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“I’m not invited to these rooms where policies are being made. … but what I can do is point out infrastructure that’s physically visible to everybody,” Alex said.
If you see a man pushing a cart full of protruding poles or flattened construction cones down Massachusetts Avenue, it’s probably Alex Alex, making his frequent commute to City Hall in an attempt to clean up Boston.
“One of the most basic responsibilities of government is to keep areas clean, to manage resources right, and to manage the way that people move around. And I saw that, in Boston, there’s obviously a very clear failure in … those aspects,” Alex said.
Alex Alex, 25, may be familiar to some Boston residents after he ran a longshot campaign for mayor last fall. After his predicted loss, Alex has not stopped his campaign for a brighter Boston.
Alex opted to change his last name to match his first after he became an American citizen in 2023.
Alex, who works part time at a restaurant on Beacon Hill, spends his free time pushing a cart around the city, collecting fallen state and city government materials like bus signs, broken traffic cones, and forgotten construction equipment, along with other trash.
He then carts the damaged infrastructure and garbage to City Hall plaza and leaves it there for all to see.
The goal, he said, is to raise awareness about what he describes as inaction from the city and a misallocation of resources that have left ordinary Bostonians behind.
“I’m not invited to these rooms where policies are being made. I really can’t go to school board meetings, and pitch ideas there, but what I can do is point out infrastructure that’s physically visible to everybody,” Alex said.
Alex documents the process, filming his trash collections and posting videos on his social media platforms.
“The third time in ten days bringing damaged infrastructure to City Hall, totaling over 200 pounds,” Alex said in one of his more popular posts.
He’s picked up a total of 5,000 pounds of trash and other discarded materials in a year, Alex said.
The New York University graduate said he’s had a few encounters with police around City Hall. He’s never been arrested for dumping trash, but he did have to complete 16 hours of community service earlier this year after being arrested for spray painting statistics about fatal car crashes in Massachusetts outside of the State House.
Alex says that once, as he brought liquor bottles to City Hall after a cleanup last summer, 10 police officers circled him and about five police cruisers pulled into the plaza.
“It’s always a question of ‘Is there going to be law enforcement waiting for me? What is going to be the response?’ Because I can never really tell. Sometimes [authorities] tell me that it’s going to be a fine, and then they don’t do anything about it for a few months,” Alex said.
Alex said he’s fine with pressing the boundaries of the law.
“I’m OK with doing it, because I know how to walk a line. I know that eventually there will be consequences I have to face that I wasn’t ready for,” he said.
City Councilors say they’ve been willing to listen
The idea of lugging hundreds of pounds of broken traffic cones, traffic barricades, or bus signs around the city may seem extreme. According to Alex, he has already tried speaking to city officials about the litter problem, but they always seem to brush him off.
“It’s kind of been an escalation after being ignored by an administration that says that they listen to residents and then work with them to deliver real results. So I was like, ‘Okay, you don’t want to work with me. You don’t want to talk about these issues that I brought up. You don’t want to review the data. Then I’ll bring it to your front steps,’” Alex said.
Boston.com reached out to the City Councilors whom Alex said he’s tried to contact, along with Mayor Michelle Wu.
Councilor John FitzGerald, who represents Dorchester and parts of the South End, Councilor Benjamin Weber, who represents West Roxbury and Jamaica Plain, and At-Large Councilor Julia Mejia all pushed back on Alex’s claims that they haven’t engaged with his concerns.
“This is not true. I met Alex once in my life at a South End event, we talked for about 10 minutes and I actually gave him advice and was very complimentary of him, though I did push back on some of his comments and educated him on things he was unaware of that make his demands more difficult to accomplish than he realizes. So not sure where he’s coming from with that statement,” FitzGerald said in an email to Boston.com.
“I am sorry he feels that way, but I don’t think it is accurate. I have spoken to him at public meetings on a couple occasions and heard him out. If he has anything further to discuss, he is welcome to reach out to my office anytime,” Weber told Boston.com.
“We have connected and met with Alex Alex since that comment has been made (that her office is unresponsive), and look forward to partnering with him through our co-governance model, as we do with all Bostonians. We appreciate Alex’s advocacy and want to continue to amplify community’s voice,” a spokesperson for Mejia said in a statement to Boston.com.
Wu and City Councilors Liz Breadon, Sharon Durkan, and Enrique Pepén did not respond to requests for comment.
When Alex goes through neighborhoods picking up trash, some residents express their appreciation, he said. However, he stresses that he can’t be the only person cleaning up the city. He wants people to understand that “at some point you’re going to have to do this too,” Alex said.
On Earth Day, April 22, Alex plans to host a protest at the State House. He’s asking participants to pick up trash from spaces that matter to them and bring their findings to the State House “to show the legislature what our state looks like and how dirty it is,” he said.
Alex is also working to launch his own consulting firm called 100ForDemocracy.
“Part of this consulting agency would be to hire people like me and young people who don’t really have these opportunities to break into the professional world, but who have skills, who have the background knowledge, and who have expertise that is being underutilized,” he said.
In the meantime, Alex will carry on with his cleanups and continue to work at his restaurant job where, he said, his boss will continue to jokingly ask him if he’s gotten arrested lately.
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