Yesterday I interviewed Pablo Fajardo, and – while I knew it before I went in – the guy is a genuine hero. It’s easy to find information online about Pablo—I recommend this Vanity Fair article (really) or the movie Crude—so I will keep this introduction brief. Fajardo is the son of poor campesinos, born the… Continue reading Inspiration in the most likely of places
At the start of June, the New York Times published a piece by Jake Halpern called “The Freegan Establishment” on a group of radicals near-and-dear to my heart. While some might be less-than-enthusiastic about being the person that comes to mind when the issue of eating trash comes up, I was quite flatterd to have… Continue reading Not (Quite) Buying It
This is, most definitely, not the blog post I was hoping to write on this topic. A few weeks ago, the Worcester College MCR—the graduate student government—debated a “Meatless Mondays” resolution, which would urge our dining hall to go vegetarian for one day a week. Initially, the people who drafted our motion couched it in… Continue reading Vegetarian Mumbo Jumbo
Listening to archaic hymns sung from the tower of one of Oxford’s most conservative colleges didn’t quite feel like the proper way to celebrate May Day. So, to reclaim some activist cred (and, in my own small way, to try to do right by the world), I spent my afternoon in Aylesbury – a town… Continue reading The Revolution Will Involve Mostly Retired People
Long before I came to Oxford, I had heard about Oxford’s notorious animal rights activists. They epitomized the absolute extreme to which the movement had come: “they” broke into labs, harassed professors, and even committed acts of bombing and arson. While there were many reason why my interviews for the Rhodes and Marshall were disasters,… Continue reading The Face of Terrorism (Oxford and elsewhere)
The ideas in this post were mostly bouncing around in my head at Christmastime, but with today being the one month anniversary of the quake in Haiti—and having just attended a panel on the international community’s response to said disaster—these things seemed suddenly relevant again. – – – – – The first proper summer job… Continue reading Giving Well
As a general rule, political developments in other countries that don’t directly involve the U.S.. have to be a pretty big deal to get coverage. The recent elections in Germany, or the passage of the new Lisbon Treaty in the E.U., passed by as a blip. The flip side is that, when stuff does get… Continue reading Why Lefties Can’t Even Make Holocaust Deniers Look Bad
Last April was probably the period where I was the most politically radical—and optimistic—I’ll ever be. By the time I handed in my thesis, it was pretty evident that I had drank the proverbial freegan kool-aid. I genuinely believed the freegans, by working to create sustainable, egalitarian, local anarchist communities, were on to something that… Continue reading The (Near) Death of an Activist
I wrote an article about freeganism for Cornerstone, a campus philosophy magazine that no one reads. So, I’m re-posting it. Pardon the pretentious tone – if it weren’t written in dull prose, it would stand out like a sore thumb. Everyone has their own solution to the economic crisis. Democrats trumpet the need for massive… Continue reading In defense of freeganism.
Alex V. Barnard - Sociology 