Councilor At-Large Julia Mejia moved her office hours out of City Hall and into the neighborhood on Saturday for a community clean-up of Moakley Park. With about 30 volunteers, Mejia said they removed roughly 200 pounds of trash from the park.

Mejia hosted a similar effort in Hyde Park last weekend. She intended to break with the traditional idea of office hours by bringing her team into the communities she represents.

“I figured we could do something that would beautify the neighborhood, give people an opportunity to get to know their neighbors, or to work in partnership with each other,” she said. “And more importantly for our office to have more meaningful engagement with folks that don’t feel so formal and so stuffy.”

Mejia called the Council’s regular office hours theatrical and mostly controlled. She specifically called out Mayor Michelle Wu’s Neighborhood Coffee Hours, saying she would rather take part in community activities where she could “get her hands dirty.”

The councilor said that constituents reported a rising cost of living, an uptick in violence, and a lack of representation in the decision-making process for development in Boston.

“Everything that I’ve done in my four terms has always been about ‘how do I remove barriers to engagement’ and ‘how do I create space for people to recognize their power and their voice.’ Showing up as I am, my hope is that it inspires other people to show up as they are too,” she said.

The clean-ups have been held in partnership with district councilors Ed Flynn, Miniard Culpepper, and Enrique Pepen and fellow At-Large Henry Santana to demonstrate that Mejia is willing to work with people despite their political disagreements.

“What I want people to also understand is that regardless of how divided the council may appear to be, there are opportunities for us to work in collaboration and bring people together,” she said. 

The councilor was also joined by controversial social media figure Alex Alex of 100fordemocracy.

Alex burst into public discourse last year with a short-lived mayoral bid and a series of videos holding public officers accountable and promoting “100 small things” he says will lead to positive change.

“There’s so much garbage here that we won’t be able to pick up, but if every single person picks up those 100 pieces, it’s so much better than it was before,” he explained. “That can be applied to so many other elements of democracy, picking up, or talking to 100 new people, doing something nice for 100 people, cooking 100 meals that you distribute, that sort of stuff.” 

Though Alex’s online rhetoric is fiery, he said it generates attention that can be directed toward positive outcomes. Though he said he had tried to approach the city more cordially in the past, it is only since becoming a “political liability” and an image issue for City Hall that he has begun to see results.

Mejia said her office was inspired by Alex to collaborate despite her peers generally running from his more confrontational approach to local governance.

“I ran towards him because I want to be accountable and I think what he’s doing is showing us what is possible,” she said. “He’s been a great partner in this process, and I think that people don’t want to hear the truth and he spits it in a way that makes people understand what’s at stake.”

On August 21, Mejia and Alex will bring the final installment in their community clean-up series to Malcolm X Park in Roxbury from 4 p.m. to 6 p.m.