A Dirty Secret — with Author Heather Rogers and Freegan Adam Weissman
Posted April 22nd, 2007 by surplus
People were pretending that the world wasn’t really happening. It was an escapism that I resented. There was a garbage strike going on and there was trash piled 10ft high…wear the garbage bag for god’s sake and then you are dealing with it. That’s what I would be doing, I would wrap myself in trash.
–Johnny Rotten, referring to the start of the Sex Pistols
The Change You Want to See presents author/filmmaker Heather Rogers and Freegan activist Adam Weissman this Wednesday for a film screening and discussion about the world of trash. As new products are produced, the old, the used and discarded are whisked away into an invisible world. The solutions society poses aim to distance us from this world, perpetuating the problem. This evening’s presenters will interrupt this cycle by introducing us to capitalism’s dirty secret.
Catering courtesy of the Freegans and the dumpsters of our fair city.
Wednesday, April 25, 7:30pm
84 Havemeyer Street, store front
Williamsburg, Brooklyn 11211
917-202-5479 or 646-221-7845
http://www.thechangeyouwanttosee.org
Directions - L to Bedford, G to Metropolitan, J/M/Z to Marcy
About the Film
Gone Tomorrow: The Hidden Life of Garbage (19 minutes, 2002) explores the history and politics of household garbage in the US. With only five percent of the global population, the US consumes more than a quarter of the planet’s resources and produces a disproportionately large amount of its wastes. To investigate the roots of today’s normalized disposability, this film uncovers the links between modern industrial production and mass consumerism, and the stories our culture tells about both.
Heather Rogers is a journalist and filmmaker based in Brooklyn, New York. Named an Editor’s Choice by the New York Times Book Review and a nonfiction choice by The Guardian, her book Gone Tomorrow: The Hidden Life of Garbage (The New Press, 2005), looks at the history and politics of household garbage in the US. Her documentary film, also titled Gone Tomorrow (2002), screened in festivals around the globe. Her writing has appeared in publications including The Nation, Socialist Register, Utne Reader, Architecture Magazine, Z Magazine, Punk Planet and the Brooklyn Rail.
About Freegans
Often misunderstood to mean simply dumpster diving for food, freeganism is a holistic philosophy and way of living based on deliberate non-participation in the capitalist economy through labor or spending.
Freegan.info works to promote, explain and build community around freegan living through our website, global email discussion list, zine and other publications, speaking events like our bimonthly Freegan Forum, weekly trash tours (walking tours exploring the waste of retails stores and recovering needlessly discarded usable goods), monthly Freegan Feasts (community meals using recovered foods), information booths, and by providing food to radical community events and to hungry people.
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