EARTH
Mike O'Callaghan
1540 Medfra
Anchorage, Alaska 99501
(907) 277-8889

From all over Anchorage and even out in the bush country they come, converging on the muddy vacant lot at Fifth Avenue and Barrow Street in station wagons, vans, sedans and pickup trucks. Promptly at noon, a rumbling semi-trailer pulls in, bearing huge white plastic bins filled with fat, glistening pink salmon carcasses in salt water on ice.

They're free for the taking for anyone who wants them -- just bring your own bag -- and they're good food, food that was being thrown away by the ton until Michael O'Callaghan got into the act.

O'Callaghan, a lean, Lincolnesque man with impressive gray muttonchop sideburns and a wiry beard, describes himself as "a rowdy," and says he got into the feeding business for a simple reason: He needed to feed himself and his family, a purpose that led him a few years ago to "dumpster diving" and has grown into EARTH, a non-profit, zero-budget organization of volunteers that doesn't keep careful count but that has surely fed thousands of Alaskans.

It got started, O'Callaghan says with a laugh, when the Carr's grocery store near his home fenced off a dumpster that previously had been a reliable source of free food. O'Callaghan asked the store manager to remove the fence so the people could eat, but was rebuffed. Eventually, however, the group got permission to take usable produce and canned goods from one store to distribute to the poor. The program worked so well that Carr's soon extended its permission to the entire Anchorage-area chain. More than 100 volunteers, after training, report regularly to Carr's outlets, pick up food, and dispense it to hungry people through their own churches, civic groups or less formalized structures. No muss, no fuss, no red tape, no paperwork. Last year, O'Callaghan estimates, the group passed along 800,000 pounds of food that previously went to the dumpster.

The fish giveaway started similarly. Three years ago, an Alaska hatchery spawned controversy when it was revealed that, because of the market economy, it intended to catch and dispose of an entire year's migration of pink salmon, known as "humpies." Appalled by this waste, O'Callaghan scouted up a fish boat and a crew to run it, headed for the salmon grounds, got out in front of the hatchery's boats and captured 20,000 pounds of fresh salmon, which they brought back to Anchorage and gave away in 24 hours.

The following year, learning that hatcheries routinely discard of tons of edible pink salmon after stripping the females of their eggs and the males of "milt" (sperm) for breeding, O'Callaghan's group won the permission of several hatcheries to take the carcasses for free. They persuaded the state legislature to cough up $30,000 to cover truck transportation, and they started trucking salmon to downtown Anchorage. During the August and September season, they gave away 585,000 pounds of salmon.

During the 1993 season, with a $75,000 grant, they expect to give away more than 800,000 pounds . . . at a rate of more than 40,000 pounds a day. Due to a decline in funding, they were only able to give out about 200,000 pounds of salmon.

"You know anybody with a pickup?" O'Callaghan asked a woman from the University of Alaska, who said her station-wagon load of salmon, stored in the freezer, would feed her free all winter. "If they've got a pickup, they can take a truckload back to the university and give it away."

O'Callaghan said he's inspired to give away food because it's right. "Here in Alaska, we have a tremendous abundance of fish, but the people don't have access," he said. "These people here can't go out and get fish. Licenses, regulations -- it's bullshit! The people should be able to get their fish. So the deal is, this is a common property resource, it belongs to the people. Rich, poor, they belong to everybody."

Unlike some grassroots organizers, O'Callaghan is interested in the policy implications of his ideas as well as merely helping people. He would like to see the fishery project replicated in every region where commercial fishing is practiced, and he's lobbying to add a fisheries tax to finance such operations in the Magnusson Bill, currently up for renewal, through which the Department of Commerce's National Atmospherica and Oceanic Administration (NOAA) regulates the commercial fishing industry. A big dream, perhaps, but he sees what he describes as "millions of tons of fish" going to waste every year.

All the feature stories on @GRASS-ROOTS.ORG's pages are reported and written by Robin Garr, a prize-winning journalist who has visited more than 500 innovative grassroots programs in all 50 states since 1990.

Browse his book, Reinvesting In America, at Amazon.com.

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