For eight hours on Saturday, dozens of volunteers cleared mountains of trash dumped on East 12th Street in Oakland, filling, by day’s end, two dump trailers with discarded refrigerators, mattresses, couches and even a dead chicken in a cage.
The volunteers, organized by the Urban Compassion Project , were expecting the assistance of Oakland Public Works, which had committed in an email to sending a garbage truck to transport the trash to the city dump. The Chronicle reviewed the emails exchanged between the Urban Compassion Project and Public Works officials in which officials told organizers that the city would provide the truck and were “excited about future collaborations.”
But the truck failed to materialize and city officials “ghosted” organizers after promising to send the truck, said Supriya Golas, who co-founded Urban Compassion Project alongside formerly homeless Oaklander Vincent Ray Williams to address illegal dumping in encampments…