Hair Today, Gone Tomorrow: One Man Cuts His Dreadlocks for Hunger

Justin Remer-Thamert gets his dreadlocks cut by his friends in an effort to raise money. He charged his friends $5 per dreadlock and donated the money to his grandmother's favorite justice organizations. (Photo courtesy of Justin Remer-Thamert)

Whenever Justin Remer-Thamert’s grandmother, Elva Thamert, saw his dreadlocks, she did not mince words. “Oh, that’s awful,” she’d say.

“She hated the locks,” remembers Remer-Thamert.

After his grandmother’s passing, Remer-Thamert, from Albuquerque, NM, decided to do something special for her upcoming memorial: cut his hair. But he didn’t just go to a barber; instead, he asked his friends to donate money to his grandmother’s favorite justice organizations in exchange for the chance to cut off one of his dreadlocks.

“I made a sign next to my cubicle wall with a blurb about each organization. I let coworkers decide which organization to put their money to,” explains Remer-Thamert. He charged $5 per lock cut, or $20 for five locks. After the big haircut, Remer-Thamert made a total of $465, with $105 going to Bread for the World – an organization that his grandmother supported for many years.

“I found it appropriate to donate to the organizations my grandma supported in her life,” Remert-Thamert says. Remer-Thamert says that a heart for social justice is his grandmother’s lasting legacy – something he will continue in his own life.

“Social justice is pretty much my life blood,” he says. “I am privileged, but Jesus’ teachings do not allow me to remain complicit when injustice happens around me. I don’t have room to take the back seat.”

+Learn more about giving to Bread for the World.