I am excited about the cleanup at Strawberry Park this week, on Wednesday starting at 3PM. I called one of the organizers, Antonio, who is a street outreach worker, to see how I could get involved. "Show up," he said and chuckled. Antonio is just one of many people who refuse to give up by giving back to the community. (See Amanda's blog post "Volunteers Needed for Park Restoration" to find out how to get involved.)   Strawberry Park is on Strawberry Ave. between Western Ave. and Boston St. near the Stop & Shop.

You may have read about Strawberry Park in the Lynn Item. A while ago, the city decided that taking down the basketball hoops would make the park less of an attraction to gangs. I really don't see how this follows, and it also deprives good kids of a place to hang out and stay active. So a group of citizens is taking the park back by cleaning it up, painting over the grafitti, and painting a mural on the basketball court. It is hoped that once the city sees the lengths to which residents are willing to go, the hoops will be put back up.

It is hard work reclaiming territory ceded to gangs. It's going to take constant, prolonged vigilance. Not that I would know, but Ward 3 Councilor Darren Cyr told me about his neighborhood's long drawn and frustrating but ultimately successful efforts to reclaim a park near the Lynn Swampscott line.

When a radio talk show host called Lynn a dump, Councilor Ford took it personally. Why did he get so upset? Maybe because the truth hurts.

I ponder this as I stoop to pick up the empty Courvoisier bottle in the gutter in front of my house. Then I think of the people living behind me who've piled old computer monitors and other assorted junk in the 3 foot space between their house and my backyard fence. Out of sight, out of mind. Ultimately, It's the absentee landlord's responsibility to remove these items, so any ticket that inspectional services writes up is probably ignored. Then I see the sewer drains in my neighborhood clotted with debris. Used syringes in the dark alley by the foreclosed house with boarded up windows. That's my neighborhood. People seem to treat it like it's a dump. I just don't get it. 

We held a neighborhood cleanup in May. The DPW was there. The city of Lynn and SCI Lynn chipped in. Lynn Lumber provided discounted trash barrels for distribution to residents. We cleaned up a cul-de-sac with several foreclosed houses (where the syringes were found), a parking lot on Essex and Chestnut Streets and the area around the Ingalls school. I even decided that I would adopt the cul-de-sac with the foreclosed homes and clean it up every now and again. I actually followed through for a couple of weeks, but grew discouraged. It didn't take long before the places we had cleaned up were littered again.

You'd think we would treat our homes, our neighborhoods, our environment, with more respect. What's it going to take to transform this multicultural place we call Lynn, where we must live so closely with our neighbors, into the city it could be? One person alone can't do it. Many people acting independently of each haven't been able to do it. It doesn't even appear that the many civic, municipal and social service organizations working independently of each other have been able to do it. These are all good beginning attempts, but something more is needed. When one thing is fixed, another one breaks somewhere else.

So I put it out to all of you who want to see a Lynn transformed? What are your ideas? How can we put them into action? How do we hold our leaders accountable? How do we reach critical mass? What must we as a community do to get to the tipping point? Why do I bother writing to this blog? Does anyone care to comment?