{news} Zaac Chaves in Fairfield County Weekly

[David Bedell]

The cover story in the current Fairfield County Weekly (also the
Hartford Advocate and New Haven Advocate) features Green Party member
Zaac Chaves, who ran for State Senate last year.� 



For anyone who would like to try some mushrooming, puffball season is
here (that's the only mushroom I feel confident gathering).



David Bedell




http://www.fairfieldweekly.com/article.cfm?aid=14799

Freegan Out
From second-hand clothes to foraging in fields to grabbing dinner out of a dumpster, freegans try to take as little as possible from the consumer world 

Thursday, October 08, 2009
By Marc Ferris

The morning before he led a foraging group in Brooklyn, Zaac Chaves woke up
in a makeshift campsite in New York�s Catskill Mountains, ate a bunch
of wild blackberries and mounted his black bicycle to ride about 40
miles to Poughkeepsie. There, he hopped a train to Grand Central
Station and pedaled to Prospect Park, where he led a group of around 20
people who beat the bushes looking for edible plants. That night, he
took the subway to the last stop in the Bronx and rode home to his
apartment in Greenwich. 

It�s all part of his lifestyle. Chaves, 27, is part of a burgeoning movement
known as freeganism, whose practitioners attempt to consume as little
as possible. Their four main practices include sewing, foraging,
bicycling and dumpster diving. Yes, they salvage food from dumpsters,
but only stuff that�s still in its package. Chaves says you�d be
surprised what gets thrown out simply because the expiration date has
passed. A bent toward cooperation and away from rampant individualism,
with an undercurrent of anti-capitalism, often fuels their desire to
use less and reuse more. 

"We�re not trying to drop out and be passive; we�re trying to teach people
what they can do to not participate in the system,� says Madeline
Nelson, a spokesperson for http://www.freegan.info , the movement�s hub in the
tri-state area. Nelson dates the crystallization of freeganism to a
treatise written by punk rock drummer Warren Oakes in 1999.

The term can rankle even those who practice its tenets. �I don�t always
call myself a freegan, but I definitely try not to be part of the
wasteful culture that we seem to have in western society,� says Kira
Taylor, 24, a native of Mansfield who tends to hop around the country.
She�s briefly worked as a nanny in Seattle and an office worker in
Amherst, Mass.

Taylor sustains herself by dumpster diving for food and foraging for
mushrooms, gets around by hitchhiking and bicycling and clothes herself
using second-hand stuff. �I�m trying not to put too much emphasis on
the objects I have in my life,� she says. �Most people don�t realize
they don�t have to make their car, house or job the center points of
their lives."

Taylor has traveled widely, including a stint at a tent city near UConn, where
she first encountered freeganism. In St. Louis, she experienced her
epiphany at an urban farm in the shadow of the iconic Jefferson Arch.
�A friend took me to a derelict section of the city, maybe 30 to 40
square blocks, where squatters worked to revitalize the neighborhood,�
she said. �They fostered such a community spirit. It made me realize
that I wasn�t alone.�

Taylor will soon move to Indiana University to audit courses on mushroom
studies. For her, �Capitalism isn�t the root of all evil, but it
exacerbates the problems. � Freegans are part of a grassroots thing,
where we learn to be conscious and try and make an effort to share what
we have.�

Chaves, who also lives a Spartan life, is building on the work of �Wildman�
Steve Brill, an expert on botanical bounty. A Westport native, Chaves
first got into the lifestyle in high school, when he decided to build a
treehouse out of materials scavenged from a dumpster at a construction
site. 

�I figured that this makes sense,� he says. �It�s fun and it�s free.�

He earned a computer science degree from UConn, where he met like-minded
souls, and he holds a job monitoring home computer systems, which is
liberal about letting him take off to work on an organic farm or ride
his bicycle up to the farthest reaches of Quebec.

Something of a scholar who dumpster-dives libraries, Chaves recites the chain of
misery that brings factory-farmed eggs to the breakfast table and
practices a vegan diet where all animal products are off-limits. Though
not prone to preaching, he bemoans the island of plastic detritus
growing in the Pacific Ocean and the use of fossil fuels for
transportation. He rides his bicycle or walks everywhere. 

�For me, it�s important to recognize that my personal choices have
implications,� he says. �There�s no need to be dependent on the
capitalist system. I operate more with that primate instinct where you
run through the woods grabbing anything edible, which taps into the
basic psychological workings of our species.

�What really floats his boat? Mushrooms. He says a perfect day would be spent
reading books about mushrooms, foraging in the wild after a hearty rain
and eating mushroom stew.

The day he led his foraging tour, he wore patched-together shoes, thick
socks, stitched-up pants and a dirty shirt (the exact same outfit he
wore two days later). Stickers on his bike read, �This planet needs
civilization like a forest needs a bulldozer� and �Progress is killing
us.�

As he led about a dozen fellow-foragers, some of whom collected clumps of pig
weed, jump seed, black walnuts and crabapples, Chaves described the
often laborious process it takes to extract their flavor or make them
safe to eat.

Chris Shirely, who�s been a part of Chaves� foraging expeditions, studies
environmental studies at Yale and hangs with the freegans in New Haven,
a scene close to the Elm City Info Shop and New Haven Food Not Bombs.

A Lyle Lovett look-alike, Shirely, 22, opposes industrial farming, oil
consumption and waste, but even though he lives the lifestyle, he
doesn�t overtly identify with the movement. 

�It�s not a huge endeavor, really,� he says. �I like going to potlucks and skill shares and riding my bike to school keeps me healthy so I don�t have to go to the gym. And I dumpster dive. Thai restaurants are the best.�

� 2009 Fairfield County Weekly 



 		 	   		  
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