When I was on the Everglades research team in the 1960s, our office and laboratory were in the Federal Building in downtown Miami, as ugly and unadorned a phallic monolith as you would ever want to (not) see. During the riots that ensued after Martin Luther King Jr’s assassination, Liberty City in Miami was not spared. One side effect of that dangerous situation was the suspension of city services, amongst them sanitation. The garbage built up on the city streets.
A bunch of us on the 10th floor of the Federal Building are leaving our offices one day to head down to the cafeteria for lunch. Us junior members, either due to age or status, tended to bunch at the back of the crowd. One of the engineers was in the National guard activated to quell the violence. He’s bragging about how they showed those rioters (he used a much nastier appellation for them) who was boss! I’m next to a young BLACK engineering intern from the University of Miami who piped up:
“Hey Jim! (his real first name!) When are you going to come pick up our garbage?”
He turned as red as his hair. As in so many parts of the country the police departments had not yet become armed paramilitary forces, so the national guard was brought in. And, of course, there were suggestions they could perform the necessary functions of city services as well, as to be Garbage People!