Mayor Cherelle Parker’s cleanup efforts are speaking my anti-litter love language

After more than a decade in Philadelphia, I’m not so easily impressed anymore.

The view atop the Art Museum steps? Fabulous. Seen it.

The walks in and around Wissahickon Valley Park? Invigorating. Next.

But then, last week I ventured out to check on Mayor Cherelle L. Parker’s endeavor to clean every block in Philadelphia over 13 weeks this summer.

Every. Block.

I’m all in.

The ambitious plan had already gotten my attention when Parker first announced it last month. But on Thursday, I found myself uncharacteristically giddy as I watched crews at work around North Philadelphia.

At one location along North Sixth Street near Glenwood Avenue, I counted more than 100 paper bags filled with debris of all kinds, collected by a team of workers who transformed what is usually a trash-strewn area.

At another, a small army of workers with trash blowers affixed to their backs made their way along the 4100 block of North Fairhill Street, methodically gathering up what hadn’t already been removed by street sweepers. I wasn’t the only one impressed. A corner store clerk I chatted up said the block was cleaner than he had seen in a while.

Leaf blowers are not my favorite litter-fighting tool. They’re noisy and smelly and kick up way too much dirt, but still, they were music to my ears.

This feels like where I should explain what may read like a slightly unhealthy obsession with trash.

There are certain things that are deal breakers for me: people who are rude to waitstaff, people who don’t love animals — especially dogs — and litterbugs. I’m proud of a lot of things I’ve done as a metro columnist, but high up there is a neighborhood cleanup I organized when I worked in Hartford, Conn. And, well, Philly, I’m not telling us anything we all don’t already know by pointing out that we’re next-level nasty sometimes.

I still recall the day I watched in horror as someone pulled their car over near where I was walking, opened their passenger-side door, and ejected mounds of fast-food wrappers onto the pavement before driving off. I was shocked and appalled — Who raised you? I wanted to yell out — and seriously reconsidered the wisdom of my decision to move to Philadelphia. I may cringe anytime someone uses one of the city’s more unkind nicknames of “Filthadelphia,” but it’s not completely undeserved.

We have a problem — a big one — with litter and illegal dumping, and abandoned cars, and abandoned properties, and potholes, and all sorts of basic quality-of-life issues that make living in a city as mostly great as Philly more challenging than it should be.

So how could I not be optimistic about a beautification program that seems to be aiming high, and that — fingers crossed — could turn out to be the jump start we need to finally clean up our city for good?

No doubt there is still a lot that needs to be worked out with Parker’s short- and long-term goals to address the city’s litter problem. Everyone involved has said cleaning every block this summer is just the beginning, which I’ll hold them to because there needs to be a lot more done to take this effort from window dressing to a bona fide win.

But, lucky us, we have a not-so-secret weapon in the war against trash — although it’s not the one city officials think it is.

While announcing her initiative in May, Parker introduced her “Clean and Green Cabinet,” a committee of 38 city officials, agency heads, community organizers, and private-sector leaders responsible for researching and developing methods and policies to clean the city this summer and beyond.

“These are the people who are going to save us,” Parker said at the time.

I prefer Gerald Pickett’s take.

“It’s gotta be a combination of programs and people,” Pickett, a member of one of the cleaning crews I saw Thursday, told me when I asked what needs to happen to make this latest effort stick.

Programs and people. Exactly.

People like the men and women I regularly see and speak to while roaming around the city, sweeping up in front of their homes and in and around their neighborhoods. The official and unofficial block captains, the stewards of their small corners of our city. The lionhearts of litter.

People like Tishawn Coles, another member of the cleaning crew, who cleans up parts of the city all day, and then goes home and, as a block captain, tidies up her street.

People who reminded me of the women of North Sydenham Street whom I wrote about in 2013, warriors in the battle against blight. Some have since moved to other neighborhoods, but they continue to fight — one trash bag at a time.

In fact, Joetta Johnson, one of the women, was the first person I called when the block-by-block cleanup was announced. I promised I’d visit her soon to talk trash — of all kinds. But Johnson’s excitement was already coming through loud and clear.

“This could be big, this could be great,” she said, echoing the kind of enthusiasm workers told me they’d heard from residents since they began showing up to neighborhoods earlier this month.

I hope city officials are listening to people like Johnson because this optimism — cautious as it should be, given the history of start fast, disappoint faster city programs — is coming from residents who have heard all kinds of promises before. And, still, they are all in.

And that, Philadelphia, is quite impressive.