Dumpster Divers on Trial Later This Month

Anti-poverty activists across North America will be watching Victoria in the next few weeks to learn the results of two separate court cases that highlight human rights abuses in our city.
The two cases are known to many as 'The Right to Sleep', and 'The Right to Eat', and both cases challenge the authority of the police to deny access to these rights.
The Right to Sleep is a charter challenge that seeks to have a city by-law prohibiting public camping declared unconstitutional. If the plantiffs in this case are successful, the ruling could in effect overturn similar laws all across the country.
Right to Sleep activists will finally get their day in court on June 16th, when a five day Supreme Court trial is set to begin.
The latest chapter of the two and a half year old Right to Eat case will take place on May 26, when four people will face charges of mischief related to taking food out of a garbage dumpster.
This case made news for a variety of reasons, the least of which being the fact that people were arrested for trying to eat food that others had thrown away.
Few people in this country realize just how much food is wasted every day at their local supermarket. Even fewer realize that scores of people all over the world provide for themselves by salvaging this food. Even fewer still realize what kind of repression and harassment 'dumpster divers' face from security guards and police.
Andrew Ainsley, an independent film-maker, was well aware of the treatment that some of his friends had been facing when they set out on their urban foraging missions. That's why he set up a hidden video camera one night, in a van across the street from the dumpster, and equipped a friend with a wireless microphone.
Expecting the usual treatment from the private security guard hired by the supermarket, the four scavengers were instead met by Victoria police, who arrested the group for mischief and trespassing.
Ainsley caught the whole thing on tape, including a confession from the security guard that the supermarket was routinely poisoning the food with bleach to discourage dumpster diving.
The Right to Eat case has been in the courts for two and a half years, with each of the 20-30 court dates costing taxpayers tens of thousands of dollars.
All this to punish people for eating garbage.
Ainsley's footage, (which, along with footage related to the Right to Sleep campaign, can be viewed on his website at www.loveandfearlessness.com) was the hook to this story that brought it forward into the mainstream media. Otherwise, it might have been yet another untold story in the war against the poor.
Why is there not outrage in our society that in a time of global food shortage, we are throwing food away by the tonne, every day, in every city and town? Why is there not outrage that we must go hungry, or slink around at night like criminals in order to feed ourselves? Why are we not outraged that the courts are wasting their time and money putting people on trial for eating food that no one else wants?
It doesn't really matter why. It just needs to stop.

see also:
Trash, Security and Videotape

Filmmaker Arrested For Filming Arrest of Homeless

A is for Ambush: A - Channel "Journalist" Stephen Andrew and Sandbagging the News

A Tale of Three Andrews