On the brighter side of people...
Last weekend I was home in DC. Hold on one second, I just have to soak in how weird it is that "home" is Washington, DC.
Ok, I'm over it.
So anyway, I was home, and Amber heard about this local River Cleanup event and we decided to go.
Backstory: Amber used to work for the Farallones Marine Sanctuary Association in San Francisco. She helped design their visitor center, and organized events, which taught people about the stretch of ocean from the Golden Gate Bridge out to the Farallon Islands. They also took people to visit Cordell Bank National Marine Sanctuary, which is an amazing underwater sea mount. While working there, Amber used to help organize beach cleanup events. Twenty or thirty people would show up, put on gloves and grab a garbage bag. It was a feel-good awareness event where everyone would walk along the beach to pick up a bag or so worth of trash. It was mostly bottles, cans, and cigarette butts.
What I mean to say, is that we were totally unprepared for what we were about to witness at this river cleanup in DC.
The organizers fed us bagels and juice, and then they handed out work gloves and garbage bags, then we got a little pep-talk from the mayor, pretty normal fare. Then we walked over the ridge to the river, and oh my god!
This wasn't exactly a bottles-and-cans trash pile. There were washers, dryers, refrigerators, entire cars which had to be chopped up by an advance crew, tires, tires, and more tires, lots of rotten lumber, jagged unidentifiable rusty metal thing-a-ma-jigs. Let me just tell you right now that there were over a hundred volunteers, probably closer to two hundred. We spent over four hours pulling stuff out of the river, the bushes, and the dirt. All told we hauled out over seventeen tons of trash including over two hundred tires! Basically, this river had become a community dump.*
Amber and I milled around in shocked disbelief for about ten minutes before our organizational instincts kicked in. Without consciously deciding to, we split up and each started building work crews around us. The organizers had two pickup trucks, but were only running one.
I asked, "Hey, what's up with that second truck?"
They said, "Do you know how to drive a stick?"
I said "Hell yeah! Where are the keys?"
Amber helped assemble a crew down by the river, building piles and loading them into the truck. I got a guy to walk ahead of me hollaring "Truck coming!" to clear the ant-trail of human trash removers, and then I enlisted a few guys who stayed up by the road—at the growing trash pile—to help me unload the truck. Being a sub-organizer was awesome!
(I feel like I'm filling out a resume to be on the work crew during Megan's revolution.)
Honestly, it was a really amazing experience. Folks were there from all walks of life. There were a lot of kids, mostly in roving sub-packs wearing matching T-shirts. I didn't look too closely, maybe school or church groups, but whatever, they were working their butts off. One crew of eight boys, I'd guess about 12 years old, had this whole "fridge patrol" thing going on. They kept pullling them out and hustling them up the hill. I wondered if I should give them a break and let them load a fridge onto the truck, but as I drove by with a full load I heard one say, "Should we use the truck for this?" But another didn't hesitate a moment before saying, "We don't need that truck! We got it!"
Let me also say, I can't believe nobody got seriously hurt! The local fire department's off-duty firemen were onsite cleaning up and standing by in case of injuries. (Who doesn't love fire men-and-women? Just leave right now!) But everyone was super careful. I was even proud of the young fridge-patrol. I saw them start to lose a fridge, but they all just put it down, and then checked on each other "I'm ok. Are you ok? Are all of you guys ok? Alright, let's pick it back up." I think the universe, in a show of rare compassion, looked over all of us that day, because, seriously, people's heads could have been chopped off by some of that metal which was getting tossed around. Maybe it was just so dangerous, that all the danger cancelled itself out. I don't know.
Anyway, another faction was the community-service-hours types. These guys weren't too hard to spot either. They were young, strong, not very interested in actually doing any work, and absolutely dumbfounded as to what all these nerds were doing working their asses off for free. I don't think they were lazy, so much as they just couldn't figure out how to get onboard. Where did they fit in here? There were a few of those guys that were good workers though, and I think they realized what a sweet gig this was, as far as working off community service hours goes. One of them became my main point of contact back at the pile. I think he respected me because of the truck, but I think he worked hard because he saw that he was useful and necessary to the process. (Isn't that all any of us wants?) He got into it, which pulled in a few more tuff-types.
At the end of the day, I went up to him and pulled off my gloves to shake his hand. "Hey, seriously, you were a big help today, you kicked ass." He stared to shake my hand, but then reached around and hugged me.
I wish every day of work was that satisfying!
*Let me add a few things, before anyone looks down on this neighborhood, like I wanted to at first glance. When a person with money retires their appliances, they usually go to someone like a college student. When a college student moves, they sometimes leave appliances out in such a way as a poorer person picks them up. Folks in a poor neighborhood don't just throw away useable appliances. They are the ones who use those things until they are truly dead. Until even duct tape and bailing wire won't save them. Society should want these appliances to get used to death. Yes there is obviously a problem here, nobody wants cars and dishwashers in the river. The question is, how to help extract those dead appliances from those neighborhoods, not how to hassle or arrest people trying to get rid of them. Hell, you didn't want your old washer once you could get/afford a bigger, nicer, quieter one. The only difference is that someone else was happy to take your old one since it still worked.
Ok, I'm over it.
So anyway, I was home, and Amber heard about this local River Cleanup event and we decided to go.
Backstory: Amber used to work for the Farallones Marine Sanctuary Association in San Francisco. She helped design their visitor center, and organized events, which taught people about the stretch of ocean from the Golden Gate Bridge out to the Farallon Islands. They also took people to visit Cordell Bank National Marine Sanctuary, which is an amazing underwater sea mount. While working there, Amber used to help organize beach cleanup events. Twenty or thirty people would show up, put on gloves and grab a garbage bag. It was a feel-good awareness event where everyone would walk along the beach to pick up a bag or so worth of trash. It was mostly bottles, cans, and cigarette butts.
What I mean to say, is that we were totally unprepared for what we were about to witness at this river cleanup in DC.
The organizers fed us bagels and juice, and then they handed out work gloves and garbage bags, then we got a little pep-talk from the mayor, pretty normal fare. Then we walked over the ridge to the river, and oh my god!
This wasn't exactly a bottles-and-cans trash pile. There were washers, dryers, refrigerators, entire cars which had to be chopped up by an advance crew, tires, tires, and more tires, lots of rotten lumber, jagged unidentifiable rusty metal thing-a-ma-jigs. Let me just tell you right now that there were over a hundred volunteers, probably closer to two hundred. We spent over four hours pulling stuff out of the river, the bushes, and the dirt. All told we hauled out over seventeen tons of trash including over two hundred tires! Basically, this river had become a community dump.*
Amber and I milled around in shocked disbelief for about ten minutes before our organizational instincts kicked in. Without consciously deciding to, we split up and each started building work crews around us. The organizers had two pickup trucks, but were only running one.
I asked, "Hey, what's up with that second truck?"
They said, "Do you know how to drive a stick?"
I said "Hell yeah! Where are the keys?"
Amber helped assemble a crew down by the river, building piles and loading them into the truck. I got a guy to walk ahead of me hollaring "Truck coming!" to clear the ant-trail of human trash removers, and then I enlisted a few guys who stayed up by the road—at the growing trash pile—to help me unload the truck. Being a sub-organizer was awesome!
(I feel like I'm filling out a resume to be on the work crew during Megan's revolution.)
Honestly, it was a really amazing experience. Folks were there from all walks of life. There were a lot of kids, mostly in roving sub-packs wearing matching T-shirts. I didn't look too closely, maybe school or church groups, but whatever, they were working their butts off. One crew of eight boys, I'd guess about 12 years old, had this whole "fridge patrol" thing going on. They kept pullling them out and hustling them up the hill. I wondered if I should give them a break and let them load a fridge onto the truck, but as I drove by with a full load I heard one say, "Should we use the truck for this?" But another didn't hesitate a moment before saying, "We don't need that truck! We got it!"
Let me also say, I can't believe nobody got seriously hurt! The local fire department's off-duty firemen were onsite cleaning up and standing by in case of injuries. (Who doesn't love fire men-and-women? Just leave right now!) But everyone was super careful. I was even proud of the young fridge-patrol. I saw them start to lose a fridge, but they all just put it down, and then checked on each other "I'm ok. Are you ok? Are all of you guys ok? Alright, let's pick it back up." I think the universe, in a show of rare compassion, looked over all of us that day, because, seriously, people's heads could have been chopped off by some of that metal which was getting tossed around. Maybe it was just so dangerous, that all the danger cancelled itself out. I don't know.
Anyway, another faction was the community-service-hours types. These guys weren't too hard to spot either. They were young, strong, not very interested in actually doing any work, and absolutely dumbfounded as to what all these nerds were doing working their asses off for free. I don't think they were lazy, so much as they just couldn't figure out how to get onboard. Where did they fit in here? There were a few of those guys that were good workers though, and I think they realized what a sweet gig this was, as far as working off community service hours goes. One of them became my main point of contact back at the pile. I think he respected me because of the truck, but I think he worked hard because he saw that he was useful and necessary to the process. (Isn't that all any of us wants?) He got into it, which pulled in a few more tuff-types.
At the end of the day, I went up to him and pulled off my gloves to shake his hand. "Hey, seriously, you were a big help today, you kicked ass." He stared to shake my hand, but then reached around and hugged me.
I wish every day of work was that satisfying!
*Let me add a few things, before anyone looks down on this neighborhood, like I wanted to at first glance. When a person with money retires their appliances, they usually go to someone like a college student. When a college student moves, they sometimes leave appliances out in such a way as a poorer person picks them up. Folks in a poor neighborhood don't just throw away useable appliances. They are the ones who use those things until they are truly dead. Until even duct tape and bailing wire won't save them. Society should want these appliances to get used to death. Yes there is obviously a problem here, nobody wants cars and dishwashers in the river. The question is, how to help extract those dead appliances from those neighborhoods, not how to hassle or arrest people trying to get rid of them. Hell, you didn't want your old washer once you could get/afford a bigger, nicer, quieter one. The only difference is that someone else was happy to take your old one since it still worked.
posted by Dennis at 11:35 AM
1 Comments:
Man, the revolution would be lucky to have you and Amber in it. So is DC.
Post a Comment
<< Home