The latest left-wing craze - dumpster diving against Bush. Sounds like lunacy, right?
It is and it was showcased on the December 16 "World News Sunday" in a disturbing human interest segment about freeganism - a radical-left anti-capitalist movement.
Madeline Nelson, an executive-turned-freegan, was featured on "World News." The segment showed Nelson serving a four-course meal, which included a mixed green salad, stuffed peppers, and a tofu cheesecake with strawberries.
"The grocery bill for such an elaborate feast? Zero," said ABC correspondent Ryan Owens. "That's because this food doesn't come from inside a store, but outside of it."
"Outside of it" as in the store's garbage. No, it isn't a homeless person down on his luck. It's anti-capitalist people practicing what is known as freeganism and doing so to make an ideological statement.
That sounds gross, but the idea of "gross" is something completely different to Nelson.
"I'd say what's gross and disgusting is the fact that this food is being thrown out in the first place," said Nelson. "What's really disgusting is the system that allows this waste to happen."
The "system" Nelson referred to is a capitalist economy. But she didn't stop there.
"I just started looking at the state of the U.S. and the state of the world, and thinking, ‘what the hell am I doing here? What am I doing? Global warming is happening, there's war in Iraq, Bush is out of control, and here I am, working at a corporation to help a company sell more stuff,'" Nelson said to ABC News in a supplemental online story.
Owens accompanied a group of freegans, led by Nelson, who went through various businesses' dumpsters in the borough of Brooklyn.
Freeganism is an idea derived by compounding the conceptions ‘free' and ‘vegan,' according to freegan.info:
"Vegans are people who avoid products from animal sources or products tested on animals in an effort to avoid harming animals. Freegans take this a step further by recognizing that in a complex, industrial, mass-production economy driven by profit, abuses of humans, animals, and the earth abound at all levels of production (from acquisition to raw materials to production to transportation) and in just about every product we buy."
After the segment, ABC "World News Sunday" anchor Dan Harris said, "We present all sides here."
Not exactly. No businesspeople were included in the segment. The story didn't explore the fact that the food wouldn't be available in the dumpsters if not for the businesses involved.
