Philly's Youth Are Taking Charge of Their Future

By Carl Gibson, Reader Supported News

20 May 13

've never been to Detroit, but I imagine Philadelphia's West Kensington neighborhood is a lot like it. It's a smoldering battlefield where unregulated capitalism emerged victorious over the last remaining public investments, where the residents have been forsaken in a plot for ever-increasing corporate profits. Chris Hedges refers to places like Detroit and Kensington as "sacrifice zones."

While driving by the Dauphin SEPTA stop, my tour guide, Cheri Honkala of the Poor People's Economic Human Rights Campaign (and 2012 Green Party vice presidential candidate), told me that nobody makes a full stop at a stop sign unless they're looking to buy heroin or sex. An addict sat on a nearby stoop with his head limply hanging toward his knees. A group of women leaned their heads inside the window of a car stopping on a sidewalk.

"You can score a hit of heroin for less than $10. And most of these girls will offer full intercourse for just $5," Honkala told me. "Our prostitution problem is similar to Thailand's."

We drive over a bridge and past a block of dilapidated buildings that have eroded far beyond what any casual maintenance could fix. The apartments weren't far from a homeless children's shelter and a rehabilitation center for prostitutes which recently had to shut down due to lack of support from the city. Around the corner was a psych ward for children surrounded by a tall iron fence. We drove by a playground full of addicts shuffling aimlessly. A group of cops stood placidly on a corner, chatting as a world of endless crime spun around them.

"When the schools let out for the summer, our group is one of several that goes out and cleans up the used needles on the ground so the kids don't get stuck while playing," Honkala said. "The kids organized an impromptu march a few years ago to protest all the junkies having sex on the stoops and shooting up in public in broad daylight." Children in Kensington have a history of activism. Mary Harris "Mother" Jones organized a march against child labor exploitation in the early 20th century with Kensington as its starting point.

We drove on and noticed an empty concrete strip by the water. Cheri told me the concrete strip used to feature the community's alternative economy where people made and sold things independently, using a barter system to trade goods for services. Since the city shut it down, it's been empty.

Several police cars were pulled over on the strip with lights flashing. As we passed the cars, we saw a young black man who didn't look a day over 18 with his hands on the hood of a cop car. He was being patted down thoroughly by one of the cops as another one stood by holding a set of handcuffs. A helicopter buzzed loudly overhead.

"It always sounds like Vietnam over here," Cheri said. "There are always cops kicking down doors and conducting drug raids. Drug and prostitution money are the top sources of income for this neighborhood, since there's no jobs."

I asked Cheri if anyone has attempted to start a community garden in one of the nearby vacant lots. She said they've tried in the past, but once all the oil refineries and chemical plants closed down, they left behind empty shells of buildings and poisoned soil that won't grow crops. It's a food desert, where there are no grocery stores nearby, just bodegas and fast food joints. As a consequence of the lack of nutritious options within a walkable distance, many of the impoverished residents of this neighborhood are also obese.

Cheri Honkala's 10 year-old son Guillermo Santos goes to Moffet Elementary. Moffet is one of the 23 schools slated for closure by the Philadelphia City Council. Pennsylvania Governor Tom Corbett cut $1 billion from the education budget while passing out over $800 million in corporate tax breaks. It seems unfair for the governor to take away what might be these kids' only ticket out of here. Guillermo announced at the walkout that he's joining in the 150-mile Operation Green Jobs march all the way from Philly to DC. He'll be carrying signatures from his classmates all the way there, calling for an end to education cuts.

The following morning, after the depressing tour through Kensington, I walked downtown to the school district building on Broad Street to check out the planned citywide school walkout to protest the cuts. I was ten minutes early, and only saw a group of about 30 young people, as well as a few cops and a news helicopter overhead. But we were quickly joined by 100 more. Several students were equipped with bullhorns and a PA system mounted on the back of a truck. As the chants grew louder, we noticed hundreds more marching toward us down the street. Many of the students were in various school uniforms, and others were dressed down. Within another 30 minutes, the crowd had swelled twice as much. After another 30 minutes, the crowd's size seemed to have quadrupled.

I was suddenly in the midst of a cacophony of young people shouting "S-O-S! Save our schools!" and "No ifs, no buts, no education cuts!" As we started marching, I looked down the street and noticed a throng of students running down the sidewalk to join the already massive crowd. Cars that drove by on the other side of Broad Street were all honking their horns and holding their fists in the air. People in office buildings had all stopped their work to watch us from the windows. Truckers honked loudly as the crowd cheered in response. At that moment, we felt invincible, with the entire city's population fully behind us.

When the students filled the atrium at Philadelphia City Hall, the sound of our collective voices was deafening. The students were also joined by their teachers and counselors, who walked out protesting cuts that would leave only a principal and a police officer at each school while eliminating all other extracurricular activities, including arts, music and sports. A lot of the kids were holding signs that said things like, "A dollar spent on schools is a dollar not spent on prisons." Other signs said, "Education, not incarceration," and "Don't privatize me, bro!"

When a community's main anchor for their children is taken away from them, the community comes out in full force. And though the great organizing work done by the Philadelphia Student Union and Youth United for Change shouldn't be overlooked, most of the kids who came out were likely motivated by the environments they saw around them while growing up. Kids know their education is their key to getting into college, finding a good job, and escaping the pervasive school-to-prison pipeline that's sucked in so many in neighborhoods like Kensington.

Tom Corbett should take a tour through Kensington at night sometime, and he might change his mind on his draconian education cuts. Kensington will be everyone's future if we allow the radical fascist agenda dictated by governors like Tom Corbett, Scott Walker, Rick Snyder, Rick Scott, John Kasich, and other right-wing governors to come to fruition. It will be a future where there's no income for people other than petty crime, no food other than processed frankenfood, no education other than the privatized corporate charter model, and no hope for anyone not born into privilege.

Our last, best hope is our children. They're the ones with the most at stake. And if children everywhere fight like children just did in Philly, we may win this fight yet.

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