Picketing: Extreme Peer Pressure

A few years ago, in an article in the Grants Pass Daily Courier about my problem with the litter and weed problems in this city, our then-City-Manager Laurel Samson said, “We enforce our nuisance codes by peer pressure.”  Trouble was then and still is that almost no peers are willing to apply it.  Like any necessary evil, it doesn’t necessarily win one friends, and it can be dangerous when one tries to correct a disorderly person.  This is why we have police, public nags, to do dangerous jobs like telling someone that one’s property is disorderly and one needs to clean it up.

But our city police presently are forbidden to enforce or even notice property maintenance and other city codes, the better to enforce state laws, one supposes, though our City Charter demands that the Manager enforce all city codes and does not mention state laws.  Our previous manager, David Frasher, in 2006 set up a Code Enforcement Department of non-sworn officers, soon renamed as “Community Service Officers,” (CSOs) supposedly to enforce city codes, but actually to be the place where property nuisance complaints go to die, while complaints about other code violations like lack of sign permits and fees are enforced. 

When nuisances ripen into safety hazards, CSOs eventually cite and abate the hazard.  But even hazards are not enforced against until they become a big enough hassle to clean up that the responsible party might let the city to do it for profit.  They used to charge a 10% of cost administration fee for hazard abatements; it recently was raised to 20%.  After all, people will clean up a minor nuisance or safety hazard with only a warning from a cop, which makes no money for the city. 

          But the purpose of nuisance codes is to stop safety hazards from developing.  When police won’t do their job of necessary nagging, the responsibility for it falls on private people, “peer pressure,” as Ms. Samson said.  This Litter Cleaner has been applying a subtle kind of peer pressure for the last year, demonstrating cleaning of litter on private and public properties.  It has been too subtle, and subtlety doesn’t work for a protest.  

It’s time to make it blatant, by picketing one property at a time, starting with the most egregious offender, a restaurant that piles empty boxes out front of their store under their overhang, an obvious safety problem.  Let’s see how long it takes them to clean up their exterior with a protester holding a sign for a couple of hours per week and handing out leaflets. 

          (It took about a half-hour, and was not pleasant for anyone involved.  The next target is Walmart, which is the biggest offender, will be tougher, and won’t take it so personally.)

I'm done cleaning on the Miracle Mile

Some businesses, along the blocks of the Miracle Mile that I've been cleaning under the sponsorship of KAJO/KLDR, have been slacking off on their own litter cleaning. This shows that, if you do something for others for free, they will stop doing it themselves.  

Not everyone has done so.  Some have actually improved a bit, namely the Fruitdale Grange, which has lately begun renovating their landscaping, and last week cleaned up the bamboo and maple leaves along the north edge of their lot.  

       Then there is a certain restaurant, which has been so slovenly that I started calling police on them for leaving their boxes piled up within sight of passersby, where they could burn if a firebug took the notion, and attractive nuisance back in the corner of the fence that they share with another property.  Their employees also throw their butts everywhere, including the property next door.

An employee confronted me a while back about calling the cops, when I was shaking my head at their having moved their boxes to the front of their building, under their overhang where they would stay dry, burnable and even more accessible.  She said that the cop had been there 5 times and he said that it was okay to stack boxes if they were broken down and flattened.  I see no such allowance for storing such trash on the ground in our nuisance code.  

What became crystal clear to me on the day before Thanksgiving is that regular weekly cleaning does not work as a protest, even while wearing a tunic sign.  One becomes like Mom cleaning house or a servant.  

It was L'il Pantry who made me call it a day and an end, looking at the trash at one end of their lot.  I had noticed the trash on their lot increasing; this was the most butts I'd seen on this edge yet.  It was obvious that their workers never get to this edge of their lot, and apparently picked up little or nothing between my weekly visits.  

When I first started picking up their lot, I gave them a prize for “no old trash” on their property.  Perhaps the worker who liked to keep things clean had quit and no one has taken up the work, a common problem, which means that their owner does not care.  

I get the best reaction from a neighborhood when I clean an area occasionally rather than regularly.  Once a week is too often; people are willing to wait for it rather than do the work themselves.  It actually sets a bad example, implying that weekly is often enough, when litter cleaning needs to be done at least daily, several times a day at restaurants, bars, and convenience stores.  

So I am done with protest cleaning of any private property, and will end my weekly cleaning under the Caveman Bridge.  The City will continue to depend on me to clean it if I keep doing it.  I may picket that restaurant’s unsafe disorderly conduct and the city over their toleration of it.

I owe KAJO/KLDR for the two months or so left on their year of site sponsorship.  I give them credit for two days of cleaning an event of their choice, a $200 value.  This is a service, not a protest.