Pearl River The North American ACORN Year End / Year Begin meeting ended at noon on Sunday. Today is Martin Luther King’s Birthday, a holiday in the United States, and by the flip of the calendar, also Inauguration Day in Washington, DC, where Donald Trump will take the oath, likely with his little fingers crossed behind his back, as the 47th President of the United States.
In short, there’s a lot of things to think about on a day like today. I was trying to channel King yesterday as I read a portion of a new book, The Containment, for an upcoming radio interview, which argued that his death was the final catalyst in passing a bill on fair housing. I’ll have more to say about that soon.
What was really on my mind was something much different though. It’s a critical part of organizing and actions that is often either forgotten or neglected. Once everyone packs up and heads for their cars, the airport, or bus station to make their way back to their home offices, there are always pieces leftover and tasks to be done.
This morning, I did my fourth load of laundry and finally finished folding towels and sheets that I began working on early yesterday afternoon. I have one more sleeping bag to get out of the tent and another couple of bags of recycling and garbage to haul out to the truck and the can. We’ve had several flights cancelled as the temperature dropped around the country and the snow complicated air travel. The television was on for some of the last to leave last night, and we could see the snow on the football fields in Philadelphia and Buffalo, so we knew this wasn’t fake news. Two of our team ended up on a 5AM flight and one will be in New Orleans an extra night. Not bad, considering everything. I’ve only had to find two computer cords that were left in the pack out and one battery pack. Even sending away muffins, bagels, snacks and more, there’s still food to put in coolers and ferry back to New Orleans. I hope cream cheese can last another year, because thanks to Costco, we’ve still got plenty! The rest goes to the office, though there’s one more king cake that we’ll save for closer to Mardi Gras. There’s a leak in the big trailer, but all that means is turning off the water and hoping for the best the next time we come over.
All of which is why we always have a “cleaner” on meetings and actions. This time it’s me, but we learned decades ago that this was an absolute necessity. Originally, we were taught this lesson after an ACORN convention in Philadelphia, where some dozen or more arrests, meant delays in springing people from jail, while their busses and planes with other members were long gone. Realizing that someone had to stay behind in all of these situations meant we needed a “cleaner.”
Thanks to Harvey Keitel in his classic role as “Victor the Cleaner” in the 1993 film “Point of No Return” with Bridget Fonda, Anne Bancroft and others, and then again as Winston Wolf, a cleaner, in the 1994 breakthrough film “Pulp Fiction,” we knew what to call this job assignment. Keitel was the person the mob would bring in to clean up whatever mess was created or left from their mischief and mayhem. Having a cleaner has now become almost a trope in films about crime and the deaths it leaves behind. There was even a BBC-TV series about a man specializing in cleaning up crime scenes that is called “Spotless”. It features a character named Jean, who runs a crime scene cleaning business and gets entangled with his criminal brother.
Talking to other organizers, I’m often surprised that they haven’t learned to name a “cleaner” as a standard practice after meetings and actions. It might be a thankless job for those not thinking, but it’s critical in making all the pieces come together and keeping things right for the next time around. I’d like to emphasize this even more and go into more detail, but I’m the cleaner here, and I still have a lot to do.