Grid Magazine February 2022 [#153]

■

■

■

We’re losing trees to climate change

City launches Environmental Justice Advisory Commission

Community gardens imperiled by sheriff’s sales

p. 6

p. 16

p. 14

FEBRUARY 2022 / ISSUE 153 / 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

BOUND TO TRADITION Black-owned bookstores, epicenters of learning and activism since 1834

Yvonne Blake, owner of Hakim’s Bookstore on 52nd Street.

ORGANIC LOCAL FAMILY–OWNED Kimberton Whole Foods is your one-stop shop for organic produce, raw dairy, local meats and cheeses, specialty items, baked goods, supplements, body care and more.

NEWLY EXPANDED STORE! COLLEGEVILLE 222 East Main St

DOUGLASSVILLE 1139 Ben Franklin Highway West

DOWNINGTOWN 150 East Pennsylvania Ave

KIMBERTON 2140 Kimberton Rd

MALVERN 429 East King Rd

OTTSVILLE 4010 Durham Rd

kimbertonwholefoods.com

Erik Curtis Philadelphia, PA encurtis.com @encurtis TELL US ABOUT BUSINESS + YOUR STORY I am a woodworker and sculptor who enjoys blurring the lines between fine furniture and art. A lot of my ideas are discovered during my long walks around Philadelphia. Whether it’s a philosophical concept that I want to express visually or a simple exploration of technique or material, once the idea is discovered I discuss it with the client before starting drawings and models. Most of my furniture is carved or shaped in some way, focusing on line and movement. Whether that’s a cabinet door, a box lid, or a table leg. Sometimes the entire form is carved, such as a twisting pedestal base for a dining table. Currently, I’m working on a commission for a coffee table and light fixtures using resin as a sculptural medium.

WHAT’S YOUR MOST REWARDING MEMORY AS A MAKER? I was working on a speculation piece; a small breakfast table with a carved base. The goal of the piece was to make a piece of furniture that invited the viewer to walk around it 360°. The day I finished it, somebody walked into the community shop where I was working.

I was across the workshop so he didn’t say a word to me, but he approached the table, stopped for a moment, slowly walked around it in a full circle, smiled, nodded, and continued on his way. I knew then that I had succeeded in exactly what I set out to do. It was the first large piece of sculptural furniture I had ever made.

F E B RUARY 20 22

G R I DP HI LLY.COM

1

EDI TO R ’S NOTES

by

alex mulcahy

Find the Money director of operations Nic Esposito managing editor Alexandra W. Jones associate editor & distribution Timothy Mulcahy tim@gridphilly.com art director Michael Wohlberg writers Bernard Brown Nic Esposito Constance Garcia-Barrio Jenny Roberts Lois Volta photographers Chris Baker Evens Drew Dennis Linette Kielinski Chelsea Marrin Rachael Warriner illustrator 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

2

GR ID P H IL LY.CO M

F EB RUA RY 2022

T

that are held on the land. Anne Fadullon, the city’s director of planning and development, says that the city would love to help, but their hands are tied.

In an October 2021 Inquirer article she said, “There hasn’t been the financial wherewithal with all the other budget priorities for the city to find that money.”

How much money? $25 million—less than $10,000 per lot. A little less than Bryce Harper will make this year or about 0.5% of the city’s $5 billion budget.

To be clear, this would not be $25 million worth of real estate solely for community gardens. The city would then own the land and they could sell it. And they could do it judiciously, in a way that would prevent greedy speculation, in turn slowing down gentrification, allowing the preservation and expansion of affordable housing and creating opportunities for green outdoor space. This is what our low-income neighborhoods need.

And it aligns perfectly with budgetary priorities of the city: to reduce gun violence, improve public health, expand access to green space to all neighborhoods—not to mention mitigating the “heat island effect” of climate change that affects so many living in poverty.

Community gardens deserve to be protected. Let’s not let community self-determination and self-reliance get crushed by bureaucratic indifference.

Pay the liens, Mayor Kenney.

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

COV E R P HOTO G RAP H BY D RE W DENNI S

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

publisher Alex Mulcahy

here’s nothing like a great bookstore. At their best, they can provide both a mirror to who we are and expand the possibilities of who we can be. They are the hubs of the dreamers and visionaries. I share in the disappointment of many Philadelphians that Joseph Fox Bookshop will be closing after 71 years in business. You just can’t replace that.

It seems a perfect antidote to bookstore melancholy to read Constance Garcia-Barrio’s cover story on the Black-owned shops that we are so fortunate to have, and it serves as a reminder to support the businesses we want to succeed.

If you find yourself feeling confused or frustrated while reading this month’s story written by Nic Esposito about the César Andreu Iglesias Garden Community’s fight for survival, it’s not Nic’s fault. Unfortunately, it is a confusing and frustrating situation.

First, let’s talk about why community gardens are so important.

Usually they begin as abandoned lots.

Neighbors, often with limited resources, band together and turn something that is a liability into an asset.

Studies have shown that greening lots reduces gun violence by as much as 30%, reduces people’s fear of going outside by 58% and increases use of outside space by 76%.

Simply by making land more accessible and beautiful, the number of people outside increases, which makes the streets safer.

Community gardens are a boon for public health. By providing fresh and wholesome food, they help address obesity and its associated maladies, such as diabetes. And for the people who garden, it further builds health through physical activity.

Yet some of these oases are now endangered due to a bad deal the city made under the Rendell administration regarding liens

Parka Fridays? Not the best way for your business to save.

PECO has energy answers.

Saving money is easier than you think with advice that leads to comfort and energy savings all year long. Learn more ways to save at peco.com/waystosave.

© PECO Energy Company, 2021. All rights reserved.

F E B RUARY 20 22

G R I DP HI LLY.COM

3

TH E VO LTA WAY

by

lois volta

DEAR LOIS,

I

t’s okay for our hands to be held.

Many times when I’m unmotivated to do a project, I know that the main deterrent to getting started is simply that I don’t want to do it alone.

My week is split in two: I have my three teenage children four nights a week and the other three it’s just me. I walk between two different lifestyles as a working single woman and a very busy mother.

When the girls are home we emphasize collaboration and set a standard of cleanliness for the end of each day. I am more inclined to keep my personal belongings under control and am quick to tidy up to set an example for my children. Generally, the house is cleaner when the kids are home.

We all work together and they are learning how to build basic human skills.

4

GRID P H I L LY.CO M

F EB RUA RY 20 22

This parenting style keeps me sane. If we are not working together to keep the house tidy, it gets very overwhelming very quickly. The feeling of camaraderie that comes with working together has inertia. Knowing that there are four sets of hands to keep the house manageable feels more liberating than carrying everything on my own.

When the kids are at their father’s, I find that the sink tends to fill with dishes and I vacuum “as needed” instead of diligently each evening. Sometimes when I look around the room I’m surprised to see my dining room table covered in work documents and dishes—but my first reaction is to give myself a break and a little grace. It is harder to find the motivation to clean up after myself when it’s just me.

I play a game with myself: the only rule

is to never let the house get so messy that I couldn’t piece it back together in under an hour. (I acknowledge that I am faster than most at tidying up because I have been a cleaning professional for 10 years. I also know that I implement specific movements that I have practiced and built upon to minimize the mess I make. I find that an hour works for my skill and comfort level.)

But there are always areas of the home where I need to devote a little extra time. I tell myself that it should be something I tackle on my own, but it is hard for me to do this.

I started taking my own advice: asking for support. Most times when I am working with a client they just need someone there to talk through how to approach their clutter, come up with a strategy and give them a little push in the right direction. I need that, too!

IL LUSTRATIO N BY LO IS VOLTA

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

Why is it easier to clean when you have people to clean with?

Weigh It Weekend

The first weekend of every month friday, saturday & sunday

& Shooupr OBwun Clonktainer Use Y

Save 10%

The feeling of camaraderie that comes with working together has inertia.”

Ambler • Chestnut Hill • Mt. Airy

Community-owned markets, open to everyone.

Life has a tendency to throw us curve balls and even the best organizational structures need to be rethought and redesigned.

There is no shame in asking for help, and if there is guilt that you need to overcome, then sit with that.

Why do you feel guilt and shame? These issues are far bigger than “I need to find the motivation to clean.” It’s not just checking off a to-do list, it’s addressing that the way we have been living hasn’t been working and it won’t be fixed with a nicely labeled bin.

Whether we have the built-in structure of a family or live alone, the home should be safe and restorative. Somewhere we can work through deeper internal patterns with self-reflection, but also with support. Getting the support we need will send us in the direction of a restorative, loving home.

There are always ways we can learn and build on a solid base. Sometimes we need help to uncover what has been dormant and lay a new foundation.

Learning new ways of living is counterintuitive; we are creatures of habit. And sometimes to break a habit, we need a helping hand. ◆ lois volta is a home life consultant, artist and founder of The Volta Way. Send questions to info@thevoltaway.com.

www.weaversway.coop

Honoring Childhood

Sustainable Practices

Dedicated Staff

Organic Lunch Program

Graduates That Make A Difference

Education that matters Schedule your tour today for our Early Childhood through 12th Grade programs.

Contact: admissions@kimberton.org

410 W. Seven Stars Rd Phoenixville, PA

kimberton.org

610.933.3635 ext 108

F E B RUARY 20 22

G R I DP HI LLY.COM

5

A Changing Forest Philly’s cold-loving trees are dying out due to climate change.

The city has a plan to replace them by bernard brown

S

ometimes a forest can feel like a time machine.

A walk in the quiet, shaded woods takes you back to a world before there were crowded streets and computer screens. But in early January, as I walked through the Haddington Woods section of Cobbs Creek, I took a trip to what might be our future.

I was searching for a group of young loblolly pines. The evergreens were pretty easy to spot in the winter woods amid naked deciduous trees like red oaks and black cherries. (It helped that the trees were also labeled with their scientific name, Pinus taeda).

6 GRID P H IL LY.CO M F EB RUARY 20 22

Loblolly pines are native to a broad swath of the American Southeast; I’m used to seeing them in Georgia or North Carolina. These particular trees were planted as an experiment, along with other Southern species, by Philadelphia Parks & Recreation (PPR) in 2015. As the climate heats up, our region will no longer be too cold for species like the loblolly pine, and they are expected to expand their range north. The thought being, if Philadelphia becomes too hot for other tree species, like white pines, could we plant these southerners to replace them?

“The hypothesis is that you need to assist the migration of species into the city,” says

U.S. Forest Service research ecologist Max Piana, who was involved with the plantings as a graduate student at Rutgers University and has continued to help monitor them.

Piana points out that urban trees already have to put up with hotter conditions than their rural counterparts thanks to the “heat island effect”—our local climate is a little more southern.

Climate change is already picking some winners and losers in Philadelphia.

At the end of 2021 PPR cut down an ailing sugar maple tree on the Belmont Plateau in Fairmount Park. After decades of shading picnics and framing scenic pictures of the park, the tree was at risk of losing a limb or coming down completely, an intolerable safety hazard at such a heavily visited spot.

After consulting with local tree experts, Lori Hayes, director of urban forestry for PPR, has chosen to replace the tree with a trio of black gum trees (aka sour gum, or tupelo).

P H OTO S BY E L L E N C M I L L E R C O U R T E S Y P H I L A D E L P H I A PA R KS & R E C R E AT I O N

urban naturalist

Philadelphia Parks & Recreation took down the dying sugar maple on the Belmont Plateau on December 15.

Officials below tried to count the rings, but were unable to get a final tally on site.

The hypothesis is that you need to assist the migration of species into the city.”

— max piana, U.S. Forest Service research ecologist “They have a lot of color in the fall, not a lot of messy fruit,” she says.

Sugar maples are on the way out in Philadelphia. We sit on the southern edge of their range as it is, and the trees, which do best where winter snow covers the ground above their roots, are finding our warming climate less and less welcoming. Black gums, by contrast, thrive all the way down into Florida.

Which other trees should we be planting, and which should we be giving up on?

The Forest Service has been helping urban foresters answer that question by estimating vulnerability of common species to

likely future conditions—not just temperature shifts, but also changes in other factors such as precipitation and pests.

Leslie Brandt, a climate change specialist with the Forest Service’s Northern Institute of Applied Climate Science, says that some trees like hackberry, American holly, black gum and American persimmon could be expected to fare well, while others, such as American beech, white pine and eastern hemlock, could be expected to have more trouble surviving in Philadelphia.

This kind of modeling is proving useful in Philadelphia, according to Max Blaustein, who runs PPR’s Greenland Nursery, which

uses local seeds to produce plants for ecological restoration work.

“Most of the projections for our area that I’ve seen show many of our most important tree species to fortunately remain viable,” Blaustein says. “This includes many of the oak and hickory species common within our plant communities. There are also a handful of species whose current range is mostly south of us that we are looking to increase our use of.”

Blaustein says he is also sourcing seeds for native tree species from populations to our south, where they might be adapted to warmer conditions. How much this matters is uncertain.

It could be that trees grown from our local seeds might be flexible—or “plastic,” to use the scientific term—enough to deal with a warming climate.

“The question is, within a Philadelphia acorn is there enough plasticity to withstand climate change? Or are acorns collected from, say, Nashville, more adapted?” Piana says.

Philadelphia will begin taking part in an experiment with Baltimore, New York City and the Hartford–Springfield, Connecticut, area to answer that question in 2022. Each site will plant white oak and chestnut oak acorns from all four areas to see whether the Baltimore acorns grow better in a warming Philadelphia than those from Connecticut, for example.

It will take decades for scientists to study these experimental plantings, but that is still the blink of an eye for our longest-lived forest trees. A sugar maple can live longer than 300 years, a white oak 500 years and black gums have been found to live longer than 600 years.

Climate forecasts of 50 or 100 years out can seem distant to humans, but for our trees it’s time to get started. ◆ F E B RUARY 20 22 G R I DP HILLY.COM 7

water

Julie Scott, an architect and former co-chair of the Greening Lea Project, in front of vegetation used to soak up rain on the grounds of Henry C. Lea School.

Playing with Water Schoolyard doubles as green stormwater infrastructure at West Philly elementary by bernard brown

R

ecently I slid a few dozen times down the curvy slide at Henry C. Lea School, as demanded by my daughter Gilda, who slid on the adjacent straight slide. She is almost three years old and thus has a bottomless appetite for repetitive fun.

Her older sister, Magnolia, is in the fourth grade at Lea. The schoolyard is where she lines up for school in the morning. At recess she burns off energy with games of tag and basketball, shows off tumbling moves on the springy pad under the two play structures, confers with friends and frenemies, and groans when the buzzer sounds to head back inside.

The Lea schoolyard isn’t just a place to 8 GRID P H I L LY.CO M F EB RUARY 20 22

socialize or exercise, though. It is also a giant sponge, engineered to soak up stormwater and reduce water pollution, as recently recognized by the Philadelphia Water Department (PWD), which named the Lea schoolyard, along with 12 others, as stormwater pioneers.

Up until about 10 years ago the Lea schoolyard was much more barren, and more of a stormwater liability than an asset.

Rainwater runs off of hard surfaces like asphalt schoolyards and into storm drains, overwhelming our combined stormwater/ sewage system and forcing raw sewage into our creeks and rivers. PWD launched the Green City, Clean Waters program in 2011 to soften the city, using vegetation to soak

up precipitation and cut back on the sewage overflows.

At Lea, fighting water pollution was a bit of an accident.

In 2011 the West Philadelphia Coalition for Neighborhood Schools (WPCNS) approached Lea looking for ways to cool the building, which gets oppressively hot in spring and summer, says Molly McGlone, a member of the coalition and a Lea parent.

“The first thought was could the coalition raise money for air conditioners,” she says, but air conditioning proved impractical because the building’s electrical system would have needed to be upgraded. So the group shifted focus to planting shade trees and greening the playground, ultimately giving birth to the Greening Lea Project.

The coalition took part in a design workshop held by the Community Design Collaborative, according to Julie Scott, an architect and then-co-chair of Greening Lea. Now with a clearer vision for a greener schoolyard, the group kicked off the renoP HOTO G RAP HY BY RACHAE L WARRI NER

The ability to integrate science learning, greening, a calming space—you can’t quantify the benefit.”

— emma melvin, School District of Philadelphia green infrastructure program manager

vation in 2012 by replacing a strip of asphalt along one side with a garden planted with small trees, shrubs and perennial flowers.

In 2014, the school received a play structure, their second, from a nearby school that was closing and set both on a porous pad that serves as a surface ideal for tumbling as well as slowing stormwater runoff.

In 2015, the larger stormwater management project kicked off, including work above and below the porous surface to slow and capture water flowing across the schoolyard, feeding rain gardens along the downhill edge of the schoolyard as well as sixteen red maples framing the play structure pad.

Schoolyard stormwater projects like Lea’s have also spurred environmental learning. The Fairmount Water Works has developed a water curriculum and teacher training program to accompany the projects, including one with middle school teachers at Lea. But not everything went according to plan at Lea. Some of the garden features

were tempting for hurried students to cut through. Basketballs, like water, roll downhill into the plantings, each one retrieved by trampling feet. A recent revision added fences to protect the plantings, with gates to slow the kids to a more deliberate pace.

Lessons like these have helped to guide the dozens of schoolyard projects that have followed: 41 completed with 10 in the works, according to Emma Melvin, the green infrastructure program manager for the School District of Philadelphia. “Because these schoolyards are so multidimensional, we don’t always know how it’s going to go. Every school is a pilot. Always something you didn’t expect is going to happen.”

The Lea schoolyard renovation also benefited from a relatively well-off and highly educated school community. Scott, an architect, volunteered to coordinate the work. The coalition secured a grant from the PWD’s Stormwater Management Incentives Program (SMIP) for about $250,000, half the estimated $500,000 schoolyard

renovation costs. They raised the rest from other grants, local businesses and neighborhood funding campaigns.

“Lea is an exception, not the norm,” Melvin says. “Most school communities don’t have that capacity.”

In more recent projects the school district has taken the lead to secure funding, sometimes in partnership with The Trust for Public Land.

As any Philadelphian can tell you, a schoolyard isn’t just for kids. Plenty of grownups shoot hoops or find a quiet corner to talk (or make out) with a companion.

Our neighborhood association uses the schoolyard for events such as health fairs, all much more comfortable in a gardened space with shade trees.

“I do believe these projects provide benefits to students, families, and also to the community as a whole,” Melvin says. “The ability to integrate science learning, greening, a calming space—you can’t quantify the benefit.” ◆ F E B RUARY 20 22 G R I DP H ILLY.COM 9

Clean Water, Healthy Streams The quality of Philadelphia’s drinking water depends on the health of upstream suburban waterways like the Darby-Cobbs, Wissahickon, Pennypack, Tookany, and Poquessing Creeks.

PEC and our partners work for clean water and healthy streams by: • Promoting nature-based projects to improve local stream health • Educating citizens, municipal officials and large landowners on clean water practices • Monitoring water quality

Learn more about PEC at pecpa.org

Delaware River Watershed Initiative (DRWI) Upstream Suburban Philadelphia Partners: • Darby Creek Valley Association • Eastern Delaware County Stormwater Collaborative • Friends of the Poquessing Watershed • Lower Merion Conservancy

• Pennsylvania Resources Council • Pennypack Ecological Restoration Trust • Temple University • Tookany/TaconyFrankford Watershed Partnership • Villanova University • Wissahickon Trails

Learn more about DRWI at 4states1source.org 10 GR ID P H I L LY.CO M F EB RUA RY 20 22

Conservation Through Cooperation

DID YOU KNOW THAT GFS HAS TWO EARLY CHILDHOOD LOCATIONS?

Main Campus, Germantown

Center City, The Curtis Center

31 W. COULTER STREET PHILADELPHIA , PA 19144

601 WALNUT STREET PHILADELPHIA , PA 19106

Learn more about our Preschool and PreK programs: WWW.GERMANTOWNFRIENDS.ORG/ADMISSIONS

Let us custom design the perfect cake for your Wedding!

Artisan baked goods for 30 years

7725 Germantown Ave 215.248.9235 NightKitchenBakery.com

F E B RUARY 20 22 G R I DP HILLY.COM 1 1

city healing

The Real World Nonprofit helps returning citizens beat the odds by

constance garcia-barrio

P

ennsylvania “locks up a higher percentage of its people than almost any democracy on earth,” states the Prison Policy Initiative, a nonprofit in Northampton, Massachusetts, that works to end mass incarceration.

In addition, more than 40,000 Philadelphians, disproportionately Black and Brown, come home each year from state and federal prisons, according to a January 31, 2017 article on Generocity.org about reentry.

The math gets grimmer.

The majority of Pennsylvania’s returning citizens leave prison “ … with limited knowledge of (and little access to) services … ,” according to the 2020 Report of the Pennsylvania Reentry Council. The reentry council, under the auspices of Attorney General Josh Shapiro, seeks the successful reintegration of returning citizens. “Small wonder … that 67% of all returning citizens end up incarcerated again within three years’ time,” the report adds.

Suffice to say J. Jondhi Harrell, 66, the founder and executive director of The Center for Returning Citizens and the Community Healing Center, is fighting tough odds.

The center, a Germantown Avenue-based nonprofit that has been helping returning citizens and their families since 2012, wants better outcomes.

“Reentry is hard work,” says Harrell.

“Lots of times returning citizens come to us in crisis. There’s no food in the house or no electricity. We talk with them one-on-one and then make referrals for housing, food, employment and other services they need for a smoother transition.”

Born in New Jersey to migrant farm workers from Georgia, Harrell has the 12 GR ID P H IL LY.CO M F EB RUA RY 20 22

J. Jondhi Harrell is the founder and executive director of The Center for Returning Citizens and the Community Healing Center. Oppositve page: A volunteer passes out food.

credentials to design effective support systems.

“I spent 25 years in federal prison,” he says. “Seven years the first time and eighteen years the second time, both terms for bank robbery.”

Released two years early from parole for the second sentence because of his outstanding community service, Harrell completed the Goodwill Industries Ex-Offender Reentry Program, earned a bachelor’s degree in human services management from the University of Phoenix and is completing courses toward a master’s degree in social work at Temple University.

Like Philadelphia’s Office of Reentry

Partnerships or the Prison and Reentry Services at the Free Library, the center directs returning citizens to services, but its presence in North Philly lets it reach a different demographic, Harrell says.

“Philadelphia is a fragmented city where some folks only feel comfortable in their own neighborhood,” he says. “They don’t go into town because their experience of Center City is courts and police. We provide help here in the community.”

Assata Thomas, chair of the steering committee of the Philadelphia Reentry Coalition, an umbrella agency for 154 groups offering different services, applauds Harrell’s approach.

P H OTO G R A P H Y C O U R T E S Y O F J O N D H I H A R R E L L

“People are returning home to neighborhoods,” Thomas says. “They need robust reentry services where they live.”

Many organizations stress getting a job first for returning citizens, but Harrell speaks of a hierarchy of needs and sustainable steps.

“If you’re assured of food on the table and a roof over your head, you can relax and take on the work of reentry,” he says.

That task includes adapting to new conditions.

“If you’ve spent significant time incarcerated, you have to adjust to a changed world.

Your parents are older. Your children have learned to live without you. They may resent you for being gone when they needed you,” says Harrell, a father and grandfather.

“You wonder how much patience your family will extend to you.”

The center helps families reknit their bonds.

“We have support groups for families with incarcerated loved ones,” Harrell says. “We also have activities for children of incarcerated parents, like visiting The Franklin Institute and attending basketball games. A mom may need a center member who’s doing well to mentor her son. We arrange for that too, and for help once the

family is reunited.”

Reverend Pam McDuffie, pastor of Hosanna Christian Life Center in Frankford, relies on Harrell’s help.

“My son, who’s been incarcerated for some time, will soon come before the Parole Board [for release],” she says. “He plans to start a business based on a music program he developed in prison and uses with other inmates. Jondhi talks with him via telephone to explain the changes my son will find and the steps he needs to take for success. Jondhi also assures my son of continuing support.”

The center encourages returning citizens to look at trauma’s impact on their lives.

“It’s a necessary step to sustain a new life,” says Harrell. “The problems you had prior to incarceration don’t go away. Prison may have intensified them. You do a lot of soul-searching, taking responsibility for past mistakes, for harm you caused. There’s a high level of stress. We’re trying to change ourselves, to do something we haven’t successfully done before.”

Depending on each person’s needs, the center’s referrals may cover psychological counseling, financial literacy, job training, legal aid, addiction treatment and free or low-cost yoga classes.

The center claimed a broader community role when the pandemic hit.

“We opened, and still operate, a food pantry on Fridays, and we deliver boxes of food on Fridays, too,” says Harrell, noting that the center’s current location is ideal for storing food, but that he’d like to share offices with a church or community center to run programs on site.

“On average, we provide food for 8,000 people a month,” he says. “Volunteers make it possible.”

One volunteer, Betty, 59, of Germantown, does, “ … whatever needs doing. I clean the building, organize shelves and distribute food on Fridays. A lot of people don’t have the income to buy food.”

Karl Erikson, 65, the center’s landlord, also lends a hand. “It’s a good use of my time to assist Jondhi in helping people,” he says.

Ali, 33, a poet and songwriter, puts canned salmon on pallets. “In my childhood, I went without food sometimes,” he says. “I volunteer because I don’t want other kids to go hungry.”

Helga, 62, who can greet people in English or Spanish, volunteers on Fridays. “In the afternoon I take food boxes to students at Olney High School.”

Harrell emphasizes that volunteers like Helga are sent to deliver food throughout the city. “We don’t limit ourselves to North Philly,” he says.

When it comes to bettering odds for returning citizens, Harrell explains that formerly incarcerated people themselves must spearhead change.

“Our struggle has to be led by us,” he says, “just as people with handicaps fought to have the Americans with Disabilities Act passed.”

Some returning citizens have already become activists, Harrell notes. Philadelphian Hassan Freeman, who spent time in prison, developed Focused Deterrence, an effective strategy for reducing gun violence.

“Returning citizens are active in many areas of life in Philadelphia,” Harrell says.

While Harrell and others work on the frontlines, they seek allies.

“We get by on small grants and donations, but we would welcome financial help as well as volunteers.” ◆ For more information, visit tcrccommunityhealingcenter.com, call (215) 791-0645 or email jondhi@gmail.com.

F E B RUARY 20 22 G R I DP HI LLY.COM 13

JUSTICE LEAGUE

The city’s new environmental commission will ask residents and communities to hold officials accountable story by bernard brown

—

photography by chris baker evens

F

the strategies and programs that we’re doing are not only held accountable to achieving those objectives for environmental justice, but that we’re really able to leverage these folks’ expertise to make sure we are making impacts in the right areas.

I’ll start with a really basic question. Why do we need an Environmental Justice Advisory Commission? When we talk about environmental equity, we focus on distributional inequities, like who has what access to what environmental amenities. Do you have green space in your community or do you have a polluting facility in your community? What gets lost in the conversation is that there is a procedural aspect to equity.

The way it has come up in government is ‘how do you provide more meaningful participation for environmental justice communities in public processes?’ So what we wanted to do is take that a step further, so it’s not just in making sure environmental justice communities are engaging when they’re under some sort of threat but ensuring that these folks have the expertise that is needed to ultimately solve these challenges.

These folks are persisting against threats on a daily basis. It gives that constituency a platform to really be able to engage equitably with government. To make sure

I get the importance of building a process for people in communities to engage with the government, but I wonder how recommendations coming out of an advisory commission will actually influence what the government does. How will it make the connection to policy making and to the bureaucracy? I’m going to be a little vague, and that’s intentional.

What we have tried to do from the beginning is to ensure that this commission is really able to remove the barriers that have traditionally limited folks from distressed backgrounds to participate in these civic bodies.

From the beginning we had an external body, an environmental justice working group of external stakeholders to help us think about what would make this commission more equitable than perhaps what we’ve seen in the past. We’ve tried to limit the sort of top-down authority that the government has had in this process but we haven’t yet necessarily identified particular pathways that the commission will have in terms of effectuating change. We’re going to leave that to the commissioners to decide. One of the first things that they’ll do once they convene is to initiate a strategic planning process.

There are a lot of areas where we could see potential engagement, whether that’s policy making, programming or budget.

Those are all areas where the commission could be offering expertise and ultimately holding us accountable, to make sure that

ebruary is environmental Justice Month, a fitting time for Philadelphia to launch its Environmental Justice Advisory Commission.

According to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, “environmental justice is the fair treatment and meaningful involvement of all people regardless of race, color, national origin or income, with respect to the development, implementation and enforcement of environmental laws, regulations and policies.”

I spoke with Philadelphia’s Chief Resilience Officer and Deputy Director of the Office of Sustainability Saleem Chapman about the new commission.

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

14 GRID P H I L LY.CO M F EB RUA RY 2022

our policy making is actually achieving those aims, that we’re actually creating new policy that contributes to environmental justice, but also making sure that none of the policies that are outside of the context of environmental justice are having a negative impact on it.

Philadelphians have organized several environmental justice initiatives on a grassroots level in recent years. For example, Neighbors Against the Gas Plants organized to oppose, and now monitor, a new SEPTA natural gas power facility in Nicetown. Philly Thrive advocated that the Philadelphia Energy Solutions refinery remain closed after its 2019 explosion and fire, and since has remained active as the site’s new owner, Hilco, rolls out redevelopment plans.

What will the commission add to efforts like these? We saw from recent environmental issues in the city, whether that was the Nicetown gas plant, or the redevelopment of the refinery, that there has been a lot of great organizing that’s happening with the communities but there wasn’t necessarily an obvious place for those recommendations to go and be received. We really hope the commission will be an entry point for those recommendations.

Also the terminology we use can be a barrier to participation. I grew up in West Philadelphia, and my community was an environmentally overburdened community and an environmental injustice community but I didn’t know that terminology, right?

What the new commission really seeks to do is to provide a way for people to see themselves in this work. That means to have a broad range of questions and leave it open enough for people to articulate their connection to this work even if they’re not using professional jargon. ◆

Saleem Chapman is the city’s Chief Resilience Officer and the Deputy Director of the Office of Sustainability.

F E B RUARY 20 22 G R I DP HI LLY.COM 1 5

Muralist and garden community member Cesar Viveros at the César Andreu Iglesias Garden in the summer of 2021.

LOTS TO LOSE

Community garden advocates say it is within the city’s reach to save neighborhood spaces set up on abandoned, bank-liened land story by nic esposito

B

efore the chic boutiques and overpriced cafés arrive, the first sign of gentrification is often a slew of ubiquitous posters stapled to telephone poles reading, “We Buy Houses.”

One is more than likely to find these illegally-placed advertisements in low-income parts of the city where desperation for fast cash can outweigh the benefit of long-term financial planning. It can be devastating to a family’s long-term wealth when they make this short-term decision.

So what happens when a city follows a similar path?

In 1997, the City of Philadelphia held liens on more than 33,000 tax delinquent private properties. These liens prevent a property from being sold until the owner pays off the taxes; each year the lien goes unpaid, penalties and interest accrue. With the city’s finances still recovering from the brink of bankruptcy in the early 1990s, then-Mayor Ed Rendell’s administration hatched a plan to sell these liens for $72 million to U.S. Bank in order to secure bonds to fund the school district.

Not too long after, the city defaulted on the bonds to the tune of $42 million. This was a black eye for the city at the time, and the effects of this decision are reverberating throughout Philadelphia to this day.

U.S. Bank and the national law firm it hired to collect on these liens, Linebarger Goggan Blair & Sampson, have managed to collect taxes, penalty and interest on 30,000 of these liens.

Although there are the occasions where 16 GRID P H IL LY.CO M F EB RUA RY 2022

the homeowner clears the taxes, oftentimes these liens are cleared through the sale of the property through sheriff’s sales.

According to Linebarger, there are approximately 2,777 U.S. Bank liens in their collections portfolio and, due to the surging Philadelphia real estate market, U.S. Bank and Linebarger are ramping up their efforts to close this chapter of Philadelphia history by aggressively collecting these liens, often by forcing a sheriff’s sale where deep-pocketed developers have the funds to clear the debts as they bid on the property.

In early January, advocates from the César Andreu Iglesias Garden Community and the Neighborhood Gardens Trust (NGT) began circulating a call to action in the Philadelphia gardening and advocacy community to partake in a “phone zap”—a coordinated effort of advocates calling government officials with a consistent script demanding action—to pressure Mayor Jim Kenney’s administration to buy back the remaining 2,777 tax liens in order to protect the “side yards, community gardens and open spaces.”

In a prepared script for supporters willing to make the call they stated: “Putting these lots in the [Philadelphia] Land Bank would be an important step in community control for our neighbors, while selling them to the highest bidder would only increase gentrification.”

The reason organizers such as Adam Butler call it the Iglesias “Garden Community” rather than “community garden” is that this language puts the land first. Made up of more than 30 parcels between North

5th and Lawrence streets in North Philadelphia, the garden was formed 10 years ago by neighbors who wanted to take advantage of the huge amount of vacant space. It is now used for growing food, hosting events and meeting space.

Two of the lots that comprise an important part of the food-growing space are U.S. Bank-liened properties that were on the list for the January 6 sheriff’s sale, hence the urgency of the “phone zap.” In addition to their activism, Butler and other organizers have been working with entities like NGT to find a pathway to ownership.

P HOTO G RAP HY BY CHE LS EA MA RRI N

Formed in 1986, NGT is Philadelphia’s land trust for the protection of community gardens and other shared open spaces. The group has been working in the city for the past four decades to secure land ownership or long-term leases for 50 community gardens experiencing insecure land ownership.

“A very common scenario is one where the community garden or part of a community garden might be privately owned and the owner of record abandoned the property decades ago and stopped paying taxes,” NGT executive director Jenny Greenberg explains.

“So now the property is encumbered by liens

People are relying on these community gardens to eat.

This is how they feed their families.”

— eb ony griffin, Public Interest Law Center attorney often owed to the City of Philadelphia. But then there are also these U.S. Bank liens, and we have really hit up against a wall on figuring out how to secure these properties.”

One major problem is that if the city owns the property outright, as it still does on an estimated 10,000 vacant lots, then there is a much more direct, albeit challenging, path

to work with a City Councilmember and garner community support for the city to at least remove the property from the sheriff’s sale list—and best case scenario, move it to the Land Bank where ownership can be transferred to a nonprofit like NGT to secure ownership on the property for longterm community garden use.

F E B RUARY 20 22 G R I DP HI LLY.COM 17

Through the Public Interest Law Center’s Garden Justice Legal Initiative, Griffin and her team provide pro-bono legal representation to gardens and market farms throughout the Philadelphia region, mostly around land access.

What makes Griffin’s and Greenberg’s jobs even harder, they say, is that when they have approached U.S. Bank or Linebarger about removing the liens, both firms say that they lack the authority to do so.

While U.S. Bank representatives did not respond to a request for comment, representatives from Linebarger confirmed this, stating that all liens owned by U.S. Bank “must proceed through the litigation process and be foreclosed upon at sheriff’s sale if the tax liens have not been paid.”

“If a lien is satisfied through payment by the legal owner, the lien is released,” Linebarger’s team explains. “If the lien is not paid, judgment is rendered in favor of U.S. Bank and the property proceeds to sheriff’s sale.”

A city spokesperson explains that the proceeds of U.S. Bank lien sheriff’s sales go first to U.S. Bank, as the holder of the oldest city liens. If there is surplus from the sheriff’s sale, proceeds go to the city as the holder of any newer liens; to pay any water debt liens and licensing and inspection liens; and then to pay debt to any relevant private creditors.

Any “excess proceeds” go to the former owner of the property, the spokesperson said.

Linebarger representatives reiterated that a sheriff’s sale is the mechanism under the law that allows for the lien to be alleviated for the property to be sold and anything short of a sheriff ’s sale will not transfer ownership. However, the firm also said that many properties have been temporarily pulled from the sheriff’s sale list until a 18 GR ID P H I L LY.CO M F EB RUA RY 20 22

Jenny Greenberg is the executive director of the Neighborhood Gardens Trust.

... a community garden might be privately owned and the owner of record abandoned the property decades ago and stopped paying taxes.”

— jenny greenberg,

Neighborhood Gardens Trust executive director

solution can be reached between U.S. Bank and the city due to “Land Bank interest or request by City Councilmembers.”

Linebarger also said that the liens are not their own, and that it is acting on behalf of a client to collect debt.

“Therefore [Linebarger] has no standing to offer any ‘options’ other than what is permitted under the contract entered into between the City of Philadelphia and U.S. Bank with [Linebarger] as the servicer of the liens, and the laws of the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania,” the firm says.

With neither Linebarger nor U.S. Bank seemingly able to make the decision to remove the liens so that an entity like the Land Bank can repossess the property, the mechanism of sheriff’s sale becomes the only path.

“A lot of times you’re looking at principal tax balances of $2,000 or $3,000,” Griffin explains when discussing the tax profile of many of these tax-liened properties in garden spaces. “But after taxes and fees and penalties, we’ve seen bills of upwards of

$40,000 or $50,000.”

This can make owning community gardens built on tax-liened land especially difficult, she explains.

“Most Philadelphians working in community gardens don’t have that money,” Griffin says. “And most of the community gardens in Philadelphia are located in the lowest income neighborhoods in the city. People are relying on these community gardens to eat. This is how they feed their families.”

The liens, including penalties and interest, are only the beginning of the battle. Once the property is cleared of liens, there’s the additional cost of actually acquiring the property.

“Even in situations where we could try to fundraise to cover the cost of the liens and the acquisition, we’d be doing it at risk because we don’t own the property,” laments Greenberg. “One parcel in particular I’m thinking of has over $30,000 in tax debt.

To raise that kind of money to pay off the liens, and then to look to the Philadelphia Land Bank, which is budgetarily limited in

P H OTO G R A P H Y C O U R T E S Y O F J E N N Y G R E E N B E R G

But Public Interest Law Center attorney Ebony Griffin points out: “When there’s a U.S. Bank lien on it, it’s privatized. So really the only entity that can postpone the sheriff’s sale indefinitely or pull the property off is the lien holder, which in these instances are U.S. Bank or more specifically, the collection agency that they’ve hired, Linebarger Goggan Blair & Sampson.”

Griffin adds that even if there’s no sheriff’s sales slated, U.S. Bank still can’t work with the Land Bank. “Because the Land Bank is, I believe, statutorily prohibited from acquiring properties that have U.S. Bank liens on them.”

what they can afford to acquire every year, becomes a year-long process where we still risk losing the property and the money.”

Since U.S. Bank doesn’t seem to have the power to alleviate these liens other than through the mechanism of the sheriff’s sale, NGT, the Public Interest Law Center and the Iglesias Garden Community (along with the Pennsylvania Horticultural Society, Soil Generation and dozens of other gardens on tax-liened properties) are requesting that the city find a solution.

According to reporting by Samantha Melamed in The Philadelphia Inquirer in October 2021, the full cost of the liens (including penalties and interest) at that time was an estimated $25 million. In the piece, the Department of Planning and Development director Anne Fadullon bemoaned the fact that even though the city has tried to negotiate for some of the lots, U.S. Bank has taken an all-or-nothing approach.

“What’s happened is not that there hasn’t been political will,” Fadullon said at the time. “There hasn’t been the financial wherewithal with all the other budget priorities for the city to find that money.”

A city spokesperson elaborates to Grid that, to date, U.S. Bank has only offered to sell Philadelphia the entire portfolio of properties.

“Acquiring the entire U.S. Bank portfolio is not realistic financially,” the spokesperson says. “The city is willing to work with U.S. Bank to acquire individual properties that will advance neighborhood revitalization goals within the city’s budgetary constraints.”

Doing the quick math, the estimated $25 million bill divided by the 2,777 tax-liened

lots equals out to about $9,000 per lot.

The city expressed concern that its actions align with the best interest regarding the issues plaguing the city.

“No city department exists in a vacuum,” the spokesperson says. “Every need at every department is considered in the context of the city’s need to address education, gun violence, opioids and other pressing issues.”

For the city’s planning department, whose “goal is to create neighborhoods that are well-connected, affordable and desirable places to live and work,” what is the “financial wherewithal” for the opportunity to bring these side yards, gardens and future affordable housing sites into the Land Bank to achieve that departmental mission?

“The truth about the U.S. Bank-liened properties is that they have all been completely abandoned and no one is taking care of them,” Butler offers as his lived experience at the Iglesias Garden Community.

“In some cases, the city might be doing very minimal maintenance on them, but in the vast majority of cases it is not. And in the cases where [the lots] are being taken care of, it’s almost always a volunteer effort of people who are working to control it.”

So Butler and the Iglesias Garden Community continue to toil the land without the security of full ownership. Griffin continues to respond to those gardens that call her office every time a sheriff’s sale notice is posted to their fence. And Greenberg continues to work with all of these partners as well as politicians such as Councilmember Kendra Brooks to find, as Greenberg puts it: “A front door or a pathway where I can go and I can say, ‘Here is a community garden,

here’s all the benefits it’s providing. Even if I have to fundraise and figure out a price or negotiate a price, how do we start to untangle this so that we can save these gardens?’”

Griffin adds, “I would also encourage people working on a garden to figure out if any of your properties have a U.S. Bank lien. Being empowered is super important, especially with this issue. We actually have given trainings in the past on how to figure out if your property has a U.S. Bank lien on it. So feel free to go to the law center’s website where there are trainings and posts quarterly called ‘Vacant Land 215’.”

Butler’s advice to any Philadelphian, whether a gardener or not, is to let people in power know how important this issue is.

“I would say the elected officials in Philadelphia are the primary people who have the power to solve this problem right now. City Council and the mayor firmly have it within their control to resolve this issue if they are properly motivated to do so. And what we really need is for everyone who’s impacted, even if you’re a member of a community that is indirectly impacted, to let the mayor and your district council person know that you would like to see a resolution here.”

The January 6 “phone zap” may have had some effect: The threatened properties in the Iglesias Garden Community were temporarily removed from the January sheriff’s sale list.

But there will be another auction in February and another after that until Philadelphia sheds the remaining 2,777 U.S. Bankliened properties.

The only question is: Will there be enough time and political will to save these lots for the gardens and the people of Philadelphia before they’re all gone? ◆

F E B RUARY 20 22 G R I DP HI LLY.COM 1 9

Introducing

The Past, Present and Future A new series from Grid Magazine coming April 2022

20 GRID P H I L LY.CO M F EB RUA RY 2022

Subscribe to for just $2.99 a month!

Visit gridphilly.com/subscribe

Café and Cider House are

open 7 days a week!

8am to 5pm

Enjoy Fresh Air,

Beautiful Scenery, and Great Wholesome Food with your friends and family!

1 Boathouse Row • 215-978-0900

cosmicfoods.com

F E B RUARY 20 22 G R I DP HILLY.COM 21

BORN TO DYE

New Fishtown storefront will offer sustainable apparel and community workshops story by jenny roberts

—

F

photography by linette kielinski

ollowing the birth of her first son in 2018, Melanie Hasan experienced postpartum depression, a condition that affects millions of women each year. She turned to natural dyeing to find comfort.

“Just dipping your hands into a really nice, lukewarm bath and absorbing the color of an onion skin, or just embracing the smell of eucalyptus … it does have characteristics that actually help offset those feelings,” says Hasan, 32.

She turned this meditative practice into a full-time business, Modest Transitions, in 2019 when she began dyeing fabric with plants in her kitchen and selling the wares online.

The February opening of her Fishtown storefront will mark four years of healing for Hasan and a new chapter for her business.

Hasan, who lives in Darby, Delaware County, says part of the reason she chose this section of Fishtown, at North 3rd Street and West Girard Avenue, is because the area struggles with drug use.

“I actually wanted to be able to build community and inclusion somewhere it … needs to happen,” says Hasan, who worked in behavioral health for eight years prior to starting her business.

“I know that the arts are very therapeutic for someone who’s suffering with addiction,” Hasan adds, “so I am opening my studio with open arms to help those who may suffer with addiction or any other behavioral health issues.”

She says the neighborhood’s vibrant energy also drew her in.

“When I hear Fishtown, to me it screams artisans, it screams a sense of uniqueness,” Hasan says.

Modest Transitions will offer seasonal workshops on natural dyeing, using sustainable materials and reducing textile waste. Classes will range in cost from $55 to 22 GRID P H I L LY.CO M F EB RUA RY 20 22

Melanie Hasan stands in Modest Transitions’ new Fishtown store, set to open at the end of February.

Hasan creates her own natural dyes to make patterns for clothing and accessories.

The idea for Modest Transitions is we’re trying to provide holistic restorations in our community.”

— melanie hasan, owner of Modest Transitions

$375, but once a month these offerings will be pay-what-you-wish. Modest Transitions is also building a library that will provide free seeds, fibers and dye swatches.

Hasan says she also hopes to partner with nonprofits to provide job placements at Modest Transitions for those who need employment.

“The idea for Modest Transitions is we’re trying to provide holistic restorations in our community,” she says.

Bethany Rusen, founder and director of Black Hound Clay Studio in West Philly, has seen Hasan in action as a teaching artist at her studio, where she led sustainability classes.

“She’s very much community-minded,” Rusen says. “Fishtown is just so blessed to have her in that space and to have her vision and her energy … ” With the opening of her storefront, Hasan is excited to have more space to create the colorful scarves, bandanas, shawls, totes and silk dresses that are part of her collection.

“What I like to do is try to embrace natural beauty and create really unpredictable designs that are just naturally reoccurring,” Hasan says of her work.

Hasan creates the dyes for these pieces by simmering organic materials from avocados, onions, hibiscus and black walnuts to extract colors. Because of the unique nature of the dyeing process, none of her pieces come out the same.

“I know how much care she puts into every inch of the fabric that she dyes,” says friend and collaborator Liz Sytsma, owner of the Mount Airy fiber shop Wild Hand. “I like to picture her coaxing the colors out of plants in this mystical way.”

Another important aspect of Hasan’s craft is her focus on sustainability. Not only does her process allow her to make use of food waste, but she also minimizes her carbon footprint through zero-waste pattern making. She uses excess pattern paper to create additional products, and she also repurposes scrap material by weaving it into fiber.

“I realized that there [are] millions and

billions of textile waste going into our landfills, and it’s just sitting there, and it’s really becoming harmful to our planet,” says Hasan, who learned about sustainability while studying fashion and textiles in the adult certificate program at Moore College of Art & Design in 2018 and 2019.

Whether it’s protecting the planet or creating an inclusive neighborhood space, Hasan’s values drive her work, and much of her inspiration comes from her Islamic faith.

At the beginning of her creative journey, Hasan found herself dyeing hijabs, the head covering Muslim women wear for modesty.

In doing so she found herself pushing back against stereotypes about Muslim women.

The name of her business, Modest Transitions, is an homage to Hasan’s own religious conversion and journey of faith.

“I’m hoping that even if you’re not Muslim, it almost brings awareness like, ‘Wow, I could be a modest woman and still have the most fun,’” Hasan says. “My transition was just my way to modesty, and that’s in everything that I do and touch.”

Sytsma says the importance of Hasan’s faith in her practice is evident.

“You see what it looks like to have a person who’s putting their everything, their heart, their soul, their values, their faith into every single step in the production process,” Sytsma says. “And that’s why I think the dye work looks unique [and] has so much more depth and beauty.”

Hasan is currently raising funds to support the storefront through a GoFundMe with a fundraising goal of $25,000. The funds will be used to make textile arts more accessible to the community, provide future job opportunities at the store and create a dye garden onsite, where Hasan will grow the fruits, vegetables and other plants used in her natural dyeing process. ◆ Hasan will hold open houses at Modest Transitions’ storefront at 312 East Girard Avenue Feb. 26 and 27. Visit modesttransitions. com or donate at gofundme.com/f/modesttransitions-a-home-for-inclusion.

F E B RUARY 20 22 G R I DP HI LLY.COM 23

Fairmount Water Works exhibit takes a look at how segregation reshaped African Americans’ relationship with water

I

story by constance garcia-barrio

n colonial jamaica a group of enslaved women were bathing in the nude, washing clothes and likely gossiping on a riverbank when some traveling Englishmen spied them, according to Kevin Dawson, associate professor of history at the University of California, Merced,

“POOL: A Social History of Segregation” will exhibit in the former Kelly Natatorium, which was an indoor pool for competitive swimmers.

24 GRID P H IL LY.CO M F EB RUA RY 20 22

in his book “Undercurrents of Power: Aquatic Culture in the African Diaspora.”

Thrilled with what seemed assured pleasure, the Englishmen made for the women.

The women, divining their intent, plunged into deep water.

“The women said, essentially, ‘If you

P H OTO G R A P H Y C O U R T E S Y O F 1 5 M I N U T E S F O R FA I R M O U N T WAT E R W O R KS

DEEP DIVE

want us, come and get us,’” says Dawson, a swimmer since he was three months old.

“The women knew most Englishmen feared water while they themselves, like many people of African ancestry in the past, were proficient swimmers.”

In “POOL: A Social History of Segregation,” a 4,700-square-foot museum exhibition at the Fairmount Water Works near the Philadelphia Museum of Art, visitors can hear recordings of Dawson describing historical illustrations that reveal the aquatic skills of African heritage people in times past.

Through scholarship, storytelling and dazzling exhibits, POOL looks at “segregated swimming in America and its connection to present-day drowning issues affecting Black communities,” explains Victoria Prizzia, who created POOL, which was funded by the Pew Center for Arts & Heritage and the Philadelphia Water Department.

Using diaries, travel accounts, ship logs, plantation records and other documents, Dawson establishes that people of African ancestry in the Americas had swimming abilities that allowed them to dive for pearls, retrieve gold from shipwrecks, obtain specimens of marine life, and harvest seafood for their enslavers.

“They also built canoes and sometimes paddled to freedom in Spanish Florida,” he adds.

Those skills contrast with the way many people in the U.S., including African Americans, view Blacks and swimming today.

“Swimming is often seen as un-Black or a white activity,” Dawson says. “But that’s incongruent with our past.”

The change took root because segregation often gave Blacks little chance to learn to swim.

“In 1940, for example, Washington, D.C., had three inadequate indoor and two outdoor pools for African Americans,” Dawson says, “whereas there were nearly fifty pools for other swimmers. In addition, most African Americans lacked the resources to pay for swimming lessons.”

Some cities’ refusal to provide pools in Black neighborhoods continues to take a toll.

“According to reports from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Black children and teenagers are almost six times more likely than white children to drown in swimming pools,” Prizzia says.

POOL blends striking art and the voices

of swimming champions, aquatic activists, researchers and scholars—from theater artist James Ijames to Olympic gold medalist Simone Manuel—unwilling to tolerate the status quo. They come from different disciplines but they agree that “the answer to correcting these [racial disparities lies in] making the lifesaving skill of swimming available to all,” Prizzia says.

Visual elements range from murals with sensual watery images to digital animations and large-scale architectural projections.

POOL also offers commemorative postcards with images from newspaper archives and the Library of Congress that capture key moments regarding African Americans and swimming. One postcard has a 1962 photograph of young Black swimmers at the Kelly pool at the Fairmount Water Works.

“Philadelphia newspaper clippings reveal immense public support for the pool,” the postcard says.

That moment contrasts with the situation today when many city pools lack support.

Billy Penn reported in June that only 69% of Philly’s pools would open this year due to a lack of lifeguards.

Another postcard features Black activist Mamie Livingston. In 1953 at age 18, Livingston, rejected at a public pool near her home because of her color, wrote a letter of protest to the Baltimore Afro-American. The letter spurred the NAACP to take the city to court to equalize recreation facilities, the postcard explains.

Multimedia artist and photographer Azikiwe Mohammed reminds visitors of the connection between Blacks and water in a different way in his exhibit.

“I project water-based imagery onto Black mannequins to remind viewers that water is a homeplace for us, always has been, always will be,” Mohammed says.

Featured voices include that of Anthony Patterson, president of the board of governors of Yeadon’s Nile Swim Club (NSC), America’s oldest Black-owned swim club.

“The African American community established the Nile in 1958 after Yeadon’s private white swim club turned away Black families,” says Patterson, raised in Yeadon and owner and CEO of Main Line Investors Group.

“NSC offers membership and swim lessons to people of all ethnicities,” says Patterson, one of 19 siblings who grew up swimming at the Nile.

“Our NCWDOT [No Child Will Drown

Victoria Prizzia, the creator of POOL, pictured with the Calo Rosa mural “Ofrenda.”

Swimming is often seen as un-Black or a white activity, but that’s incongruent with our past.”

— kevin daws on, associate professor of history at the University of California in Our Town] provides free swimming lessons to children of all races,” Patterson says. The club’s pool is located on a fourand-a-half-acre outdoor site. “We partner with the Lansdowne YMCA to continue our program in winter.”

Visitors learn about the Harlem Honeys and Bears Synchronized Swimming Team, formed in New York City in 1979 to teach seniors ages 60 and over to swim.

“I learned to swim when I was 62,” says team member Willie Joyce Clarke. “I’d gotten sick, and the prognosis wasn’t good, and I decided I would learn to swim before I went to heaven. The water is another world.

We’re mermaids in the water.”

“We have a program to teach youth to swim,” says team president LeRoi Whethers. “Our two oldest members are 99.”

POOL includes an area where one can test “blue mind theory,” the idea that being “near, in … or under water induces a mildly meditative state,” according to scientist Wallace J. Nichols, author of “Blue Mind.”

It’s a short hop from that theory to the possibility that people who lack access to bodies of water might lack a resource for

emotional balance.

These provocative exhibits also lead one to consider environmental racism. The Flint, Michigan, water crisis, which exposed that city’s residents to water-borne lead and disease from 2014 to 2019, happened due to “systemic racism,” the Michigan Civil Rights Commission found, according to a report by the Natural Resources Defense Council.

POOL plumbs the history, injustice, activism and achievements involving people of African ancestry and water. “The more I learned about the connection between land use and healthy waterways, the more I could see that the story of all water is a story of social justice,” Prizzia says. “Where there’s irresponsible development, pollution, poor infrastructure, a lack of greenspace and buffers between land and water, there will also be compromised water bodies and systems—the vital and wondrous living systems we all depend on.” ◆ POOL will open on World Water Day on March 22, 2022 at the Fairmount Water Works. Admission is free. Visit fairmountwaterworks.org/pool F E B RUARY 20 22 G R I DP HI LLY.COM 25

A POWERFUL T LEGACY

he fbi kept Hakim’s Bookstore, 210 S. 52nd Street, under surveillance for some time, sniffing around for subversion, says Yvonne Blake, 70. Daughter of Dawud Hakim, the store’s late founder, Blake recounts how her father had done the unthinkable in 1959 by opening an independent Black bookstore, five years before segregation would be outlawed in the United States.

Given that move, the G-men thought he needed watching.

Black-owned bookstores have been activism epicenters since the 19th century.

These local shops continue to carry the torch story by constance garcia-barrio

26 GRID P H I L LY.CO M F EB RUA RY 2022

The FBI’s fears recall the ferment that greeted the nation’s first documented Black bookstore. Abolitionist and businessman David Ruggles (1810-1849), born free in Connecticut, launched his enterprise in 1834, according to the David Ruggles Center for History and Education in Florence,

When you know your history, you have deep pride in yourself.”

— lawrence mile s, La Unique African Bookstore & Cultural Center owner Yvonne Blake (left) and her sister Glenda Cook both work at their late father’s store.

Massachusetts. Ruggles’ establishment, near Broadway in New York City, offered “Anti-Slavery publications of every description…” according to his 1834 newspaper ad.

Ruggles, who withstood beatings, a near-lynching and an attempt to kidnap him into slavery, also sold feminist works.

He had a reading room and lending library in an era when New York’s public libraries barred Blacks. Ruggles also helped hundreds of fugitives from slavery, including Frederick Douglass, whom he reportedly hid for several days.

In time, stores like Young’s Book Exchange, begun in 1915 by George Young, a Pullman porter and the son of freedmen, sprang up. Young found it “ … exceedingly gratifying to note the growing interest manifested in books by and pertaining to the Negro race … ” according to a blurb he P HOTO GRA P H Y BY DR EW D E N N I S

placed in The New York Age, a Black weekly newspaper published from 1887 to 1953.

Ruggles set a high bar for community service for Black proprietors of independent bookstores. Today, the U.S. has 125 Blackowned bookshops, according to Oprah Daily, with Greater Philadelphia boasting a handful of such businesses.

Each seems to have a distinctive flavor— Amalgam Comics and Coffeehouse, in East Kensington, for example, announces its slant in its name while Black and Nobel, in Society Hill, offers health products as well as books—many of the entrepreneurs share community concern and grit. Those qualities have stood them in good stead recently as they did Ruggles 200 years ago.

“My father was passionate about sharing Black history,” says Blake, Hakim’s current owner. “He was an accountant for the City of Philadelphia, but he sold books from the trunk of his car and did people’s income taxes to raise money to start the store. He

said that knowing our history strengthens Black people.”

Hakim stocked books like “The Five Negro Presidents” (1965) by Jamaican-American journalist J. A. Rogers (1880-1966) and “They Came Before Columbus: The African Presence in Ancient America” by linguist and anthropologist Ivan Van Sertima (19352009). Hakim’s inventory also included journalist John Howard Griffin (1920-1980), author of “Black Like Me,” (1961), a nonfiction account of a white man who took a drug to darken his skin so he could experience life as a Black man in the South.

“We still stock those books,” Blake says.

Hakim passed down knowledge in other ways, too.

“I got my first book here in 1974,” recalls long-time customer Jerry Williams, 60.

“It was ‘Malcolm X Speaks’ (1965) for 60 cents. Instead of hanging out on the street, a bunch of [guys] would come here and …

[Mr. Hakim] would talk with us. If we didn’t have enough money for a book, he’d give it F E B RUARY 20 22 G R I DP HI LLY.COM 27

to us, then quiz us about it later.”

Nowadays, Hakim’s still offers biographies, books about healthcare and spirituality, as well as figurines, puzzles, tote bags, beaded jewelry and other African-themed gifts, but it has honed in more on young people.

“We’ve expanded the children’s section,” says Blake, who, like her sister Glenda, has worked in the store since her high school days. “Our children must know what we’ve accomplished. I didn’t learn about the wealth accumulated by ‘Black Wall Street’ and the 1921 [Tulsa race] massacre that destroyed it until I was grown. Our children must know what we achieved.”

FBI surveillance eventually ended, but the bookstore has faced other crises.

In 1997, Hakim died.

“I was working full-time then,” says Blake, retired now. “I would rush home from work, catch a nap, then open the store. Other family members pitched in, and they do so now even more, but those were grueling days.”

More challenges loomed in 2020. The pandemic almost shuttered the store, Blake says. “I filled some orders from home. Then, after George Floyd’s murder some people

28 GRID P H IL LY.CO M F EB RUA RY 20 22

were marching [in solidarity with Minnesota protestors], and some were looting. Most of the looting took place between Market and Walnut [streets], just north of us. The National Guard was stationed at Market Street. We locked up that Sunday [May 31], and a young man, a volunteer, stood guard in front of the store all night.”

Then sales surged.

“Customers of all colors, including many new white patrons, couldn’t get enough books about Black history,” Blake says.

“Books flew off the shelves.”

Things have settled into a steadier rhythm for Blake and her staff, with demand higher than pre-pandemic days.

“This has always been a family enterprise,” she says. “My sister, daughter, granddaughter and grandson work here.

We promised [Hakim] to keep his legacy alive, and we’re doing it.”

Jeannine A. Cook’s second location, Ida’s Bookshop in Collingswood, New Jersey, is named for Ida B. Wells.

In another corner of Philadelphia Jeannine A. Cook, 38, defied doomsayers when she opened Harriett’s, a feminist bookstore on Girard Avenue in Fishtown. Friends warned that she was courting racist violence in that area.

In time, that threat did come, but like the store’s namesake—Underground Railroad conductor and Union Army spy Harriet Tubman (1822-1913)—Cook followed her instincts and opened for business in late January 2020.

Strapped for cash at the outset, Cook cobbled together bookshelves from pipes and other found items, and plumped up her inventory with volumes from her personal library.

“It hurt to take those books from home, but I kept asking myself, ‘How serious are you about this bookstore?’ then I’d bring them in,” she remembers.

Harriett’s has books that celebrate Black women artists, authors and activists. Fiction by Nobel laureate Toni Morrison, science fiction superstar Octavia E. Butler and Harlem Renaissance luminary Zora Neale Hurston fill the shelves. Some titles sizzle, like 2020’s “Wayward Lives, Beautiful

P HOTO G RAP H BY CHRIS BAKER EVENS

P H OTO G R A P H Y O F B O O KS & S T U F F C O U R T E S Y O F L I N E T T E K I E L I N S K I

Experiments: Intimate Histories of Riotous Black Girls, Troublesome Women, and Queer Radicals” by Saidiya Hartman.

Hardly had Cook opened her doors when COVID-19 shut them—but not for long.

“We moved the bookstore out to the sidewalk,” she says, “the shelves, books, furniture, everything. People said the furniture would get broken and rained on, and it did. But we know the healing properties of reading, so we just kept going. Young people have the energy to do that work,” Cook says of her cadre of teen and twenty-something volunteers.

Cook used the sidewalk for more than selling books.

“I had the young folks stand on a soapbox inside the store, practice reciting poetry, then do it outside,” she says. The spoken-word performances helped sell books, but “the young people also conquered their fear of public speaking,” says Cook, who has three paid interns learning the book selling business. “We’ve got to prepare our young people to lead.”

Oprah Winfrey heard about the sidewalk sale and gave her a shoutout, Cook says.

Then an acid test came with George Floyd’s murder.

“We didn’t board up Harriett’s,” says Cook, who flew to Minneapolis to pay homage to Floyd and his family. White vigilantes attacked people protesting in Fishtown, but left Harriett’s unscathed.

“Black and white neighbors stood in front of the bookstore to protect it. They see Harriett’s as a community resource, which it is,” Cook says.

“Bookstores have become more important than ever because so many schools don’t have libraries,” says Cook, who majored in education and minored in communication at University of the Arts.

Cook’s children’s room has child-sized furniture and titles like “Happy to be Nappy,” by the late feminist and social activist bell hooks. Cook also carries “The 1619 Project, Born on the Water,” by Nikole Hannah-Jones and Renée Watson, which explains slavery in U.S. history.

Cook herself read from early childhood and circumstances ingrained the habit.

“My mother, who’s from Trinidad, was a librarian,” she says. “She went blind when I was 10. My two sisters and I—I was the middle one—would read to her. When you have a parent who’s differently-abled, it makes

Lynn Washington is the owner of Book & Stuff, now an online shop.

BO O K E D U P Philly boasts its share of indie Black bookstores, and Germantown is home to three of them At Uncle Bobbie’s Coffee & Books, opened in 2017 at 5445 Germantown Avenue, owner Marc Lamont Hill offers “cool people, dope books, and great coffee.” ➽ unclebobbies.com Newly opened Umoja House, 6338 Germantown Avenue, reflects the Ghanian heritage of its owner. Umoja House carries books like Will Smith’s memoir, works on Black history and on West African-based religions. It also offers Nigerian jewelry, other Black and African-themed gifts and Ethiopian coffee in its small café. ➽ umojabooks.com Books & Stuff owner Lynn Washington used to sell books “on weekends at flea markets and bazaars,” she says. Tired of lugging books around, she opened a shop on Maplewood Mall [off Germantown Avenue] in 2014. “… The shop [was] an extension of my 28 years working at the Free Library of Philadelphia as a graphic designer.” Washington aims to promote “the importance of reading, particularly for children. I sell books with multicultural, Afro-centric characters and themes, and I emphasize the importance of a home library.”

Books & Stuff went exclusively online in 2019 due to overhead and construction on Maplewood Mall. “Because books are often an expense that many families can’t afford, I try to pass on more of my discount to the customer.”

Washington offers “Surprise Packages.” “Customers pick a price point, $15, $25 or $35.

They pick a children’s, teen or adult package [then] tell me a … bit about the recipient’s reading interests, and I put together a selection of books and stuff that I feel will … interest the recipient.” Washington also orders specific books for individuals and groups.

She’s scored a couple of coups. “I’m the exclusive vendor of ‘Philadelphia Jazz Stories Illustrated,’ a book I designed for the Philadelphia Jazz Project. Last year, I was the first book vendor at the Philadelphia Flower Show and I’m going to return this year. I will continue working to get books into the hands of all!” ➽ booksandstuff.info

F E B RUARY 20 22 G R I DP HI LLY.COM 29

you resourceful.”

Harriett’s packed ’em in wall-to-wall when Will Smith visited in November to launch his memoir, “Will.” Business has gone so well that Cook has opened another store, Ida’s Bookshop, in Collingswood, New Jersey, named for Black investigative journalist Ida B. Wells (1862-1931), who started toting a gun after receiving death threats because of her articles on lynching.

“I’m going to keep following my intuition,” Cook says, “doing what I feel called to do.”

Across the river, Camden’s La Unique African Bookstore & Cultural Center lives up to its name.

Founder and proprietor Lawrence Miles, 88, a U.S. army veteran and former owner of a travel agency, opened the bookstore in 1991 with children’s books.

“When I went to school we studied Negro history,” says Miles, a great-grandfather raised in Crisfield, southernmost town in Maryland. “That’s what our teachers called it. We knew about J. A. Rogers and Carter G. Woodson [founder of the Association for the Study of African American Life and History as well as Negro History Week, the precursor of Black History Month]. When you know your history, you have deep pride in yourself.”

La Unique—whose “La” comes from Miles’s first name—has books like Renée Watson’s “Piecing Me Together” (2017), a novel about a determined Black girl in a tough world, and Angie Thomas’ “The Hate U Give,” a 2017 novel that became a movie, about a girl’s response after the police kill her friend.

“This location is on the corridor of the University District,” Miles says, referencing the neighborhood that houses Rutgers University. “It’s near K-12 schools in this area. Parents won’t find children’s books [elsewhere in Camden] unless they go to the mall.”

“La Unique” has broadened its stock in recent years to include history, biography and other books for adults. Visitors can browse mysteries by Walter Mosely, works by Ta-Nehisi Coates, and books like “Getting Away with Murder: The True Story of the Emmett Till Case,” by Chris Crowe (2003), which recounts the 14-year old boy’s lynching, which helped ignite the civil rights movement.

“You can find books on health, religion and travel,” Miles says. “If you read a book, 30 GR ID P H I L LY.CO M F EB RUA RY 20 22

you can travel the world from your sofa.”

History stands at the heart of La Unique’s offerings. Cowrie shell bracelets, necklaces and earrings for sale recall the use of the shells as currency in West Africa centuries ago. Cloth pocketbooks, CDs and shea butter form part of the attractive displays.

La Unique features a small museum with African sculptures, carvings and drums against a background of mud cloth in black, tan and white, a tradition with roots in 12th-century Mali.

“The museum complements the books,” Miles says. “You can read about African cultures and then see the objects pictured there. I have artifacts from Senegal, Benin, Nigeria and Cameroon, including a 600-year-old bronze statue. There’s a shield from Ethiopia made with an elephant’s ear.

Visitors can admire the ability and craftsmanship of Africans. It’s great for kids.”

La Unique also has a 40-seat auditorium called the Poets Den. “Omar Tyree [a best-selling urban fiction author] gave readings here,” Miles says.

“Philadelphia jazz musicians used to jam here.”

The pandemic slammed the door on those events and slashed sales.

“It’s been rough,” Miles says. “Online stores had already cut into my sales, then the lockdown came along. Foot traffic hasn’t risen again, which means less money to replenish stock. I’ve had to refinance the mortgage.”

Miles has a GoFundMe to raise $20,000 for repairs.

Yet La Unique remains a beloved spot.

“This bookstore is a Camden institution,” says Ed Bass, 51, a customer for 20 years. “It adds to the multicultural riches of the city. Mr. Miles is one of the old warriors.”

So much happens at independent Black bookshops that Cook calls them “literary sanctuaries.” At these stores, Black folks can gain self-knowledge denied to them in school, see the skills of African artisans, learn through author presentations and cultural events, and simply find

Jeannine A. Cook at Ida’s Bookshop in Collingswood, New Jersey.

Cook is also owner of Harriett’s Bookshop in Fishtown.

peace. The stores may also groom young leaders. And something more.

“When you open this book,” Cook says, pointing to Harriet Tubman’s biography,

“When you open [Harriet Tubman’s biography] you can hear the voice of an ancestor.”

— jeannine a. cook , owner of Harriett’s Bookshop and Ida’s Bookshop

“you can hear the voice of an ancestor.”

After George Floyd’s killing, the importance of Black bookstores jumped beyond their surrounding communities. White people began turning to them for guidance.

“I got a note from a 71-year-old white woman who said she’d had white privilege all her life, and now she wanted to learn what was really going on in the country,” P HOTO GRA P H Y BY C H R IS BA KE R EV E N S

says Blake. “She wanted me to suggest books for her to read.”

It was more than a local phenomenon.

“When we reopened … we noticed that the traffic that we were seeing definitely had more white customers coming into Southeast D.C. to shop our store,” said Derrick Young, co-owner of Mahogany Books in Washington, D.C., on an NPR program in May 2021.

“ … My customers were mostly white [after George Floyd’s killing],” VaLinda Miller, owner of Turning Page Bookshop in Goose Creek, South Carolina, said on the same broadcast. But the store had an even greater reach. “I got so many [orders from] people in Brazil and Venezuela,” Miller added.

Blake agrees.

“For the first time ever, I’ve had book orders from Dublin, Guam and the U.K.,” she says.

With their new customer demographics, Black bookstores seem poised to help shepherd the world toward racial justice.

“My father would be so pleased,” Blake says. ◆ F E B RUARY 20 22 G R I DP HILLY.COM 31

TOP OF MIND local businesses ready to serve COWORKING

CATERING

Penn’s Treaty Coworking

Birchtree On the Go

Modern affordable coworking located at Billy Penn Studios, in Olde Kensington. Featuring Airthinx Air Quality Monitoring. Desks start at $199. Private offices at $500.

Learn more at pennstreaty.co

New! Birchtreeonthego.com offers high-end sustainable catering through easy online ordering, with free local delivery and curbside waste pick-up.

Portions start at 10-15 people.

Order today!

BOOK STORE

GROCERY

Books & Stuff

Kimberton Whole Foods

Multicultural, Afrocentric books, gifts, and surprise packages for all! Founded in 2014, and recently online only at booksandstuff.info and

A family-owned and operated natural grocery store with six locations in Southeastern PA, selling local, organic and sustainably-grown food for over thirty years.

teespring.com/booksandstuffstuff.

kimbertonwholefoods.com

Domestic work is everyone’s work.

Develop healthier home life skills, so your space can serve you better.

Lois is revolutionizing the way we live at home by empowering all people with the mental, emotional, and physical tools to live healthier, happier, and more fulfilling lives.

Book your session: TheVoltaWay.com 32 GRID P H IL LY.CO M F EB RUA RY 2022

Kristen Henwood, MES ‘12 Associate Director of Stewardship, Willistown Conservation Trust

Turn your passion for the environment into a fulfilling career Make the most of industry connections and Ivy League academics Virtual Café Join the MES program team from 12-1 p.m. on the first Tuesday of every month for an online chat about your interests and goals.

Log in with us.

www.facebook.com/UPennEES

In Penn’s Master of Environmental Studies program, you train for success in a field where you can make a real, practical difference.

Built with flexibility in mind, the program’s innovative, interdisciplinary approach allows you to create your own focus, or choose from six established concentrations: environmental biology, environmental policy, environmental resilience and adaptation, environmental sustainability, resource management, and urban environment.

Gain hands-on experience through internships and fieldwork opportunities while studying on a green campus in the heart of Philadelphia. And enjoy the option of full- or part-time enrollment to suit your schedule.

@Penn_MES_MSAG

Take the next step in your environmental career at

www.upenn.edu/grid