I haven’t been posting much lately, in fact the last few days have been completely devoid of posts. Philadelphia is one of my favorite places in the world to be. I love it here, and I believe it is a city with more good qualities than bad, in addition to a city that is under-appreciated and receives an unjustified bad reputation. I have lived 25 years of my life defending Philadelphia against the haters, and spent the last year and a half writing posts for LOLadelphia as my love-letter to the city I love.
However, in recent weeks I have grown disgusted with Philadelphia. The love is still there, but things are strained. The amount of homicides thus far in 2012 is very concerning to me, especially since one of those homicides affected me personally. We have lived 26 days in 2012, and our city has had 31 homicides within its borders. That’s bad even for a violent city like Philadelphia. It makes me sad, and makes me question humanity when a 30 year-old stepfather who is supposed to be a voice of reason fires twelve rounds of ammunition into a car full of teenagers. It makes it hard to defend Philadelphia as “not as as bad it is made out to be” when four people kill a person over an $11 pizza. The stories of the homicides in Philadelphia have gotten more extreme, and even more ridiculous than before, and it’s heartbreaking.
Equally as heartbreaking to me is the sorry state of our school district, which is in a state of crisis. Due to budget cuts that came down from Governor Corbett, in addition to years of irresponsible spending by the School District of Philadelphia, our schools are in crisis. People are being laid off, schools are closing, and most importantly, kids are being robbed of an enriched and well-rounded educational experience through no fault of their own. It upsets me when people from the suburbs look down from their ivory tower and say things like, “City schools are doomed anyway,” and, “Oh well, those kids don’t want to learn anyway.” That’s bullshit. All kids want to learn. The reason why city schools have that reputation is because they have always been underfunded, and have never been given even a chance to succeed. Philadelphia School District is a district in crisis, and there is nothing that Mayor Nutter can really do to fix it. The answer would have to come from Harrisburg, and Corbett is more than content with sitting back and watching Philly’s public schools, and the hundreds of thousands kids get screwed over.
Now, we have a intersection of the two issues: kids who are being robbed of an important and well-deserved education, and a city where street culture that is breeding a new kind of brazen and violent criminals. The sad reality is that something drastic has to happen for either problem to get fixed, and if kids aren’t getting an education, chances are many who don’t escape will fall victim to this street culture. There is no easy fix. Telling someone to move, or go to a different school, or “just say no” to street pressures (i.e. drugs, violence, etc) isn’t as simple as it sounds. Sometimes even the best kid with a good family situation and good education can fall victim to the streets. Lastly, blaming Mayor Nutter isn’t the answer because whether you like him or hate him, Nutter has been proactive in addressing these problems and has worked with many people, making himself visible in the public eye to attempt to fix these problems. In that regard, Nutter deserves praise. Philadelphia has long been a city with a government that can be described as inefficient and apathetic. Nutter breaks that trend, and deserves praise for his efforts.
In the meantime, I’m going to continue writing LOLadelphia as I see fit because I love writing this site and I love showing off the offbeat side of this magnificent city. As far as the current issues I addressed, they will always exist, but we as a city need to work to see them get corrected. Followers and readers, I still love and appreciate you and your readership. Things will be back to normal for us really soon, I promise.
All the best,
Chris@LOLadelphia
