Volunteers with Charlotte church go layers deep into litter at West Boulevard and Remount Road
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Out back, the words have been brought to life.
Here on Sunday morning, just east of Remount Road, volunteers from the World Mission Society Church of God attacked an acre of brush and woods that can be best described as three parts active landfill and one part outdoor toilet.
Generations of drinkers and drug users have left a legacy of trash. The ground clinks with it. The air is rife with it. Several groups have taken one glimpse, one whiff and decided their community-service efforts were better directed elsewhere.
Working with the city of Charlotte, the World Society Church of God delegation waded right in. Working in blue T-shirts and vests, they filled hundreds of trash bags and hauled away everything from animal carcasses to refrigerator doors. The more they carted out, the more they found.
“I knew it was going to be bad, but we all hoped it would be better than this,” said church volunteer James Lindsay, hacking at the overgrowth with a machete.
“It’s sad to see people treat the earth this way,” said Allison Danley, a church member from north Charlotte. “This is disrespecting God.”
The Tyvola Road congregation took on the cleanup as part of a worldwide effort by its church. The 2,200 branches of the World Mission Society are performing community service to prepare themselves for the celebration of Passover on April 5.
Jack Kim, the Charlotte church’s missionary and coordinator of the event, said the morning offered members a chance for environmental awareness, “to cleanse our own souls,” and to love thy neighbor.
In this case, some of those neighbors aren’t much for litter laws and personal hygiene.
“There are more politically corrects terms we could use, but we’re talking about homeless vagrants and crackheads, and they are out here every day,” said Chris Lyon, a Charlotte-Mecklenburg police officer assigned to the area.
The cleanup started at 9 a.m. About 70 volunteers showed up with 100 trash bags. At 9:30, they went out and bought 200 more.
By that time, 80-year-old David Moryas had seen the work on a TV newscast and driven over to help. Machete in one hand, the native of Kenya pointed at the nearby businesses.
“The shop owners should be participating,” he said, “so they can know what’s going on in their neighborhood, what their customers have done.”
At the nearby Jeman Express convenience store, Kay Aho was opening up.
Does the area have a problem with loiterers? “Ha, this is West Boulevard,” he said.
Asked if he knew what the church volunteers were doing, he retreated. “I work up here. I don’t know what goes on back there.”
Back there, two messages have been painted on the cinder block. No loitering. No p---ing. Based on available evidence, both have been ignored.
Lyon, who worked alongside the church volunteers, said police make arrests in the woods almost every day. The department and the city have also begun the legal process to get the owner of the vacant property to take more responsibility.
He looked around at the volunteers. “The church is great,” he said.
Nearby, a small mountain of filled trash bags had begun to emerge near West Boulevard. And still more came. Mattresses, furniture, tires and hundreds upon hundreds of bottles and cans. Lindsay tossed something heavy over a fence onto the back parking lot – the gas tank of a car.
Later in the morning, Vickie McClain sat on a rock to catch her breath.
“I’m from Charlotte, and I know West Boulevard. But I had no idea what was in those bushes,” she said. “Look at some of those bottles. They’ve got to be 30 years old.”
McClain looked at her watch: 11 a.m. An hour of work to go. She grabbed her bag and a picker, and headed back into the brush.
