RBAC Celebrates ‘One Seattle’ on Henderson
Rainier Beach Action Coalition(RBAC) works locally in the Rainier Beach Community to support neighborhood safety, clean up and beautification and a lot more. On May 20th RBAC participated in the Mayor’s Second Annual “One Seattle” city wide cleanup and beautification event. The Mayor and staff supported over a hundred community efforts throughout the city to make Seattle a better place to live.
RBAC selected the Henderson Corridor as the area of emphasis for the May 20th clean up. Leading the cleanup was Coach Vic Roberson and Tyree Abella of RBAC’s famous “Clean Crew”. This team has been responsible for hundreds of neighborhood litter pickups, and countless beautification efforts in the Rainier Beach neighborhood. Henderson was selected in part because RBAC is working to get feedback from the community on how to reimagine Henderson street.
Nearly a dozen community members signed up to help spruce up Henderson Street- which is a major corridor in the community which connects citizens, students and businesses to the Light Rail station at Martin Luther King Jr way. Volunteers came from the community and included the likes of Mr. Gregory Davis and Dwayne Chappelle who dawned orange vests, put on gloves to help make Henderson street even more inviting.
Three cleanups were conducted on Henderson street by the host of eager and excited volunteers. The first was a renovation and makeover of the garden beds at Henderson and Chief Sealth Trail. Mr. Davis led a group of volunteers who weeded the bed, deadheaded the pansies and then provided a thick blanket of mulch to keep the plants moist so they can survive the upcoming hot summer weather. As we conducted the work one of the volunteers indicated they didn’t know how to do the work-but was caught on quickly and was soon separating weed from a good plant. The volunteer shared with us that her mom recently passed and her mom loved purple flowers and there she was pulling weeds from purple pansies in the flower bed. Just touching the soil with her hands connected her with mother earth and the wonderful memory of mother.
The team then went to work on a huge tree pit that was crawling with blackberry vines so much that they blocked the sidewalks. The team armed with shovels, pick axes and sheers went to work on the mass of blackberries vines until they were pulled up, chopped off or dug out. That was some work! The final project of the day was a litter pickup that feature Mr. Chappelle and several neighbors and his amazingly cute kiddos. With their litter sticks moving deftly they filled several bags of litter that folks dropped (please don’t litter– watch our message about littering insert slam dunk the junk).
On behalf of all those who participated in the One Day of Service the Clean Crew thanks you for your dedication to making this community, our community, the most amazing place to live, work and play in Seattle.
