Letter: Parade cleanup a party of its own

Spanish Town had a lot of crime when most of us bought property. We bought any way. We stuck together and chased the crime out.

The litter from the parades is no different. Most of us bought here knowing litter is a problem. We don’t want the parade to go. We want the litter to go.

Just because the neighborhood suffered from the lack of a systematic and consistent cleanup in the past, we are not destined to repeat the past, but we can bring change to rid ourselves of litter in the future.

A bunch of us know that it will take the same energy it took in fighting crime to make the litter go away and to help people to understand that you gotta clean up after the party.

Look at the University Lakes. Everybody loves the pink birds that magically appear every year. And the tradition of going out into the lake to steal your pink bird is precious. But now there are all these ugly sticks left behind from where the birds once were.

We need to all come together to preserve these unique traditions and put systems in place for litter cleanup after we all had a lot of fun.

Individuals stepped up to the plate this year for the first time in several years, and the only piece of litter I saw on Spanish Town Road Monday morning was one cup.

But we can’t celebrate yet because it is all too fragile. The money used to clean up after the parade came from the Society for the Preservation of Lagniappe in Louisiana — the parade organizers. The bulk of the organizing effort came from one individual in Spanish Town and a whole lot of city officials who cared. Now hopefully the responsibility will shift from the individuals to the groups and the cleanup will become institutionalized.

Our downtown is so amazing. I had some young friends ride a bus in from Loyola University in New Orleans, asking to spend the night so they could come to the Spanish Town Parade. Imagine that!

C’mon now. Patronize good restaurants. Dance a lot. Listen to musicians. Party hard — and then clean up so we can have another party. It would be sad if these unique traditions went away because the different groups can’t hear each other and institutionalize solutions to rid ourselves of the litter. Maybe there are service organizations out there who can partner with parade organizers and civic associations to help out.

Marie Constantin

photographer

Baton Rouge

Comments

1) Comment by Whatchange - 12/02/2013

I had to go to NY for work, my wife has never been so she came with me on this trip, I finished a couple of days early and we decided to tour NY, it just so happened that the gay pride parade was happening that weekend, man that is one huge parade, I mean huge. What surprised my wife and I was the size of the parade, the number of people watching the parade, the double row of barricades, and how clean it was after the parade, and no violence despite all the people. You just don't realize how trashy our state is/looks and how lazy and rude people in Louisiana are till you travel to other states, it is ashamed we have forgotten ourselves.

2) Comment by twinkie1cat - 12/02/2013

At Gay Pride in Atlanta, the organizers put cardboard trash cans, with the logo of a sponsor on them. That way there is little excuse to make a mess. A few minutes before Pride gets over, people are reminded to pick up the trash and put it in the containers, which they do. Then the canners, who have been waiting up on the hill watching the drag show get the aluminum and make some money recycling. (Canners are people who collect aluminum. In Atlanta they are often elderly men who have electric wheelchairs or scooters.) The result is that there is very little trash left after Pride for the city to pick up and it has the reputation for being one of the cleanest festivals Atlanta has. PS: Leave the beads in the trees. They look great. Or organizers could put out special bead cans for the groups that recycle them