Clean L.A. With Me<\/a>, began posting videos to social media in 2024 of his grassroots clean-up efforts, \u201cmingas,\u201d to try to inspire tourists and Angelenos alike to be mindful of littering.<\/p>\n\u201cStarbucks cups with names written on them are everywhere in Los Angeles,\u201d one Clean L.A. With Me post reads. \u201cThese cups don\u2019t just carry coffee\u2014they carry the evidence of how careless we\u2019ve become.\u201d<\/p>\n
Naula said he started the cleanup efforts after only five weeks of living in L.A., and has since quit his job to dedicate his time to Clean L.A. With Me. He said that he hopes that if people are unable to come and join him, they do their part by sharing his social media content to spread awareness of the severity of the problem and participate in preventing it.<\/p>\n
Scroll to continue reading<\/p>\n
\u201cI think social media can be bad and can be good, but I\u2019m using it for good because I\u2019m trying [to use] my platform to prevent littering, to prevent people throwing trash on the streets,\u201d Naula said. \u201cSocial media is a tool.\u201d<\/p>\n
Through the nonprofit \u2019s website, Angelenos can put in requests for Naula to host a minga in their area. One particular location he has gotten requests for is Venice Beach, which happens to be the second most \u201cInstagrammable\u201d destination in California according to Family Destinations Guide, with 4.5 million posts using its hashtag.<\/p>\n
\u201cPeople ask me to come and help\u2026 because they put a request on 311, and then 311 is not showing. So now I\u2019m the 311,\u201d Naula said. \u201cIt\u2019s everybody. The government, people, everybody has to do better [for] a better L.A.\u201d<\/p>\n
Many community members, Naula said, have answered the call. His weekly Saturday mingas have been growing in the number of participants, with over 1000 volunteers showing up to all 79 of his mingas so far.\u00a0 Every Saturday, he said, it\u2019s a new, diverse group of Angelenos who he hopes will keep showing up to clean up their community.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Social media destinations like the pink wall, the Hollywood sign and Venice beach have seen littering problems When…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":479574,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[27],"tags":[188113,9774,106805,48,52,51,47,50,49,80054,188114,4568,3989],"class_list":["post-479573","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-los-angeles","tag-clean-l-a-with-me","tag-hollywood-sign","tag-juan-naula","tag-la","tag-la-headlines","tag-la-news","tag-los-angeles","tag-los-angeles-headlines","tag-los-angeles-news","tag-nithya-raman","tag-paul-smith-pink-wall","tag-social-media","tag-starbucks"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/479573","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=479573"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/479573\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/479574"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=479573"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=479573"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=479573"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}