Youths Tell City: Clean Up Your Act
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About 1,000 high school students pushed the world’s largest broom a quarter mile up 7th Street in downtown Los Angeles Saturday in a message to City Hall that area residents and store owners want their littered streets cleaned.
The event, called “Operation Big Sweep,” spotlighted the beginning of a monthlong cleanup effort by residents to reclaim a section of downtown from graffiti and trash, group spokesman David Encinas said.
The 3,500-pound broom, designed by engineering students at USC and patterned after an ordinary push broom, qualifies for the Guiness Book of World Records, Encinas said.
The 105-foot-tall sweeper is made of Douglas Fir studs and about 700 pounds of bristles. Its 40-foot-wide brush can clean an entire street in one sweep.
A group of high school students built the gigantic broom as a class project and pushed it a quarter mile up the downtown street.
Encinas said organizers were upset at the city’s neglect of the area and developed the broom to get City Hall’s attention.
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