Following up last year’s videos and images of Washington Square Park after the Pride March and Queer Liberation March, Here are videos and images of the park after this year’s marches.

Prepare to want to cry or vomit. I can’t see how any one could accept how we are treating each other and nature. It is a statement of our culture at every level. Not one item of trash in any image is necessary. Few, if any, were designed for long-term use. It’s all designed and used to be disposed. There are people and wildlife at the other end of this disposal. Watch this episode of Frontline on plastic if you think plastic gets recycled or is safely disposed of.

And everyone disposed of all this stuff. It is not a sanitation issue. It is a too-much-production issue for the manufacturers. For the people who bought it, since nothing in any image was necessary, they chose to buy each superfluous thing. They’d be richer in time, money, relationships, and safety by not buying any of the things.

Videos

Here are videos of me walking through the mess. I set my alarm to 4:30am to increase the odds of my arriving before taxpayer-funded city staff started cleaning it. A few destitute people were already picking through it, though I didn’t see anything of value. They only left junk they didn’t want.

---

---

Pictures

This is how we treat our world. I see it as a leadership issue at every level, from individual to heads of corporations and government.

Expect more if everyone doesn’t make stewardship our priority.

• ← Volunteering: Institutional Composting
• How Not to Give Up →