For seven hours on Saturday, dozens of volunteers worked with rakes, shovels and construction equipment to clean an illegal discharge site on East 12th Street. They took seven waste trailers – including thrown mattresses, one moped and two models.
At the center of the effort was Vincent Williams, co-founder of the Urban Compassion Project, a waste cleaning group. Dressed in a white disposable combination, Mr. Williams and 48 volunteers withdrew 25 tonnes of debris and spent $ 6,500 in equipment and transported that day.
Mr. Williams started five years ago with garbage bags in a park in which he played once when he was a child. He has not stopped since, pushed by a conviction that even a single cleaning can be important in a city where illegal dumping has become a routine.
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An effort to clean Oakland started little: a man trying to make a safe park so that a little boy can play. Today, volunteers say that cleaning is not intended to replace government services, but must remind people the importance of the community.
“You know how many people have said it was impossible? … or” it will never remain clean. You will never have this battery, “he said, looking at the last trailer filling up.” So yes, it’s very fulfilling. “
The illegal spill is not new in Oakland, where waste on the roadside is a common show. While the volunteers release one of its most neglected corridors, the organizers underlined the city’s unequal record on the application. Since 2021, Oakland Public Works has issued nearly 3,000 quotes from illegal discharges totaling approximately $ 1.3 million. But only 11% of this was collected. Residents say that the city is not enough to catch offenders.
One of the volunteers on Saturday was the member of the District 2 Charlene Wang council. Not yet sworn at the time, she did not chop words by rolling up her sleeves.
“I’m not going to be diplomatic,” she said, wearing a N95 mask and other protective equipment given to all volunteers. “It stinks and we really need help.”
It recognizes the deficits of city staff and the growing frustration of the community. “But in some ways, we are in a disastrous moment,” she continues. “We are in the short term in the city and we need all the help we can get.”
Ms. Wang hopes that waste cleanings will continue. “The Oaklanders are ingenious people and we find ways to get things done,” she said.
While the city is struggling with illegal spill, volunteers claim that the weekly efforts of the urban compassion project have become a basic symbol and a call to more responsibility.
Since its foundation, the group says it has released more than 2,300 tonnes of waste – the equivalent of 1,000 garbage trucks.
“It’s about cleaning hearts and minds”
Mr. Williams began to choose garbage in 2019, shortly after his release from prison. Born and raised in Oakland, he became homeless at the age of 9 and spent years bicycle in reception houses, group houses and mental health establishments. Upon his return to the city, he was shocked by the worsening of the conditions.
One day, he met a 5 -year -old boy who lived in a van with his mother. The boy could not play in a local park because he was dotted with waste. This moment – in a park in which Mr. Williams grew up – moved it to action. He bought trash bags and protective gloves and spent two days cleaning the park alone.
“It broke something in me,” recalls Mr. Williams. “As a person who has lived in there, I think it was my responsibility – because I got out – to put the energy to help other people find solutions to their living situation.”
He slowly built a team of friends and homeless. Then in 2021, while organizing cleaning under the name of Urban Park Cleanup, he met Supriya Golas, a student graduated from the University of California. She helped extend the scope of the group via social media. Together, they transformed the basic effort into a non-profit organization, co-founding the urban compassion project in 2022.
“The community did not really know how they could get involved in some of the social problems we see Oakland affecting at the moment,” said Ms. Golas in an interview. “Instead of complaining about it, we give people a way to be part of the solution.”
The group’s mission, they say, goes beyond embellishment. “It’s about cleaning hearts and minds,” shares Mr. Williams. “More people get involved in their community, the less we have to count on the government of the local city because we present ourselves.”
Troy A. SAMBAJON / The Christian Science Monitor
While the volunteers release one of Oakland’s most neglected corridors, the cleaning organizers say that the city’s response went from the indifferent to obstructive. In addition, some organizers have told support that never came – including a case this spring when the city would have agreed to send a garbage truck that has never arrived.
In a statement to the Monitor, the city’s communications director Sean Maher said that Oakland Public Works staff had already spoken with URBAN COMPASS project managers to share information on the services available for community partners, including tool loans, debris bins and waste collection.
“I am happy to meet UCP for clarifying our procedures and exploring how we can best support them,” he added. “My door is open.”
He noted that the city’s adopt-a-view program has more than 1,000 active groups and has helped facilitate nearly 100 unique cleaning in the past year.
Change perceptions
The non -profit organization does not only organize unique cleanings – it works to keep the sites clean by hiring homeless residents to monitor the area and alert the group if the spilling of curriculum vitae. The objective: to prevent future spill and move the perception of the public.
Mr. Williams says that homeless residents are often blamed for illegal discharges. But those who live in the street like Tj Williams – no relationship – say that the trash was not people who live there, but foreigners.
Troy A. SAMBAJON / The Christian Science Monitor
“Citizens and random businesses would pour their garbage,” he says. “It really affected many of us because it was to what we were doing. But it was really not the case.”
In an interview in 2022 with the San Francisco Chronicle, Oakland’s director of public works, Harold Duffey, said most of the rejected garbage on illegal sites came from accommodated residents, who threw their garbage on camp sites rather than taking it to the discharge. He noted that the problem has increased every year since 2017 and that residents of the homeless “do not generate much more than normal daily garbage”.
Now Ambassador, TJ Williams wins an allowance of $ 100 per week to monitor the cleaned areas and report new spills. “It’s not just because we are blamed,” he says. “If we could keep it all clean, it could really make a difference in the way we are seen.”
Mr. Williams says that the ambassadors receive a “virgin canvas” to report any illegal activity. “This guarantees that our streets remain clean and it gives them a goal.”
“” What would Jesus do? “I think he would clean the garbage.
What started with less than five people now attracts an average of 30 volunteers each week. The group documents its efforts on social networks, displaying Timelapse videos of each cleaning and promoting upcoming events.
John Gelenyse, a recent retiree from Apple, brought his own trailer and transported more than 2,900 pounds of waste that he paid for the dumping ground. “Some people go to Disneyland. I like to rent tractors, pull trailers and go to the discharge, ”he says.
He adds that he is constrained by his faith to help. “Sometimes I think,” What would Jesus do? ” I think he would clean the garbage.
The first volunteer Vanessa Smith, a public information official who lives in Oakland, heard of the Urban Compassion project via Reddit. “These illegal discharges give the city a reputation that it does not deserve,” she says. “But the fact that 40 of us have made progress in two hours say a lot.”
Repeat the Haldean Brown volunteer says that it is giving him who makes him come back. “My feeling of Oakland after having lived here for five years is that people come together and repair it themselves,” he said. “It’s just cool that Oakland meets like that.”
The volunteer of Oakland, Josiah Herbert, and his wife, Ameena, joined the cleanings after looking at their neighborhood deteriorate. Mr. Herbert says he always thinks: he is a waste. How does it happen? “But then you realize, we can do something to repair it,” he said.
The group works to clean a section of 2.4 miles from East 12th Street, one of the worst discharge areas in the city. Volunteers say they will continue to introduce themselves, one trailer by trailer, block by block. The goal is to do more than embellish the streets. It’s to send a message.
“We are not here to replace city services,” said Williams. “But we are here to remind people what the community looks like.”
