A Friday morning with Trash for Peace
Francie Royce, liaison to Trash for Peace
On a Friday morning I arrived at the Trash for Peace warehouse on SE Water Avenue in Portland's Central Eastside, a bit before 9:00 am to look for Mo. A man greeted me and introduced himself as Mo, the day coordinator for Trash for Peace. Two other men entered the warehouse and Mo made introductions. Jim and Dave are hired to clean up the Central Eastside neighborhood. I followed Jim out the door as he rolled a custodian cart on our way to gather trash.
Jim rolled his cart and told me he was a machinist, but now worked for Ground Score Association 32 hours a month and was paid $20 an hour. Ground Score, I learned, is a Trash for Peace initiative which manages some street clean ups in the Central Eastside, hires campers to clean up their sites, and some other projects. The Trash for Peace website says, “Ground Score is an association of informal recyclers, dumpster divers and other environmental workers who create and fill low barrier waste management jobs.”
Our destination turned out to be a large bio swale at the east end of the Morrison Bridge, BioSwale Number 1, said Jim. The swale is home to a fairly large encampment, with some recreational tents raised from the ground on pallets of other wood, many covered in blue tarps, and some wooden structures. One tent had a metal chimney and others had homemade camp stoves in front. The bioswale was landscaped with thirty or more trees and bushes which were being attended to by Barb Weber, the Ground Score Cofounder and Coordinator, and a ten-person crew. In organized chaos the crew shoveled recently delivered dirt around the plants, mounding rings to hold water. Other crew members were pouring buckets of water onto the plants. Mac, a Portland Bureau of Environmental Services employee, was attaching plastic webbing onto stakes to protect the plants. Friends of Trees was there with a tank of water on their pick-up. The property by the bridge is owned by Multnomah County and within the neighborhood of the Central Eastside Industrial Council, an industry group of local businesses. At one point in our conversation, Barb quickly outlined the complex and layered cooperation between public and private agencies involved in the three bioswales along MLK Blvd that are home to people experiencing houselessness.
Barb pointed out a few men wearing Ground Score vests and explained that they were swale residents hired by Ground Score to maintain the landscaping. She hoped that the campers would learn landscaping skills, and also hoped that they would learn how to take care of their environment. Apparently, BioSwale Numbers 1, 2, and 3 along SE Martin Luther King Blvd are all "sanctioned" encampments that Ground Score works to engage the campers to maintain. The organizational relationship between various government agencies and non-profits is dizzying!
Meeting and chatting with several of the active campers was enjoyable – I met Levi who has lived in Bio-Swale Number 1 for two and a half years, and John who was shoveling dirt into buckets that would be hauled to the swale's trees. Others filling buckets urged John to be careful and slow down and John joked back that he had to work twice as hard because his legs were weak. Later I saw John sitting on the ground with his legs twisted behind him, reaching with a shovel and determined to fill more buckets with dirt.
On my walk back to my car I ran into Jim and Dave who were cleaning up a sidewalk campsite that had burned, sweeping ash into black bags. Since the place they were cleaning was right next to an occupied tent I stopped to ask them how they knew they could clean this place so close to the tent. "We asked him, and he's ok with it," replied Jim.
I enjoy the opportunity to learn. - Francie