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The Fourth of July came and went in Philadelphia without liberal-left protesters marching downtown condemning the holiday.

Yet a trash stench hung over the city that was worse in some neighborhoods than others.

A city workers strike, called for July 1, was already in full swing. The strike was called by AFSCME District Council 33 with little warning. At that time Philadelphia Mayor Cherelle Parker addressed the city, telling residents not to put trash and garbage in front of their sidewalks but to transport it to one of the 66 designated dumpster sites throughout the city.

Since many city residents do not own vehicles, to expect Philadelphians to walk their trash or take public transportation to designated dumpsters seemed utopian at best.

To expect residents to keep trash and garbage in their homes or apartments until the end of the strike is also wishful thinking.

The average Philadelphia city worker makes about $23.82 an hour; sanitation workers here make anywhere from $39,000 to $42,000 annually, allegedly the lowest in the nation.

Strike organizers turned down the city’s offer of a new three-year contract with an annual raise of about 3%.

The city’s progressive community came out strongly in support of the strikers.

This was especially evident on social media in those neighborhoods that are among the first to identify with left wing causes. Dutiful residents posted photographs of trash bags dumped illegally in alleyways. These posts drew comments like, “We need to photograph the culprits and publish their identities and addresses,” and, “This has to stop. We need to follow them to their homes, if possible, and then expose them.”

In many ways this attitude was a replay of what occurred in the city during the pandemic lockdown when the city urged neighbors to snitch on neighbors who were hosting large gatherings at home.

A special hotline was devised for these Big Brother snitchers. Many residents of Northern Liberties and Fishtown, especially the progressive transplants from New York-the same people who wore face masks outdoors and took it upon themselves to yell at strangers who were not wearing masks-took to that hotline like communists gravitating to Zohran Mamdani.

While sanitation workers deserve to make a decent wage, do they have the right to hold a city hostage and endanger its health and welfare in order to force the city to capitulate to its demands?

I don’t think so.

Anyone who has ever lived in Philadelphia knows the hypocrisy of this town when it comes to litter and trash collection.

Philadelphia has always had a heavy litter problem. In the neighborhoods people have been known to stuff trash and even dead pets down storm sewers as if they were trash receptacles. When recycling became the law in the city some years ago special recycle police were sent out to inspect trash bags set on sidewalks. These inspectors would sort through your trash and if they found a random plastic Coke bottle you would be issued a fifty dollar ticket.

That practice soon fell by the wayside. The city lost interest in that kind of heavy policing as the sanitation department itself was discovered to mix all trash, recycles and non-recycles both, and deposit them in the same place.

It didn’t help that during the last decade or so, the city also began to eliminate trash receptacles in many neighborhoods, forcing neighborhood associations and volunteers to buy trash cans and do the job themselves.

Google “Why aren’t there municipal public trash cans in Philly?” and you’ll get this Reddit response:

“I moved from [insert some other city here] and they got them. But in all seriousness, is there some specific, practical reason Philly doesn’t have municipal garbage cans? I’ve seen those painted big belly compactors, but those seem like their private/public, and also pretty sparsely distributed.”

The absence of city trash receptacles has caused Philadelphia’s litter problem to implode.

Trash pile-ups in Center City, especially near SEPTA stations, are not uncommon. The sad fact is, Philadelphians are used to trash and litter. Twenty years ago when I moved into my Fishtown neighborhood I joined a volunteer group committed to cleaning up certain streets of trash and litter. My participation didn’t last long because the project proved to be an impossible task. These streets still have as much litter and trash as they did two decades ago when I joined the group.

Philadelphia, simply put, is a city that likes to litter. Litter is in the urban DNA here alongside its misguided love for its sanctuary city status and its ingenious ability to call up thousands of Trump-hating robots on ‘No Kings’ day.

It is a city that prides itself on “inclusivity” despite the fact that its annual WAWA-sponsored concert on the Benjamin Franklin Parkway every July 4th features only black rap artists and pop stars. As a rule, white people in the surrounding neighborhoods either go to the shore when these concerts are scheduled or stay locked up in their houses until the “equity” concert is over.

The latest WAWA July 4th Parkway bash took a hit because of the trash strike.

Two rap artists, non-white, bowed out of performing because they didn’t want to be perceived as crossing picket lines. Over the same July 4th weekend, 8 people were injured in a mass shooting at a place called 7 Elements Restaurant Bar and Lounge in South Philadelphia.

“Bad things happen in Philadelphia,” as President Trump said during the campaign of 2024.

The trash strike, meanwhile, continues on its merry way as residents find it harder to obey the mayor’s request to not place bags on street corners or near abandoned buildings.

AFSCME DC 33 meanwhile, has been called out by City Solicitor Rene Garcia, a fellow progressive Democrat, for a host of illegal activities during the strike.

Here’s what she found:

One AFSCME union guy was arrested for slashing tires. Union strikers also jammed the locks of several city Health Centers while other strikers prevented city residents from dropping off trash at designated city dumpsters. Water was also shut off by strikers at a water treatment facility and trash was physically removed by strikers from (approved) compactors and thrown on the ground.

There were court injunctions (Democrat-against-Democrat) forcing some workers back to work, like the employees of the Philadelphia Medical Examiner’s Office.

Other court injunctions targeted illegal picketing when strikers attempted to prevent employees from entering city facilities.

Philadelphia’s last big sanitation workers strike occurred in 1986 when 45,000 tons of stinking maggot-infested trash filled city streets.

The dire condition in the city at that time caused then Mayor Wilson Goode, a Democrat, to experience a Ronald Reagan moment when he ordered 2,500 trash collectors back to work on Day 18 of the strike after threatening to fire them and hire private contractors.

This is what needs to be done by Mayor Cherelle Parker should this strike last more than ten days, especially when you have people like Daniel P. Bauder, President of the Philadelphia Council AFL-CIO urging city residents to not dump trash in designated city dumpsters because they were put there by private contractors.

Bauder, whose organization endorsed Kamala Harris for President in 2024, wants Philadelphia residents to keep their garbage at home until the strike is over, which may be days or weeks from now.

Never mind that sitting piles of garbage is often a huge indicator of rat abundance and that trash, when not securely contained, provides food and shelter to hungry rodents, the animal version of a leftist-maggot infested-sanctuary city.