Grid Magazine October 2020 [#137]

OCTOBER 2020 / ISSUE 137 / GRIDPHILLY.COM

T O W A R D A S U S TA I N A B L E P H I L A D E L P H I A

Fewer federal protections could mean more flooding in Philadelphia

TROUBLED WATERS

Lamar Gore, John Heinz National Wildlife Refuge Manager, wades in the Tinicum Marsh.

Stretching 3,000 miles from Maine to Florida and projected to host 50 million visits in 2020, the East Coast Greenway is the most popular park in America.

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East Coast Greenway in Philadelphia Existing Trails Planned Trails

The East Coast Greenway and its local partners connect greater Philadelphiaʼs diverse neighborhoods to its natural resources - including the Delaware River Watershed - via greenways and trails that provide active, equitable transportation for all. And weʼre just getting started.

Studies show completing East Coast Greenway in the region would create 175 miles of multi-use trails, thousands of jobs and a return on investment of more than $3 billion in economic, environmental and health benefits.

Learn more at greenway.org

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1

EDI TO R ’S NOTES

by

alex mulcahy

Seeing What’s Possible

managing editor Alexandra W. Jones associate editor Timothy Mulcahy tim@gridphilly.com copy editor David Jack Daniels art director Michael Wohlberg writers Maddie Clark Nichole Currie Constance Garcia-Barrio Siobhan Gleason Alexandra W. Jones Randy LoBasso Claire Marie Porter Aaron Salsbury Lois Volta photographers Drew Dennis Linette Kielinski Milton Lindsay Rachael Warriner illustrators Sean Rynkewicz Lois Volta published by Red Flag Media 1032 Arch Street, 3rd Floor Philadelphia, PA 19107 215.625.9850 G R I D P H I L LY. C O M

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Keziah Ridgeway (page 18), a history teacher at Northeast High School, presents the American story in a way that addresses the barbarity of our colonial heritage. She wants her students and society at large to reckon with, and to truly see, our history and how it affects what is happening today.

Ridgeway says, “I’m painfully aware that I look different than the majority of the teachers in my department, who are mainly white males.” Not only will her honest portrayal of history benefit her students, so will the fact that she is their teacher.

There have been 45 presidents and 48 vice presidents since our republic was founded. 92 of those 93 office holders have been white. All 93 have been men.

While a winning Biden-Harris ticket would feel like a tremendous relief right now for reasons too numerous to list, the long-term impact of a Kamala Harris vice presidency might be an even greater gift.

White people must overcome our “mental handicap,” so that people of color can dare to dream.

ALEX MULCAHY Editor-in-Chief alex@gridphilly.com

P O R T R A I T BY J A M E S B O Y L E

publisher Alex Mulcahy

n a recent interview with The New York Times, Chris Rock shared an observation about racism he’s made before. When the color line is broken by a Jackie Robinson or a Barack Obama or some such trailblazer, it isn’t progress for Black people. It’s progress for white people.

Rock says, “[T]he real narrative should be that these people, the Black people, are being abused by a group of people that are mentally handicapped. And we’re trying to get them past their mental handicaps to see that all people are equal.”

That “mental handicap”—prejudice and racism—affects the lives of all people of color and minority groups in this country.

State Representative Malcolm Kenyatta (page 16) is the first openly gay person of color elected to hold a seat in Pennsylvania General Assembly’s history. He was selected as one of the 17 “rising stars” and a keynote speaker at the Democratic National Convention, yet his political success and newfound fame are secondary.

The true payoff for him will be in 30 years when “some young Black kid, young queer kid, young poor kid” knows that they can be who and what they want to be because they can see the success he has had.

Brandi Aulston (page 30) was born and raised in Philadelphia, but she never took a hike on the Wissahickon until she was 29.

Now she leads women for biweekly hikes and online meditation through her group, Hike+Heal.

“I didn’t know a hiking group that was headed by a Black woman, another woman representing my background,” Hike + Heal Hive member Marie-Renee Malvoisin says.

“It helped me to see that.”

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3

by

lois volta

DEAR LOIS,

Can compassion be a personal and political act?

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e are all human and are going to make mistakes, both large and small. We aren’t always the best versions of ourselves. We have the capacity to cause damage to the people in our lives and to the planet. It is far easier to see faults in other people, especially politicians, because of the grief they can cause us personally and as a whole—but when we know what compassion feels like, it is infinitely easier to forgive those who oppress us.

Casting judgement is easy. Taking personal responsibility for the way you feel and how you respond takes courage. I know that I will cause painful experiences for myself and others as I navigate through life’s troubled waters. I trust that I always want to be the best Lois that I can be, and I believe in myself.

Growth is uncomfortable for everyone, and sometimes what we thought was right was wrong, and vice versa. When we acknowledge this, we can have compassion for ourselves, and trust that we are doing our best, even if we say or do hurtful things out of a dark place. As Americans, we are collectively in a dark place. Give yourself a break, forgive yourself and recognize your humanity. You are more free to express your anger when you know your heart is in the right place.

I hear excuse after excuse when it comes to causing pain and refusing to engage in someone else’s suffering. Will the person or group who are in pain take advantage, or become reliant? Often people who are 4

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suffering are accused of not being strong enough to pull themselves up by their bootstraps. Some say that skirting responsibility to someone in pain is an act of self-reliance.

It’s extremely risky to explore pain. Pain can be violent, abusive and depressing, but it is where you find your own wisdom and how interconnected we all are.

I consider my conflicts and remember where I’ve come from, everything that I’ve learned about myself and the world. I ask myself if I am being the best Lois I can be, right now, in this moment. Is there malice, spite, hate, manipulation and disgust in my

heart? No, there’s not. I don’t want to hurt anyone, and when I do, I feel terrible, like a failure and a part of the problem. I am extremely hard on myself to the point where I wear the pain of the oppressor and the oppressed and quickly forget who I am. Still, there is no malice, just a hurt little girl who acted out and needs a hug.

In the exploration of my pain, I learn about the uncharted catacombs of selfcompassion and its reflection: Love. Not everyone wants to explore compassion, it’s too hard and goes way too deep—far too risky for the weak-hearted. But when I see the little girl inside me, give her a hug, and tell her what to do, I understand my own suffering through the eyes of compassion.

We are all stunted children living in a world gone wrong.

This does not mean that we shouldn’t throw dishes and draw lines in the sand.

Women should never be raped, and Black Lives Matter. I can be passionately true to myself, my beliefs and still be loving and

P O R T R A I T BY J A M E S B O Y L E

TH E VO LTA WAY

IL LUSTRATIO N BY LO I S VOLTA

compassionate. It’s up to us to find out what is causing our pain, because it’s most likely causing pain for someone else, and you don’t want to dilute the bigger message by misdirecting your rage. You should care about this. Stop being toxic to others when your heart is true. Explore your pain, and clean it up. Draw the lines so you can heal the way you have to.

As individuals we all feel like there is enough on our shoulders, but we have to start caring about the people who are suffering right in front of us. Address your own pain like a patient, loving parent and learn what you need to do to feel safe and heal. When we are healthy, we can extend a hand to someone else, whose little girl inside might be scared and angry.

We know that this is good, and works, because we have felt it for ourselves. We know that others’ pain is their own, but we have the power to be a loving influence. It is a choice to do this work, and it is not easy.

We can forgive, so we all rise. We can drop what has been holding us back, and rise like a buoy from the depths of treasured oceans.

We have to decide what side of the vote we stand on during this upcoming election.

Many people vote on what they think the “right thing to do” is, but that has failed us in our broken system. We see where we have come from, and it’s sinking in how terrible it has gotten. We have to fix it, get serious and address the pain. We can then start to understand the mad, abused and forsaken. It is this path, the thorny path, that will save our country.

We need leaders who speak for the suffering, oppressed and poor. Vote for the leaders who hail compassion and love over fear and hate. When we overcome, we will connect through our joy, and however hard the journey was, it was worth it. lois volta is a home consultant, musician and founder of Volta Naturals. loisvolta.com.

Send questions to thevoltaway@gmail.com.

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The Fourth Dimension

Jefferson offers a real estate program with a conscience

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n 2009, Troy Hannigan needed a job.

He had just graduated from Philadelphia University (now Thomas Jefferson University) with a degree in architecture, but, in the midst of the Great Recession, there was little work to be found.

But the Central Pennsylvania native was determined to stay in Philadelphia. He found a position at Habitat for Humanity Philadelphia through AmeriCorps. That job would alter the trajectory of his career and sow the seeds for his leadership of Jefferson’s Master of Science in Real Estate Development.

Hannigan recalls that that job and subsequent positions he held during his near five-year run at Habitat exposed him to the complexities of providing housing—especially affordable housing. “[The work] involved project planning, working with architects on designing the houses, doing all the permit work and acquiring houses.

I learned the whole process of acquisition of land, design, construction and affordable

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housing finance.”

As he was learning the intricacies of building, he began to ask some bigger questions.

“How [can we] transform communities through development and do development in partnership with neighborhoods? And not just focus on the financial bottom line, but really work with communities to build affordable housing, build commercial space, build green space.”

The answer he came to in 2014 was to begin working as the Program Director for Community Ventures, a nonprofit real estate developer with a focus on affordable housing and mixed-use neighborhood revitalization projects in partnership with communities. A few years later, he became an adjunct instructor at Jefferson, as the University launched

Quadruple Bottom Line of Real Estate Development – People, Plant, Profit, Placemaking. Project: Centennial Village by Community Ventures, West Parkside, Philadelphia, PA.

the MS in Real Estate Development.

If you think of real estate development as something that often tends to be mercenary, this program presents a different view. The triple bottom line—the socially conscious philosophy of businesses meeting the needs of people, planet and profit—is given a fourth dimension with this program: placemaking.

That philosophy attracted Sharmaine Belton, who holds a bachelor’s degree in Real Estate Finance and Business Management, to the program.

“I was looking for a program that stepped outside of the finance-only type of teaching,” Belton says. “Every program that I had looked into was mostly in investment, brokerage and finance. But I wanted to know: Is there a program that could teach me how to develop and construct, how to design sustainably, and not only just teach me about finance?”

Belton has had two remarkable, and remarkably different, internships. The first with Amtrak, dealing with widely varied contracts regarding rail usage, and the second with Five Below, a corporation hitting on all cylinders and growing rapidly. But ultimately, her heart lies elsewhere.

“I would like to get into affordable housing one day,” Belton says.

“There’s a lot of mansions and upscale houses, but then there’s still a lot of people that don’t have a roof over their head. I’d like to get into that field as well as redevelopment, because many people are really quick to destroy an old factory or knock down an old building when it can be saved [and] reused.”

This fits in perfectly with the approach of the Real Estate Development program.

When students begin an assignment, Hannigan asks them some key questions about their projects.

“How is it not just another building?

What are you trying to solve here?” Hannigan asks. The answer involves helping humanity.

THE MISSION OF Jefferson’s College of Architecture and the Built Environment is to educate the next generation of design and construction professionals to create an equitable and sustainable future.

Learn more at Jefferson.edu/Grid.

O R I G I N A L P H OTO C R E D I T: M I N G M E D I A

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bike talk

Vote Like Your Bike Depends on it Ballots will determine Philadelphia’s ability to expand infrastructure for pedestrians and cyclists

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by

randy lobasso

hen folks go to the polls or fill out their mail-in ballots next month, they will likely have key issues on their minds—be it the environment, foreign policy, corruption, the economy, fighting against white supremacy or saving American democracy as we know it.

You know, basic voting stuff.

What will be on fewer peoples’ minds are transportation issues, although they should be.

Let’s start with the state legislature. In order for Philadelphia to do almost anything, 8 GR ID P H I L LY.CO M O C TO B ER 20 20

it needs Harrisburg’s blessing. Right now, there are a number of transportation issues that are being held up in the legislature.

Pennsylvania Senate Bill 565, which I’ve written about in this column, would allow PennDOT to install parking-protected bike lanes throughout the state of Pennsylvania.

The 30 percent of Philly streets that PennDOT owns are among the widest and most dangerous, which makes this legislation extremely important.

That legislation is currently closer than it’s ever been to becoming law, but it’s run into several snafus. If it doesn’t get Gov-

ernor Wolf ’s signature before the end of the year, Pennsylvania will need to elect progressive, pro-transportation legislators who understand the importance of safe bike lanes to get this legislation passed next session.

There are a number of other issues that are going to need state government approval in the new year. Among them, better automated enforcement measures that keep Pennsylvanians safe on the road, without armed police presence along the city’s High Injury Network (the 12 percent of streets that account for 50 percent of traffic deaths and injuries) and within every school zone.

On average, there are 40 hit-and-run crashes each day in the city. It should be the goal of the legislature to allow Philadelphia to make sure motorists who hit our kids and take off are no longer empowered to do so, and that they are held accountable.

Additionally, SEPTA funding is expected to decrease dramatically (by $400 million per year) come 2022, if the state legislature allows it to happen. We need a new transportation state funding plan in the coming year.

Then there’s our elected officials on Capitol Hill. Despite the president and Republicans claiming over the past four years that they would focus on infrastructure, very little has changed. Currently, there are competing bills in the Democratcontrolled House and GOP-controlled Senate that would address the country’s transportation needs.

“The House and Senate both have bills that would take steps toward addressing climate change, improving safety for people biking and walking and some changes to planning,” says Caron Whitaker, vice IL LUSTRATIO N BY S EAN RY NKEWI CZ

president of government relations at the League of American Bicyclists (LAB). “The big debate is over how to do that.”

The Democratic House bill, Whitaker notes, includes a policy wherein states would have to reduce greenhouse gas emissions from transportation, but the Senate legislation incentivizes states to reduce emissions but doesn’t require it. Same thing with transportation safety.

Despite these differences, LAB’s verdict is that both pieces of legislation are good for expanding bicycling and walking infrastructure. Both include a 40 percent increase in funding for the Transportation Alternatives Program (TAP); annual funding would go from $850 million in 2020 to $1.2 billion in 2021, and 96 percent of that funding goes to bicycling and walking.

One of Philadelphia’s most well-known pieces of biking and walking infrastructure, the Schuylkill Banks Boardwalk, was funded through a TAP grant, awarded at the beginning of the Obama Administration Additionally, between $200 and $250 million a year in safety dollars would be spent on bicycling and pedestrian safety

infrastructure improvements, a marked improvement over the roughly $20 million per year currently invested in safety.

Both of these are important tools for local and state governments. Philadelphia’s annual budget does not include funds specifically for bicycling and walking. Rather, the Streets Department gets an annual budget and splits its money among several repaving and improvement projects. In actuality, most money for real bike infrastructure, like protected bike lanes and multi-use trails, comes from federal grants.

“Both the House and Senate bills also include climate programs, and other provisions that, in the league’s analysis, would incentivize biking, walking and transit, and de-emphasize building roads only for driving cars,” notes Whitaker, in a post for LAB. “We agree with our partners, though, that the House bill, in general, is more aggressive in promoting sustainability in our transportation system.”

Finally, we have the presidential race. In addition to democracy being on the line, it’s very important who the president chooses to lead the Department of Transportation.

When Elaine Chao was nominated for the position in 2016, she was viewed as an oddly good choice. With a background in the field, Chao served in DOT positions under Ronald Reagan and George H. W. Bush. Most within the transportation community agree she has run the department smoothly, and LAB agrees she has been good for bicycle and walking issues. It has even invited her to speak at several National Bike Summits.

Unfortunately, and predictably, the Trump Administration has not made a point to expand infrastructure the way the president promised before he was elected.

He’s publicly chastised public transportation (and cities in general) throughout his term in office as well. The coming four years, with the current president, are precarious at best, and transportation funding as we know it could be on the line.

The point is this: if you’re someone who cares about getting around the region inexpensively and efficiently, who you vote for on November 3 matters, up and down the ballot. Transportation—the lifeblood of our city, state and nation—is on the line this Election Day, too.

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urban naturalist

Bird in Band Conservation managers use banding to study birds and by bernard brown restore their habitats

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he young american robin squeaked like a rewinding cassette tape as Margaret Rohde took the bird out of a cloth bag.

Rohde, conservation manager with Wissahickon Trails, had untangled the robin a few minutes earlier from one of six mist nets she and Kristy Morley, senior naturalist, had set up before dawn at the Crossways Preserve, in Blue Bell, Montgomery County.

The morning in early August followed a tight rhythm: check the nets, process the 10 GR ID P H IL LY.CO M O C TO B E R 2020

birds, release them, repeat. The first round had yielded a wood thrush, a house wren and a couple cat birds.

Rohde had found this particular robin in the second round. After she removed the bird from the bag, she proceeded to hold its wing against a ruler, examine its feathers to confirm its age and rattle off a series of measurements. Morley jotted down the notes in a ledger. Rohde and Morley had set up their field station—a couple folding tables under a pop-up tent—in a mowed right-of-way that cuts through the forest at the preserve.

Rohde took a few steps out of the tent before lowering her face mask and blowing onto the robin’s belly, parting its feathers so she could assess how much fat the bird had stored up under its skin. Then Rohde attached a small aluminum band to the robin’s leg, reciting its unique code to be entered in the ledger.

Wissahickon Trails has caught and banded birds at Crossways Preserve since 2015 and contributes the data to the Monitoring Avian Productivity and Survivorship (MAPS) program, which seeks to guide bird conservation efforts in the United States and Canada by collecting and analyzing information on their population trends.

That population information is also useful locally.

“We care about what’s happening with birds here,” says Rohde. “This is really helpful for us in terms of figuring out how our land-management strategies are working or not. We’ve been doing a lot of active management on the preserve. We’ve removed several acres of invasives and we’ve planted about 400 trees and shrubs, so we’re trying to increase the native diversity.”

Morley pointed out other related research projects at the preserve, including P HOTO G RAP HY BY M ILTO N LI NDSAY

Margaret Rohde examines the feathers of a bird to estimate its age. Birds are released after being banded.

one assessing the caterpillar population.

“We have volunteers going out and whacking branches with sticks and catching the caterpillars or any other kind of insects that fall off,” she says.

More native plants should feed more native insects, which should feed more native birds, according to Rohde.

“We’re trying to have, like, a lot more pollinator species in the meadow,” she explains. “We’re kind of starting at the lower trophic level, fixing the habitat.”

MAPS began in 1989, but ornithologists have been banding birds for research since the turn of the 20th century. Birds can fly but humans cannot, which poses a fundamental research hurdle: How do you keep track of a bird after it flies out of view?

The bands, stamped with identifying information, allow anyone who gets the bird in hand again to know where it had been caught the first time, when it had been banded and by whom. With capture after capture, bird banding has revealed bird migration patterns and answered other questions, such as how long they live and how they use habitat for breeding, for wintering and even for molting their feathers.

Rohde, who says she has been obsessed with birds since age 6, discovered bird banding in college.

“I took an ornithology class,” she recalls.

“We visited a banding station and I lost my mind, seeing people handle birds.” Various field research positions involving bird banding followed until she began working for Wissahickon Trails in 2015, kicking off the research at Crossways.

Rohde released the young robin, which clucked as it made a beeline for the trees.

Most banded birds don’t end up being caught again at the original site for a variety of reasons. Fledglings might roam before they settle down, birds returning after spring migration might end up nesting in different spots and some die before they can be recaptured, all of which makes repeat captures especially exciting, according to Rohde.

“That’s the coolest part,” she says. “We recently had a song sparrow from 2015, and at that time we aged it as a second-year bird, so we know it’s 6 years old.”

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street stories & curbside characters

A Cleaner, Kinder Place Block captains look out for their streets—and their by constance garcia-barrio neighbors

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hiladelphia’s quiet heroes include block captains, volunteers who, under the sponsorship of the Philadelphia More Beautiful Committee (PMBC)—a division of the Streets Department—rally their neighbors to keep their blocks attractive. Now, in addition to beauty, some block captains help ensure food and a sense of security for their neighbors in the face of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Many block captains are going the extra mile because of the current crisis, but they’ve enhanced the city for decades.

The story goes that in 1938, Sigrid Craig, aka Mrs. Philadelphia, saw a local woman throw garbage from her third-floor window into the yard below. Craig, resolute and sharp-tongued, was a volunteer for different causes. “[S]ince I’m not paid, I can be as nasty as I want, but I rarely have to be,” she reportedly said. Craig felt that Philadelphians could do better.

The campaign that Craig began, Cleanup, Paint-up, Fix-up, produced splendid results that she later showed to Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. when she accompanied him on a tour of the city in October 1966. By the mid ’60s, when Craig had recruited some 3,000 block captains, the Streets Department took over the program and renamed it the Philadelphia More Beautiful Committee.

“Now the program has more than 6,000 block captains, assisted by their neighbors, and 1,000 junior block captains between ages 7 and 17,” says Dawn Woods, administrator of PMBC. “Block captains unite the neighborhood,” Woods says, suggesting that unity may matter more in these uncertain times.

“They organize residents to sweep the block, plant community gardens in vacant lots and install litter baskets, and they don’t 12 GR ID P H I L LY.CO M O C TO B E R 20 20

get a dime for what they do,” she emphasizes. “PMBC supports the captains with supplies like bags, brooms, rakes and shovels.

With the pandemic, block captains are welcome to continue getting supplies to clean their block, but PMBC guidelines have been modified to match city and state COVID-19 mandates, including wearing a mask and practicing social distancing.”

The pandemic can mean more work for block captains in different respects.

“Litter in the city has increased due to most people working from home and children not [being] in school,” Woods says. In addition, PMBC encourages block captains to consider young people’s nutrition. “We help block captains sign up for food for children provided by the Philadelphia Parks and Recreation Department through their Playstreets and Summer Food Service Programs.”

PMBC usually holds an annual contest to decide the city’s most beautiful block. About 25 to 30 blocks take part. “The winning block receives $1,000 to use for improvements,” Woods says. Any block organized for two years may participate, but PMBC has postponed this year’s competition because of the pandemic.

Often, captains devoted to their block’s beauty are longtime residents. Darnell Perry, 62, an employee at Lowe’s, has lived on the 1000 block of Pallas Street in West Philadelphia for 50 years. Perry and his wife, Alice, 63—who works at the Philadelphia Corporation for Aging—serve as joint captains. “We take … pride in our block,” she says. Their stretch of Pallas won first place in PMBC’s 2019 Clean Block Contest.

On their small, close-knit block, neighbors wear masks and continue to sweep the streets. Their chief concern now is the children. “Children play outside, and cars

speed down the street,” says Alice. “We’re all working with the Streets Department to have the street repaved and speed bumps included to slow the cars.” She notes that the block has a lunch program for children.

Timothy Jones, 74, a retired aviation employee and assistant pastor of a local congregation, serves as the captain of three blocks—7800 Stenton Avenue, 900 East Hortter Street, and 900 East Phil Ellena Street—in Mount Airy.

“At one time I lived in the suburbs, but I moved here in 1975,” says Jones, also a police chaplain for the 14th District, a position in which he works with police during crises.

“I felt I could be more effective as a pastor if I lived in the same conditions as the congregation. That’s what Jesus did.”

As a block captain, Jones strives to keep P HOTO G RAP HY BY RACHAE L WARRI NER

Darnell and Alice Perry serve as co-captains of the 1000 block of Pallas Street in West Philadelphia. Their stretch of Pallas won first place in PMBC’s 2019 Clean Block Contest.

the blocks clean and ensure a good quality of life. “I see the fruits of my labor when we come together and cooperate on projects,” he says. “We recently worked together to have a faded street sign replaced.”

It’s not all hearts and flowers. “Some things, say, music that’s too loud, oppose the quality of life,” he says. “In that case, I talk with the leader of the group.” Sometimes dumpsters pose a problem. “You have to register them with the city,” he says, “and they remain only for a certain period of time. Otherwise, people throw garbage in

them, and they begin to smell. I always talk with the people involved so they have a chance to remedy the situation, but if nothing happens, I call L & I [Department of Licenses and Inspections]. Some people won’t talk to me now,” he says, then chuckles, “but I still say hello to them.”

“Since COVID-19 began, I’ve made sure I have an updated email list of all the neighbors to communicate that way instead of calling meetings.

“Going forward, I’d like to see millennials more involved,” Jones says. “In some cases,

a grandmother wills her house to a younger generation. I’d like them to realize that they’ve inherited a nice piece of real estate and really take care of it.”

Donnie Moore, 68, co-captain of the 1700 block of North 19th Street, retired from the Philadelphia Department of Prisons in 2010.“We cooperate to keep our block clean,” says Moore, of his North Philly block, just off Cecil B. Moore Avenue, that looks like a slice of suburbia. Moore became co-captain in 2015, the year the block won first place in the PMBC contest. “We worked together to win. We also cooperated to stop plans for a new school that would have destroyed green space and a playground.”

With his background working in the prison system, Moore sometimes turns to halfway houses for labor needed on the block. “The men work well,” he says, “we just have to feed them.”

Moore’s dedication gives block residents a sense of safety. “We have a nice block: a Vietnam vet, an attorney, college students, a SEPTA employee and a disabled woman,” says Janie Brooks, 58, Moore’s nextdoor neighbor, who emphasizes the need for more beautiful, affordable homes like those on her block. “Donnie keeps an eye on things, especially since the pandemic.”

The pandemic has motivated Moore to go all out. In the morning he spiffs up the block by discarding trash and sweeping, if necessary, then hops into his van to pick up 600 meals from The Real Deal Food Ministry, 2016 W. Berks Street, and other sites to deliver to senior citizen centers, homeless people and neighbors.

“People have been laid off because of COVID-19,” says Moore, whose block won first place in 2016, the year he began as co-captain. “Some people don’t have money for food. I distribute food five days a week and pay for my own gas. I’m not a clergyman, but you could call it my ministry.”

To learn more about becoming a block captain, visit philadelphiastreets.com/pmbc or call (215) 685-3981.

O CTO B E R 20 20 G R I DP HI LLY.COM 13

food

Crust Punks Vegan bakery opens storefront in Manayunk to retain all current employees

W

alexandra w. jones

hen the pandemic hit, Crust Vegan Bakery owners Meagan Benz and Shannon Roche were in a tough position.

They had been working out of a 250-square-foot commercial kitchen in Manayunk along with their eight full-time employees. It just wasn’t possible for all of them to socially distance.

“We were always kind of elbow-toelbow,” Roche says. “We’re not going to be able to work in a small space all together for a very long time—until there’s a vaccine, essentially.”

This is one reason, Roche says, Crust had to furlough some of its staff temporarily.

“Not all of our staff were able to get unemployment or even pandemic unemployment assistance,” Roche says. So they began paying some staff for 40 hours a week, “even though they were maybe only working like 10 or 15 hours a week,” she says, to ensure their employees were still able to pay bills and buy food. “It became more apparent as we went on that things are never going to go back to normal for us,” Roche says.

While they couldn’t all work in the kitchen at the same time, the bakery owners didn’t want to lay anyone off.

“Meagan and I have both worked in various businesses and restaurants where we have seen hostile management culture,” Roche says, noting these environments can be misogynistic, homophobic and racist.

One of their goals when opening Crust was to create a more empathetic, compassionate workplace—one where employees felt safe.

14 GRID P H IL LY.CO M O C TO B E R 2020

Crust’s menu includes brownies and “brookies.”

Below, owners Meagan Benz and Shannon Roche.

So when they found out that the owner of Sugar Philly, a bakery at 4409 Main Street in Manayunk, was planning on closing his doors, moving into the space seemed like the perfect solution. Less than half a mile from their commercial kitchen, the new venue offers both kitchen and retail space, Roche says.

“We’re envisioning half of our staff going to the new retail location and then half staying at the commercial kitchen,” she says, noting that with four employees in each space, everyone should have “enough space to keep a 6-foot bubble around them.”

This is the Crust team’s first time working in retail space. Although their name is on the Grindcore X Crust coffee shop in West Philly, at 4134 Chester Avenue, they’re not involved in the management of the location, Roche says, and act more like vendors.

Crust was founded in 2015. Prior to the pandemic, the bakery operated mostly as a wholesale business selling baked goods to

shops around Philadelphia. They hope their new storefront will allow them to accommodate more pickup orders.

Crust held a soft opening the last weekend of August and has been open on the weekends since. Eventually they will add more hours, Roche says.

“Everything will be ordered outdoors, and no one will be able to come in,” Roche says. “Just walk up to the door, we’ll have a menu out and we’ll take your order.”

They’ll be offering all of the products normally seen on their menu—including cookies, brownies, cookie sandwiches and cake slices.

“All of our chocolate and coffee and cocoa powder … they’re fair trade,” Roche says.

“That’s really important to us.”

If folks can’t come out to the new storefront because they are immunocompromised, Roche adds, Crust has also put some of its recipes up for sale online. Customers can help them support the bakery’s staff by purchasing those at crustveganbakery.com/shop.

“Our main focus is just that we can employ all of our staff,” Roche says. “What we want is to survive this as a small business, and not have to permanently let any of our staff go.”

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O CTO B E R 20 20 G R I DP HI LLY.COM 1 5

politics

Leading from Experience State Representative Malcolm Kenyatta talks DNC, by aaron salsbury democracy and free and fair elections

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o l i t i c s a r e p e r s o na l to Malcolm Kenyatta, a third-generation community activist born and raised in North Philadelphia.

Kenyatta began his career in civic activism as a block captain at 11 years old, and he worked his way up the political ladder over the next few decades, studying political science at Temple and Drexel universities and serving as a consultant in numerous local elections before entering the ring himself. In 2017, Kenyatta announced his campaign for a seat in the Pennsylvania House of Representatives.

In November 2018, Kenyatta won the seat for the 181st district with more than 95 percent of the vote, becoming one of the youngest elected state representatives in Pennsylvania and the first openly gay person of color elected to hold a seat in the state’s history.

Since then he has made national headlines, calling out his Republican colleagues for failing to tell their Democratic colleagues that one of their members had tested positive for COVID-19 and for his passionate defense of service workers forced to go back to work in the midst of the pandemic.

In August, Kenyatta was selected by the Democratic National Convention as one of 17 Democratic “rising stars” across the country, and he served as a keynote speaker at the event, which culminated in Joe Biden accepting the party’s presidential nomination.

In the months leading up to the upcoming presidential election, we spoke to Kenyatta about his speech at the convention, his support for Joe Biden and why it’s important to get out and vote.

This interview has been edited for length, clarity and style.

16 GR ID P H IL LY.CO M O C TO B E R 20 20

You got your start in community service very early working with the Philadelphia Streets Department as a block captain, correct? Yes, I was a junior block captain, and that really sparked not only my desire but sort of this belief that, “Oh my gosh, I can get involved in something, and really have an impact.”

Once I felt that, it spiraled. Then there were bigger issues that I had the confidence to say, “Hey, I can use my voice, I can speak out and change the way things are done in this regard.”

The theme of this year’s Democratic National Convention was ‘leadership matters.’

You’re the first openly gay Black male to ever speak at the convention as a keynote, and also the first and only Black LGBTQ person elected to Pennsylvania’s state government. How does it feel to be a role model to all of the young people watching such historic achievements unfold for the very first time? It’s so difficult for our young people to be something they can’t see, and so I recognize that there’s a lot of value of seeing somebody that shares parts of their lived experience on that stage. I really hope the takeaway is not, “Oh my god, look what Malcolm did,” but more importantly, “Oh my god, look what I can do.”

Folks have asked me, “How exciting has this been?” and, certainly, it’s exciting, but the real excitement will come years from now when there’s some young Black kid, young queer kid, young poor kid who said, “I could never run for office, I could never accomplish some of the things that I have my heart set on.” It’s going to be amazing for them to go and do it. That’s when I’m gonna feel that really deep sense of pride, when I see people looking at me not as a high watermark, but really as the beginning of a ripple effect that leads to more diverse people, in general, running for office … [and] being involved in our government.

You’re a third-generation activist, and also the son of a nurse and a social worker. What unique perspective has being from a working-class background provided you, and how did that translate into your early support of Joe Biden? Folks who are closest to the pain have to be closest to the power. When you know what it means to get an eviction notice, to have your utilities cut off, to not know where your next meal is gonna come from, or how you’re gonna be able to pay for college or even, as a kid, to go on the school trip.

Those perspectives matter, and it feeds into the way I conduct business. It feeds into how I talk about policy, and how I prioritize marginalized people in our policy conversations, and I think Joe Biden also understands that. He was the poorest member of Congress for his entire career in the legislature.

He talks at great length about his experiences with his father losing his job and then moving to Delaware from Pennsylvania, and how those things impacted how he looked at what a job means. And a job is not just about how much you make, it’s about knowing that you have a place in the community.

That really is a perspective I carry with me. A lot of the folks who have run and achieved office are millionaires, or at least incredibly well off. That factors into how they look at issues. I’m not saying they can’t empathize, but it’s one thing to empathize, it’s another thing to have the experience. I think that difference is meaningful.

How did it feel to be named a “rising star”?

I’ll leave those characterizations to others.

I’m just focused on doing the work. In my neighborhood, I’ve been involved in this stuff since I was [a kid]. So I guess I say what a lot of people say: “It takes a long time to become an overnight success.”

You’re a member of the governor’s Suicide Prevention Task Force and in May 2019, you co-sponsored legislation referred to as Phillip’s Law. Why is this issue so important, and what has the Biden campaign done to support Phillip’s Law? [Editor’s note: According to Kenyatta’s office, Phillip’s Law

is one of the places where support needs to be embedded. That’s what Phillip’s Law is all about. But we failed more broadly in terms of our society, the big “We.” In terms of holding our young people close and making them feel valuable and valued.

When I brought this up to the Vice President, obviously he was moved by the story, but he included this in one of his policy proposals, and he has made it a goal to pass Phillip’s Law at the federal level, and I think that that’s incredibly powerful.

Folks who are closest to the pain have to be closest to the power.”

C O U R T E S Y O F S W I G E R P H OTO G R A P H Y

— mal colm kenyatta

would require the Department of Education to investigate and report on the number of mental health professionals in schools to make recommendations on how to increase these numbers to meet nationally accepted ratios. Phillip was an 11-year-old student from Kenyatta’s district who committed suicide after being bullied at school.

Phillip’s family said that he had tried to get the attention of the support staff at his school but was told that he had to wait. Afraid to miss the bus, and worried about his younger brother, Phillip left school and later that day took his own life.]

The reason that this is important is because you look at what’s happening in Pennsylvania specifically, and we can certainly talk nationally as well, death by suicide is one

of the leading causes of death for our young people. That’s shocking to a lot of people when you say that, but after accidental death, death by suicide is the leading cause.

When I got that phone call from little Phil’s grandmother, letting me know that he had passed, I’ll never forget that. I often refer to that as the worst day I’ve had since I’ve been elected, and I work with a bunch of Republicans, so I’ve had a lot of bad days. This was, legitimately, the worst day I had, because to have a kid that young, with so much promise, basically feel so hopeless and alone, it makes me feel like we have failed. We failed, in terms of providing the mental health support that we need in our schools. I think that

In closing, could you speak to our readers briefly on the topic of voter fraud, and why it’s so important to vote? The real voter fraud is the suppression and intimidation that we are consistently seeing from the highest office in the land. It’s still shocking to me to see our president trying to diminish people’s faith in our election system because he does not believe he’s doing well in the polls. That’s ultimately what this is about: a democracy. The core of it is the ability for there to be free and fair elections.

In America, we have elections that are not—are not—rife with voter fraud. That they are rife with fraud is a myth and we know that when you talk about voter fraud … that diminishes individuals’ faith in our elections and ultimately leads to less people voting. If people feel like their vote isn’t going to count, or if people feel like nefarious forces are putting their hand on the scale in some way, we know that that diminishes participation in the election.

If you are a candidate for office, you only want less people to vote if you think more people voting means you’re gonna lose. It’s apparent why [President Trump] is trying to do this, but it’s also apparent what the longterm impacts of this are, and they’re deadly.

Our system of government can handle folks from different ideological perspectives being in power. We’ve dealt with that before; had Democratic administrations, Republican administrations, folks who felt vastly different on any number of policy issues, but what we’ve never had is a president who was actively trying to weaken our democracy, and that should be concerning to everybody. The only panacea we have to that infection in our democracy is to vote, and to vote like we’ve never voted before.

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RELEARNING HISTORY A conversation with educator Keziah Ridgeway about how teachers can move past America’s tradition of whitewashing history lessons story by maddie clark

K

eziah ridgeway, a history and anthropology teacher at Northeast High School, has seen how the history of African American and Indigenous people has been unrecognized or been severely filtered in American schools.

Ridgeway, a Black Muslim woman, sees this as an issue plaguing education to this day.

Being part Black myself, I have to agree. My lessons in high school almost never included the discussion of people who looked like me.

I remember being taught the jingle: “In 1492, Columbus sailed the ocean blue,” but I wasn’t taught that Columbus jumpstarted the transatlantic slave trade. What else was I missing?

Black History Month, February, was when I got a yearly dose of Martin Luther King Jr., Rosa Parks and the slave trade. All were packed into a lesson plan that would be regurgitated the following year like clockwork; and the history of Indigenous people would, more often than not, go unnoticed altogether.

Ridgeway would like to see Indigenous people and Black and Brown people appear in American history every step of the way.

It might be an uncomfortable discussion for some to have, but that is okay because, as Ridgeway says, “Black and Brown people are uncomfortable from the moment they are born.”

This interview has been edited for clarity, length and style.

Why is teaching African American history and that of Indigenous people so important within the school system? If you want to truly revolutionize education, it has to start at the beginning with destroying white supremacy, which has always been a part of the framework of the United States.

Even Brown v. Board of Education, a seemingly big win for abolishing school 18 GRID P H IL LY.CO M O C TO B E R 20 20

segregation, didn’t fix the entire problem because a lot of Black teachers lost their jobs since they were not wanted to teach white kids. Then on the flip side, you had Black and Brown kids being taught by white teachers who, by design of the slave trade, were never supposed to be granted education in the first place.

Without this history, which is more nuanced than the surface level lessons students get about MLK, students are not able to make the connection between the events that happened in the past and what’s occurring in the world today. We need to put things in proper context.

Do you think this whitewashing of history is intentional or merely due to a lack of understanding of Black and Brown cultures?

I think that some teachers are purposeful with their curriculum, but I also think some simply lack that understanding. I’d love to see a course required for teaching certifications that has to do with Indigenous cultures and histories.

I see that some teachers are still teaching Black and Indigenous history through a lens. They often focus on Black suffering versus Black resistance, which causes a lot of students to think that we just began as slaves and all we’ve been is subservient to white people instead of starting at the beginning in Africa with many of the kingdoms that arose there.

Not only is it important to understand the history, but culturally, how do you interact and relate with children of a different ethnic background and culture than yours? You know when you’re reading classic literature to your students and the N-word comes up, how do you approach that subject with your students? Things like that as well.

What would you recommend teachers do to become more culturally aware? Read and join in discussions, watch documentaries, join organizations such as Racial Justice Organizing, which actually now offers anti-racist training. That information is out there, you just have to be willing to do it.

Can you tell me more about Racial Justice Organizing? Racial Justice Organizing started as a committee under the Caucus of Working Educators but has now become its own group. It focuses on issues like social justice, abolishing racism in education and, most recently, the Black Lives Matter movement.

Do you think that a lot of the issues and racial tensions we’re experiencing now would be alleviated with more education? Let’s not be naïve. Education is a piece of the puzzle but taking action is definitely another part.

There needs to be a multipronged approach.

If information on African American history and ethnic studies was available to

I’m here to teach real history and it can be uncomfortable, but Black and Brown people are uncomfortable from the moment we come into this world.”

—ke ziah ridgeway P HOTO G RAP H BY D RE W DENNI S

Keziah Ridgeway, a history and anthopology teacher at Northeast High School, shows off her online classroom setup.

O CTO B E R 20 20 G R I DP HI LLY.COM 1 9

every teenager, I think we would have very different educational outcomes.

However, capitalism creates a lot of division in itself. Education can only do so much until the whole system is destabilized and everyone is truly equal.

Look at issues like homelessness, hunger and even COVID-19. There are two public health crises going on right now: racism and COVID-19. While everyone is experiencing the damaging effects of this pandemic, the United States is at the epicenter, and it’s affecting Black and Brown people at disproportionately higher rates because they don’t have equal access to healthcare, a lot of them are essential workers, they’re being underpaid and overworked, many of them also have preexisting health conditions that are a result of the food they were introduced to during slavery.

Given everything that has happened within the recent months, how are you going to go into this school year? I know my Black and Brown students will have a lot of trauma and fear as a result of the killings of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor and Ahmaud Arbery.

20 GR ID P H I L LY.CO M O C TO BE R 2020

A lot of their home situations are not ideal, so ... having to stay home will likely have had an impact on their mental health as well.

We’re definitely going to have a conversation about these things, the attack of the trans community, the dangers of being Black and Brown, and LGBTQ. I want to make sure my students always have the opportunity to voice their opinions, even if it’s not while we’re in session and they want to pop in during my office hours to talk. I’ve had students write me letters before.

Do you ever feel like you need to cover your bases or censor yourself when it comes to what you teach? I’m painfully aware that I look different than a majority of the teachers in my department, who are mainly white males. In the classroom, however, I don’t censor myself. I’m here to teach real history and it can be uncomfortable, but Black and Brown people are uncomfortable from the moment we come into this world. We are uncomfortable when we get on an airplane, we are uncomfortable when we go to the store, we are uncomfortable when we

are in a restaurant, we are uncomfortable because we don’t know when our skin or our features will be used against us.

What’s one main thing you want people to know? As an educator, there not only has to be space for people to learn and grow but also to make mistakes. I’m not here to drag white educators.

I was teaching a lesson about Buddhism during my world history unit. I asked my students if anyone has ever seen the robes that monks wear. One of my students raised his hand and said that he had seen them, and I kind of shot him this look of disbelief like, “Yeah, okay.” Later I found out that he wore those robes during his aunt’s funeral as part of the culture on his mom’s side. But because he was Brown I assumed I knew his culture because of his skin and because his hair was curly.

Even for someone like me it’s important to always be cognizant of people’s ethnic and cultural backgrounds aside from what they look like.

It’s important that everyone does the work. I will be a lifelong learner.

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Hub, a Black-led mutual aid and collective care program. Its mission is to supply a “free market” for everyone, and the market gives more than food. The Supply Hub provides essential household supplies, and they raise money for neighbors struggling to find and keep housing. The group accomplishes this by inviting neighbors to help neighbors, free of charge.

“This is not charity. This is providing a basic human right,” says Eppchez Yes (Ey/Em), one of the 12 organizers for the Supply Hub. The two afternoons start with vehicles lined up along Church Lane. Volunteers unload food and items to distribute to neighbors. They partner with Philly Foodworks, The West Philly Bunnyhop, community gardens, Philly Food Forests and local backyard farmers. Neighbors enter the lot with items or food their household does not need but another may, like diapers, toiletries, furniture and books.

“People show up in return ... they get the fresh produce, and then give back whatever they can,” Yes says. “People come and donate whatever they have that they’re not using anymore, that someone else may be able to make use of.”

The Supply Hub launched in June after Community members share produce and household goods, supporting each other at the Germantown Supply Hub’s “free market.”

GIVE AND TAKE

Germantown mutual aid program dreams of a permanent “free market” for the people, by the people

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story by nichole currie — photography by milton lindsay

omething special happens at the corner of Germantown Avenue and Church Lane every Wednesday and Saturday afternoon. A collective of neighbors and volunteers gather in The People’s Lot, with cardboard box cutouts that read “Free Food,” but that’s not all that brings people in.

If you travel to The People’s Lot, you will see an array of volunteers, organizers and 22 GRID P H IL LY.CO M O C TO B E R 2020

neighbors unloading boxes of produce, but also sharing laughs and stories. Neighbors gather their essential needs but stay for a little longer, talk a bit longer and sometimes rest in the brightly colored chairs. Because the group is not organizing a charity, they are making a community investment.

Their main goal is simple: We have to take care of each other.

The group is the Germantown Supply

This is not charity. This is providing a basic human right.”

—epp che z ye s, Germantown Supply Hub organizer

the COVID-19 pandemic heightened food disparities in Philadelphia. The public health emergency highlighted severe, systemic problems that the government could not address sufficiently. Yes and eight other organizers, including Ashley Davis and Shanel Edwards, assessed how they could foster community investment.

“We’re trying to meet people’s needs,” Edwards says. “I think the most human way to do that is through relationship building and not assuming that we know what [others] need.”

The Supply Hub settled at The People’s Lot, and the space aligns with their values.

The lot is part of artist Victor Jackson’s OURchive project. It is a shared space for many creative Black youth and artists to commune, dream and organize. Davis says it’s been a pleasure to witness people settle in the lot’s chairs and engage with one another while enjoying mutual aid.

“Beautiful conversations spark,” Davis says. “People share recipes, food, dreams of gardening—and that’s what we do here [at the Supply Hub]. We share.”

Giving back to communities has become popular since disadvantaged groups found themselves in vulnerable positions, such as working at hazardous essential jobs.

University of Pennsylvania sociology professor Regina Baker says that the act of receiving free food or items from charities

requires disadvantaged populations to have a dependent relationship with the people helping them.

“Vulnerability, in essence, is just this idea of having to rely on other people to provide for you,” Baker explains, referring to food insecurity. “It’s this idea that ‘I need to be saved.’ ” However, according to Baker, navigating vulnerability might be easier for underprivileged groups participating in mutual aid rather than charity. While people tend to perform charity as a form of “giving back,” it requires a stronger or independent entity to give to those less fortunate. Mutual aid creates a symbiotic relationship, where everyone offers goods or assistance to each other.

“It’s … this reciprocal relationship and I think it makes people proud,” Baker says.

“People in the community doing something for the community for mutual benefit versus just going someplace and getting something.”

Yes says a symbiotic relationship is present in the Germantown mutual aid program. An example of a neighbor who participates in both giving and taking is Miss Dawn Butler, whose garden at the Nicholson Church Lane Community Garden is a few blocks from the Supply Hub. Prior to the pandemic, the Nicholson community garden donated fresh produce to Whosoever Gospel Mission, a Germantown transitional living program for men. After learning the mission would not need donations this year, Butler thought of a new idea.

“When I seen the ladies out there doing what they were doing, and not asking for anything,” Butler says, “I let them know that once my stuff started growing, I was going to donate my vegetables to them.”

While most working days she donates food from her garden, she also gathers diapers for her neighbors who have a newborn. She says the Supply Hub has benefited the neighborhood, especially those who do not have enough money to cover all of their living costs.

“Some people have to ask, ‘Do [we] want

to pay the bills this week, or do [we] want to get food?’ ” Butler says.

As the warm weather comes to an end, mutual aid programs like the Supply Hub consider how their programs will continue through fall and winter.

Todsza English is working on the answer.

English is a volunteer-turned-organizer for the Supply Hub. She stumbled across the mutual aid program after taking a stroll through Germantown. She felt at home with the Supply Hub, especially as many of her ideas and goals lined up with theirs.

English says she cannot stand to let food go to waste and that she also knows “people on my block who cannot drive because they are elderly or sick” who can benefit from the program.

English runs a nonprofit called Live Decent, whose mission is to help community members become self sufficient through cooking and crafting projects. The Supply Hub brings her self-sufficiency practices to the mutual aid program. English gathers leftover produce from the Supply Hub on Saturdays and creates non-perishable items for people to collect the following week. For example, English takes leftover zucchini to make relish.

“I’m very concerned about moving forward in the winter,” English says. “The donations we’re getting now primarily is fresh produce. That’s going to stop and many people don’t know how to preserve food,” English says.

The Supply Hub is planning food-preservation workshops, and English will continue to provide non-perishables. Although winter will present challenges, the Supply Hub plans to operate long term and normalize food redistribution and the idea of meeting all needs and wants, free of charge.

“If I were to dream my own dream, it would be a free world,” Organizer Ashley Davis says. “That this is set up everywhere, and people are sharing their resources, knowing their neighbors [and knowing] what one another needs.”

O CTO B E R 20 20 G R I DP HI LLY.COM 23

• Lamar Gore, refuge manager at the John Heinz National Wildlife Refuge, in Tinicum Marsh.

portraits by

linette kielinski

NAVIGATING THE WATERS A federal rollback of wetland and stream protections could affect Philadelphia

story by

claire marie porter

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efuge manager lamar gore watched as Tropical Storm Isaias tore acres. Residents have reported that up footpaths and surged over the boardwalk at John Heinz National Wildlife many homes in Eastwick are sinking.

Refuge at Tinicum. ¶ “It was too much for the banks to hold,” says Gore. ¶ ¶ There are several sources of chronic flooding in Eastwick. The Schuylkill Gore’s place of work, John Heinz, is the first and largest urban refuge in the United States. It is responsible for protecting the largest remaining freshwater tidal marsh River pushes groundwater into Eastin Pennsylvania. One month after Isaias, in August, the 1,000-acre refuge is still closed wick during heavy rainfall events, and to the public as commercial pumps suck water from one side of the marsh and deposit Cobbs Creek and Darby Creek converge in Eastwick, just north of the refuge. Beit to the other. The trails are unnavigable and parts of the boardwalk and bridges have crumbled. ¶ “I’ve seen bad flooding,” Gore says, “but in my six years here, it’s the worst fore the area was developed, the swellimpact I’ve seen in Eastwick.” ¶ The refuge and the adjacent Eastwick neighborhood in ing of floodwaters would have been abSouthwest Philadelphia, suffer from chronic flooding, due primarily to the major loss sorbed by the area’s sponge-like wetlands. of wetlands over the years. Tropical Storm Isaias presented “a worst-case scenario” for Where only an underdeveloped floodplain both the residents of Eastwick and the refuge, says Gore. ¶ The community of Eastwick used to be affected, there are now homes, was built upon marshland. What used to be 6,000 acres of tidal marsh is now 300-400 says Gore.

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jurisdiction of federal laws.

This change eliminated critical pollution rules that had safeguarded at-risk ecosystems and drinking water across the country, and put development of floodplains and wetlands ultimately in the hands of developers and farmers, though states will still have the power to step in and protect vulnerable waterways if they so choose.

Why Protect Wetlands?

WETLANDS SERVE AS the kidneys of the wa-

ter system, or watershed. They are an essential filter, cleaning pollutants out of the water and purifying it for drinking. They provide storm surge control, and coastal wetlands, in particular, create a spongelike barrier to hurricanes and sea-level rise.

Two categories of wetlands are found on every continent except Antarctica: coastal or tidal wetlands, found along the Atlantic and Pacific coasts in the U.S., and in-land wetlands, which often appear along floodplains. The latter includes marshes and wet meadows, swamps and seasonal vernal pools. All of which serve as essential habitats for many species of plants and animals, some of whom are endangered.

“Wetlands are one of the most productive ecosystems on Earth,” says Brett Hartl, the Center for Biological Diversity’s government affairs director. “They are some of the richest biological areas in any ecosystem,” he says. “Losing your wetlands is a death sentence for a lot of wildlife.”

Since the Clean Water Act’s conception, the EPA has never taken a more restricted definition of wetlands, says Hartl of the 1972 law, which was established to protect navigable waters and their adjacent wetlands from pollution and degradation.

“It’s unprecedented,” he says. “This is taking a meat cleaver to a bipartisan approach to regulating wetlands. The EPA’s own analysis said as much.”

Prior to this rollback, the most significant change in the protection of wetlands in the U.S. was an executive order, originally issued by President Jimmy Carter in 1977, and later signed into law by George H.W. Bush in 1989, says Derron LaBrake, senior professional wetlands scientist at Wetlands and Ecology, Inc., a local environmental consulting firm. The order

Birds take flight at John Heinz, the first and largest urban refuge in the country.

required that there be “no net loss” of wetlands, meaning all filled wetlands had to be simultaneously replaced with an equivalent amount of wetland creation, says LaBrake.

In the 1980s the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers was initially responsible for regulating activities in Waters of the U.S. (WOTUS).

“The protection of wetlands and waters has been a pendulum swinging back and forth for a long time now,” says LaBrake.

The Obama administration successfully clarified a scientific definition of what qualifies as WOTUS, which, he says, should have been done in the Clean Water Act. “Many of the really good practicing wetland scientists I know feel as though the

LANDSCAPE COURTESY OF LAMAR GORE

Because the wetlands are no longer there, the water spills out onto the streets in the adjacent neighborhoods. This happens during most rainfall events, but Isaias presented perfect-storm conditions, converging with a high tide during a full moon, when the highest tides occur.

In Eastwick, the storm inundated the Clearview neighborhood and floodwaters flowed through what residents call the planet streets—Saturn Place, Venus Place, Mercury Place and Mars Place—before finally filling the area around the abandoned shell of the George Wharton Pepper Middle School.

“It was horrific,” says Ramona Rousseau-Reid, a resident of Eastwick. “No one saw this coming. People are still cleaning up.”

Rousseau-Reid is the vice president of the Eastwick Friends and Neighbors Coalition, which has been working nonstop to help residents get back on their feet. They started a grassroots flood relief fund and gave more than 100 gift cards, directly from the coalition’s budget, to affected neighbors.

Many Eastwick residents lack adequate flood insurance, if any, she says. They lost vehicles, major appliances and countless personal items. One entire block of rentals was condemned and residents were forced to vacate within 48 hours.

“It’s absolutely an environmental justice issue,” says Rousseau-Reid. “This has been a deprived and disenfranchised community for decades, dating back to the Urban Renewal Plan in the fifties.”

The only solution to chronic flooding in Eastwick is creating more tidal marshes, says Gore. This would serve to both slow floodwaters and create more habitats for the wildlife of the refuge.

Wetlands are now one of many at-risk ecosystems in the country, under siege from the impending threat of climate change and, more recently, the loss of wetland protections.

This year, in April, one day before the 50th celebration of Earth Day, the EPA rolled back federal protections of waterways, replacing the Waters of the United States rule under the Clean Water Act of 1972 with a regulatory standard, entitled the Navigable Waters Protection Rule.

The new rule casts wetlands, lakes, ponds and streams outside of the regulatory

I really don’t understand why our American society has stopped listening to scientists.”

—derron labrake , senior wetlands scientist at Wetlands and Ecology, Inc.

original Corps manual was the way things needed to stay because it was written by scientists,” says LaBrake. “In my opinion, most of the regulatory rule changes that have been put into effect since the late 1980s have been corrupted by non-scientific partisan agenda, driven by greed. I really don’t understand why our American society has stopped listening to scientists.”

There is immense lobbying pressure from parties seeking to profit from reduction of water and wetlands. This is a battle that has been going on for decades, pitting environmentalists against developers and big agriculture.

Wetlands are often seen as valueless by the latter groups. Preserving water quality limits those seeking to profit from building houses

or growing commodities on that land.

“It’s [a problem of ] the interests of the individual being weighed out against the interests of the many,” says LaBrake, indicating that protecting wetlands are in a greater community’s best interest.

According to the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, over the past 200 years, an average of 60 acres of wetlands have been lost every hour in the contiguous states. This equates to a loss of more than half of all U.S. wetlands.

If wetlands and streams were valued, there would be very little flooding, says LaBrake. The U.S. has terrible water quality as a result, which is why so much money is spent cleaning water before it’s drinkO CTO B E R 20 20

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Gore traveling the refuge grounds.

able—approximately $100 billion per year, according to the National Association of Clean Water Agencies. It’s also why the U.S. spends millions of dollars per year cleaning up after floods, he adds.

The new rule does not consider the complexities of hydrology, says Hartl, particularly the fact that water is connected below and above ground. “[The rule] instituted a new regime based on a non-majority opinion, that in the aggregate, over time, will reduce the amount of water and streams protected by about 50 percent,” says Hartl.

Part of the problem is that it is very difficult to prove that a wetland is a wetland. It requires an intimate knowledge of an area, says Hartl. Wetlands are often seasonal—there are dry and wet periods—and a stream could exist only six months of the year.

“Developers like wetlands because they’re flat and easier to build upon,” says Hartl. “But it’s incredibly short-sighted.”

Filter and Habitat “IN GENERAL, most people don’t understand

or appreciate wetlands. They simply see a swamp; a mosquito-breeding habitat,” says Fred Stine, citizen action coordinator of the Delaware Riverkeeper Network. “However, that changes for many people once they understand that wetlands are one of nature’s 28

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[Y]ou cannot do scientifically informed water management without creeping into land management, which is much more politically perilous.”

—karl russek , The Water Center at Penn research and program director most important filtering systems that help protect and clean our drinking water supply and reduce flooding.”

Our waterways are protected through a series of local, state and federal regulations: a system of checks and balances, he says.

But politicians can change those regulations and how they are enforced and waterways can swing from greater protections to less, depending on who is in charge. Right now, at the federal level, those water protection regulations are being dismantled to allow more pollution, more wetlands to be filled, and weaker enforcement, he says.

“If you don’t have strong wetland protections and regulations, you end up with flood and water-quality issues,” he says.

As they stand, Pennsylvania’s state ordinances are likely too weak to protect vulnerable waterways at the same level as the EPA’s now-rolled-back regulations.

“All wetlands are important to humans and to all living creatures that depend on

clean and healthy water for survival,” says Stine. “Not just the large ones like the Everglades and the Tinicum Marsh, but the little ones in the woods at the end of your street, behind the school, and the other nooks and crannies in our communities. They all play an important role in our quality of life.”

Though Philly is at the bottom of the hill, geographically, some great things can be done at the bottom of the hill, he says.

The City’s Green City, Clean Water program has created many stormwater management projects, such as rain gardens and the de-paving of parking lots, allowing for the reduction of pollution into the Delaware and Schuylkill Rivers, the sources of Philadelphia’s drinking water.

These projects are located in nearly every neighborhood in Philly, providing important hands-on educational opportunities for the next generation. But while these projects are great, they don’t fix everything, says Stine.

There is a hierarchy of consequences of these rollbacks, with flood protection, water quality and drinking-water supply at the top. Next to more visceral consequences of flooding and drinking-water quality, is the loss of wildlife diversity, he says.

Aquatic animals, particularly reptiles and amphibians, are most affected by wetland loss in Philadelphia’s waterways.

Many amphibians are considered “indicator species” because they’re sensitive to changes in water quality, so the health of a body of water can be assessed by the health of the amphibian population that lives there.

At-risk species living in Philadelphia’s wetlands include the state-threatened red-bellied turtle and eastern mud turtle, the northern cricket frog and Atlantic Coast leopard frog, says Matthew McCann, a research and policy associate at the Delaware Riverkeeper Network.

The great egret and black-crowned night heron, which was once considered a common nesting heron in Pennsylvania, are both state endangered birds whose populations are decreasing, likely due to wetland loss. The John Heinz refuge has been designated by the National Audubon Society as an Important Bird Area, providing a sanctuary for 90 species that regularly nest and 300 species altogether.

Erik Silldorff, Delaware Riverkeeper Network’s staff scientist, says the list of at-risk fish and aquatic animals goes on to include shortnose sturgeon, Atlantic sturgeon, eastern pondmussel, tidewater mucket, yellow lampmussel, dwarf wedgemussel, horseshoe crab, brook trout and the bridled shiner.

“If you’re shrinking that biodiversity,” Stine says, “it doesn’t happen in isolation; it’s all connected, and the consequences will be widespread.”

Still, he doesn’t anticipate any action taken on the matter to be proactive.

“Humans are a crisis-driven species,” says Stine. “It takes devastating flooding or the threat of extinction of a majestic species to wake us up.”

State Wetland Protections THE PENNSYLVANIA CLEAN STREAMS LAW,

enacted in 1937, does give the state a leg up for protection of vulnerable waters, says Carol Collier, senior advisor for watershed policy and management at the Academy

of Natural Sciences of Drexel University.

The law was designed to protect not only the larger existing bodies of water, such as mountain streams and rivers, but also the “underground water that navigates through cracks and spaces between rock and soil.”

It gives the Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection (DEP) “broad powers” to protect the streams and wetlands in a given watershed.

“Since this is a law of the commonwealth, it is not affected by the WOTUS decision,” she says.

While this law puts Pennsylvania in a better position to fight for protection of the smaller streams and wetland areas than other states, DEP is significantly underfunded and understaffed, says Collier, and may not be able to handle the workload to protect vulnerable bodies of water.

Furthermore, the EPA and Army Corps of Engineers will be using less stringent definitions of what makes a wetland a wetland, and state and federal agencies will likely not be “on the same page,” she says.

Getting people to care about these subtle but essential distinctions will be difficult, but necessary, Collier notes.

Moving Forward IN A NATURAL STATE, the highest points of a

watershed contain tremendous amounts of natural storage, says Karl Russek, director of programs and applied research at The Water Center at Penn. Floodplain wetlands, in particular, function as organic tubs, providing temporary storage for floodwaters from rain storms or snowmelt events.

When human activity gets in the way of these areas that fill with water, whether through tree removal or construction of roads and parking lots, thus converting those headwater areas into impermeable spaces, it results in a much more “erratic,” “flashy flow regime,” says Russek.

“Which aggravates flooding conditions,” he adds, “because a lot of that natural storage is gone.”

In the world of hydrology, scientists refer to these aggregations of small impact as “death by a thousand cuts.”

“The issue at a watershed scale is that any one small change that may have a fairly minimal local impact aggregates across a watershed,” says Russek.

In Philadelphia the consequences of these small impacts result in issues like persistent flooding events in low places, like the banks of Cobbs Creek and Darby Creek.

“Outside hydrology is the function that these various features play in regulating nutrient transport, carbon transport and general stream health,” says Russek.

These rollbacks could increase the rate of loss of habitat and hydrologic features, which will aggravate flooding events and impact water quality, says Russek, noting the loss of natural systems on top of climate change may be more than we can bear.

“It’s kind of a one-two punch. We need to really understand: there will be an impact and it will be aggregated across the watershed,” says Russek.

It’s important to realize how far we’ve come, he says. The improved health of both the Delaware and Schuylkill Rivers is remarkable.

“The ‘easy work’ is done, in terms of regulating massive point sources,” he says, referring to end-of-pipe discharges that are easy to identify, measure and regulate from places like wastewater treatment plants and industrial complexes. “Non-point” sources, by comparison, are characterized as many small inputs, like stormwater runoff, which sweeps everything from streets, parking lots and lawns and can aggregate into a much larger impact.

“As our understanding of these [water] systems improves over time, the problems become much more complex, and the solutions become much more distributed,” says Russek.

The solutions come in the form of a thousand township meetings and land-use planning applications. “A classic issue with water management is that you cannot do scientifically informed water management without creeping into land management, which is much more politically perilous,” he says.

Compliance with thousands of contraction permits, and enforcement of those permits, he says, is where it gets hard. According to Russek, finding ways to work upstream and downstream across political boundaries is the biggest challenge confronting Pennsylvania in the face of building stronger regulatory systems that protect our wetlands.

“Watersheds don’t respect political boundaries,” he says.

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Women find power and community in group hikes along the Wissahickon Creek story by siobhan gleason

D

uring a recent Hike + Heal meetup on the Wissahickon Creek, one member shared her reason for coming on a hike: she had just moved to Philadelphia during the COVID-19 pandemic and was looking for a community of women.

Hike + Heal founder Brandi Aulston was impressed by the woman’s search for community during such an isolating time.

“That takes initiative,” Aulston says. “She could easily have said, ‘Woe is me.’ She said, ‘Ok, what’s around here?’ ” Even as stay-at-home orders have loosened in Philadelphia, meeting new people has continued to be a challenging feat. Aulston has seen interest in Hike + Heal grow exponentially in the past few months. Before each biweekly hike, about 60 women sign up online. In order to enforce social distancing, Aulston has had to cap attendance at about 20 participants.

“I’m very happy that what I do is accessible during a pandemic,” Aulston says. She 30 GRID P H IL LY.CO M O C TO BE R 2020

believes social distancing and mask-wearing have had no effect on everyone’s ability to engage with each other. “[Everyone is] still able to connect even though you only see half of a person’s face,” Aulston says.

Aulston has made a few adjustments to the typical Hike + Heal meetups during the pandemic. She moved her Hopeful Hour and Healing Hour meetups online, both of which give women a chance to work through current emotions and life experiences by utilizing mindfulness exercises, including meditation, breathing exercises and journaling.

For Hike + Heal Hive member Marie-Renee Malvoisin, the Healing Hour meetups have served as “a safe space where people feel like they can be heard.” The virtual meetups have “helped me be present and know that I am not alone,” Malvoisin says.

“You don’t have to explain yourself. Somebody can already understand and relate.”

The virtual setting of the Healing Hours

C O U R T E S Y O F C AT H I E AT B E AU M O N D E O R I G I N A L S

NATURAL FRIENDS

has also opened the events up to women living far from Philadelphia. Malvoisin has seen women from states as far away as Colorado joining the meetups.

For Hive members who want to dive deeper into meditation and mindfulness, Aulston also offers Clarity Chats and Virtual Healing Hours. During Clarity Chats, women talk to Aulston about something in their lives they would like to change, which might include moving on from a past relationship, healing from trauma or changing their life outlook.

After the initial chat, Aulston sets up a consultation to determine the time frame that would be best for achieving specific goals.

In addition to moving different events online, Aulston has made other adjustments to the hikes, all of which she hosts on the Wissahickon Creek. Before the pandemic began, at the midpoint of each hike, members did partner stretching. Aulston has halted these stretches and has instead introduced new activities.

“I’m a very touchy-feely person,” Hive member Liz Fever says. “Being able to connect with people during our stretching is something I’ll miss, but I look forward to a time when we can do it again.”

On a recent hike, each Hive member wrote down something they wanted to let go of on a piece of water-soluble paper. They then released the paper into the creek to symbolize letting go of negative thoughts and life challenges.

You don’t have to explain yourself. Somebody can already understand and relate.”

—marie -renee malvoisin

Fever first met Aulston last summer at a photoshoot for the company Girls Gone Happy, which creates card decks designed to prompt conversation and introspection.

The decks focus on a variety of topics, including motherhood, money and loss.

Aulston came across the cards on Instagram and reached out to the founder of Girls Gone Happy, Justine Haemmerli, to express her interest in becoming a brand ambassador. Aulston mainly uses the cards during Healing Hours and occasionally on hikes.

While at the photoshoot, Aulston told Fever about Hike + Heal. Aulston founded Hike + Heal in March 2019 and held her first hike in April.

Fever came on her first hike in September 2019 and immediately admired Aulston’s approach to exercise and wellness. Rather than focusing on aesthetics or treating exercise as a means to an end, Aulston’s hikes instead emphasize mindfulness and connection with nature.

“As a woman on the smaller end of a plus-sized body, exercise always felt like a punishment. Exercise had always been something I would do to change my body,” Fever says. “[In] the wellness industry, you see the same type of person over and over again. Hike + Heal is for all types of women.

Everyone is represented and there is something attainable for every fitness level.”

Aulston noticed the lack of diversity in

Left: Hike + Heal Hive members meditate and do yoga beside the Wissahickon Creek. Right: Founder Brandi Aulston.

the wellness industry while at Temple University. She had always been active as a child, playing soccer, cheerleading and other sports. In college, she took as many dance and movement classes she could as a biology major.

However, once Aulston ventured off campus and took classes at yoga studios, she felt out of place. She noticed that studios and gyms had a lack of diversity.

After graduation, Aulston taught Zumba and even volunteered as a fitness instructor at her job’s gym. She focused on making exercise accessible and offering modifications, but over time she began to lose interest and started to search for something new. At age 29, Aulston hiked along the Wissahickon Creek for the first time. Aulston was surprised she had never visited the creek before, despite being born and raised in Philadelphia. After spending time on the trails, Aulston knew it was the perfect place to start a wellness group.

“I wanted something different that doesn’t require hiking gear. You just show up and move,” Aulston says.

Aulston posted about Hike + Heal on Instagram and Facebook in the spring of 2019 and word quickly spread. Many women who joined the group had also never been on the Wissahickon Creek before,

but they quickly became comfortable with navigating different trails, even returning to the creek with friends and family. Aulston frequently gets texts from Hive members asking her for directions to different trails so they can revisit them on their own, which she is always happy to share.

“The goal is to tackle the Wissahickon,” Aulston says. Aulston believes that by introducing others to the creek, she is helping to show that hiking is available to everyone— that it is an inclusive activity. Her focus on inclusivity has set Hike + Heal apart.

“I didn’t know a hiking group that was headed by a Black woman, another woman representing my background,” Malvoisin says. “It helped me to see that.”

The members of Hike + Heal are made up of a wide variety of ages, races and ethnicities, which Aulston has always championed. She regularly posts pictures of the Hive members online to showcase the diversity in the group. Aulston chooses not to post many of her own pictures on the Hike + Heal social media accounts because she believes the women of the Hive are the focus, rather than herself. Often, women who show up for their first hike with Hike + Heal don’t know that Aulston is the founder. She makes sure to introduce herself, but she also keeps the focus of Hike + Heal on the larger group.

“I didn’t really put myself on the page. I wanted to create a community,” Aulston says.

Aulston has watched the friendships formed during hikes and meetups take shape quickly, both in person and through social media. Practicing mindfulness, exercising together and sharing the outdoors helps forge strong bonds. In fact, she believes it is impossible not to make a connection at a Hike + Heal event.

“When you come, you’re going to leave with a new friend,” Aulston says.

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