Trash Talk: “Picking Up: On the Streets and Behind the Trucks with Sanitation Workers of New York”

• History

Rank-and-file members of the New York City Department of Sanitation have an old saying: “You can go your whole life without ever having to call a fireman, and if you’re lucky you’ll never have to call a cop, but you want to see a sanitation worker every day.” Join Robin Nagle, NYU Associate Professor of Anthropology and Urban Studies – who is also the NYC Department of Sanitation’s anthropologist-in-residence – for a fascinating conversation about this often-overlooked army of urban workers, the subject of her new book, Picking Up (Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 2013). Nagle will discuss her investigation into the “san men’s” world along with Department of Sanitation Commissioner John J. Doherty and members of the sanitation workforce. Co-sponsored by the NYC Department of Sanitation and the John W. Draper Program at New York University.