Volunteers team up to clean up Austin community

CHICAGO (WLS) -- Volunteers rolled up their sleeves and worked together to clean up the Austin neighborhood Wednesday morning.

It's an effort that started long time before the recent unrest.

More than 100 volunteers, many complete strangers, showed up to work to clean up the Austin community.

Brandon Wilkerson lives in this neighborhood and after seeing this week's looting, decided to help out and make a change.

"I want to be a part of something positive" Wilkerson said. "I seen things I've never seen in my-lifetime that happened these past few days and i want to be a part of something different."

37th Ward Alderman Emma Mitts decided to bring the groups of people together, volunteers, members of the Chicago police department and Streets and Sanitation. They were all armed with shovels, brooms, bags and resilience.

"Everyone is feeling the sense of wanting to do something," Alderman Mitts said. "We've cleaned up the areas where trash is out on the floor we want to clean up our neighborhood as well, giving them the opportunity to socialize talk to one another help to get the we can move forward coming together being the family we are and the people we are."