THE BOOK
To the political left Hunter's people are the ignorant and the ill informed, to the victorious right they are the unwashed and discarded waste product of the labouring class. Chav Solidarity is part autobiography, part meditation on trauma, class and identity, part one finger salute into the face of respectability politics, but mostly an articulation of the contradictory heart of Chavvy shit heads across the U.K.
This collection of essay's pick apart the lived experiences of its author. Hunter uses his experiences as child sex worker, teenage crack addict, violent thug and community activist to examine the ways in which our classed experiences shape the ways in which we think and do our politics.
THE AUTHOR
D. Hunter is an ageing chav, whose first 25 years depended upon the informal economy including child sex worker, robbing from shops and homes, and dealing. From the age of 14 he was a homeless crack addict who was moved in and out of young offenders institutes and prison, until at 24 whilst sectioned under the Mental health act he learned to read using borrowed copies of a Spot the Dog book, Gramsci's "Prison Notebooks" and a young adult novel which involved a teenage girl with cancer and her sarcastic best friend Since then he's been an anti-capitalist motivated community organiser who spends too much time watching and reading about football. He pays his bills by working as a mental health support worker, and thinks everyone should stop recycling until they've collectivised and/or redistributed all their current and future economic resources.
He has written for the Canary, Dope, Plan C and the Independent.
In the Canary
'We have chronic elitism and gross snobbery in our social movements it has to stop'
In Dope
http://dogsection.org/chav-solidarity/
For Plan C
https://www.weareplanc.org/blog/all-the-privilege-no-fucking-praxis/
In the Independent
You can find him on facebook @DP Hunter and twitter @dtheclaretchav