The Asian American Civic Association (AACA) hosted the first Clean-up Chinatown Committee meeting since the COVID-19 pandemic struck. For many years, the committee has worked to clean up the streets of Chinatown. Due to COVID-19 restrictions, the meetings were suspended for about eight months before resuming on October 14.

This meeting followed the efforts of the “We Love Boston Chinatown” campaign and the cleanup day hosted by Chinatown Mainstreet (CMS) and Boston Chinatown Neighborhood Center (BCNC) in August. On October 9, rather than host another cleanup day, Tufts University took the lead in hosting “311 Day” to educate the public about the number to call for requesting non-emergency services.

The 311 flyers at the outreach event also had simplified Chinese instructions for calling the line. Pallavi Shrestha, from AACA, said, “For example, if there are broken lights or their trash on the streets, we basically highlighted that for 311 was basically a complaint line because a lot of people around the Chinatown community didn’t know what that was.”

The committee plans to make this an annual outreach event to remind everyone about the complaint line. Those present at the October 14 meeting included AACA members, Raymond Cheng from the Chinese Consolidated Benevolent Association, Helen Kwok from the Chinese Business Association, and the Mayor’s Office’s Lisa Hy as well as City Councilor Ed Flynn.

The committee discussed targeting systematic changes to make towards keeping a better and cleaner Chinatown neighborhood. Previously, AACA also participated in the Boston City Council hearing on illegal dumping and rodent control on September 22.

CEO of AACA Mary Chin said, “We want very much every muscle, the only way we can get muscle is to have our community working with city officials.”

Working alongside other efforts to clean up and beautify Chinatown, the committee plans to meet monthly to check-in on the progress towards the community’s betterment.

Councilor Flynn said, “Thank you to the volunteers that did an outstanding job last week at the cleanup day with the translations and then 311 outreach. It’s groups like AACA that work hard to represent the community and make sure that they’re treated fairly with respect and dignity.”

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