Funding In the Dumpster By Mike Roselle

<>Josh keeps telling me that I’m giving him too much material. But we have a deal. He publishes everything I send him, and I let him do his Internet thing. Once he starts to reject my articles, I’m going to start paying attention to whatever it is that he does and have him explain it in detail to me. Anyway, if you’re reading this you already know more about computers than I do, and I want to keep it that way. I barely learned to operate a mimeograph printer when the first photocopiers came out. Photocopiers maintained a dominant role in communication technology for three decades, until the first fax machines came out in the early eighties. < style="font-family: helvetica,arial,sans-serif;"> 

When I worked for Friends of the Earth with Randy Hayes in San Francisco in 1982, they had found their first fax machine in a Dumpster and used it for the next five years. Small Macintoshes slowly replaced the Selectrics and old Royals that were the mainstays of our whole communication network. In fact, in 1992 Hayes even found the beat-up old Macintosh that sustained the Cove/Mallard Coalition through its campaign for seven years in a Dumpster. Overall, though, those old computers turned out to be a bad idea. PageMaker and laser printing would lead the next revolution, as hundreds of new publications appeared and grassroots groups sprung up across the planet like bad toe fungus. < style="font-family: helvetica,arial,sans-serif;"> 

In 1982, John Seed told me that the only people fighting to save the rainforests were a few indigenous tribes, and a handful of hippies and scientists with typewriters. By 1985, largely due to his efforts there was a broad and effective international network of dedicated forests activists. There was also Randy Hayes, but we’re not going to talk about him or the role he thinks he played in the building of this important global movement. That’s because he’s a hillbilly from West Virginia and doesn’t know any more about computers and technology than I do. I think I started out writing something about computers. Like I said in the beginning, if you know more than I do about computers, you won’t be wondering right now if I really have a point to make. Stay with me because I’m really trying.  < style="font-family: helvetica,arial,sans-serif;">

Margaret Meade never said “Never doubt that e-mails alone can save the planet,” indeed it’s the only thing that we know how to do.” It’s so true, because e-mail is the only thing I know how to do. Technology is a strange thing. I bought my first 4-Track tape player when the stakes were raised to 8-Tracks, got an 8-Track when cassettes relegated them to the dustbins of history. The only thing I know for sure is that the best technology usually comes out of a dustbin or a Dumpster; and some of our best activists too; and more than a few pretty good dinners. Generally my experience is that it’s better to get your technology out of a Dumpster than your food. As for activists, you have to pretty much get them anywhere you can, and sometimes that may involve going to the Dumpster.  < style="font-family: helvetica,arial,sans-serif;">

With all this moaning and groaning you read lately about the lack of foundation funds because the Internet Bubble collapsed and took the telecommunications, healthcare-electricity industry with it, I just want to say one thing. If you’re a typical lowbagger activist it won’t mean the checks will stop coming. There never were any checks. They don’t send foundation grants to Dumpsters. Every lowbagger knows this. None of the funders know that. Even on a good day, we got more out of the Dumpsters then we did from the funders. I am not saying that we have to choose from funders and Dumpsters; we need them both. Well, actually we neither need funders, nor really like them. We just want their money. Now funders say they don’t have any. How can funders not have any money, they’re fucking funders. I say, cough it up funders and take a lowbagger to lunch. It’s cheaper than polling data and you learn more.

Mike Roselle is currently doing a survey of environmental opinions in Montana bars that do not serve spinach-artichoke dip.