To The Readers’ Forum:

When I look around Jamestown, I cannot help but become disheartened and angry at the way so many people have treated our beautiful city as nothing more than a municipal garbage dump. While some streets are worse than others, you can look around virtually any neighborhood in this city and find litter.

On May 21, the citywide cleanup initiative “Hands on Jamestown Clean Up” organized several groups of volunteers to clean the streets throughout the city. The group that I volunteered in was assigned the north side of Jamestown. Among the group were two 75-year-old senior citizens who cleaned an obscene amount of litter on Crescent Street. Additionally, our city council man, Brent Sheldon, who had a scheduled foot surgery pending, cleaned East Second Street by himself. If you look at that street today from Dollar General to 7-Eleven reaching all the way to the apartments on East Second Street, you will find trash everywhere.

Both the residents and businesses on that street should be ashamed of how poorly maintained their neighborhood is. I would go so far as to say that the trash on that street is a reflection of the amount of care and attention to detail said residents and businesses put into their personal and professional lives. Just by looking at the amount of litter that has cluttered Second Street alone, you wonder if anyone is even bothered by this or if they feel so helpless and overwhelmed by the situation that they merely turn a blind eye.

Is it really so difficult to grab a trash bag and a pair of gloves and pick up the garbage? Better yet, wouldn’t it be better if the people who were responsible for the litter grasped the concept of personal and social responsibility and took five seconds out of their important, busy day to walk over to a trash can to deposit their litter rather than recklessly throw it on the street? What a novel idea.

Though the unfortunate reality is that will always have low-life, moronic, intellectual neanderthals wrapped in a bubble of solipsism and entitlement, the majority of people are hard-working, caring citizens who want to maintain the integrity and beauty of this charming city. When I speak to the people who litter, my words fall on deaf ears. When I speak to the responsible citizens who notice this litter epidemic, I am preaching to the choir. So now I turn my words toward the city. We seem to have an unenforced litter law which is apparently nothing more than a mockery when you see the condition Jamestown streets are in. I urge this city to consider the benefits of serious repercussions for anyone who is caught littering. Fine them or, better yet, have them pick up litter on the streets for a few days.

Shannon Harris,

Jamestown