January 17, 2022
MLK Day cleanup with Ya Fav Trashman! Bag Count - a lot. Cleanup MC - DJ Bounce Gawd.
The Cleanup. Here’s what it looked like under the Septa overpass near the corner of 3rd and Somerville in the Olney section of Philadelphia until this morning:
And here’s the crew that Terry Haigler, aka Ya Fav Trashman, scrapped together for an MLK Day cleanup (if you squint you can see me, center-back):
Some action shots:
Tunes, courtesy of DJ Bounce Gawd:
Some feel-good moments:
And, finally, some cleanup stats:
Reflections. Before the pandemic Haigler was a sanitation worker employed by the city. He started using social media to give people an inside look at life as a sanitation worker, branded himself as Ya Fav Trashman, and blew up: he now has tens of thousands of followers on Instagram. He quit his job, started a nonprofit called Trash 2 Treasure, and is working fulltime as a sanitation activist, organizing cleanups around the city like the one in Olney today.
He gets a lot of press in local media and he has the attention of local leaders. Some of the tweets embedded above are from Stephanie Farr, a Philadelphia Inquirer reporter, Brendan Boyle, Congressman for Pennsylvania’s 2nd district, and Lily Maguire, a colorectal surgeon at Penn Surgery. Also in attendance at the cleanup were PA state representatives Jason Dawkins and Malcolm Kenyatta, the latter of whom is running for a U.S. Senate seat in 2022.
The politicians all made sure to snap some PR shots:
Boyle even asked for everyone’s attention for a moment so that he could publicly present Haigler with a congressional community service certificate.
The cleanup garnered a bunch of corporate sponsors, including Tito’s Vodka and Saxby’s. The CEO of Saxby’s chimed in on Twitter:
And the guy he was quote-tweeting, Christopher Wink, is a CEO himself: he runs a company called Technically Media. Mixed in with the politicians, surgeons, CEOs, and camera crews was a bunch of ordinary folks who were doing most of the grunt work — picking up broken glass, scooping piles of mud up off the sidewalks, hauling away abandoned furniture. One guy even dug up an entire headlight that was half-buried in the dirt near the overpass. But those working the hardest were the blue collar guys operating the dump truck, doing most of the loading, and disposing of the 10+ tons of garbage that were lifted off the street.
It was an inspiring scene. Over a hundred people showed up on a cold, damp holiday to get their hands dirty and beautify a small patch of Philadelphia that desperately needed it. And it all happened because Terry Haigler has acquired a platform on social media — which in today’s world is to say he’s acquired power — and has used it for good.
As with any good thing, there are those who see what Haigler is doing and say: yeah, sure, that’s good and all, BUT:
The man behind the “but” is Charles D. Ellison, “an award-winning thought leader, political strategist, commentator and advocacy expert with nearly two decades of applied expertise in the arena of politics, public policy, campaigns and elections, crisis management and emerging/digital media strategy.”
The award-winning expert’s two-cents, unsolicited and slightly obnoxious though they may be, are fair enough. That so many streets in Philadelphia’s poorest neighborhoods are suffocating beneath mounds of garbage is a municipal failure. Accountability is important. Coordination with local officials would be nice.
But one need only peruse the replies to Ellison’s tweets to get the sense that people have been trying in vain for a while to hold elected officials accountable on this issue:
Robbins’ tweets are representative of a sentiment you encounter a lot in Philadelphia. People are fed up with the negligence and incompetence of city government. The city first earned the nickname Filthadelphia in the 1970s. Officials have had 50 years to get on top of this issue, and yet countless streets still look like today’s cleanup site.
Maybe Haigler is in a unique position to pressure city government into effective action. Maybe, after fifty plus years of failure, him shining the social media spotlight on Philly’s litter problems will give rise to a transformative city-led clean streets program.
But, honestly, I doubt it.
It seems more likely that leaders will keep coming to his cleanup events, posing for pictures, and leveraging his social media clout to polish their own image. And maybe that’s fine. If people are so fed up with the incompetence of government, then maybe what we need are solutions that circumvent the ineffectual machine entirely.
To me, that’s exactly what so exciting about Haigler. He’s building something special, and for now, it’s free of red tape and all the rest of the baggage that comes along with city-led programs. I see Ellison’s point, but my advice to Haigler would be exactly the opposite: accept the city’s failure for what it is, and keep doing your own thing.
For now, Haigler is barely making a dent in the city’s trash problems. But he only became Ya Fav Trashman a year and a half ago, and in the words of Tom Waits, things worthwhile need time to grow:
As sure as fire will burn
there's one thing you will learn
is things you have cherished
are things that you have earned
luck is when opportunity
meets with preparation
the same is true for every generation
little man
as you climb on my knee
the whole future lies in thee
little man
little man
never hurry
take it slow
things worthwhile
need time to grow
little man
don't look back
there are things that might distract
move ahead towards your goal
and the answers will unfold
little man
love is always in the air
it is there for those who care
little man
don't look back
there are things that might distract
move ahead towards your goal
and the answers will unfold
little man
love is always in the air
it is there for those who care
little man