Trending

Day 3 of the Great Philly Trash Strike and We Have a Name for the Trash: “Parker Piles”

By Kyle Pagan

Published: Jul 3rd, 2025 · 10:06 AM EDT

---

Every protest, strike, event, etc. needs a clever nickname or a brilliant chant they can pull people in and rally behind. That’s Marketing 101. This country was founded on colonists yelling, “No taxation, without representation!” Well we’re three days in and the citizens of Philadelphia have found a name, “Parker Piles”. The “Parker Piles” are the trash you see building up around the temporary dumpsites the city set up:

These #ParkerPiles are at 6100 Ardleigh St. After only 15 hours, they are overflowing!

Waste Management came by to pick them up, and the worker said it was so bad, he couldn't get them! They also mentioned something about hitting a load limit from all the work today! pic.twitter.com/zaMonFkCYF

— Larry (@markskull) July 2, 2025

Fabulous name. Great job to whoever came up with that and printed out signs. Now I can’t go anywhere on social media or Reddit without people talking about the “Parker Piles” in their neighborhood. There’s an entire thread dedicated to it on r/Philadelphia to people posting pictures of different Parker Piles they see throughout the day.

Here are some:

This didn’t age well:

Filthadelphia? Not while @PhillyMayor Cherelle Parker's in charge. We're ready to take out the trash and make Philly one of the cleanest, greenest, and safest cities in the nation.

Visit https://t.co/WNl8v4Xx3d to join the fight! pic.twitter.com/OlTOj69MxX

— Philadelphia Department of Streets (@StreetsPhila) April 25, 2024

“We’ll end Filthadelphia!”

Today, I established a Clean and Green Cabinet to complement our Office of Clean and Green Initiatives. This 38-person team will utilize their expertise to help reduce waste, increase recycling, and tackle litter and illegal dumping. We’ll end Filthadelphia! pic.twitter.com/XisONIj8Lp

— Mayor Cherelle L. Parker (@PhillyMayor) May 17, 2024

Not so fast my friend!

@jayviius

Take it to City Hall or her Lawn! #philly #trash

♬ This Is America – Childish Gambino

@brygallagher4

This is day two of the strike and trash continues to pile up at 50th and Locust in West Philadelphia. @6abc Action News #philly #philadelphia #phillynews #dc33 #unionworkers #union #trash #phillytiktok #phillytok #fyp #districtcouncil33 #strike #westphilly

♬ original sound – Bryannagallagher

How long can the mayor keep this up? I feel like DC33 can go on forever. Everyone in the city is on the union’s side. These people are PISSED and I the guy leading the entire thing, Greg Boulware, is delivering fiery speech after fiery speech to his members like some head coach leading his team into battle.

We’ve got July 4th starting tomorrow. A ton of tourists will be in and around the city and the first thing they’re going to do is step around the mountain of trash to take pictures in front of the LOVE sign and Rocky statue. The trash is going to be brutal after this weekend and people don’t care if the dump sites are overflowing. It’s better than putting it in front of their house and letting the rats get into it. I can’t believe the mayors office can look at all of these videos surfacing online and be okay with it. Not to mention half the dump sites sit right outside of parks, which is crazy. Negotiations ended at 1:15am Thursday morning and aren’t expected to resume today so we’re going into the holiday weekend with sanitation workers on strike. How long until people start dropping trash off at City Hall?

Here are some updates for the folk that want to stay in the know:

• DC33 has decreased their ask to a 5% raise annually over four years via Sean Collins Walsh at the Inky.
• A DC33 worker was arrested for slashing a PGW digger loader tire via Eyewitness News.
• Mayor Parker didn’t give herself a 9% raise, she did though create 15 new jobs and gave significant raises to her staff via Ryan Briggs and Sean Collins Walsh at the Inky.