displacement of the working class. Smith goes on to note:

The language of revitalization, recycling, upgrading and renaissance suggests that affected neighborhoods were somehow devitalized or culturally moribund prior to gentrification. While this is sometimes the case, it is often also true that very vital working-class communities are culturally devitalized through gentrification as the new middle class scorns the streets in favor of the dining room and bedroom. The idea of 'urban pioneers' is as insulting applied to contemporary cities as the original idea of 'pioneers' in the US West. Now, as then, it implies that no one lives in the areas being pioneered-no one worthy of notice, at least. 12

Although gentrification is an international phenomenon, the idea of an "urban frontier" in need of taming resonated particularly well among Americans. In a particularly racialized and postmodern nostalgia for the Wild West, the poor and working class were vilified as wild, dangerous, and devoid of civilization until the capitalists came in, cleaned up and built a well-known Seattle-based coffee shop. Housing was not a right, but a commodity; cramped or dangerous living conditions suffered by the poor were not situations in need of assistance, but blights that needed to be removed and repainted. 13

Gentrification often results in further marginalization of the poor: they are pushed into the suburbs, the former havens for the rich after they fled the city; they remain in the streets, sleeping in parks or squatting in abandoned buildings. Some squatters, like those in Burch's book, believe that squatting "can break the vicious cycle of poverty,

12 Ibid., 32-33.

13 Ibid., xvi. 93

homelessness, etc. It is also an empowering tactic to resist the system that treats us like products and takes away our basic rights to food, clothing, and adequate, affordable housing. Through squatting, we can solve our own homelessness, and at the same time fight for a better standard of housing, one based on need not greed."14 According to journalist Robert Neuwirth, in 2004 there were over one billion squatters worldwide--0r about one in seven people.

New York has had a particularly tumultuous history with squatters. "During the

1990s, the city's Department of Housing Preservation and Development (HPD) evicted thousands of squatters," Annia Ciezadlo reported. "Sometimes with riot cops, armored vehicles, even helicopters--especially on the Lower East Side, where squatters welded doors shut and even barricaded streets when the city came to kick them out."15 In 1988, a riot broke out in Tompkins Square Park on the Lower East Side when police attempted to evict over a hundred homeless who had set up camp. Demonstrators comprised of housing activists, punks, park inhabitants, artists, and LES residents marched the perimeter of the park, the streets holding signs that read "Gentrification is " and chanting "Whose fucking park? It's our fucking park!" In total, almost 450 cops dressed in riot gear and brandishing clubs attempted to clear the park of the protestors. They gave up and withdrew around 4 am, but the battle for Tompkins Square would continue for at least another three years. 16

14 Claire Burch, Tales of Young Urban Squatters plus How to Squat, 156.

15 Annia Ciezadlo, "Exclusive: City to Let Squatters Sit Comfortably At Home," City Limits, August 19, 2002, http://www.citylimits.org/news/article.cfm?article_id=822 (accessed March 23, 2010).

16 Neil Smith, The New Urban Frontier, 3-5. 94

1 On December 14 \ 1989 (the coldest night of the year) homeless residents were evicted from the park with nowhere to go--the cities' shelters were only equipped to handle one-fourth of the city's homeless population. 17 In May 1991 the community hosted a concert called "Housing is a Human Right," which ultimately ended in another altercation with police. In June 1991, Mayor David Dinkins' administration evicted the estimated 200-300 park dwellers from Tompkins Square and a $2.3 million reconstruction project was immediately initiated. Officials didn't offer any alternative housing to homeless people and so they either filtered out into the city or joined the few remaining squats in the neighborhood. 18

The park exemplified the city's failure to deal with the growing homeless population and highlighted the problems with the neoliberal belief that housing was a commodity as opposed to a basic human right. Patrick Markee, a policy analyst for

Coalition for the Homeless, and Lizzy Ratner, journalist, argue that the contemporary housing crisis can be traced back to the administration of Ronald Reagan:

From the earliest days of his administration, Reagan set about systematically dismantling federal housing programs, slashing funds for federal rental vouchers and public housing. He also initiated the shift in federal low-income housing policy away from subsidized development to tax-credit programs, which fail to help the poorest families. The reason was pure conservative hocus-pocus: the idea that housing is a commodity best created and priced by the unregulated, unfettered market and that government should play little or no role in guaranteeing shelter to its poorest citizens. 19

17 Ibid,, 5.

18 Ibid., 5-6.

19 Patrick Markee and Lizzy Ratner, "Hope for the Homeless," The Nation, January 22, 2009, http://www.thenation.com/doc/20090209/markee_ratner (accessed May 4, 2009). 95

City spaces, particularly in New York City, are interesting sites of contestation over what is "public" and "private." In the 1972 landmark case of Lloyd Corp v. Tanner, the right to free speech was determined only in public, not private spaces, thus the

"privatization of public space undermines the opportunity for free speech."20 Public space has historically been a site of activity and debate, especially religious and political activity, but as it becomes more privatized through suburbanization, gated and intentional communities and multi-use developments to name a few, political organization becomes increasingly more challenging. As the concept of public becomes more multiplicitous and contradictory and "private" is tied ever more tightly to capitalist consumption, activists are attempting to reclaim the "private" by creating community gardens in abandoned lots, staging puppet shows on street corners, squatting in defunct buildings and otherwise challenging the idea that the best use of space results in a monetary profit

In the late 1970s and 1980s when the housing market was flailing, landlords in

New York City abandoned their buildings to avoid paying rising property taxes. In 1987, there were 5,662 vacant buildings in the city, but by 2002 that number had dropped to

524. With few to no resources for the growing homeless population, many NYC residents took to squatting in the empty spaces. Many held down jobs as social workers or electricians, they just didn't make enough to afford the rising costs in the neighborhoods they called home.21 Others squatted for political reasons; anarchists

20 Margaret Kohn, Brave New Neighborhoods: The Privatization ofPublic Space (New York: Routledge, 2004 ), 3.

21 Wired New York-Forum, "For $1, squatters become building owners in NYC," October 14, 2002 http://wirednewyork.com/forum/showthread.php?t=3207 (accessed May 4, 2009; reprint of article, same title, from CNN.com, October 14, 2002, link no longer active). 96

wanted to challenge the concept of private property or were appalled that buildings stood empty while so many people filled the streets. Many freegans said they supported squats although they didn't live in them because they saw it as a social justice and humanitarian issue.

The Lower East Side, long a draw for immigrants and artists, became a squatter haven as more and more buildings were abandoned. One of the most infamous pages in

NYC squatter history was the eviction of squatters from government-owned buildings in

1995. Just four years after evicting homeless from neighboring Tompkins Square, police once again donned full riot gear to evict several hundred residents from two squats on

13th St. When the cops arrived (in a tank) at the buildings on May 30, residents, some of whom had lived there over a decade, formed a chain at the door in a non-violent attempt to block the eviction. Thirty-one residents of the squats and nearby buildings were arrested.

Much of the neighborhood was outraged. '"People have taken homes the city had turned its back on, and they have made them into real homes,' explains Mark Goldberg, a

New York University student who was one of the 31 people arrested. 22 In order to make buildings safer and more comfortable for squatters and their kids, many residents contributed "sweat equity," patching roofs, replacing staircases and replacing wiring for electricity and heat. At one squat known as the Umbrella House, residents kept a "sweat equity log" and those who didn't contribute could be voted out of the building by a group

22 Miriam Axel-Lute, "Battle Over 13th Street," National Housing Institute, May/June 1995 http://www.nhi.org/online/issues/8 l/ squat.html (accessed May 20 I 0). 97

vote. 23 In a report for the National Housing Institute, Miriam Axel-Lute interviewed squatters involved in the 1995 "Battle over 13th Street" who argued that "along with making the buildings habitable, they brought improvements to the neighborhood through a drop in the crime and drug traffic that had occurred in the empty buildings."24 In addition, the homesteaders had a legal claim on the .

According to some state laws, squatters who maintain residence in a home for a certain number of days, some as few as 30, they can gain tenancy rights. In New York

City, if the homesteaders live openly, continuously and in a hostile manner (without the owners' permission) in a place for 10 years then they gain ownership of the property under the law of adverse possession. The tenants of 13th street argued, successfully, that not only did they fulfill the requirements for adverse possession, but they also had proven that the city knew about and condoned the squats prior to the 1995 eviction. They were eventually able to return to their homes.

In 2002, eleven of the twelve remaining squats on the Lower East Side were legalized. The city sold the buildings for a dollar to the Urban Homesteading Assistance

Board who assisted in arranging $200,000-$600,000 loans for each building to be brought into compliance with city housing codes. According to a story by the Associated Press,

"The loan will then be passed on to the one-time squatters, who will become owners of the cooperative housing. This also means the residents of each apartment will pay around

$450 a month for years to come -- for many, the first time they've paid rent in years,

23 Wired New York-Forum, "For $1, squatters become building owners in NYC," 2002.

24 Miriam Axel-Lute, "Battle Over 13th Street," 1995. 98

though many have poured thousands of hours and dollars into making needed building repairs, such as pouring concrete staircases and patching floors and roofs."

The legalization and legitimization of the Lower East Side squats coincided with a huge revitalization campaign in New York City. Marcuse also talks about New York City development strategies in his analysis of contemporary urban space.25 Whereas during modernism, he argues, the purpose of urban planning was to impose order on chaos, the goal of postmodern urban planning is to impose chaos on order. The planned randomness and visual bedlam of such places as Times Square and the Las Vegas strip hide hierarchical and classed social patterns. He writes that that such "planned chaos" is an

"attempt to cover an increasingly pervasive pattern of hierarchical relationships among people and orderings of city space" which ultimately just "reflect(s) and reinforce(s) that hierarchical pattern."26 Sociologists John R. Logan and Harvey Luskin came to similar conclusions in their analysis of "the conflict between use and exchange values in cities."27 They found that the commodification of place in reference to the organization of cities leads to social stratification of local individuals and groups.

In his analysis of the economic and sociocultural change in Washington, D.C., geographer Paul L. Knox introduces the concept of the "sociospatial dialectic."28 He

25 Peter Marcuse, "Not Chaos, but Walls: Postmodemism and the Partitioned City," In Postmodern Cities and Spaces.

26 Ibid., 243.

27 John R. Logan and Harvey L. Molotch. Urban Fortunes: The Political Economy ofPlace, 2.

28 Paul L. Knox, "The Restless Urban Landscape: Economic and Sociocultural Change and the Transformation of Metropolitan Washington, DC," Annals of the Association ofAmerican Geographers 81, no. 2 June 1991,181-209. 99

argues that the city is simultaneously the cause and result of social relationships. The sociospatial dialectic is the understanding that the urban landscape is a mold and mirror of our economy, culture and society. New York, in the wake of Rudolph Giuliani's attempts to clean up New York City during his tenure as mayor in the mid 1990s to early

2004, is an example of such relations. The concept of the "socio-spatial dialectic is helpful in understanding how the freegans are reliant upon yet critical of New York City and capitalism. "Hierarchy," Marcuse writes, "is not an inevitable part of social organization."

*************************

When I began my preliminary research with the NYC freegans, checking out their meetings, going to events and trash tours, I still lived in Washington DC. I had a lease for another year on a nice, 5th floor apartment building with walk-in closets and master bathroom. While I was still deciding whether or not to commit myself to working with the freegans, I subsisted on the kindness of friends, staying on their couches or occasionally in their swank guest rooms on Tompkins Square Park. My friend, Jason29 lived in a legalized squat near the park and it was at his place I spent my first night in

New York City. Jason was actually out of town the first night I jumped excitedly off the

Chinatown bus and took the F train to the Lower East Side. The tenants kept the front door locked but there were usually people hanging out in the front and all I had to do was drop his name and they let me in.

29 Pseudonym. 100

I followed directions-I st floor, down the hall, to the right. Someone had written "Jason, I miss you" on the door. The handle was a studded punk rock bracelet attached to a door-the key, as promised, was in the lock. Poets need to write about places like this, I am not a poet. It's an apartment by all forms of definition but it's an apartment with graffiti on the walls and windows made out of French doors. There's posters and art and politics tacked up everywhere, lights rigged, homemade desks built with books and an Ethernet connection on the coffee table. The bed is a loft built above one of the two couches. "But be very careful climbing the ladder-it needs to be fixed," his note cautioned. Jason left me a note with instructions about the apartment: "Leave the key in the door because other people in the building use the bathroom and shower." There's a claw-foot bathtub and a grey water toilet (I did in fact have to reach my hand into my own pee after I saw, too late, that toilet paper goes in the trash can ... my commune days should have prepared me better.) There's a fridge, albeit a smelly one, a toaster, an oven and a spice rack and movies and a printer and he doesn't pay a cent? (A valid question: J, how is there electricity?) I danced around Jason's apartment for several minutes trying to take it all in. So rad.30

Listed as one of their practices, freegan.info describes squatting as a way to reclaim abandoned space and repurpose it for the community. "Squatters find abandoned buildings and restore them into rent free housing and community centers with arts and educational programs for low-income communities."31 One of the best examples of this community-focused squat is ABC No Rio, a collectively run artist and activist center established in 1980:

Our community is defined by a set of shared values and convictions. It is both a local and international community. It is a community committed to social justice, equality, anti-authoritarianism, , collective processes, and to nurturing alternative structures and institutions operating on such principles. Our community includes artists and activists whose work promotes critical analysis and an expanded vision of possibility for our lives and the lives of our neighborhoods, cities, and societies. It includes punks who embrace the Do-It-

Jo Excerpt from my research journal.

JI Freegan.info: Strategies for Sustainable Living Beyond Capitalism, "Freegan Practices" http://freegan.info/?page_id=47 (accessed January 17, 2009). 101

Yourself ethos, express positive outrage, and reject corporate commercialism. It includes nomads, squatters, fringe dwellers, and those among society's disenfrachised (sic) who find at ABC No Rio a place to be heard and valued.32

In an interview with Lower East Side squatters, Robert Neuwirt points out the fine line between squatting as an act of survival and as a political statement: '"The whole issue of taking over vacant space and using it is revolutionary, according to the establishment,' said Hafid Lalaoui--who lived in many East Village squats over the years, most recently at Bullet Space on East 3rd Street--as he basks in the afternoon shade on

Avenue C. 'But it's not stealing. It's recycling and transforming and building community.

We were not anarchists, not anti-establishment. We were struggling to survive-- period.' "33

Kathy noted the tension between homeless squatters who are more concerned about having a roof over their heads than challenging the concept of private property, and freegans who squat as act of defiance. She notes that most of the original squatter movement in New York is "dead," and her real issue with freegans is dumpster diving.

"The reality is that there are real homeless people who need the food. I think if people don't need it, they shouldn't be exploiting it," she said. All of the media interest in freeganism, which primarily focuses on dumpstering, had negative consequences for other divers, she continued. "The establishment (is) catching on," she shook her head. In order to keep people, and cameras, out of their trash, some restaurants and grocers would

32 ABC No Rio, "About" http://www.abcnorio.org/about/about.html (accessed January 22, 2009).

33 Robert Neuwirt, "Squatters' Rites," City Limits, September I •i, 2002 http://www.citylimits.org/news/article.cfm?article_id=2799 (accessed March 23, 20 I 0). 102

slash packages so the food would turn faster, pour bleach into the bags, or switch to trash compactors and locked dumpsters.

Although it's true that store managers sometimes employ different tactics to discourage divers, it is arguable whether incidences have increased since freeganism captured the attention of the media. In his memoir, "Travels with Lizbeth: three years on the road and on the street," 34 Lars Eighner writes: "I have heard of people maliciously contaminating discarded food and even handouts, but mostly I have heard of this people with vivid imaginations who have had no experience with Dumpsters themselves."35

Most reports of scrounging sabotage comes from cities and towns that keep their garbage in dumpsters or bins in the back alleys, unlike New York, where garbage is out on the streets and more accessible for passer-bys. John Hoffman describes trash compactors, locked bins and recycling programs as primary obstacles to diving in his how-to dumpster diving manual originally published in 1993.36

In my own diving experience, there was only one time where it appeared the garbage may have been contaminated. It was during an informal restaurant dive, just me and three other freegans at a popular vegan restaurant just after closing. The food bag had a mixture of hot, delicious smelling food that, in some parts, tasted slightly ... soapy. We were divided on whether or not it had been tampered with but a couple of people packed

34 Lars Eignher, Travels with Lisbeth, l l 6.

35 To be fair, Kathy had been homeless off and on during her seven years in New York City. She counted herself among those she spoke of having to scrounge to survive and thus did have a working knowledge of homelessness and diving in the city.

36 John Hoffman, The Art and Science ofDumpster Diving (Port Townsend: Breakout Productions, 1993). 103

up some of the food anyway. (To my knowledge, they didn't get sick, so it's quite possible we were being overly cautious ... which is never a bad thing when diving.)

Diving at restaurants without packaged food is not something freegans do with novices-while most people can get behind rescuing a package of salad or cookies, safe in their cellophane packaging, diving cooked food takes some time to work up to. And, most freegans say, not something everyone will want to do. During the official trash tours, freegans stuck almost entirely with groceries and bakeries they had been visiting for years. On multiple occasions, store workers would wait until we arrived to put out the trash, usually pointing out which piles were food bags and which were mixed refuse. It was important to the freegans that they keep a congenial relationship with the market owners. Many were quite sympathetic to their aims of trying to reduce waste and served as allies.

After seeing her dumpster dive behind his store in Queens, one manager pulled

Janet aside and offered an easier way for her to rescue discarded items. "I pick up bread from (the) health food store once a week and I drop off one or two or three dozen loaves to a drug rehab center and then if I have more that I have left over, and I give to my neighbors, I give it to my friends at work, I give it to my family, and I keep some myself," Janet explained. "It's a great feeling to give it away and I know that the guy who's managing the store where I take it feels good to see that that day a lot of his garbage didn't get thrown out. It was his idea to give it to me, instead of having me dumpster dive." 104

One of Kathy's biggest critiques of freeganism was that it co-opted individual acts of survival for a political ideology that hurt, rather than helped, the homeless. "I'm not really sure who it's benefitting, except the individual who may or may not need it. I'd be curious to see how much food is rotting in people's fridges," she said.

The depiction of freegans as middle-to-upper-class folks exploiting the groups they claim to ally with was often invoked by non-freegan squatters and various media sources. Newsweek contributing editor Jerry Adler dismisses freeganism as a utopian dream based on idealized myths of the past. While he sympathizes with their critique of excessive waste, he also attempts to invalidate the movement by pointing out their social position as incongruous with their aims. "The freegans, most of whom are educated and capable of contributing to the economy, aren't sharing the surplus wealth of the West with those who are destitute by circumstance rather than choice. They are competing with them for it. "37 Adler relies on a strictly capitalist understanding of "contributing" as monetary rather than social or environmental. He leaves freegans, and other activists, no room to ally with others, in Adler's case, poor African soap makers.

Adler's critique is based on a perceived lack of authenticity as needy, homeless or low-income people, which leads to an invalidation of the movement. They're not really needy, the argument goes, and so then they must be exploitive.38 Authenticity is an important point of validation for identity-based movements. Analyzing radical politics

37 Jerry Adler, "The Noble Scavenger on the Living Room Couch," Newsweek, October 1, 2007 http://www.newsweek.com/id/41784 (accessed February 2009).

38 Passer-bys, journalists, even well-meaning family and friends would often ask what the freegans would do if suddenly there was less waste, a question which showed that the larger freegan goal of a world which produces less waste was obscured. 105

since the 1960s, L.A. Kauffman argues that contemporary radical politics are based around sub-cultural identity rather than a once unified oppositional "left." "In the political realm," she writes, "there is a remarkable parallel between this new importance of 'taste ' and market segments in U.S. society and the move, since the 1960s, from a common counterculture to a plurality ofradical ."39 Why the shift?

One reason is the shifting meanings of the "public sphere, " a concept introduced by German philosopher and sociologist Jurgen Habermas, to refer to a discursive space where people come together to discuss and, hopefully solve, social problems. She writes:

In recent years, as voter interest and turnout has steadily declined and "infotainment" has usurped the place of hard news, it has become commonplace to assert that American public life has weakened at the center. Political debate has become soulless and shallow in this account, and the so-called "public sphere" of rational and informed discussion on broad social and cultural matters has all but ceased to exist. Some blame television, some blame the retreat of all intellectual life into the academy, some blame the American education system; all agree that the center no longer holds.40

The move to post-Fordist production, "in which production is fragmented spread around the globe, rather than taking place in one big factory or plant,"41 mass consumption and the rise of finance capital combined with fissures of groups within the left who chose to create their own institutions rather than fighting for inclusion in the leftist agenda, created "micro-public spheres, each with its own distinctive discourses,

39 L.A. Kauffman, L.A, "Small Change: Radical Politics since the 1960s," in Cultural Politics and Social Movements, ed. Marcy Darnovsky, Barbara Epstein, and Richard Flacks (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1995), 157.

40 Ibid., 155.

41 and Douglas Kellner, The Postmodern Adventure: Science, Technology, and Cultural Studies at the Third Millenium (New York: The Guilford Press, 2001),208. 106

debates and institutions."42 Pointing out important problems with the homogenizing discourse of the countercultural left (which was often racist, sexist and homophobic), black power, women's liberation, and gay rights groups broke away, creating new alternative cultures. Kauffman argues that whereas the 1960s counterculture aspired to create an inclusive opposition to the mainstream, these identity-based movements restricted membership and led to the formation of more and more micro-public spheres.

This restructuring, which addressed real inequities within the left, none-the-less created opposition as opposed to co-operation among groups with similar interests and goals. The micro-public spheres often became stalemated as they were reduced to identity politics which don't always recognize commonalities of social injustice. The discourse around social movements since the 1970s has been mired in the rhetoric of neoliberal consumption:

.. .it is striking and unsettling to contemplate how much the subcultural politics of particularity unwittingly echoes the structures of the post-Fordist economy. Multiplicity, choice, reshaping one's self, refining one's sense of identity-these days, these are the values of the marketplace as well as those of the opposition. Smallness has become a matter of both principle and profit in late-capitalist America: principle for the radical periphery, profit for the capitalist core. And the parallel makes it all the easier for the latter to capitalize on the former, often undermining the opposition in the process.43

With all of these fragmented causes perpetuating the capitalist system, it makes sense that an anti-capitalist social movement would choose to organize around affinity, not identity; about excluded politics, not excluded groups. These direct action tactics

42 L.A. Kauffinan, "Small Change: Radical Politics since the 1960s," 155.

43 Ibid., 159. 107

challenge the notion that "the creation of interest groups is the only viable goal of a movement... Its aim is not inclusion but the articulation of an oppositional political theory."44 In fitting with their non-violent approach, direct action movements aim to be the change they wish to see.

Freeganism is a radical democratic project which offers alternatives to capitalist culture. Nora articulated the difference between being liberal and radical as being about intersections. "We are oppressed in multiple ways, so resisting in multiple ways and seeing all these links - and forming coalitions. One of the reasons I really love Wetlands is because it's a multi-issue group. It makes Wetlands really complicated in that way, because it's like taking on different projects and people are like wait, you're an environmental group but then you do sometimes do human rights stuff. .. but this stuff is more complicated." She paused. "You know, radical is about the root, and I see all this stuff is linked"

44 Noel Sturgeon, "Theorizing Movements," 42-43. CHAPTER 5

RACE AND REPRESENTATION: "YOU CAN'T INVITE PEOPLE TO DINNER

AFTER HA YING RUN OVER THEIR LEGS"

For a few minutes I thought I'd really messed up. The meeting place didn't exist; it couldn't, unless it was behind this alley way, or around that comer. .. no wait, it's supposed to be in a market, right? Not exactly some hipster speak-easy where I'd need a secret code or special knock. Markets would want business, right? Bright neon signs, open windows ... had my consumption research not at least helped me figure out how to find a deli in New York?

It was the middle of April and I was headed to a meeting on freeganism and whiteness; I'd been working with the freegans for several months and I felt I was making headway, "gaining entre" in old school anthro-speak or "developing relationships" in the more equitable, contemporary terminology. Until this point I had the participant­ observation part of field work down, but this was the first time I had taken an active leadership role.

The idea for the meeting had been Adam's, but I jumped at the chance to be involved. Here was something I was concerned about and a way I could contribute to the group.

I was excited ... and potentially lost.

108 109

*************************

During an organizational meeting a few weeks earlier, the freegans brought up concerns they had about media representation of their group. The most visible freegans were white dumpster divers and the media's fascination with their middle-to-upper-class position was, some argued, obscuring their larger message about waste.

"We get enormous volumes of coverage, but not the best quality," Adam said.

Adam, one of the most vocal anti-capitalist anarchists of the group, was also one of the most visible in terms of media representations of freegans. When I was initially doing research on the freegans while I was still in DC, I heard a clip of him talking about the wastefulness of capitalism on an internet radio show. Most online searches of "freegan" will also include his name. His ability to remember facts was amazing; he had a cache of statistics on waste, hunger and homelessness catalogued in his head. During speeches he was better than anyone else at peppering in data, although sometimes he over-spiced; he could come off as dogmatic because he believed so strongly in what he's doing. He recently got into a debate with a female member of the media working group about

"whether Thanksgiving being a big lie should be one of our talking points ... I said I think it's complicity in genocide and racism to not talk about it," he said.

For Adam, freeganism was not a choice but essential for his morality. Vegetarian at the age of 8 and vegan by the time he was 12, he felt freeganism was a natural progression. "I feel kind of like I'm simply a person acting in the way any ethical person would in a society full of profoundly unethical and deluded people."

He acknowledged that he's often used as a foil for stories; because of the bluntness of his conviction, his simultaneous inability and refusal to sugarcoat his 110

critiques, he became the go-to media guy. "The freegan media group has decided I get to be the grumpy holiday meaning prick - they're like, oh, this is an Adam-type story, they require someone who is negative and joyless, so let's throw it at Adam," he half-laughed, only slightly exaggerating requests he'd had from reporters regarding a story on

Thanksgiving. '"If you could not eat for a few days before so you could be especially pale, and don't sleep so you have bags under your eyes, and paint your fingernails black' ... so yeah, I get to be the token holiday hater."

The danger of being reduced to a stereotype was one that most freegans were cognizant of from the beginning; in many ways, it was the media attention that originally jumpstarted freeganism in New York City. The first freegan dumpster dive was only supposed to be a one-time event, an activity sponsored by Wetlands meant to call attention to the amount of edible, usable food going to waste on the streets. But as strange luck would have it-none of the original members quite remembers how-a newspaper cameraman ("I think he might have been from The Times?" Cindy suggested) tagged along and they began to get calls from all variety of news sources. There was such an interest in what they were doing that they started freegan.info, and the website's original purpose of letting locals know where to find the best dumpsters morphed into home base for a burgeoning direct action social movement.

Soon, freegan.info became such a big project that it broke from Wetlands.

Freegan.info was still considered a project of the environmental group, but it held separate meetings and created its own specific agenda and membership. It started off slowly, but by its third year, freegan.info was fielding up to a dozen different requests a 111

week from various news outlets. They started a media working group which met at least once a month to work on archiving stories and dealing with the new requests.

Not just local, but national and international outlets were interested in covering the freegans. Articles have appeared in the Boston Globe, LA Times, in newspapers and magazines in Georgia, Oklahoma and Florida. The freegans have gained international attention, as well. Reporters from Telemundo interviewed Janet and followed her around for a "Day-in-the-life-of' piece. A television segment on freeganism featuring Janet and

Christian ran in Japan. There have been stories about the freeganism in the Dutch,

German, Irish and Spanish press. Freegans showed up on the cover of The New York

Times, 1 in a story on Comedy Central's The Colbert Report2and several freegans were interviewed for 20/20.3

The freegans are all over the internet. Articles ran in Salon.com, CNN.com, and

Alternet; Newsweek ran a story supplemented by a reporters' blog about her one month experiment into freeganism. Coverage consistently focused on the spectacle of dumpster diving and tended to be more about the edibility and safety of the food than examining reasons why it was thrown out in the first place. The 2007 report on 20/20 is an example of how stories focused on the spectacle of digging through trash and on the "gross out" element (ala Fear Factor or Survivor fame) of dumpster diving:

1 Steven Kurutz, "Not Buying It," The New York Times, June 21, 2007, http://select.nytimes.com/gst/abstract.html?res=F00711 FF3 B5BOC728EDDAF0894 Df404482 (accessed February, 2009).

2 Stephen Colbert, "Report-The Freegans," Comedy Central, http://www.colbertnation.com/the­ colbert-report-videos/89056/june-25-200 7/the-freegans (accessed March 23, 2010).

3 Brown, Bob, reporter, "ABC 20/20 Piece on Dumpster Diving/Freeganism," Google Videos, http:!lvideo.goog/e.com/videop/ay?docid=-2083677057695191231# (accessed March 23, 2010). 112

Open on John Stossel, speaking to the camera.

"Don't you hate waste? I do. I hate to throw anything useful away. But some people carry that to extremes. " He gestures to images ofa freegan trash tour playing on a screen behind him. "Yes, there they are," "Not the homeless, the freegans: people who go through garbage for food. Food they then eat. Why? Bob Brown with a story that may spoil your appetite."

The report begins with the sound ofjingling holiday bells as the camera follows a group ofpeople walking down the sidewalk.

"It's the month before Christmas, " Brown's melodic voiceover is to the tune of

The Night Before Christmas, "and out on the street, is a band offriends looking for something to eat. They 're wrapped in warm clothing; they 're not short ofcash. But what's on the menu tonight," he pauses, "is the trash." There's a jarring reveal of Cindy opening a trash bag to Psycho-esque sound effects,

The report continues against the background noise offreegans cataloguing for the crew what they found in the garbage. "Oh, it's certified organic red chard, " one woman announces. "My favorite!"

"This is definitely not the kind of holiday outing that winds up in verse on a holiday greeting card, " Brown's voiceover says.

Cut to Brown on the street, interviewing Adam. "It's after 9 o'clock at night, temperature is in the 20 's, you live in a comfortable home... what's the point ofbeing here? "Brown asks. 113

"We 're making a statement to people, " Adam says. "We 're part ofa network of people that are helping to build solutions to this over-consumptive, wasteful society and proposing different values. "

A quick voiceover explains that the termfreegan is a combination offree and vegan, although not all freegans abstain from animal products.

"We 've chosen everything that might be good, and then we just sort ofgo through it and people take whatever they think is reasonable, " one unnamed freegan tells Brown.

The camera cuts to Jane, holding a package ofvegetarian sushi, explaining that the vegetarian kind "doesn't go bad very easily."

"Some people use it for their own needs, sometimes we 're on the subway and we give it to homeless people" freegan Caryn Hartglass said.

"There is enough, they say, " Brown's says as the camera pans piles ofclean, edible food they have found in the trash, "so they would never have to buy food again.

But on the other hand ... " the screen cuts to a shot ofa dog peeing on a pile ofgarbage bags, "this is the trash. "

"Are you worried that the food might make somebody sick ifyou give it to them?"

Brown asked Adam.

"The sad thing is, and the outrage is, is that corporations running these supermarkets are throwing away perfectly good ... "

Brown cuts him off "No. But, just, no, no I've heard that, but just just give me an answer. Are you worried that the food you give to somebody is going to make them sick?

Adam tried again "Stores are throwing away perfectly good foods that haven't spoiled that have nothing wrong with them and ... " 114

Adam's voice fades as Brown does another voice over. "We 'fl get back to that later. But, we wondered, how serious is the problem they 're protesting? How much food do American 's waste?

"Jn our overall , we 're probably losing somewhere in the range of

40-50%," Dr. Timothy Jones ofthe University ofArizona says. Brown explains that the

''figure is so staggering" that Jones "conducted a study to try to quantify food loss at every level ofconsumption. "

"It is a really big issue. Jn terms ofeconomics, we 're talking at least 100 billion dollars a year." Brown says. The study, he continues, found American families to be some ofthe worst offenders, with the average family of4 throwing out $600 offood every year, and 14% ofthat is food that hasn't expired, or even been unpackaged.

Commercially, Jones said, convenience stores waste the most food, followed by fast food chains. "Supermarkets are among the most efficient, because competition has forced them to cut waste with a lost estimated at 1-2%. "

There are groups that are trying to do something about the waste, Brown says, mentioning how City Harvest, collects 20 million pounds ofsurplus food each year from super markets, restaurants and cooking schools. The food is then distributed to community programs that feed more than ~ million people a week. Food safety inspections, Brown stresses, are part ofthat process.

"So is it tempting to point that out to freegans who are rifling through trash for food" the host asks.

"I'm not the food cops but I would love to tell them it's not a good idea to do that, "John Krakowski from City Harvest laughs. "It's a risk, it's actually a gamble. " 115

In the remaining two minutes ofthe almost six minute report, Brown talks to some freegan members at a/east who say that they've never gotten sick and/eel that practicing diving safely is a good way to combat waste.

The final scene is a slow motion shot ofgarbage men piling bags into the back of the truck as we hear Brown's final words: "Nearly two-hundred years ago it was French food connoisseur who wrote 'tell me what you eat, and I'll tell you what you are. 'Jn this season when consumption is at its height, he might have added, what we are is also what we waste."

Bob Brown's coverage of the freegans, although he attempts to wax confusingly poetic at the end, maintains a mocking tone throughout. The continual references to the holidays, the bells, the music, the rhyme scheme, which may have been an attempt to validate covering the group during the high consumption Christmas season, created a tone of playfulness bordering on mockery.

The use of Jones' study seems an attempt to invalidate the freegan tactic of diving at supermarkets, although it's interesting that he diverts from a concern about waste back to health. He says that freegans say they could live off all the waste from supermarkets­ and if they are throwing away the least compared to families, 7-11 'sand restaurants, he doesn't seem worried about the implications of the 40-50% of waste Americans produce overall.

***************

Coverage of the freegan movement in the United States and England has ranged from elitist fears of whether it "look[ed] right for a Times journalist to be seen 116

rummaging in bin-bags,"4 to articles stressing the logic of freeganism, referring to the practice as "the most direct form of anti-consumerism."5 Those articles that move beyond the spectacle of dumpster diving tend to focus on the economic context of freegan activism.6 Bones, like Jones above, found that a typical household 14 per cent of all food purchased and that 15% of that includes products that were tossed, unopened, before there expiration dates had even passed. He writes:

"[a] 1997 study by the US Department of Agriculture estimated that the US wastes about 43 billion kilograms of food a year. That is about 27 per cent of US production, but the true figure is as much as 50 per cent, according to ten years of research by Timothy Jones at the University of Arizona. 'The No 1 problem is that Americans have lost touch with what food is for,' Professor Jones said. 'We have lost touch with the processes that bring it to the table and we don't notice the inefficiency.'" 7

Looking at Australia's waste, Gartrell reports:

"[a] recent study by environmental group Planet Ark found Australians throw away an astounding 3 .3 million tons of food each year -almost a quarter of our total food supply-mainly because people buy too much. To put that figure into perspective, consider this: according to the United Nations only 7.5 million tons of food aid was distributed to the world's 900 million starving people in 2004 - a little over double what we chuck out. 118

4 David Rowan, "The Next Big Thing," Rowan 2005

5 Jenny Kleeman, "Food for Nought: Jenny Kleeman lifts the lid on London's anti-consumerist, food foraging 'garbage geeks,"' Time Out, October 12, 2005, www.lexisnexus.com (accessed October 26, 2006); Laurie Essig, "Fine Diving," Salon.com, June 10, 2002, http://www.salon.com/mwt/feature/2002/06/1 O/edible _trash/print.html (accessed October 26, 2006).

6 James Bones, "Why the middle classes go scavenging in dustbins," The Times, November 26, 2005, http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/O,, 11069-1891251,00.html (accessed November 2, 2006); Adam Gartrell, "Fed: 'Dumpster Divers' eat from bins to protest against waste," Australian Associated Press, July 22, 2005, www.lexisnexus.com (accessed October 26, 2006); Megan Greenwell, "Diving for Dinner," The Washington Post, B- 85, August 16, 2006; Jeff Shantz, "One Person's Garbage," 2005; Leslie Siegle, "Is 'freegonomics" really an option?" Observer, February 5, 2006, www.lexisnexus.com (accessed October 26, 2006).

7 James Bones, "Why the middle classes go scavenging in dustbins," 2005.

8 Adam Gartrell, "Fed: 'Dumpster Divers' eat from bins to protest against waste," 2005. 117

Gartrell notes the important terminological distinction common among freegans: they aren't "stealing" from the dumpsters, rather they are "liberating."9 Essig writes that

"dumpster divers are the most logical subset of the anti-globalization activists because they live in a way that does not create any demand for goods and therefore their lives do nothing to propagate the very system they are protesting." 10

In October 2007, Benno Schmidt from the CBS Early show went on a trash tour for a segment on freeganism. He and his cameraman, Mark, were setting up when we arrived. When he saw Janet, he smiled, "I saw you in the LA Times!" His camera man,

Mark, was busy determining lighting and angles when Christian rolled up on his bike wearing a Viking helmet.

Adam stressed, both in front and behind the scenes, the desire to change the discourse of interviews at trash tours away from what we most like to find and more towards political analysis. "Industrial capitalism is killing our planet," he said. He worked to steer the conversation beyond the dive and into other freegan activities like squatting and sharing.

We moved on to the bagel store and Schmidt set up for the money shot. He didn't do any diving at the grocery store with the mixed food; he spent that time doing interviews. Mark placed the camera in front of the plastic bags and Benno knelt on the ground, discreetly sliding his notebook under his knee to keep his pants from hitting the ground.

9 Megan Greenwell, "Diving for Dinner," 2006.

10 Laurie Essig, "Fine Diving," 2002 118

A little over a week later, Schmidt introduced his report alongside CBS Early

Show host Harry Smith in their outdoor studio. He began by saying some of the freegans, whom he described as "a loose cross between vegetarians and anti-capitalists," had a

"serious message." The voice-over noted that while freegans dig through the trash, most of them are not homeless: "Some of them are, in fact, educated professionals choosing to forage for their meals." The three-and-a-half minute segment focused exclusively on dumpster diving, normalizing the act of finding "edible treasures," by noting how dumpster diving is practiced all over the United States and approved by doctors, assuming diving is practiced safely, avoiding rotten food.

The Early Show's coverage of freeganism wasn't overtly negative, but it didn't get at the heart of the freegan critique of capitalist consumption. (Schmidt describes them as "anti-capitalist" but that's the only time we hear capitalism referenced.) Ultimately, the segment ends by resorting to the stereotype: freegans really are just about getting something for free. "The biggest scare for these freegans?" the voiceover asks as we see freegans rushing to close bags. "Trying to stay ahead of that urban freegan nightmare ... the garbage truck."

As the taped piece ends, we return to Schmidt and Smith in the studio. "Ok, so I saw you out there with them, but did you actually eat with them?" the host asked, leaning m.

"I did eat; actually, we had to cut it out for time purposes. But I did eat," he replied.

Most mass media coverage does not interrogate the larger issues which freegans protest. Print journalism seems to offer deeper analysis, while television pieces focus on 119

the potentially shocking images of individuals digging through the trash. The most egregious of those examples were the television spots. Freegans talked openly about how diving was the "hook" most reporters used to gain viewer interest in the story. ABC

Nightly News was scheduled to attend a dive one particular night but cancelled at the last minute. "I think a lot of places have 'freegan' stories on the back-burner for slow news cycles. They run us when they don't have anything else shocking or scary and if something better comes along we get dumped," one member theorized.

The media working group eventually took on more responsibilities. Having been burned by negative "gross out" stories written about them which focused on someone eating straight out of the garbage, or attending a meeting and writing details about internal tensions out of context, they created strict rules about what, when, where and how media interactions would occur. The media was barred from attending organizational meetings and "trailblazes," events where they did exploratory dumpster dives in new areas. All stories and interviews were scheduled through the working group and limits were placed on how many reporters could be at each sanctioned event. In addition, they agreed on a "rule" in which they wouldn't eat the food recovered on dives if a camera was present.

There was press videotaping the freegans during my first dumpster dive. We had just stopped at our second supermarket.

"Psst!" Adam and Nora were gesturing towards Wendy. She was munching on a bagel and they reminded her that they don't eat when there is media present. I asked

Adam why and he said they'd been burned by the media before. "Sometimes," he said vaguely, "they tum seemingly innocuous things negative." Later, Cindy also started to 120

eat, an apple this time, when Adam reminded her about the reporter. She waved him off.

"There's only one camera and I know exactly where it is," she said.

The media group held special sessions for new people interested in being interviewed for freegan stories and discussed bringing in a "Green media" trainer to help them ensure they were getting the types of messages across they intended. The consensus, though, was that the group needed to decide internally what messages those were, before bringing in a trainer. "We're all in different places" Cindy said, regarding what they thought their media problems were. Jess, a college student majoring in sociology, was working as the freegans media intern, 11 agreed with Cindy. "We don't want a trainer to tell us what we want, we want a trainer to help us get what we want," she said.

Determining the discourse around freeganism, particularly at the trash tours, could be a daunting task. Attendees were often stuck on the spectacle of eating out of the garbage, seeming to ignore the larger message about capitalism and waste. Freegans recognized and instituted ways to try to get the political and social message to sound above the din of the garbage cans.

12 During one tour, Michael gave the "wave the banana, " in front of a television crew. "I enjoyed it, I had a big crowd. It was a little weird because other people were passing and it was kind of strange not to know how much attention you have. And at that

11 Wetlands Preserve had an internship program for college students interested in progressive organizing. As a media intern for freegan.info, she was tasked with organizing and data-basing stories on freeganism.

12 That's what freegans called the speech that was given at each trash tour about waste. See Chapter I for more details. 121

time I didn't realize it, but you are literally mostly talking to people who know you and already know what you're saying," he said. "Yeah, you're talking to the media people, but they're going to cut the message. So mostly what you're saying is to 90 percent of those people who have heard this over and over again."

In order to help build on the waste concerns evidenced at the trash tours, freegans also allowed media to attend their feasts. Partly this was to showcase that the food's natural conclusion didn't reside in the trash; the audience sees the food in the dumpster and then they can see it transformed into delicious casseroles. But the feasts also served as an alternative image to the spectacle of middle-class folk digging through the garbage.

It was one of many freegan attempts to control the discourse surrounding them.

In addition, freegans hoped to highlight the communal aspects of freeganism, the sharing and reciprocity, as freegans opened their homes and pantries. While the freegan critique of waste was most visible in relation to the food reclaimed on the streets, they offset the spectacle of food reclamation, untying garbage bags under the glaring lights of midtown Manhattan, with images of men and women gathering in the warmth of a kitchen to prepare a community meal.

Some freegans, though, felt more guarded in the presence of reporters and their cameras. The media could disrupt, or at least challenge, the sense of community they were simultaneously attempting to capture. 13

13 See Chapter 2 for more examples. 122

There was a sense of hesitancy, perhaps better described as a hyper-awareness, when media were present. During one feast at Madeline's apartment in Brooklyn Heights, an ABC news reporter asked us if we could re-enact our first bites due to bad lighting.

"I'm sorry, could you do that again? Just put the casserole back in the ... yeah, like that. Now, can you cheat to your left? Great!"

"Does anyone mind removing the forks and setting the table again? We didn't get it the first time. Oh, no, you don't need to wash your hands ... "

When the media were present, it could often feel like play. Sets were staged.

Actors knew their lines. "It's not even memorized, it's just that it's so rote by now,"

Adam said when asked for his definition of freeganism.

Figure 8. Media At a Feast: On the left, reporters interview two freegan members. On the right, people work around the crews equipment as the sit down to eat.

************************* 123

The image that the media wanted to portray was often at odds with what the freegans wanted. One concern that was continually raised dealt with the homogeneity in terms of perceived race and class. Focusing on their race and class typically went one of two ways: it either legitimized their activism by focusing on how "normal" and

"educated" they were or dismissed them as exploitive for not being marginal enough.

Although there is potentially a larger racial and socio-economic range of members on the freegan online community, 14 it is the active NYC core that gamers media attention and thus scrutiny for its homogeneity. As discussed in the previous chapter, freegan stereotypes propagated by the media and evidenced by their largely white core membership, threatened their larger critique of capitalism and conspicuous consumption.

Many freegans were acutely aware of how the spectacle of middle-class white people digging through the trash could obscure their larger message about waste and conspicuous consumption. The media interest in freeganism was a double-edged sword; as freegans gained notoriety, they also lost more and more control of the message they were trying to get out.

It was physically obvious that the majority of freegans were white, but was this a problem as some suggested, an inevitability as one thought, or an organizational hurdle that could be overcome? Adam suggested that we hold a special meeting about whiteness and white privilege. It was met with mixed reactions.

"My first thought was why should we discuss race?" Michael, one of the most active black freegans said one night while were diving Bagel Bobs in Manhattan. "The

14 Numbers of members of the online fluctuated and I never got accurate numbers or demographic data. 124

first person who approached me with this issue was Adam. I think he wanted more people of color to be involved in the activities. And then my next thought was-that's kind of weird. I think you'll have a hard time convincing anybody to be one [a freegan]. The invitation to these activities is kind of a weird one for anybody." Michael wasn't sure racial diversity was or should be a major priority for the group. "If you say to somebody

[there should be more freegans of color] because, 'I believe in social equality,' that's a hard connection for even me to make. One of the things I think about is priorities. Is it really a priority to have people of color be involved in these activities?"

Nora, on the other hand, was concerned about the homogeneity of the group and the tendency to do outreach among educated upper and middle class white kids. "I'm just sick of how white the group is, I'm sick of how many college kids are involved- maybe that's because I'm a college kid ... but like doing the freegan forum at the New School last year, it. .. I felt really weird advertising about freeganism all over my school. And sure, I would love to spread it to everybody, but. .. I'm more interested in people who face lots of the oppression from capitalism figuring out how to react to that," she said.

Michael opened a black bag and the smell of onions and garlic permeated the air: everything bagels. "It is so many steps removed from. the problem that people of color have more immediately in front of them, which is, put it this way, sure, I can consume food from the garbage that's reducing waste poundage that goes into the trucks that create fumes, that whole story. Maybe I can make a statement about waste of consumption and reduce demand," he said. "Or, I can put my time into getting a grocery store in my neighborhood because I don't have one. Or maybe make sure there's always a fruit stand on the comer. I'm not a poor black person. I'm upper middle class. I know some very 125

poor people, and I listen carefully, but I can only feel tangentially, somewhat so, the immense discomfort, pressure, and difficulty it is to live not having a grocery store in your neighborhood."

Weeks ago when Adam suggested the meeting to talk critically about whiteness, I quickly signed on. The racial homogeneity of the group was striking and I was glad someone wanted to formalize a meeting to address it. Whiteness studies was a major component of my work at American University and I wondered how much overlap there was between scholarly interrogations of racial privilege and what people thought and felt in the real world.

That night as I searched for the deli where we'd decided to meet, I was thinking about Nora and Michael's legitimate concerns about priorities versus the overarching freegan concern about social justice and wondered if they were really all that divergent.

Because freegans were all white, did that mean they represented or reinforced white privilege? Was freeganism, as an anarchist direct action social movement, structurally racist or a critique of whiteness? Why were some members concerned and what did we mean by "whiteness," anyway?

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As a white woman growing up in a metropolitan suburb in Texas I was aware of the racial tensions that ran high in Oak Cliff, the south Dallas suburb known for crime, poverty and a large population of people of color. But race as an issue or an antagonism was never really brought up until someone of color was around. And while attending a predominantly black high school we had our fair share of white teachers espousing the 126

wonderful contributions of black scientists and thinkers in February, 15 race was always something that was talked about as an issue of color. It was a "black thing" in which whiteness was discussed only in reference to slavery and affirmative action, argued by many whites as reverse racism. Issues were never couched in "I, as a white person;" "I" as a woman, "I" as a student, "I" as a variety of other descriptors, but never as "I am white." As Faye J. Crosby notes in her discussion of being a white academic in favor of affirmative action, "I can say with ease 'I am a woman' but find myself choking on the words "I am White. "'16 I was relatively privileged or deprived, depending upon your stance, to not have race figure into my personal identity, and thus I was ignorant of the ways in which it placed me among a larger social paradigm of opportunity, power and choice. Race, I was taught, was something white people dealt with a hundred years ago and black people deal with now. But of course, that's not "our" (white) fault.

"Whiteness" reinforces a series of common sense assumptions, 17 particularly among whites, in which white experience is the referent for all experience. Editors Brown et al. write in Whitewashing Race: They Myth ofa Colorblind Society that the benefits of whiteness have been naturalized.

White Americans may face difficulties in life-problems having to do with money, religion, or family-but race is not one of them. White Americans can be sanguine about racial matters because their race has not been (until recently) visible to the society in which they live. They cannot see how this society produces

15 And only in February.

16 Faye J. Crosby, "Confessions of an Affirmative Action Mama," in Off White: Readings ofRace, Power and Society, ed. Michelle Fine and others, (New York: Routledge, 1997), 182.

17 Norman Fairclough, Language and Power, 1989 127

advantages for them because these benefits seem so natural that they are taken for granted, experienced as wholly legitimate, 18

The merit of whiteness studies revolves around its ability to be critical, analyzing whiteness' role as an oppressive social force whose positioning conveys power, rather than merely another outlet of personal identification. Noel lgnatiev argues that

"Whiteness has nothing to do with culture and everything to do with social position ... Without the privileges attached to it, the White race would not exist, and the

White skin would have no more social significance than big feet." 19 Whiteness isn't primarily about skin color. Whiteness as it pertains to the American dream and the national reality of unequal access to jobs, housing, justice, education, etc. is about power and privilege. The often invisible, or at least unquestioned,20 benefits have become normalized as an automatic right of not being racialized, not being black or brown. 21 The importance of race as a social position22 and the ways in which skin color predicts and

18 Michael K. Brown and others, "Of Fish and Water: Perspectives on Racism and Privilege," in Whitewashing Race: The Myth of Colorblind Society (Berkley, CA: University of California Press, 2003), 34.

19 Roberto Rodriguez, "The Study of Whiteness," Black Issues in Higher Education 16, no. 6 (May 13, 1999): 23.

20 Unquestioned, at least, by many white people- people of color have been questioning these assumptions for centuries.

21 Although, arguably benefits do run on a scale depending on what kind of color. The plight of the Native Americans, Africans, Japanese, Spanish, etc. vary quite importantly, and even within such groups the vibrancy of skin pigment means certain social rewards or restrictions.

22 Adrian Piper "Passing for White, Passing for Black," in Critical White Studies: Looking Behind the Mirror, ed. Richard Delgado and Jean Stefancic (Philadelphia, PA: Temple University Press, 1997), 426. 128

constricts lived experiences is the crux of most critical whiteness studies.23 "The most important feature of being white, then, is not pigment, melanin, or skin color," writes

Brown, et. al. al. "It is, rather, the very close connection between being white and having improved opportunities and life chances."24

The creation of racial categories is an historical process; it is a social construction with material consequences. The tangible effects of these categories define people's opportunities and experiences and the terms of racial discourse in American society has largely been set by the dominant white, middle class power holders. In an article which discusses anti-racist organizing within academia, William Aal25 highlights the importance of focusing on the impact of racist actions on people of color rather than on the intent of the white people involved. Similarly, in wonderfully honest and self-reflexive examination of the dominant image of gay men in American culture, Allan Berube writes:

It's important for me to understand exactly how that racial unintentionality gets constructed, how it's not just a coincidence. It seems that so long as white people never consciously decide to be a white group, a white organization, a white department, so long as we can each individually believe that people of color are always

23 James W. Gordon, "Did the Justice Harlan Have a Black Brother?" in Critical White Studies: Looking Behind the Mirror, ed. Richard Delgado and Jean Stefancic (Philadelphia, PA: Temple University Press, 1997), 444-457; McPherson, Pat McPherson, "The Revolution of Little Girls," in Off White: Readings of Race, Power and Society, ed. Michelle Fine, Lois Weis, Linda C. Powell and L. Mun Wong, (New York: Routledge, 1997), 283-296.

24 Michael K. Brown and others, "Of Fish and Water: Perspectives on Racism and Privilege," 51.

25 William Aal, "Moving From Guilt to Action: Antiracist Organizing and the Concept of Whiteness for Activism in the Academy," in The Making and Unmaking of Whiteness, ed. Birgit Brander Rassmusen and others, (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2001). 129

welcome, even though they are not there, then we do not have to examine our whiteness because we can believe it is unintentional.26

In her examination of race, class and power in , Pem Davidson Buck argues: "What Whites received as wages was interpreted as what Americans received ...

Real Americans were white; in white American eyes what happened to everyone else- including white trash-was simply irrelevant to understanding America.'.27 Viewed uncritically, whiteness, as it pertains to Americanness, needs no clarifier- there African

Americans, Native Americans, Japanese Americans, Mexican Americans-never White

Americans. To say "American" is to say white. So what does that mean to those who are hyphenated? To be the referent to which all others must hyphenate-that is a form of power and privilege that critical whiteness studies are attempting to deconstruct. Faye

Crosby writes: "At whatever 'level' one's family is in the American social hierarchy, it is surely easier to feel in possession of this country when your skin is White than when it is more darkly colored."28

And similarly, many white upper-middle class activists "whitewash" race when they fail to critically examine their structural privilege and power (whiteness).

Freeganism aims to find ways to live sustainably outside of capitalism, but without interrogating what living inside capitalism means for those who are usually denied full access to it, can is every truly be a transgressive social justice movement?

26 Allan Berube, "How Gay Stays White and What Kind of White It Stays," in The Making and Unmaking of Whiteness, ed. Birgit Brander Rassmussen and others, (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2001), 252.

27 Pem Davidson Buck, Worked to the Bone: Race, Class, Power and Privilege in Kentucky (New York: Press, 2001), 175.

28 Faye J. Crosby, "Confessions of an Affirmative Action Mama," 183. 130

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When I finally I arrived, ten minutes late, at the critical whiteness meeting, I was the only person there. I walked through the small, but well stocked grocery store/deli combo that proliferate New York City, marveling at the array of well-lit food items stuffed in every available comer. They had a huge selection of vegan items. I felt guilty for eying the package of faux chicken nuggets right before a freegan meeting: it was kind of unhealthy on a couple of levels.

I made my way up the stairs to the dining area/internet cafe. In the comer was a row of three computers, the kind you need a code or credit card to operate. I had literally just gotten off the Chinatown bus, I'd made a special trip back for the meeting, and I was starting to wonder if my mid-week commute was in vain. I sat next to the railing that over-looked the store and waited.

A few minutes later Adam rolled in on a pair of in-line skates, his back-pack bulging with papers. He didn't own a car and preferred getting around town on his skates because it was faster than walking. His pale scalp was still visible on his recently shaved head, a sharp contrast to his dark, fluffy mustache and goatee.

Adam, perhaps the most active member of the freegan group, was also arguably the most contentious. Although he won't cop to his age, he'd been a major force in the

New York activist scene for almost fifteen years and his passion and ability to go without sleep was unparallel. He worked full time for Wetlands Activism Collective, the "parent organization" of freegan.info, for over ten years and was also a major part of Tradejustice

NYC Metro and Global Justice for Animals and the Environment. 131

For him, the solidarity between anti-racist activism and freeganism was obvious and he'd been pushing the rest of the group to discuss the potential problems and implications of their racial homogeneity. "I've done a lot oftalks at animal rights conferences on challenging institutionalized racism and racist assumptions within the animal rights movement. I set up meetings to discuss racism in the animal rights movement after PETA pissed off a lot of people comparing slavery and animal oppression29 in a way that I felt was heavy on appropriation and light on the solidarity," he said.

Even though several people had said they were going to come to what Adam and I eventually called the "Whiteness Meeting," it was soon clear that it was just going to be the two of us. We decided to go ahead and make notes of things we thought were important and then send them out over the listserv to elicit feedback and hopefully schedule a follow up meeting. Most of the issues were posed in the forms of questions:

• Does freeganism fundamentally present a lifestyle that is only accessible via whiteness or for white people? Can there be a freeganism that is more accessible to others? What does a freeganism conscious of race look like? How do we get there?

• Does our organizational culture operate under recognized white cultural assumptions and practices? What about our politics?

• Do we adequately recognize freegan and strategies for people of color and what can we do to lend more help/assistance/integration of those strategies to our current form of freeganism?

• How can we increase our collaborations with organization of people of color and how can we do more work in diverse neighborhoods and neighborhoods of color?

29 In 2005, PETA created a traveling display which compared slavery to the confinement and abuse of factory animals. 132

• When discussing consumer products, freegan.info often cites the social injustices involved in their production which often disproportionately affects people of color (displacement of indigenous communities, landfills placement, prisons, labor, etc.) How can we act in more direct solidarity with these communities?

• How can we ensure that people of color within our organization feel and have a sense of power and influence in the group?

• Does our group make racist assumptions?

• Do assumptions about wealth and achievement make it easier for white people (or people involved in the institution of whiteness) to opt out of consumer culture and eat garbage? What are the different stakes for people of color to make these same lifestyle choices?30

During our discussion, Adam stressed uncovering the "hidden privileges" of whiteness. In the same way that freegans use the trash tours to bring attention to the wastefulness that usually goes unseen, they also should work on addressing the assumptions and privileges inherent in their activism. We both agreed that an interest in social justice requires an examination of the implicit assumptions and practices of whiteness; "racism is not always overt or 'purposeful,"' we wrote.

The original meeting notes were posted in April and after two months passed, only one person had responded. "My intention," Trevi31 wrote, "is to briefly describe social behaviors as I have observed them, in the US and in other Multi-Racial/Ethnic

Societies. I wish to make it clear that I am not intending to express any prejudice/stereotyping, but rather my own descriptions of various peoples, solely from

30 Excerpt from the April 4, 2007 notes.

31 Pseudonym. 133

my own personal observations ... I am personally convinced that 'Colorlessness' is crucial to inclusiveness in Freeganism, in any aspect of social exchange."32

"Colorlessness" was not the goal of engaging in critical whiteness, but rather an awareness of how race has placed us historically and acknowledgment of the power inherent in white privilege. The familiar insistence that one doesn't "see color" is a popular one among liberals. But to deny color is to deny history and social positioning.

Difference isn't inherently bad; it's how you react to that difference that poses the problem. True inclusiveness, in the progressive sense, celebrates difference as a source of strength.

Trevi explained that s/he did not live in New York City and thus was only involved in the cyber NYC freegan world. S/he wrote: "At the great risk of deviating from the focus of this research33 (for a brief moment), I would like to make an attempt at clarification by introducing a question:"Which Privileged White Americans are we referring to"? The ones in the White-House, the Senate, in the Ivory Towers of Wall

Street, or those described By Michael Harrington in his epic "The Other

America"?(l 962)" Harrington's book could arguably be an example of the importance of whiteness studies: he looks at the "invisible" poor, such as white women, children and minorities, who are left out of traditional political discourse. 34 These are not the folks that

32 Trevi, email to author, May 27, 2007.

33 The emailer wasn't referring to my dissertation research, but rather the research or discussion of whiteness that the meeting notes were attempting to focus on.

34 Michael Harrington, The Other America (New York: Macmillan Publishing Company, 1962). 134

mix well in the melting pot and thus are usually left out of the white middle-class

American imagination.

But the emailer's concern in bringing up Harrington was the tendency to conflate

"whiteness" with all white people, even though they are not homogenous in class, gender or sexuality. The apprehension which occurs over "which" white people are referred to when analyzing whiteness can be problematic. Dr. Maulana Karenga argues that it is vital for people interested in studying whiteness to "focus on concrete expressions of White power, rather than on muddled and mistaken conceptions of self by white people. Key to avoiding these conceptual problems is to focus not on whiteness as a concept, but on

White supremacy as a social problem."35 By moving away from looking at whiteness as an identity and instead as a social position of power, a stakeholder in inequality, it leaves room for white activists to ally with marginal groups.

At one point in the email, Trevi, speaking to whether or not it is easier for people who come from a place of privilege to choose to "opt out" of consumer culture, wrote: " I think it is fair to suppose, that being (manifesting) FreeGan Philosophy, is "Not" for the feint [sic] hearted. It separates one from conventional society, in a comprehensive way, like few other philosophies ever could. There is virtually 'no' room for anyone with traditional assumptions of wealth and achievement." This gets to the underlying problem which makes it necessary for freegans to engage in critical whiteness: freeganism, as a lifestyle, identity or set of practices, operates under the assumption that it is a choice, that we are not conspicuous consumers by nature. And if you have a choice to not operate

35 Roberto Rodriguez, "The Study of Whiteness," 26. 135

within a system of "traditional... wealth and achievement," then that implies you at least in some way have access to that system, which isn't always the case. And for some people who have historically been denied inclusion into the American ideal, who have had to eat out of the garbage by necessity or denied a home-loan because of their skin color, participating in freeganism carries an entirely different set of implications and issues.

Critical whiteness theory and activism emphasizes the importance of understanding whiteness as a socially constructed entity with material and social consequences and also calls for accountability in the white community. Whiteness studies seek to find productive ways to analyze and also hold participants responsible for the implicit ways in which whiteness is tied to systems of inequality. Understanding the historical creation of whiteness, who gets to be white and when, such as David

Roedigger's 36 examination of white ethnics in the United States and Karen Brodkin-

Sacks37 work on the historical inclusion of Jewish people as white, are integral to contesting the righteousness of white privilege. So for groups who have struggled to become socially accepted, because of race, class, gender or , to give up that normalcy means a lot more than to folks to whom it comes naturally and unquestionably. This is true in the case of critical whiteness and critical consumption.

The mythologized "American" is white, middle (to upper-middle) class, speaks standard

American English, and glorifies capitalist consumption. Freegans have worked to de-

36 David R. Roediger, Towards the Abolition of Whiteness, (London: Verso, 1994).

37 Karen Brodkin Sacks, "How Did Jews Become White Folks?" in Race, ed. Steven Gregory and Roger Sanjek, (New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press, 1994), 78-102. 136

naturalize how we understand ourselves as classed consumers but haven't extended that into ways in which we are also racialized consumers.

Most of the freegans avoided any organized discussion of whiteness, despite repeated attempts. A few months after Adam and sent the original notes from our meeting, I resent the meeting notes over the list-serv, at Nora's urging, and asked if anyone would be interested in helping put together a workshop to address issues of privilege and anti-racist practice. The response was minimal; mainly the core members who had already spoken to me about their interest in the idea. Paula38 wrote me an email off-list:

Hi Kelly, This is an issue that a lot of people shy away from speaking on for all kinds ofreasons, including their own oppression, or oppressiveness (whether or not they are aware of it). Nonetheless, there is a significant portion of the population that is interested in a topic like this. Don't be disappointed if you don't get much online feedback. Just go ahead and schedule a meeting or forum. It's like the field of dreams, if you book it, they'll come. You can count me as interested, although I can't yet verify if I will be in attendance. Thank you for giving this issue consideration, and best wishes.39

There was a desire for discussion, but like many freegan projects, it was eventually lost amid scheduling conflicts, obligations to other activist groups and inconsistent support.40

Issues of diversity, access and outreach were continually raised but usually in reference to other events.

38 Pseudonym

39 Paula, email to author, October 10, 2007.

40 See Chapter 5 and Conclusion for more discussion of the problematics of organizing and consensus decision making. 137

Michael described one frustrating experience during a meeting in which the group was talking about hosting a "Trashy Film Night," a screening of documentaries relevant to freeganism. "The first school mentioned was NYU, I think. And it's not that I have a problem with NYU, I think it's a perfectly rational place to go. But I think you had just finished talking about your critical whiteness [meeting], and I was like, there it is!" He clapped his hands together. "Yes, we could go to NYU, we could be guaranteed an audience, we could be guaranteed a space, there'd be no confusion or problems, but we'd be doing nothing to reach out to people of color."

Diversifying the freegan ranks was going to take effort, he said. "You can't invite people to dinner after having run over their legs, taken their shoes and put up a wall around your house, and then when they don't show up be like, 'But I sent you an invitation!' When you reach out to people of color, you have to get up, out of the dining room, break down a wall, provide a wheelchair, and deservedly so," he said.

For freegans concerned with social justice, equality and ending oppression, engagement in critical whiteness is imperative. Anti-racist practices would not perhaps solve inequalities of access and thus participation in freeganism, but it would begin to address some of the discontinuities between freegan rhetoric and action.

"Reaching out means you've got to get up. You've got to reach. It may be hard and not work very well, but you have to sincere in your efforts," Michael said. "And you may be very surprised at the result. I know I'm surprised when I do diversity work; I have assumptions about who would be interested and who would do what, and what kind of answers I'll get, and oftentimes, more people than you know. And this is a city. In a city you have an even greater number of kinds of people. So of the people of color, there are 138

so many kinds of them here that you may find yourself drawing a fairly interesting and large audience. So yes, I do think that conversation does need to happen."

Many of these problems have been hinted at in media representations of freeganism, however not necessarily in the ways members find problematic. The homogeneity, or lack of diversity within the group, is an example of the classed and raced nature of conspicuous consumption and could be an important point of connection with communities of color and the poor. The freegan image isn't the problem, it's the symptom.

"I'm way more interested in providing food for homeless people, you know, or having freegan feasts that community members feel like they could come and have a big community meal, rather than just making the cameraman happy," Nora said one afternoon several months later. We were talking about the trajectory of freegan.info and where she would like to see it go. "And of course, it's great to do media, in some ways, there's education and spreading the message and everything, but we've done that. Maybe we should do that a few times a year and spend the rest of the time, like, OK, how are we giving back to our community, and what are our goals? Education or helping people eat?" CHAPTER6

DEALING WITH DISSENT: DIFFICULTIES

REACHING CONSENSUS

It was late when I got off the subway. Walking up the 81 st street exit I was struck by the quiet, almost clandestine feel of Central Park West. I had been there plenty of times during the day, sightseeing with friends and family, but at 9 o'clock at night, several hours after the museum closed, the empty sidewalks made the grandiose building feel more foreboding than fun for the whole family.

Michael, a freegan who worked as a bio-diversity specialist at the American

Museum of Natural History, had told me to call him when I arrived and he would direct me to a side-entrance. I felt like an anthropological spy who'd won the geekiest kind of lottery-sneaking into a museum after-hours made me a little giddy. The questions tumbled: Would the exhibits look different? Would they be as interesting without having to compete with other patrons to see them? Do they keep their lights on? What does the electricity bill for the Natural History Museum run, anyway?

"Hi Michael. It's me ... "

Just a few minutes after I had snapped my cell phone shut, he ushered me through the darkly lit (but still lit!) Hall of Human Origins. As we walked past an exhibit that traced the evolution of our species from the early Hominidae in Africa, highlighted by six

139 140

million year-old excavated tools, pottery and weapons, I was struck by the importance digging has played in our history. We first dug as a matter of survival; into the ground to plant plants, uncover medicinal roots, create fire pits to cook our food; into mountains to create passageways, search for minerals or for safety against the elements. Some dug in rituals for the dead, some in hope of finding new life. Later, we dug to help uncover what we'd long ago buried-we continue to dig to better understand where we came from and where we're going.

"Come on, through here," Michael stood bemused in front of a camouflaged doorway at the end of the exhibit. My secretive survey of the after hours museum was short-lived as we stepped into the bright light of the museum offices. The cubicle design, cluttered with neon folders, half-full coffee cups and bowls of chocolate candy, reminded me of the non-profits I had worked for. Each cubicle had its own bit of personality and kind of warmth. The meticulous order on the other side of the wall, the perfectly catalogued and tagged exhibits documenting past life juxtaposed against the hectic reality of present-day experience.

We went into a conference room to talk. Michael had a master's degree in environmental policy and was currently working on another master in environmental science. "I live in New York City, in Harlem, and I grew up in upstate New York, a suburb of the New York City metro area. I got to New York City because of school. I ended up doing an internship where I now work, that turned into a job. Otherwise I probably would have lived in Maryland, most likely. I spend a lot oftime there, I have a lot of friends there, a lot more social and community support there than here. It's 141

interesting I ended up here. I never would have expected it," he explained as he settled behind the long table.

Michael was different from other freegans in physical and ideological ways. A large black man, dressed in a pair of khaki slacks and slightly wrinkled polo shirt, he had the messy thrown-together look of your typical intellectual--concemed about how he looked, but not overly. He wore his hair in short dreads that he played with as he contemplated something new, which he often seemed to be doing. Even reclined in the grey plush office chair he exuded energy. He talked a lot but he did it well.

"I want to get a doctorate in public health. Won't go to medical school, but I think public health. Maybe even go to law school, even though that's a secret. Nobody knows that yet," he smiled conspiratorially. "I would like to work in the area of international health, global health. I'm very interested in AIDS-HIV and biodiversity in terms of how incidents, treatment, campaigns, all the social factors that go into that are affected by the

HIV epidemic, how those impact biodiversity conservation and biodiversity in general, and the reciprocal relationship: how what we do on the environmental side particularly with biodiversity affects AIDS in terms of rates, treatment, of the perspective about what

AIDS is or is not, social acceptance, all those sorts of things." 1

When Michael first arrived in New York City, he didn't know many people except his sister and her family in Poughkeepsie. It wasn't until he visited a Really Really

Free Market the previous year that he had ever even heard of freeganism. Living in a

1 Biodiversity refers to the variety of life forms in any given ecosystem and an ecosystem can range from something as small as a culture in a petri dish or as large as the entire Earth. Many scientists like Michael are interested in the intersections between diseases, sociological factors like access to healthcare, class, race and geographic location effect biodiversity. For a great example, see Paul Farmer's Infection and Inequalities: The Modern Plagues (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1999). 142

group house in Brooklyn, he didn't have much money. He and one of his roommates went to the market out of a combination of boredom, curiosity and need. "Somehow I think the fact that I went to the Really Really Free Market and I saw the freegans had a table and were giving out food and that was really impressive to me, because up to that point, I'd thought of New York City as very, very harsh; nobody gives you a damn thing.

And then here these people are giving out food. So I ate some," he said.

A few months later while Michael was babysitting for his sister, he wanted to find somewhere fun, and free, to take his nephew. He went to the website where he originally read about the Really Really Free Market and saw that another one was coming up.

"So I took the kid because, you know, he's not really old enough to have any sense of new or bought or not bought, and I thought people are always throwing away kids' stuff that is perfectly good, like a kid's book or a little stuffed something," he explained, his hands absentmindedly smoothing his shirt. "I thought we can probably go there and get something like that, and if it's a stuffed animal we'll just wash it in the washing machine to be sure, and my plan was to have him pick out something for him and his brother. So that's what we did."

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The first Really Really Free Market was an outcome of the anti-globalization demonstrations during the 2003 Free Trade of the Americas Agreement summit, held in

2003 in Miami, and the 2004 assembly of the Group of 8 held on Sea Isle in Georgia.

Markets then popped up in San Francisco, Minneapolis and Cincinnati.2 The idea behind

2 Colin Moynihan, "An East Village Market Where Everything Is Free Faces an Uncertain Future," NY Times, January 28, 2009, http://www.nytimes.com/2009/0l/29/nyregion/29free.html (accessed March 4, 2010). 143

the markets, where people gather to give away/recycle/repurpose various items, was to challenge the capitalist notion that the transfer of objects necessitates a monetary value as well as highlight how sharing and re-using strengthens communities.

Marx discusses the alienation inherent in capitalist commodity production: workers are estranged from each other and their products of labor, acting more as machine parts of the production process than creative agents who maintain some ownership of the final product.3 Other theorists carry the idea of alienation into the realm of consumption. Social theorist Herbert Marcuse argues that capitalist "free choice" is an instrument of domination, a form of social control which busies us with choosing between gadgets and brands while distancing ourselves from our real desires.4 In particular, he is critical of capitalism wherein liberty is determined to be the freedom to consume. He refers to "false needs" which deceptively placate the masses while distracting their subjugation through consumption. He writes: "The people recognize themselves in their commodities; they find their soul in their automobiles, hi-fi set, split- level home, and kitchen equipment. The very mechanism which ties the individual to his society has changed, and social control is anchored in the new needs which it has produced."5 The "false needs" of new objects is precisely what freegans take issue with;

3 Karl Marx "The Fetishism of the Commodity and Its Secret," in Social Theory: A Reader, ed. Jonathan Joseph (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2005; reprint, from Capital, vol. I, tr. Ben Fowkes, Hormondsworth: Pelican, 1976).

4Herbert Marcuse, "The New Forms of Control," in Social Theory: A Reader, ed. Jonathan Joseph, (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2005; reprint "The New Forms of Control," in One Dimensional Man, Boston: Beacon Press, 1964), 220-227 (page citations are to the reprint edition).

5 Marcuse, Herbert Marcuse, "The New Forms of Control," 225. 144

consumer culture is based on constantly buying newer, but not necessary, commodities and alienating us from each other and non-consumable desires.

Part of the alienation comes from the privatization of consumption, both in terms of food, entertainment and information. Historian Michael Kammen writes about the

1 emergence of mass culture in the 20 h century and the trend towards passive and nonpublic pursuits. The two big fears surrounding mass culture (particularly the rise in popularity of television) is "the standardization of culture as well as its privatization ... and the privatization of social life because comfortably bourgeois people withdraw themselves from involvement in civic affairs."6 Really Really Free Market's focus on community and sharing is one effort to counteract the alienation and privatization of conspicuous consumption.

The New York Market began in 2004 as an annual action organized by In Our

Hearts, an anarchist activist collective, and eventually became a monthly event at St.

Marks Church on-the-Bowery in the East Village. Participants brought any items they no longer wanted or used, ranging from clothes, toys, books, random knick-knacks and tools and placed them around the lawn for others to peruse. Some didn't bring objects, but rather donated free haircuts, legal advice or knitting classes.

Objects and services at the market cannot be bought or bartered for. In a 2009 article in the New York Times, Colin Moynihan wrote: "One of [the] volunteers,

Thadeaus Davidson, 28, from Bedford-Stuyvesant, said he thought the market fostered a

6 Michael Kammen, American Cultures, American Tastes, 201. 145

sense of community. 'There's no stress or financial pressure," he said. "There's a healthy spirit of mutual aid."' 7

When I attended my first Market, I was expecting it to be like a lot of garage sales and swap meets I'd visited in the past: tinges of that certain, weary vibe you get from people who've been lugging their stuff outside early in the morning; the uneasiness of looking through others' castoffs; folks eyeing you if you didn't pick up something of theirs. We have such an odd, schizophrenic connection with our old objects- we don't necessarily want them, yet we often drag our feet when it comes to throwing any of it out.

When we finally do decide to get rid of things, it's tempting to take offense when someone doesn't want something we designate as trash. Is it postmodern nostalgia for objects that have been wrapped up with aspects of our identity? (Am I old and stodgy now that I gave away my "Texas Cowgirl" lunch box? What happens to the strong willed feminist once I part with my Donna Haraway collection?) Is it some call-back to the our past when we reused objects until they wore thin, or is it that our culture is producing so much stuff that we can't keep up?

The Really Really Free Market in some ways attempted to break those bonds we have with things and strengthen connections between people. Stuff is just stuff, there if someone needs it, but without the uneasiness or pressure that comes with trying to give monetary value to memories. The playful nature of the event, people dressed in wild colors and unconventional, homemade styles were indicative of other direct actions: street theatre events with elaborate puppets, (now Billionaires for

7 Colin Moynihan, "An East Village Market Where Everything Is Free Faces an Uncertain Future. 146

Wealthcare), Radical Cheerleaders, etc. It was a celebration of difference, of being outside and challenging the norm of the consumptive middle class. It was part carnival and part community action meeting.

Figure 9. Really Really Free Market Sign: A chalkboard at the entrance to the Really Really Free Market reads: "Welcome to Freedom! Anarchist World Fair/Really Really Free Market. Friends. Food. Pinata. Clothes. Yoga"

Luckily that November day was bright and sunny and only a little chilly. When I walked in there were blankets set up all over St. Marks yard covered with various pieces of clothing. In the middle, the freegans had set up four tables and were busy filling them with packages of crackers, cheese, cookies and bagels. I was there to help prepare and distribute food we had dumpstered the night before. As I walked through the crowd of 147

Figure 10. The Market at St. Marks: On the left, Madeline and Wendy in St. Marks kitchen preparing food to serve at the Really Really Free Market. On the right, people walk around the grounds looking at free goods.

Figure 11. Bikes and Bites: On the left, the freegan bike workshop set up a blanket with free bikes and bike parts. On the right, market attendees try the dips and bread at the freegan food table. 148

Figure 12. Checking Out the Goods: On the left, the freegan food table included salad, fresh fruits, pasta and tea. On the right, the window sills on the wall of St. Marks served as a display case for free items.

Figure 13. Education and Outreach: The Freegan Workshop area at the market was a place for people to get bikes and bike parts but also learn about free workshops and freegan activities. A sign on one of the bikes read "Free : Ask." 149

forty or so people, I smiled when I saw so many familiar freegan faces. Cindy, who'd already made the rounds at the Market, was piling a couple of sweaters on top of her backpack which lay against the tree.

Across the lawn, I saw Madeline scurrying away from a set of double metal doors.

She was holding a steaming casserole dish and was dancing through the crowd, trying not to spill. After she deposited the pasta on one of the folding tables, I followed her back into the St. Marks kitchen- a surprisingly wide and well stocked space at the back of the church grounds.

We spent the first hour or so of the event ferrying pots of spaghetti, soup and roasted veggies from the steamy kitchen to the chilly table outside. I had brought some salad and fruit from the previous night's dive while others brought breads and spreads they'd made at home. Madeline, known as the most proficient cook and frequent host of freegan dinners, made an amazing baba ganoush from the pounds of eggplant we'd found that week. Passersby raved about the dip, asking for the recipe-"Oh, I just threw some spices together. What's really amazing is that all of this was thrown away, perfectly edible food ... " she would explain, handing them a freegan calendar. Providing food at the market served two purposes for the freegans: it met the immediate goal of providing sustenance out of food that had been classified as waste, while also being an educational outreach event about the concerns and goals of freeganism.

In addition to providing food, they also set up a space with bicycles and bike parts from the workshop. Christian had brought several bikes to give away and interest for them was so high that he created a waiting list. It was at the market that many folks first 150

learned of the free bike maintenance workshops given by the freegans and Time's Up, the direct action environmental group that organizes Critical Mass bike rides.

It was at a market with his nephew where Michael first talked to a freegan. "The freegans were there again and they had food, and the thing that caught me was this one woman - Madeline, who rides a bike, caught my eye, because she seemed the most normative out of the group and because she rode a bike and she seemed easy to talk to .. .I talked to her and asked her what the freegans were about and she gave me the details and

I'm sure she gave me a calendar, and at that point I was like, well, I can cut down on my budget ifl don't' have to go buy food. That's what I was thinking, because it was really bad, I was about to be kicked out of the house. So, yeah, just because I'm cheap, I went to a meeting," he shrugged.

It was dumpster diving as a survival technique that initially drew Michael to freeganism, but it was the sociality of the group that kept him going long after his financial situation improved. "I consider them my first set of friends that I met here," he said. "Freeganism is a social activity - when I get the chance to speak publicly, I say we do things together, it makes us sound a little more organized than maybe we are, since plenty of people don't dumpster dive with us, but for me it is a very social activity, the fact that I can be with other people. And in fact, the last couple times I didn't get anything out of the garbage, I just wanted to hang out and be there."

Although he attends some organizational meetings and dumpster dives, Michael doesn't identify as a freegan. "I've started to use that title because it helps to easily explain my behavior to those who don't really know what I'm doing, particularly the food thing. Like, ifl just tell people I eat food out of the garbage, it sounds like a singular 151

individual moment of craziness, rather than, freeganism, that says, 'No, it's organized, it's got focus and a point and rules and regulations.' That's how I'll actually set it up in a conversation," he said. "lfl want to shock someone, I say 'I eat food out of the garbage.'

But if I want to explain it more, I will say I'm a freegan, and that invites them to ask the question, what is that?"

His view of freeganism rests on a desire to create less waste, to challenge what is considered the "natural end" for products. "The consumer believes the natural end of that material is what probably has been marketed to that individual,' he explains. 'My grandmother died, I don't need any more dishes, that is a natural end to that material,' or

'I ate some of the salad, it's done, it's not fresh anymore. It goes in the garbage. That's a natural end.' Freeganism is re-consuming that product; maybe you eat the salad and use the container. Its end is not defined by what it has been marketed to be. Its end is defined by the number of human innovations that can be placed on that product."

Unlike other freegans I spoke with, Michael said he didn't consider freeganism to be a form of activism. He had previously been involved with the Bronx PRIDE center, a

GLBT organization that focuses on being a resource for GLBT people in the Bronx, particularly people of color, helping design a tutoring program, chaperoning events, otherwise pitching in where needed. Most recently he was involved with an organization that offered fellowships to Latino and African Americans who write and perform music.

But regarding his freegan activities, Michael was skeptical of the activist title.

"To call yourself an activist and identify that way ... you do have to commit to that. People always say 'I'm an activist; I'm committed to X cause.' And I think that's part of the quote, "You can't be an activist tourist." And I haven't really had a 152

commitment. I've had a commitment to some things, but it's not very apparent," he paused a moment and leaned back in his chair. Being an activist, he said, meant that you had to do work that was transformative. "[An activist is] (s)omebody who takes action that is risky and makes apparent systematic failures and problems that people have either ignored or don't know exist. And they do so quite boldly and are known for it. I have a hard time thinking of someone as an impermanent activist, like, can you be an activist in the moment? I don't know. To me that doesn't ... no. I don't think so."

Michael's definition of an activist places activism as an aspect of identity; it's something fixed that you are instead of something that you do. Other freegans have different interpretations. Nora also sees activism as an identity but in much more fluid terms, based on intent and solidarity than with a particular set of practices. "I still feel that so much of activism is based on compassion and just the activation of that - like, I care, I see homeless people on the street, or I see some kind of moment of pain and I care ... " she explained. "Maybe that's an abstract notion, maybe I have to say, "Well, you have to work this many hours a week," but no, I don't think so. I think it's more oflike a mindset or a framework than it is how many e-mails you answer a week or what exactly you're doing, because there are different times in our life when it's like, 'oh, are you organizing right now?' Maybe you don't have time for organizing, but maybe you're still an activist because this is what you live and breathe and the community you're in and what you do with your life and your goals."

Cindy similarly focuses on activism as tied to a desire to change the status quo.

For her, though, it's not an identity, but a desire for change. "I think just someone who takes direct action to make the change they want to see in the world [is an activist]," she 153

said. "Basically just trying to change something yourself rather than wait for someone else to do it."

For Adam, being freegan wasn't a conscious choice, but rather a natural extension of his ethics. "For me it started less as any kind of strategic response to capitalism and much more as basically trying to reduce the harmful impacts of my life and feeling like it was simply being very conscientious of what I considered un-crossable moral lines," he said. "I was not OK with being responsible for death and violence and I increasingly realized that was the system that was providing that which I was consuming was based on. It wasn't so much a deliberate stance on identity so much as a reaction. I don't feel like I ever chose to be freegan. To me most of the ethical choices I've made in my life I don't frame as choices."

The line between "being an activist" and participating in activism was partly one of scale. As a gay black man, Michael was on the fringe of mainstream society, yet among the freegans, he was the least "radical." He ate meat, wasn't involved in any animal rights causes and was pro-capitalism. "I wouldn't mind if capitalists said we could make money off waste. Now, that's kind of evil, but I'd prefer that to the waste." He doesn't see capitalism itself as the problem, but rather the way it is practiced. "I'd like to incorporate more socialist policies into the current capitalist system," he said.

The radical aspects of freeganism didn't interest Michael; he was introduced to freeganism by its more mainstream members and even admitted that some of the more extreme freegans might have kept him from being involved."lf a person like Adam, who is deeply connected to those positions, had approached me, I would never have joined them, because I just would have been like, well, this is way too either-or for me. Some of 154

the positions are way on one side of the pole and maybe I compromise too much, but I sort of believe in a more median point of view about economic things and social issues."

The freegans' desire for sustainability and less waste is held by members who identify as anarchist-primitivists as well as those who believe capitalism can be reformed to produce less waste and social injustice; the range of long-term goals can be problematic. Nora, Cindy and Adam, for example, identify as anarchists but, except for

Adam, participate in the economy to some degree. (Adam technically lives at home with his estranged family and isn't employed or in school, so he participates tangentially.)

Janet doesn't claim to be an anarchist but she described her ideal world as made up of small scale communities based on reciprocity and sharing. Michael, a scientist who also had the most first-hand experience dumpster diving out of need rather than politics, didn't believe in nor desire in bringing down capitalism.

"Do I want to bring down capitalism? No." Michael laughed. "I'm not sure humans are actually evolutionarily built, medically built to do something else significantly different ... Do I think it can be brought down? Not explicitly by human organized activity that purposely tries to do that. Am I interested in bringing it down? Not necessarily."

Michael's approach is more in line with recent corporate social responsibility

(CSR) campaigns. "Human short-term vision and activity is probably what will kill capitalism if anything does. Corporations fighting for the short-term profit, politicians thinking about the next election cycle, me needing a computer in the next year, or week.

All this decision making discounts the future, and what's more valuable to me is the now than the long-term. As long as we do that, there's no incentive to do things sustainably," 155

Michael said. For him, capitalism isn't the problem; rather it is the short-sighted way it is practiced now that is the issue. The concept behind CSR is to broaden business' understanding of the "bottom line" and to make concerns over sustainability in terms of the environment and communities at least as important as monetary profit.

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The Utne Reader ran a cover story and several related articles which considered the questions "Is it possible to make money and make a difference?"8 Many corporations have begun to recognize that ethics does play a role in some consumer choices.

According to a 2005 study conducted by the company itself, 8% of Americans refuse to shop at Wal-Mart.9 In order to stem the tide of loss, these "New Capitalists," including

Wal-Mart, are starting to expand employee benefits, sell organic food, and use renewable energy sources; 10 these businesses that champion CSR are attempting a "fundamental shift in the collective understanding of the role of business in society." 11

In 1987 Josh Mailman founded the Social Venture Network, an organization of entrepreneurs attempting to broaden the current capitalist discourse. Instead of viewing profits in purely monetary terms, Mailmen and others practicing CSR focus on reciprocity over corporate self-interest when they speak of the "'triple bottom line:

8 Joseph Hart, "The New Capitalists," Utne Reader, May/June 2006, 38

9 Claudia H. Deutsch. "US: Poll Shows Americans Distrust Corporations," Corp Watch. December 10th, 2005 http://www.corpwatch.org/article.php?id=12863 (accessed January 23, 2008).

10 Joseph Hart, "The New Capitalists."

11 Ibid., 40. 156

people, planet and profits."12 Companies like Puravida, Clifbar, and Amy's are taking into account the environmental and human consequences of their business practices.

In another article in the same issue, attorney and author Joel Bakan argues that

CSR is more of a public relations move which merely appears to serve public needs but doesn't make any real changes. Bakan notes: "The notion of CSR is completely out of sync with the nature of the corporation as a legal institution .. .it's actually illegal for a manager or director to do anything that subtracts, at least in the long term, from shareholder returns." 13 Basically, Bakan argues that the notion of a free market is crap:

"In a deregulated economy, the state remains heavily involved in the economy, but now on the side of the corporation rather than on the side of the citizens and the environment." 14

Still, that particular issue of the Utne Reader is largely celebratory of CSR and the companies that practice it. Issacson 15 highlights smaller companies that "are experimenting with new business models and incorporating sustainability with high ethical standards to make their work places more humane, their products more earth friendly, and their legacy about a lot more than decimal points on a ledger." 16 For example, Organic Valley is the largest farmer-owned cooperative in North America and the second largest producer o organic dairy products. Vancity, a democratically run

12 Ibid., 42.

13 Joseph Hart, "Behind the Mask: Attorney and author Joel Bakan argues that capitalism is beyond repair," Utne Reader, May/June 2006, 49.

14 Ibid.

15 Ibid.

16 Ibid., 44. 157

cooperative credit union in Canada, has nearly$12 billion in assets and over 330,000 customers/bank owners. The moderate approach which calls for corporate social responsibility is more palatable to conservative freegans like Michael. Other freegans, who see their work as a form of activism, are working for larger scale social change.

Embracing multiplicity and the potential contradictions, is one of the postmodern aspects of direct action social movements. People have multiple identities and moments have numerous, equally legitimate, interpretations. Jacques Derrida, considered the father of deconstructionism, coined the term "differance" to challenge the idea of difference being about opposition. He writes: "political choices are often determined by gradations rather than by clearly defined oppositions of the type: I am this or that. No, I am this and that; and I am this rather than that, according to situations and the urgencies at hand ....differance is not an opposition, not even a dialectical 17 opposition; it is a reaffirmation of the same."18

In many ways, this postmodern differance is liberating; it is not based on a fixed identity, but rather is fluid and allows people to participate in a variety of activities. On the other hand, it can also be extremely problematic when it comes to creating social change. When people come together with various needs or goals and without a unifying vision, internal struggles can occur.

17 The term "dialecticial" is used here to refer inherent logical inconsistencies. He's saying differance is not really about difference at all but rather about recognizing the sameness in situations and people.

18 Jacques Derrida and Elisabeth Roudinesco, "Politics of Difference," in For what tomorrow ... a dialogue trans. Jeff Fort. (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2004), 21-22. 158

The freegans are no exception. They are non-hierarchical; there is no fixed leader and they volunteer for roles and positions and practice consensus decision making. The goal of consensus decision making-a model that has been practiced by Mennonites,

Quakers and some Native Americans-is not necessarily for everyone to agree to the same conclusion. Rather, it is a process of discussion which allows each member to express their opinions and concerns in order to reach a satisfactory resolution. Direct action movements have embraced the model because unlike voting, a quantitative method in which there are "winners" and "losers," consensus decision making is qualitative process in which dissenting members opinions are taken into account. 19 It requires mutual compromise. 20

As a Quaker, Michael was familiar with practicing consensus decision making.

"It's a difficult process but it's actually quite lovely. I mean, when I first got involved I was like, 'Oh my god, somebody just make a decision,' but then I realized this was the first time I've had a real voice in all the church decisions," Michael said. "I think essentially we [freegans] are trying to do the same thing, make sure everyone has a voice."

The consensus decision making model included several roles which freegans alternated at each meeting: a time-keeper, note-taker and facilitator. At the end of each meeting, a facilitator for the next bi-monthly meeting was chosen. Typically someone

19 ACT UP: AIDS Coalition Training to Unleash Power, "Civil Disobedience Training," http://www.actupny.org/documents/CDdocuments/Consensus.html (accessed January, 20 I 0).

20 Eden Grace, "An Introduction to Quaker business practice," World Council ofChurches, http://www.oikoum ene .org/en/resources/ documents/wee-programmes/ ecum en ical-movement-in-the-2 I st­ century/member-churches/special-comm i ss ion-on-participation-of-orthodox-churches/sub-comm ittee-i-the­ organization-of-the-wcc-march-2000/03-00-eden-grace-on-quaker-business-practice.html (accessed January 20 IO). 159

volunteered for the role, however if no one did then the person who had least recently facilitated would fulfill the duty. The facilitator was responsible for compiling and distributing copies of the agenda via email before the meeting and in hard copy at the meeting. The agendas included any items from the previous meeting that they didn't get to as well as an estimated time for discussion of each item. During the meeting, the facilitator was responsible for making sure the group stayed on task and that everyone who wanted to speak had an opportunity to speak. Many times, two people would co­ facilitate, with one person concentrating on being sort of an emotional thermometer, gauging how members were reacting to each other and trying to stave off potential inequities of who spoke and how often. Often, the facilitator/s tried to elicit a variety of opinions on a subject if they felt it was too one-sided, typically on the basis of gender and race or in an effort to include the voices of new members.

In order for decisions to be made on agenda items, freegans would often test for consensus with a straw poll. Basically, this was an unofficial "vote" to see if the discussion was working towards a solution they could all deal with. Members could respond in several ways: agree, block or stand aside. "Stand asides" typically didn't feel strongly either way or had reservations about the issue, but not strong enough to block.

Many freegans expressed frustration with the consensus decision making process: not everyone knew or understood the procedures and it was time consuming, ending up with a major backlog of agenda items. As a , Michael and Nora were familiar with consensus decision making, but both noted how many people didn't understand the techniques or the goals. Quakers have a long tradition with the process and their model is used by many direct action groups, including freegans. 160

Adam had been using the consensus decision making model for years in his other activist groups and was more familiar with the process and more accepting of the sacrifice of time it took to reach decisions the whole group could accept. On several occasions he championed taking more time for discussion rather than tabling agenda items until the next meeting.

Referencing a previous meeting about the creation of unified freegan goals, Adam expressed some concerns. "People participated well, but in a lot of ways I was frustrated.

I thought that it epitomized the way that everything wrong with consensus process as used in our group' when a popular idea was blocked instead of saying, 'Ok how do we get consensus?' It just cut down the idea. It allows negative people to cut down the will of the group. We need to reexamine the way that we use it to the point of asking if it is something that we should use at all," he said.

The concern over stagnation or the inability to come to decisions was voiced by all the freegans I spoke with. Agenda items were continually tabled for the next meeting because discussions ran over their arbitrarily allotted time. "Many important things never move forward," Michael said.

Janet said she agreed with the overarching goals of consensus and the importance of everyone having their voice heard, all of which are necessary for a direct action movement which critiques hierarchy and the alienation of capitalism. "I like to hear the way people express themselves in meetings. I think most freegans or people at our meetings sound really eloquent and when they explain things, it helps other see their point of view and understand that they're coming from an intelligent place. You know, 161

we're all different and we have to allow for that, within the freegan community," Janet explained.

But Janet also expressed frustration with the process. "I have trouble with the consensus. Just from my experience, I've gone to so many of these meetings and I feel really frustrated with the meetings. Something comes up that's ... not necessarily a matter of semantics, but it could be a matter of semantics, or one person blocking when everyone else agrees ... I think there needs to be, from a teacher's point of view, I'll put it: There need to be more essay questions and fewer multiple-choice or true-false questions," she said.

The plurality and dedication to true democracy makes direct action social movements like freeganism different and potentially transformative, but it also threatens to make them culturally and politically impotent."Because of the frequent rotation of people, meaning people come in and out of the group a lot, because [the freegans] are just very free about allowing people to become decision makers in a very unofficial way,"

Michael added. "So decisions can be blocked or vitiated quite randomly just by the appearance of someone with a totally different agenda or different set of priorities."

The consensus process was problematic for the freegans and they were continually trying to make it more expedient while remaining egalitarian. While there was a about a dozen NYC residents who made it most meetings an events and comprised sort of "freegan core," other members floated in and out ofresponsibilities. There was also the consideration of non-NYC freegan members who participated in the freegans highly active list-servs. 162

There were three separate but often over-lapping list-servs: "freegan world," which was geared towards non-New York freegans, "freegan NYC discussion" and

"freegan NYC events." At some points, the NYC discussion group was also used to help pass agenda resolutions, but the process became overly complicated. It was difficult for the moderators to keep track of the listserv members; there was a constant ebb and flow of membership. The ideal was for the lists to serve as ways for people to discuss ideas and then they would come to a meeting and make decisions, but it rarely worked out that way.

Part of the problem with the consensus decision making model the freegans used was that not everyone understood how the process worked. "The rules of engagement and decision making have been changed several times and people are not clear about them.

Even though they're often written, they're still really hard to grasp for some reason."

One of the reasons several freegans articulated for the lack of dedication to the consensus process was that of personality issues. Even though freeganism was not an identity based movement, they hadn't addressed the problematic of organizing a group who were bringing different identities and desires to the table.

"There are a lot of strong personalities and individuals within this group and I think we have some problems relating to each other sometimes even though one on one and not in meetings I think most of us like, respect and enjoy each other's company,"

Janet said. "But then, I find some of our meetings tedious and difficult. I'm not very confrontational and I don't get personal, and I get upset when people do get personal and

I think that's one of our downfalls is that people place blame instead of keeping things 163

more with the eye on the big picture of what is freeganism, and how do we accomplish what we want to?"

"I don't know what the solution to that is, necessarily," Michael said during our interview at the museum. "There are personality issues; I know that's one of the problems, that people don't mitigate their personality in order to move things forward."

Nora agreed. "It's really hard to tell people that they need to work on themselves.

Ideally, they need to choose it ... a big problem is the lack ofreflection that goes on," she said.

"Personality conflicts" and "interpersonal dynamics" at times seemed code words that veiled the underlying problem of a lack of unified vision. Months before I arrived, the freegans had attempted a meeting to gain consensus on their goals but they never reached consensus. Occasionally someone, usually Adam, would broach the topic of holding another goals meeting.

"I'm really anxious about these meetings. I already saw how they worked and the way they worked - we never finish them; we end up tabling, we never finish a goals · meeting and of course things have to come down to semantics sometimes. That's the way it is when you're putting something on paper. But it just feels conflicted and there are different goals within the group," Janet said. "And I think it's important we have some sense of goals as a freegan group but it worries me because there are times when somebody might show up, and this has happened, that might really just throw a wrench in the whole discussion by disagreeing, by blocking, by adamantly feeling differently than everybody else." 164

Nora also had problems with the meeting process, although she agreed that "we should have a goals meeting. I went to some of them a year and a half ago, and they were atrocious," she told me one late fall afternoon. "They were done in this really weird specific way, where people had to write sentences out, and they were just brainstorming sentences, and then the next thing they read out the sentences, which was just like people's random thoughts. They were really vague, and people had to say yes or no and it got down to semantics."

Adam felt especially strongly about the need for a unified goal statement. "We do not have basic consensus on what our goals are, and it is impossible to have a strategy without goals. I think absent a vision, you can't have goals, absent goals, you can't have a strategy. Absent a strategy, you can't plan tactics in any kind of effective way because there is no measure of what is effective. And absent any of those things, you're basically wanking under the guise of politics, something I have no interest in," he said. We were talking upstairs at a deli after a freegan meeting. "I got involved and started freegan.info with a moral imperative to try to facilitate people shifting away from destructive lifestyles, with the idea that if we shift enough people in that direction we could help collapse the economy that is destroying the world, and I feel like freegan.info has become a recipe for stagnation."

There were several subjects which were divisive for the freegans. For example, even though most said they agreed that fundamentally everyone has a right to shelter, food, clothing and safety, they differed on whether or not they supported breaking the law to secure them. "Housing should be free," Nora told me. "It's a right. As for stealing, I feel weird saying, oh yeah, stealing is great. To me it's not about, oh stealing is great, it's 165

about how the system doesn't provide for our basic needs and we need to figure out ways to provide for those needs ourselves. I don't have a problem with people fucking over the system and stealing from big places." Not everyone felt that way though, and many drew the ideological line at stealing.

The issue of animal rights was contentious as well; not all freegans were vegetarian, but many felt that animal welfare was an essential element of a commitment to non-violence and sustainability. Others, like Michael and Madeline, ate meat and didn't see it as incongruous with the freegan goals ofless waste.

In order to better organize and coordinate with freegans outside of NYC, the idea of creating freegan chapters was brought up on several occasions. What thwarted any forward momentum on that, however, was disagreement over guidelines on how to treat animals found at dives. Madeline felt especially strongly about the need for chapters.

"We need to organize people who view freeganism like we do," she said. Unfortunately, there wasn't a unified "we;" Adam said he would continually block the creation of chapters until the charter included wording about ensuring animal welfare.

Antagonisms between members, based on personalities or political , was time consuming and problematic. Michael echoed a sentiment that many freegans expressed: they needed better communication. "Quakers will take time to listen," he said.

"They officially will say, OK, we're going to stop talking now and sit here and think.

And it works. At first I thought it was ridiculous. I already know what I think. But you don't think about what you think. You go, I know what I think, but what do they think?

... 'Do I really understand what this other person is saying? Do I really understand what they want or need?' It seems so easy to communicate, but it really isn't." 166

During a meeting in November, 2007, Leia proposed an agenda item to discuss the group's interpersonal dynamics. We were sitting in a courtyard near Murray Hill;

Christian, , Adam, Janet, Jessica, Wendy, Leia, Jess and I, gathered in circle. Leia said she was concerned that personal conflict "gets in the way of getting things accomplished" and that there was no way to hold people accountable for how they were being treated.

"I'd like to set up a meeting or a workshop where we can work all of this out," she said. Her tone, initially hesitant of the touchy subject, became bolder. "I want us to make people feel empowered and feel like they have a voice in this group." She looked around the circle, meeting our eyes.

Christian spoke first. "I think we need a marriage counselor." I laughed. You could feel the tension, the air stuffy and confining, even though we were sitting outside.

"Maybe we consistently need an outside person because it's hard to compartmentalize when you're involved," Wendy suggested. The idea of having an outside facilitator had been discussed before.

"What about Autumn?" Cindy suggested, referring to a consultant they'd had attend their meetings the year before to help them with consensus decision making.

Quinn said he could check with his friend, a life coach, to see if she might be interested in helping them out.

"Some people don't want to come to meetings," Wendy said, implying that the internal issues were limiting their membership.

Leia offered to be a point person for establishing a working group. 167

When I left New York City and the freegans a couple months later, there hadn't been any more development on the project, though. Although many voiced support, they couldn't seem to address the internal schisms and that, many admitted, hindered their effectiveness as a group. CHAPTER 7

CONCLUSION

The exploration of contradictions always lies at the heart of original thought. David Harvey1

It was the first day of November and the freegans were arriving for an organizational meeting. There was a little over half a dozen of us sitting around a dirty

Formica table on the second floor of Village 38, a deli on 8th Avenue. Several people were talking about wanting to organize a dive in the Garment District down the street.

Christian and his on-again-off-again girlfriend Emily had laid out several items on the table: a hat, a sweater and a pay-as-you-go T-Mobile Boost phone they'd found on the street, a pile of stuff for the taking. As more people arrived, more stuff was added and then taken from the pile, until only the phone remained. No one seemed to want it.

I looked down over the railing. Rows of hot food bars with steamy sneeze guards lined the floor surrounded by stacks of plastic to-go containers. The salad bars were bright palettes of color: neon green lettuce, fire red tomatoes, and rich purple beets. I love this Displays of pre-packaged cellophane treats made of chocolate, salt and maltodextrine were scattered around like obstacles in a video game; pac-people meandered from aisle to aisle, either unable to choose from the cornucopia or just bored. I laughed; "Hungry like the wolf' was playing quietly over the loudspeaker.

1 David Harvey, The Condition ofPostmodernity: An Enquiry into the Origins of Cultural Change (Oxford: Blackwell, 1989), 345. 168 169

Jess arrived and handed everyone a copy of the agenda for review. Tonight was her first time facilitating although she had been with the group for several weeks.

"There's a big media back-up," Cindy began, eyeing the calendar that sat in front of her. She suggested adding another freegan feast to the one we already had scheduled for the end of the month.

Janet pulled the master calendar out of her bag. The ninth is free, she said, and we could do a tour the night before.

"I'd be willing to host something small at my place," she added.

Adam chimed in. "We always have media at 'Leave it to Beaver' homes," he said.

"I'd like to have it at different places."

"We could do it at my place," Christian offered. He was currently living in a rent strike apartment. Emily and Leia, newer but increasingly active members of the group, nodded their heads in agreement. Emily was a quiet, seemingly reserved young woman, petite and fashionable in a freegan-grunge kind of way. Leia was larger, both in body and personality, and was more outspoken about her anti-capitalist politics.

"I don't know if we want to draw attention to that aspect of freeganism," Cindy said, tucking her long hair behind her ear. Many freegans worried that the illegal freegan practices would delegitimize the group as well as alienate more mainstream people from exploring freeganism.

Adam furrowed his brow, he was getting upset. "I would block that," he said. He was against an attempt to make a rule about what kind of places were ok to have the media. He looked around at the rest of the group. 170

Janet said she agreed with Cindy, noting that not all freegans supported rent strikes. Rent strikes were a divisive issue; some considered it stealing and others felt it was a legitimate rejection of the commodification of space. Disagreements over whether or not stealing and rent strikes should be promoted as freegan activites highlighted the rift between anarchist freegans who worked to eradicate the distinction between public and private, and more mainstream members who wanted to make legalized, state sanctioned changes.

As the media intern, Jess had been working on archiving media coverage of the freegans. She brought up her concern about how the media would portray them if they had a feast at Christian's.

"It's a problem of who gets to tell the story," she said, reminding everyone of how often the media leave out the political or social reasons for their actions to focus on the spectacle.

"We don't have a certain image to portray," Leia argued emphatically as the group began to take sides on how they believed freeganism should be presented.

"We don't have time to discuss this," Cindy interrupted, trying to return the discussion to the original topic of scheduling an extra dinner.

Adam nodded in support. He proposed going ahead and scheduling a small dinner at Janet's on the ninth. "We'll have an image discussion later," he said.

Everyone agreed. "Who can commit to a dive the day before?" Janet asked.

Several people raised their hands and it was decided they would do a tour of the village, meeting up at Bagel Bobs at 9:30 p.m. 171

We continued down the agenda, discussing another freegan forum which would be held NYU later that month. It was scheduled for the same night as the bike maintenance workshop which meant it would mostly be freegan dumpster divers in attendance. It was a repeated problem for the freegans-they took on so many projects that the conflicts compromised their mission. Having representatives from the bike workshop helped round out their "off the grid" message against capitalist consumption; without them the discourse remained centered on dumpster diving.

Later, the freegans were talking about new areas to trailblaze when Wendy suggested Ridgewood, a neighborhood in Queens, where she'd found lots of fabric.

"How is the food in Ridgewood?" Cindy asked. Typically good areas for fabric or electronics didn't have very fruitful food dumpsters.

"I would love it if more tours were focused on things other than food, because some people are really turned off by food," Adam said. Many passerby at dumpster dives said they agreed with what the freegans were doing in theory, pointing outexcess waste, but they just couldn't get behind the practice.

"We focus on food because that's our expertise," Cindy countered.

It was going to be necessary for them to either broaden their expertise or bring in new members who could extend their consumption concerns. Emily and Michael, for example, brought up the idea of doing dives at the Apple Store and other electronic shops in the area. They decided to hold a working group meeting to discuss the logistics.

"Next we have the Really Really Free Market report back," Jess announced.

Many of the members present had been at the St. Marks event and all voiced different concerns or praises. 172

"We were worried about not having enough food, but it turned out fine," I said.

Cindy agreed about the food going well, but voiced concern about how stressed out Nora had been by the event. Not everyone who committed to helping with the market showed up and a lot of the responsibility fell on Nora, who lived nearby. She wasn't at the meeting that night, but Cindy said she just wanted to remind everyone to follow through on their commitments.

Adam agreed. "I got stuck cleaning up everything," he said. Everyone left and he was the one dealing not just the leftover food, but all the unclaimed items at the market.

"How can we keep this from happening?" he asked.

"We need better pre-planning," Wendy said. She suggested coordinating with the organizers, In Our Hearts, beforehand to decide how all the surplus would be dealt with.

Just as Janet was about to make a suggestion, a short man in a button down shirt walked over to the table and asked us what we were doing.

"We're having a meeting. We're not doing anything wro ... " Adam tried to explain.

"These tables are reserved for customers," he said, politely asking us to leave.

After a bit of discussion, the group decided to head out rather than start any trouble.

"We desperately need to scout new places," Cindy said, shaking her head as she put her notebook in her bag. This was the second time in six months that they had to move in the middle of the meeting.

We walked around and ended up in a grassy courtyard between two office buildings. There was a little concrete alcove where we crouched on the ground, protected 173

from the wind by short, thick gray walls. We lost a few of the newer people during the move, and the smaller group made a perfect circle.

Evaluation of the Really Really Free Market continued. Christian said the bike section went so well that there was a waiting list for the "fancy bike" they were giving away. "It was really fun and not stressful because I didn't have to teach anything," he said. Lots of people took bikes and bike parts, but many also dropped stuff off as well.

Discussion moved onto the bike workshop fundraiser which was scheduled for the following night. The workshop had recently lost its Manhattan location but found a new home in a community space in Bed Stuy, Brooklyn. The new building had more amenities but also required that they pay rent, so they planned an event to help raise money and awareness about the new shop.

"So we've got four bands scheduled and we need people to help out at the party, taking money at the door, setting up the sound system, bartending, etc.," Christian said, glancing around the group.

"Oh! We're going to have real alcohol there? Cool," Leia said, offering to work behind the bar. "Oh wait, that's tomorrow night?" she asked, not realizing the date before she volunteered. She said she wasn't sure she could make it. Several other members also said they'd like to help out but couldn't promise they'd be there, either.

"Whoever can, just show-up and volunteer," Christian said, seemingly not too worried about being short-handed.

Adam interjected. "Wait, can we go back? I don't support the discriminatory policy of carding. Are we carding? Because if so, I don't think we should serve alcohol," he said decisively. Everyone turned and stared at him. 174

"We have to card because cops are all around and we could lose the space," Cindy said. Christian, Emily and Wendy agreed. They hadn't been at the Brooklyn building that long and they didn't want to jeopardize the workshop or the community center by getting busted by police.

"And if you get rid of the alcohol," Cindy continued, "you lose a lot of your fundraising money."

Adam stood his ground. Solo. No one supported either not carding or not serving liquor.

"It's already been advertised, people are expecting it," Christian said and everyone except Adam nodded in agreement.

Janet tried to move the planning forward. She offered to bring a lot of ones to make change for the entrance fee and alcohol sales.

"Great! Also, if anyone has any food they want to donate, please bring it,"

Christian said. "I think ... "

"Wait," Adam interjected. "I don't think enough people have voiced an opinion on the liquor issue." A few folks rolled their eyes. Michael let out a half-laugh, half- moan.

"It's not our law," Leia said. "It's unfortunate, but it's not our law," she said, referring to the legal drinking age.

"I don't think it's discriminatory if we still allow underage people in," Wendy added.

"I fundamentally disagree," Adam replied, shaking his head. 175

"I want to support the party," Janet said. If not allowing minors to drink became a freegan issue, they would have to remove their sponsorship and official participation in the event. She didn't see it as an issue which warranted the removal of freegan support.

"I think it's interesting that you pick this as an issue to fight against," Michael said, shaking his head. He supported serving liquor legally at the party and was frustrated that Adam wouldn't let the issue go.

Cindy interjected; the debate was turning personal. "This was brought up at the last meeting," she said. "We should have vetoed it then."

"The specific issue of liquor wasn't brought up at the last meeting," Adam countered. Following the consensus procedure, he made an official declaration. "I move to not have alcohol at this party."

He looked around expectedly. Usually after a movement is made, a straw poll is conducted to gauge consensus.

Christian was visibly upset as he sat up higher on his knees. "We're arguing about nothing. It's going on, we've invited people and flyers are out." He said he was trying to be open, but his voice was tense. "Next time we'll try to have a better consensus for the next event," he said. "But the event goes on no matter what."

People started to talk over each other, creating separate heated conversations. A couple of members said they were annoyed because the discussion was happening the night before the event which was too late to be having a debate about it.

"Ok, I'll drop the issue due to lack of support," Adam said, invoking the terminology of consensus. 176

The bike workshop fundraiser did go on the next night. Alcohol was sold and they made enough money to cover rent for a few more months. The issues that the debate highlighted within the group, however, continued long after the last shot was poured.

*************************

A lot has changed since I left the freegans in 2008 to move back to Washington,

D.C. Adam and Michael are no longer members. Adam had said during one of our interviews that he was thinking of leaving the freegans because they were going down a path that he felt was incongruous with the original freegan goals. Michael had also hinted at leaving the group when we spoke, partly because of the frustration he felt at meetings, and partly because of personal issues he had with food and nutrition. Nora graduated and now lives in California. She is heavily involved in the movement and is studying perennial plants and wild edibles.

Janet and Cindy seem to be the stalwarts of the movement. They were also the most tied to New York City, with full time jobs and, in Janet's case, two mortgages. She recently bought some land in upstate New York. It's her dream, she said, to have a space for freegans to come together, perhaps even have a freegan warehouse of goods where people can come and take and donate as they needed. "I want to call it OPT IN," she told me once as we waited for the subway. "Other People's Trash-It's New!"

The freegans also lost the 123 space. The community center was evicted and as of this printing, they and the newly created sewing workshops were on hiatus until they found a home. I'm not sure if they ever had another goals meeting.

I remember what Sam, who left the group not long after I arrived, said to me after my very first day. "Don't let the meetings scare you off," she cautioned. A lot of people 177

would get overwhelmed by process but "you should at least come to the events, that's what a lot of us do," she said.

Freeganism can bring people together who have varied and sometimes conflicting goals and it is true the process can be overwhelming, but not insurmountable. The key is that it is a process. The means of of direct action organizing, egalitarianism and consensus, are not the ways we are used to organizing under capitalism, where there are bosses, leaders or vanguards. Embracing communitarian methods though is integral to the ultimate freegan goal of living outside of the hegemony of the market; it is a necessary struggle. Exploring the contradictions freegans face as they move towards their goals has the potential to uncover new and potentially transformative ways of thinking about problems contemporary social movements face.

For most members, it was a desire to decrease the excesses of conspicuous consumption which drew them to freeganism. But divisions over their ultimate goals threatened to break them apart. "Part of the problem is different views of what freeganism is about and that's the other big problem, like seeing dumpster diving versus seeing all this other stuff," Nora said. What makes freeganism and other direct action movements unique in their potential to unite people across identity, class or racial lines, is also one of its biggest challenges. But rather than a hurdle, these contestations could be a tool for changing how we organize and who we organize with.

Creating change is difficult. Challenging conspicuous consumption and the capitalist system that heralds it is a massive undertaking. It's not just about how we eat or what we throw away, although those are hard lifestyle changes to make; it's also about challenging how we understand our ourselves as consumers, citizens and U.S. 178

Americans. Change compels us to reevaluate our relationships with the environment, the land, our neighbors and our perceived enemies. Change requires us to uncover and face our privileges in order to challenge oppression. Freegans provide an example of ways activists can choose to create intentional communities that celebrate difference and dissent as strengths rather than weaknesses. Their experiences show, however that it has to be a continual, active choice, as their lack of outreach and reliance on normalizing dumpster diving kept the group fairly homogeneous. For the time that I was with them, they relied on the same activist networks and resources, conceding the ground of racial and class diversity.

Direct action movements like freeganism face major ideological obstacles- even as they fight against gentrification, they use the frontier rhetoric of gentrification when they talk about trail blazes or when they continue to ignore issues of race and class which would help them align with other social justice movements and strengthen their critique of consumer hierarchies. It's hard to fight against the system when you don't see all the ways that you're in it. Or when you haven't agreed on how you want to change it.

During a discussion about where to hold an upcoming information forum, it was assumed that it would be held at NYU, where they had already had several events. "[At

NYU] we could be guaranteed an audience, we could be guaranteed a space, there'd be no confusion or problems, but we'd be doing nothing to reach out to people of color,"

Michael said. He suggested looking into space at Monroe College or City University, and although everyone agreed they should do that in the future, no one took the initiative to make it a priority. There was a contradiction between claims they made about outreach and their actual actions. 179

There were also contradictions in terms of their representation in the media.

During one of my last meetings, Leia made the comment that the freegans don't have a particular image to portray, but they did. Their use of the media as tool to recruit new members and spread the message of was constantly riddled with worries about image management. The tactical choice of using the media meant that they needed to come together on what image they wanted to portray. Some were concerned that the more radical freegans would alienate people, like Michael who said he would have been, while others felt they weren't being true to the idea of freeganism as process which is open to everyone. The main goal of the media group became to normalize their message, to make dumpster diving palatable to a broad range of people but it had the adverse effect. The homogeneity of the group obscured the complexities of their message and failed to draw in different kinds of people. Freegans attempted to show how we are all connected as consumers, tied together by waste and want, but their media maintenance made it appear to be a narrowly held concern.

Although freegans were trying to work against the hegemony of consumption, they still had to deal with how they were selling themselves to the public. Market ideology is pervasive. It's difficult to work outside of it, even as a critical consumption movement. It is tied to how we understand ourselves as citizens, as Americans. There's an entitlement to conspicuous consumption and waste that hasn't quite been interrogated fully.

It is important for freegans to interrogate the different ways structures of oppression change our experiences as consumers and thus our participation in critical 180

consumption activism. Freegans talked about the social justice concerns we don't see in capitalism, but didn't talk about the social justice concerns we might not see in freeganism. There is a privilege and particular positionality that makes it easier (or more likely) for people to embrace freeganism. Trash has symbolic importance and for those who have been or still are linked with trash,2 dumpster diving could be a matter of shame instead of fame. "Dirt," Mary Douglas writes, "is matter out of place ... Where there is dirt, there is a system. Dirt is the by-product of a systematic ordering and classification of matter, in so far as ordering involves rejecting inappropriate elements."3 Particularly in

New York City, in which mayor Rudolph Guiliani's "quality oflife" campaign of the mid to late 1990s focused on "cleaning up" the city, the linkage between people and trash and how that affects participation in freeganism is one that needs to be further analyzed.

Waste and the systematic ordering of what we consider trash polarizes the rich and the poor. Freeganism, which is largely a privileged white project, must not only acknowledge but actively seek out people who are working with and among waste in a variety of ways. For example, they could do outreach and create alliances with undocumented people, people of color, day laborers, folks participating in shadow economies re-selling used goods, etc. To put their reclaimed objects where their mouth is, freegans need to reach out to people whose lived experiences are different their own.

2 Pem Davidson Buck, Worked to the Bone: Race, Class, Power and Privilege in Kentucky (New York: Monthly Review Press, 2001); John Hartigan, Jr., Racial Situations: Class Predicaments of Whiteness in Detroit (Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 1999); Corrine Squire, "Who's White? Television Talk Shows and Representations of Whiteness," In Off White: Readings ofRace, Power and Society, ed. Michelle Fine, Lois Weis, Linda C. Powell and L. Mun Wong (New York: Routledge 1997), 242-250.

3 Mary Douglas, Purity and Danger: An Analysis of the Concepts of Pollution and Taboo (New York: Routledge, 1992), 35. 181

As a direct action group, the freegans were trying to model the type of world they hoped to bring about. Writing about the condition of postmodernity, David Harvey notes that it is necessary to question how we look at the world, what we understand as knowledge and how it is produced, in order to create real change. "For it is ever the case that," he writes, quoting Marx, '"we erect our structure in imagination before we erect it in reality,"'4 Although Harvey is arguing against postmodern activism, I think that by organizing the fragmented and various responses people have to the homogenizing force of market capitalism, a postmodern response to capitalist consumerism, that offers hope.

As capitalist consumption becomes ever more pervasive and people pushed farther into poverty, many people all over the world are organizing. In March 2008, the Bogata

Association of Recyclers, which itself had over 18,000 members, hosted the First World

Congress of Waste Pickers. Funded by international non-profits, "informal trash recyclers" from over 40 countries gathered for the four day event. 5 Although freegans placed themselves rhetorically among the globalized response to waste, by showing international films at Trashy Movie Night or inviting guest speakers to address the global ramifications of conspicuous consumption, they still had much work left to do in order to create real partnerships.

Freegans were imagining a future that had a different relationship to capitalism than we do today. Freeganism was a movement and a practice; it was a critique of the world but also a prescription for it. They were living in the world in ways they hoped we

4 Harvey, New Social Theory Reader, 183. (Quoting marx, 1967, 178).

5 Teo Ballve, "Waste Picker: 21st Century Profession," News America Media, March 21, 2008, http:! /news. ncmonline.com/news/view_article.html ?article_ id=fc67e1 bbecae25b050a5cef7 ea28ef9a (accessed March 17, 2010). According to the story, the next Congress was planned for 2010. CHECK TO SEE IF THIS IS IN BIB 182

would all live in the future, as a choice rather than inevitability. They attempted to denaturalize the assumptions and motivations of free market neoliberalism and its focus on individualism at the detriment of the community. Freegans wanted to reevaluate what we consider needs. A writer in 1929 declared: "The American citizen's first importance to his country is no longer that of citizen but that of consumer. Consumption is a new necessity."6 Particularly after the Depression, the importance of consumption as the engine of the economy continued to grow and by the 1970s new transportation and communication technology allowed finance capital to shift production to other parts of the world and to focus on drawing many people into debt-financed consumption, witnessed by the widespread growth of credit cards and other kinds of consumer debt.

But it doesn't have to be that way nor, many argue, is it possible to do so for much longer. Freeganism shows that there are ways to live and communities to be found outside of conspicuous consumption. Many freegans argued that Americans must reevaluate our place within the larger global community; our connection with the environment, animals and each other. The new "new necessity" is ensuring social justice, housing, access to healthy, less processed foods that don't go into the trash before their time. Conscientious, not conspicuous, consumption is key.

Freeganism has its pitfalls but it also has potential. Movements which attempts to organize around issues and create solidarity across identities, are fighting against the hegemony of consumption and it resonates differently with different people. Direct action is a technique, a process, it's a choice. It is hopeful, but it is not perfect. The individual freegan stories I wrote about can help illuminate the different ways and reasons why

6 Michael Kammen, American Cultures, American Tastes, 55. 183

people chose to become activists: What are their paths? What are their obstacles? How can we work to use those differences to strengthen our commitment to social justice?

Allying around issues as opposed to identity doesn't mean that the identity of the movement isn't important, but rather that instead of a static photo of what a freegan looks like, it's a moving picture.

I'm looking forward to going back, catching up, seeing what the freegans look like now. Because they're not the same as when I was with them; I saw a stage of the process. A stage that, once illuminated, could help the freegans and other direct action movements address issues and inequalities that we tried to confront while I was a freegan in New York City. BIBLIOGRAPHY

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