Four young men want to be the answer to East St. Louis trash issue. Community responds

During the drive to her home on 29th and Bond Avenue in East St. Louis, Isabelle Crockett was surprised to see a man cleaning up in her neighborhood. She didn’t realize that she had seen him before. But she noticed he was alone.

“He was on this heavy equipment machine, and I kept saying, “Dog, he is really working and he is all by himself,’ Crockett, 70, said. “I kept expecting for a crew to join him, but they never did. I was on my way back home, and I stopped to ask him if he wanted a bottle of water, and I realized it was him. I was really surprised, and I was really happy. I had seen him on State Street and he was doing the same thing.”

That thing was the ostensibly simple and cumbersome, the rewarding and overwhelming, the time-consuming and often tedious yet important task of picking up trash throughout Bond Avenue. It’s a task that Zach Chike, a youth pastor at nearby City of Joy Fellowship, is wholeheartedly committed to. It’s also an extension of the work of Clean City Coalition, a new group led by four men, including Chike, who aim to mainly address environmental racism in East St. Louis by hosting various community cleanup initiatives throughout the city.

Last November, Chike completed the month-long work of cleaning up overgrowth, weeds and trash that had built up on curbs from 10th to 35th Street. The next phase of his Bond Street initiative includes picking up glass and simply beautifying the area. For example, last month he started putting Christmas decorations in the area.

Crockett said she really admired that effort.

.“There are a lot of us who really appreciate him,” Crockett said. “I think he’s really doing some great things in East St. Louis. A lot of times, people always have derogatory things to say about our city, and a lot of them are not true. People are very caring and very friendly and they treasure their brothers and sisters and neighbors. I just like this positive atmosphere that he’s helping to bring to the top.”

Clean City Coalition

Creating a positive environment in East St. Louis is one of the missions of Clean City Coalition. Composed of local community leaders like Chike, Koran Payton, JD Dixon and Thomas Brown, the Clean City Coalition aims to promote a culture of trash maintenance to keep the city clean.

Chike, 33, said the lack of maintenance is a pervasive problem in the area that nearly normalizes the sight of trash throughout the city.

“It’s always been here…you kind of just see it and you become not indifferent but just overwhelmed and sad and frustrated because, as a resident, you’re looking at the situation like who’s going to do something,?” Chike said.

Clean City Coalition wants to be a part of the answer. Although the group formed last year, they are hoping to get its nonprofit status this year. The four men, who’ve hosted individual cleanups through their respective organizations (Payton’s Regular Everyday Citizens, Dixon’s Empire 13, Brown’s BuildN the Foundation and Chike’s work with City of Joy Fellowship) since 2020, thought it was best to combine their efforts to further achieve their shared goals and inspire others in the community to take action in the city.

“We were all doing community cleanups in East St. Louis, and we all didn’t know each other,” JD Dixon said. “One day, I was doing a cleanup. KP (Koran Payton) was doing a cleanup. Thomas and Zach were doing their thing, but we were all in different areas of the community, fighting for the same thing.

“We ended up running into each other and we were like man, there’s no need for us to spread ourselves out when we can come together and use all of our resources together and fight exactly what we’re fighting but with more power.”

In the fall, Dixon launched the Clean Street Initiative: Rebuilding our Communities Infrastructure to partially address the city’s trash issue. He’s currently raising roughly $3,400 to purchase $20 trash cans and 10 3-in-1 recycling bins for State Street.

Dixon understands that trash maintenance is the city’s responsibility, but he also understands the plight of underfunded Black communities.

“East St. Louis and the people are not dirty,” Dixon, 33, said. “It’s not trash. The reason why that happens is because of lack of infrastructure.”

That’s why he sees trash in the city as a direct result of environmental racism. He reflects on Fourth of Julys spent at his grandma’s house on 83rd Street when he’d see firsthand how a lack of resources in the city contributes to the trash in the area.

“Just being on the street, popping fireworks and walking to the store, seeing the trash buildup, seeing the burned down homes and just seeing that as a kid,” Dixon, who now lives in Belleville, said. “That’s culture of poverty. When you see that, it’s supposed to make you feel like there’s nothing that could come from where you’re at because that’s how it’s been designed. That’s why it was kept there. …Seeing that and just being there with my cousins all the time, that’s something I didn’t want the next generation coming up in now knowing what I know now.”

East St. Louis Mayor Robert Eastern III is an ally of the Clean City Coalition. He has made his administration available to assist with whatever the group needs for various cleanup projects. Eastern said he even helped DJ a recent cleanup in Lincoln Park. He’s thankful that the group is able to pitch in when the city lacks the appropriate resources.

“You have to keep in mind that for budgetary reasons, our public works department, as all departments in East St. Louis, has been dismantled,” Eastern said. “We got about 13 guys that have to handle 34 square miles of the city. That’s sewer breaks, that’s alley cleaning, that’s patching, putting up signs, pump stations. It’s 13 guys that have to handle that for the whole city.”

He said residents understanding that void “speaks volumes.”

“I think any time you have a group of people who take an interest in beautifying their city, it’s definitely appreciated, so I’m glad that seed was planted and starting to take growth and blossom,” Eastern said.

Inspiring others

Patrice Preston-Rogers has helped the leaders of the Clean City Coalition with various efforts. She has noticed the impact of their work on the community.

“Just building that morale up and then I believe it’s catching on and even going to get bigger as years go on,” Preston-Rogers, an East St. Louis native, said. “What Zach and all the guys are doing is they bring a pride back to East St. Louis to me. Because you see what he’s doing and think you can do it. It’s definitely contagious.”

Koran Payton said receiving support from the community and encouraging others is the most rewarding part of his work. Since starting his cleanup group Regular Everyday Citizens in 2020, Payton said his team has hosted or collaborated with nearly 70 cleanup initiatives in the city.

“I don’t believe that I’m going to be able to clean up the city,” Payton, 32, said. “I just believe that I am here to inspire the people that are in the city to know that they can get it clean and they can fight for justice from people coming outside of the community and dumping and they can stand up to the people within the community that aren’t doing their fair share. It’s about changing the minds of the people. It’s about action.”

Payton said there’s power in four young Black men partnering to create changes in their community. All of the leaders in Clean City Coalition are in their early thirties and either live or were raised in East St. Louis.

“Any time in the past that that has happened, you often see some type of tragedy linked around it, but it’s awe-inspiring because they’re so many stereotypes of our people pulling each other down or we can’t work together,” Payton, of Belleville, said. “Well, you can’t tell me that. I literally work with three other Black men who, mind you, we have vastly different views on how things should be done, like completely different views on how it should be done, but we have one thing in mind. We have a common goal and a common idea and we’re able to set all our pride aside to do that.”

Thomas Brown thinks so too. Changing the conditions of his hometown is something he’s wanted to do since he was in middle school. He remembers walking to school and seeing the abandoned homes and trash in the street.

“I want Clean City to inspire other organizations in the community to do the same things we’re doing,” Brown, 32, said. “We can’t wait on city government. We can’t wait on any type of person to do what we can do ourselves.”

Zach Chike said the group is hoping to be in constant communication with the city to create a viable system of trash maintenance. He wants to start doing that this year.

“Let’s just say my responsibility is to check up on Bond Ave every month, so I’ll just roll up and down it, and I’m going to note some areas that may need attention, and then I’m going to follow up with the city and say are you all able to get this area cleaned? If it’s not done within a month, then it’s up to Clean City Coalition to go behind them and pick up the slack and do it,” Chike said.

Preston-Rogers admires the group’s strong sense of initiative and community. She remembers when they helped clean the vacant lot that would eventually become her community garden on 11th and St. Clair Avenue. They didn’t have to help her. But they did.

“One thing about all of them is they’re the type that they’re not waiting for others,” Preston-Rogers. “I’ve seen all of them on a Saturday morning with their trash bags. It’s not like they’re waiting on public works. They’re taking things in their own hands, and I just love that . At one time, it could have been a sense of hopelessness. It was a sense of hopelessness, and I think that the fellas have brought hope back into the city.”

To be involved in the cleanup efforts of Clean City Coalition, click here.

This story was originally published January 11, 2022 at 5:00 AM.

DeAsia Paige

Belleville News-Democrat

DeAsia Paige joined the Belleville News-Democrat as a Report for America corps member in 2020. She’s a community reporter covering East St. Louis and surrounding areas. DeAsia previously interned with VICE and The Detroit Free Press. She graduated from The University of Kansas in 2020.