Kela Brousard, who inspired us to clean this area of Figueroa, shared a nice post on Facebook that summarizes our efforts yesterday. Enjoy.
“To be sure WE are a group of KISS ASS PEOPLE for volunteering to take the time out of our lives to clean up one of the most neglected stretches of Los Angeles I have ever seen and to be better caretakers of the planet upon which we are most blessed to live upon.
I put this out to so many people and we were the ones who showed up to make this happen. YAY! I am SO grateful to each and every one of us for following through with our intention to making our world a better place by doing this. It’s when groups of people say YES to banding together to making a difference, that a difference is surely made.
This project is not over. We have more to do, and I’m excited to get to do Phase 3 with whoever is willing to help. We three, myself, Christy Beck andRyan Kirk kicked ass last weekend and got SO much done, and with the help of our 2 new helpers, Paul Stanton and Oscar, we got even more done today.
Oscar, an arborist with Tree Care LA, was kind enough to donate his time, his labor, his truck and his tools today to help us out. He is sweet, knowledgeable, funny and lovely to be around. I highly recommend him and his company to you for whatever tree projects you may have in mind.http://www.treecarela.com/Tree_Care_LA/Welcome.html
Paul was a Godsend, especially with the tools that he brought which made a HUGE difference in our clean up efforts today. He came all the way from Topanga Canyon to help us out today.
I’d like to see our numbers grow for Phase 3, which will happen in a couple of weeks, and will entail us de-littering the other half of the block and collecting all of the leaves from the sidewalk as we did with the other half. Oh boy did we leave the block looking SO much better than we found it. I am SO proud of us. The stark difference between the halves of the block are profound, to say the least.
This city needs to take a hard look at itself for allowing such neglect to persist, and it’s an attestment to citizen activism that 5 of this city’s residents got off of their butts to do what the city would not.
Thus far, we’ve put in a solid 4 to 5 hours of work in just 2 days with a crew of just 3-5 and have gotten great results. Once this clean up project is complete, are WE going to have to be the ones responsible for maintaining the cleanliness and the sanitation of this forlorn block that has been used for an unimaginable amount of time as a public toilet and as a general trash dump by our Downtown homeless right across the street from the Central District Health Center/County of Los Angeles Health Department AND the County of Los Angeles County Department of Health Services/Department of Public Health?? The irony of this is mind blowing.
I would LOVE to see the city step up to SUPPORT the work that we have begun by, at the very least, maintaining some level of cleanliness and sanitation of the east side of Figureoa St. between Temple and 1st.
Thank you, Ryan, for being the ROCK STAR that you are and for doing the worst of the worst of the cleanup on the hill. I love you SO much!
Thank you, Christy, for being our fearless and adorable leader. I’d pretty much sign up to do anything with you. Your heart is SO in the right place! Thank you for creating Model Environmenthttps://www.modelenvironment.com/ What a stellar addition to the City of Angels!
I am overflowing with GRATITUDE and INSPIRATION!
We can move MOUNTAINS, even a mountain of TRASH when we open our eyes, open our hearts and turn to one another and say, “YES, WE CAN DO THIS!”
Which of you rock stars are joining us for Phase 3 in a couple of weeks?
We will have cold water, snacks, maybe some bumping tunes, smiles, eager hearts and hands that aren’t afraid to work to join yours!
WOOHOO!”
