American Nightmare

I have this recurring fantasy about being able to time travel back to the signing of the Declaration of Independence, almost 233 years ago in this city. That might sound lame to some, but I would love to tell them that they were forming what would eventually become the greatest country in the world. After congratulating them, I would like to time travel back to the future with them, and walk them through North Philadelphia. I wonder what changes they would make to the constitution after seeing the cost of not including equal rights for Africans, and leaving a vague right to bear arms, on the city that was in their time the capital of the United States of America. 

The more research I've done since I realized that I needed to write about poverty in North Philadelphia, the more it reminds me of the statistics I had to learn in New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina, and why not? After all, what is North Philadelphia if not a disaster hundreds of years in the making?

This is what Philadelphia is dealing with right now: 25% of this city is living in poverty. There are about 22,000 abandoned buildings, and 30,000 empty lots. 22% of adults in Philadelphia cannot read at a basic level. That's what we have to work with. Oh! And a $1 billion dollar budget gap.

These are the glimpses I have gleaned from the my research foray into the North Philadelphia's situation. I decided to write this blog about a month ago, since then I've been sitting in my room reading those dreary graduate student case studies that no one was ever intended to read, as well as Buzz Bissinger's freaking amazing book, A Prayer for the City, and everything else my google searches turned up.

I had to do the research because besides the obvious things, I don't really know about poverty, or North Philadelphia. That's because I am a middle class suburban white kid from North Jersey, and I want to acknowledge that as I begin this blog. I believe in transparency in reporting, and I want readers to know that I am stepping into this arena with a confession:

I did not grow up in poverty, and thus I am ignorant about poverty...but I want to know about poverty.

To that end I plan to go out into North Philadelphia and meet with anyone willing to educate me. I want to know who is living in poverty, why they are living in poverty, and what are the problems of poverty. I believe that that is the first step towards this blog ultimately becoming about what is being done, what is working, and what we can do to help. 

I want to meet with, and learn to understand, everyone. The politicians behind the neighborhood transformation initiative, and the community organizers who protested it. The cops and the criminals. The educators and the children. The prostitutes and the church organizers.

On this blog I plan to post news, interviews and profiles related to issues of poverty weekly. I'm also planning on keeping a simple, weekly video journal of sorts on my thoughts as I delve into the world of North Philadelphia. The profiles I write will mostly concern nonprofit organizations, philanthropists, and community leaders. I hope as well to interview as many public figures as are willing to talk to me. I don't think anything less would do this problem justice.

I was struggling to think of a way to start this blog when I heard about the second annual Philly Spring Clean up. What better way to begin such a monumental undertaking than by cleaning up the streets of North Philadelphia one cigarette butt at a time?

I was the only one volunteering at the Amos Recreation Center at 16th and Berks. Throughout the day I had the opportunity to talk to a lot of Philadelphians as we picked trash out of the overgrown empty lots that litter North Philly. These people clearly care about their city. They were just waiting for someone to give them the opportunity to do something about it. Over 10,000 volunteers turned out for Mayor Nutter's city-wide day of service, and they removed over 346 tons of trash from the streets of Philadelphia in one day.

Thanks to that day of service I had the opportunity to sit down with Alain Joinville, the Public Affairs Coordinator for the Department of Recreation, my first interview for this site. He told me about the challenges these recreation sites face in North Philadelphia, some of the programs they are working on, and pointed me in the direction of some other young idealists trying to make a dent in North Philly's poverty.

Among these volunteers were many from Temple University, and I think the only reason there weren't many more was the lack of advertising for the Philly Spring Clean Up. My last seven months at Temple has been a big part of my motivation for this blog. The fact that a university can thrive while surrounded by such an impoverished community is shameful. The school is an oasis of academia in the ghetto, disconnected from the community that surrounds us, and that is not okay. Temple University should be the base from which volunteers pour into the community, after all, we both live here. I hope that this blog will eventually become a way for Temple students to find out about all the nonprofit organizations in North Philadelphia, and become involved. 

It's no small task ahead of us, so keep reading, because I'm going to keep writing.

P.S. If anyone ever does want to become involved, or if you know of a nonprofit organization that deserves coverage, please email me. I'm going to need all the information, contacts, and help that I can get.