Pew's Philadelphia City Council Report: Research or Agenda-Setting?

(Written on February 3, 2011)

I can't help myself. Every time I see one of those Pew Charitable Trust Philadelphia Research Initiative announcements, such as the one last week called "City Councils in Philadelphia and Other Major Cities," I get flashbacks to the old Peter Paul "Mounds/Almond Joy" commercials. Sometimes I feel like I should believe what they're telling me... and, sometimes, I just don't. I must admit, it's hard for me to forget that the Pew Charitable Trust was established by the same family that founded the Sun Oil Company (Sunoco, today) and that the company and its patriarch, Joseph Pew, made no secret of their genuine distaste for Franklin D. Roosevelt, for his Depression-busting New Deal program or for organized labor, of any kind. Somehow, I also can't seem to forget that Mr. Pew was known during his heyday as a source of millions of dollars of political funding and that he consequently became recognized as the "political boss" of Pennsylvania, influencing the outcomes of both statewide and national elections. I remember each time I see a communication from Pew that it was known as a funder, primarily, of extremely conservative issues and organizations, including the John Birch Society, and I wonder how much the organization has really changed, today. More recently and, perhaps, this is my most troublesome Pew association, it was also the Charitable Trust that led the effort to manipulate the transfer of the $25 billion Barnes Art Collection away from historically black Lincoln University's control, as Dr. Barnes, himself, had stipulated in his will, and into the control of Pew, and other major, mainstream non-profits. To further complicate all of this, I'm also aware that Pew Research Center has been called the third-most-powerful think tank in Washington, D.C., and that there is a related entity called the Pew Center for Civic Journalism, which, over the last 17 years or so, has ingratiated itself with( Dare we say "compromised?") an impressive list of print and broadcast media outlets by funding their local community outreach projects. As a result, Pew probably has many more friends, if they need them, in the mainstream media than most of the others of us have, all put together. So, given all of that, whenever I see an announcement about Pew having sponsored a political project, I tend to hold it up to the light, and shake it, to make sure I haven't missed the "real story." After the second reading of last week's "Philadelphia City Council Report," I began to feel that, perhaps, the people at Pew weren't so much interested in just sharing comparative data about Councilmanic bodies nationwide. Rather, I got the distinct impression that they were more interested in getting Philadelphians "fired up" and anxious to "throw out the scoundrels" in City Council, who had clearly, from the way the data were reported, "stayed too long at the party." And, I couldn't help wondering...if the people at Pew are so adamant about getting rid of the Councilpeople we have now, just who would they like to see elected in their places? It's hard to imagine, knowing the organization's history, that they don't have some idea, and that someone over there isn't working to have that done, even as we speak. That's not good. In the opening statement of the report, Pew noted, "The 17 current members of City Council have served longer (an average of 15.5 years), than their peers in 14 other cities," and they comprise "Philadelphia's longest-tenured Council in at least the past six decades." The report moved quickly thereafter to a discussion of the benefits of term limits for City Council elections. Looks as though the people at Pew's Philadelphia Research Initiative are just as anxious to make a case for throwing out the City's incumbent Council members as their former colleagues at the Inquirer and Daily News seem to be. Also troubling was the dramatic flourish, in the report, of dividing the Council's annual budget by the number of Council persons and coming up with the meaningless "roughly $1.1 million per seat" figure that taxpayers expend every year for each Councilperson. Using that same logic, are we then expected to divide the 100 U.S. Senators into the $3.8 trillion federal budget and call each of their offices a "$38 billion seat?" Ridiculous, huh? Especially during the ongoing Great Recession, Pew's mention of the $121,107 salary of the average Philadelphia Councilperson was probably expected to raise eyebrows and drop jaws all over the City. I do believe, however, that our friends at Pew lost a bit of intended impact when they also noted that Philadelphia City Council salaries are the fourth-largest out of fifteen City Councils that were reviewed nationwide. Most Philadelphians, I'm sure, recognizing that their city is the nation's sixth-largest, don't have very much of a problem seeing that their Council representatives are fourth-best compensated. I was ready to get incensed by the section of the report that said our Council people have access to city-owned cars, until I got to the part that explained that only seven out of 17 Council members actually take a car from the City, at all. Despite the generally lackluster quality of the overall "findings," there was one section of the Pew report that did get my attention. That was the section of the document that raised the issue of "redistricting," and how it will almost certainly create more difficulty for residents who are interested in doing political organizing and make it easier for incumbents to hold onto their seats. If done in the old, politically self-serving way in which it is usually handled, that process could produce absolutely disastrous results for Philadelphia's 625,000 black residents. Pew was very careful to pinpoint the dual responsibility of the Mayor and City Council, itself, for ensuring that "redistricting" is done on a fair and equitable basis. The report writers also pointed out that neither the Mayor, nor the Council, has given any indication, as of yet, as to how they plan to ensure the sanctity of that process. We should all pay attention to that and follow up with the mayor and our district councilpeople to make sure they pay proper attention to this issue. Then, Pew, surprisingly, brought up the issue of assuring that the "underserved" continue to be fairly represented on City Councils, nationwide. In most cities, they reported, the percentage of blacks in City Council is about the same as in the city's general population. As proof, they offered that blacks make up 43 percent of Philadelphia's population and they comprise 41 percent of the City Council's members. What they chose not to mention, however, is that while whites represent 45 percent of the City's population, the nine members of City Council who happen to be white, comprise 53 percent of all Council seats. Similarly, in Boston, a city which is now 51.6 percent comprised of Black, Hispanic, Asian and mixed-race persons, whites continue to be overrepresented in that City Council, holding 75% of the twelve filled seats. I know, I know.. the race or ethnicity of a Councilperson really shouldn't matter, but since Pew brought it up...let's tell the whole truth, and find out if it really does make a difference --politically-- and if so, why it does, in the first place. Sounds like a good topic for Pew to include in one of its civic journalism programs. Have we come far enough as a society that the race of our elected officials, the race and ethnicity of our journalists and the race and ethnicity of the leaders of our think tanks and foundations no longer matter in political decision-making? Now, that's a report I would read right away. #########

Short-Sighted Harrisburg Democrats "Cut Off Their Own Noses."

By one definition, “Cutting off your nose to spite your face” is “...a needlessly self-destructive over-reaction to a problem...or pursuing revenge in a way that would damage oneself more than the source of one’s anger.”

How else would you describe a situation wherein State Representative Dwight Evans' re-election bid for chairman of the House Appropriations Committee was rejected by 50 out of 89 Democratic members of the Pennsylvania House, including what has been described, by people who were there, as a “surprisingly large number” of Philadelphia-based representatives.

They joined in stripping Evans of the seat he had held for 20 years, even though he had demonstrated, throughout his tenure, great sensitivity and support for Philadelphia and southeastern Pennsylvania issues. They also ensured that the power in that seat, held by a Philadelphian for so long that most Philadelphia-area observers had taken that invaluable resource for granted, would be shifted to Rep. Joseph Markosek of Allegheny County. Good "looking out," huh?

Sadly, I got the impression that there had been far too little focus by Philadelphia’s legislators or, even, by their constituents in the private sector and civic leadership community, on crafting a strategy that would preserve meaningful leadership representation in the House for our part of the State.

The local media were certainly not innocent bystanders in southeastern Pennsylvania's "meltdown," focusing as they did,on the titillating prospect of the powerful Evans being deposed, and spelling out why such a thing might be feasible or understandable. That created an environment, in my opinion, that emboldened the anti-Evans/anti-Philadelphia co-conspirators.

There were stories that indicated that Evans had been perceived as “arrogant” by his peers, and rumors about his reluctance to support the convening of the legislature's “lame duck” session (that which is scheduled after the actual election in early November, but before the newly elected members of the House and Senate take office).It was said that Evans wanted to avoid the "lame duck" session because of his concern that a Fiscal Oversight Office would be approved, limiting the power of Appropriations chairs. It was offered as “common knowledge” that the “lame duck thing" had really “ticked off” Evans' Democratic colleagues and sealed his fate.

Evans was not entirely without blame in contributing to some of these negative perceptions and, as the anti-Evans “feeding frenzy” grew, his colleagues – most “off-the-record,” but some few, on-the-record” – even protested the former chairman’s handling of "WAM money" (those off-the-budget allocations to rank-and-file legislators for their own Districts' projects). "WAM's" are not inconsequential, having been estimated for just the last six months of 2008, alone, at $110 million, in a June 2009 article by the Associated Press. That amount, according to the AP, was equivalent to “$438,000, on average, for each of Pennsylvania’s lawmakers.” Tied to that was the implication that Evans funneled a disproportionately large number of such dollars back to his own district and didn’t share enough of those funds with his fellow-House members.

Then, there was the “Bill DeWeese issue,” wherein the “smart people” said that Evans had seriously miscalculated by supporting a challenger to former House Speaker and long-time Greene County Rep. Bill DeWeese, during the last elections. DeWeese won anyway. A wily, verbose, ex-Marine, a student of warfare, military leadership styles and political strategies, with an earned “eye-for-an-eye” reputation, DeWeese, it was said, took Evans’ lack of support very personally, and committed himself to doing everything reasonably or unreasonably possible to ensure Dwight’s defeat in the leadership elections.

Ironically, even during this era of Tea Party/Republican resurgence, it's clear that these leadership election outcomes had virtually nothing to do with partisanship and almost everything to do with geography. This was a political strategy that the"West" had clearly prepared for, while the "East," unfortunately, seemed to be absolutely unprepared and defenseless.

As a result, not only is Pennsylvania’s Governor-elect an Allegheny County resident, by vote of the statewide electorate, but so are, both, the Democratic and Republican floor leaders in the Pennsylvania House (for the first time in 40 years), the minority leader in the Senate and the newly elected Caucus Chair in the House. In addition, Sen. Scarnati, nominated by the Republican Caucus to serve as President Pro Tempore, hails from Jefferson County, in the West, and the House Whip Michael Hanna Sr. and Rep. Ron Buxton, the Caucus Administrator, are from Central Pennsylvania. And , then, of course, there is Markosek, as we said, also from Allegheny County.

In fact, in 2011, there will be no Philadelphia members serving in the Pennsylvania House leadership – none.

There is little doubt that the votes of the Democratic Caucus members were also influenced by the long-standing perception of a strong southeastern bias by Governor Edward G.Rendell, a man some had come to call the “Governor of Philadelphia,” and who had gone so far as to hold down a "part-time job" as a broadcaster for Eagles' games, in a state blessed with, both, eastern and western Pennsylvania NFL franchises.

No one should have been surprised by the western Pennsylvania move. What was surprising, however, is that the Philadelphia-based legislators came to the table without an apparent strategy of their own. Even if they, themselves, had, somehow, developed a distaste for Dwight Evans' leadership style, the shame is that they seemed not to have a cohesive "Plan B."

This is where the “cutting off your nose …” part comes into play.

In media interviews, both, Philadelphia legislators Mike O’Brien and Angel Cruz made it clear that they voted against Evans and, in so doing, opted to diminish Philadelphia and southeastern Pennsylvania influence in the General Assembly and in discretionary aspects of the State's $28 billion budget. While they weren't the only two, they seemed to gloat the most about having played such an important role in unseating a Philadelphia-based decision-maker.
My question to O’Brien and Cruz, and to the other Philadelphia co-conspirators, is this: Now what?

With no Philadelphia-sensitive voice now in the House leadership and with a Governor-elect who will, as an Allegheny County resident, understandably be very much attuned to Western Pennsylvania issues and projects, where do Philadelphians go, in the House, when "juice" is needed? My hunch is that the members of the Philadelphia delegation and most politically savvy southeast Pennsylvanians will start missing Dwight Evans' chairmanship role in about two weeks. By that time, of course, it will be too late.

When Philadelphians went to the polls on November 2, we didn't intend to come away with less support from our state government. But that’s exactly what just happened, as result of the brilliant and ruthless geographic strategy by Western elected officials, and the all-too-spiteful, disjointed and passive reaction by Philadelphia's own legislators.

Next time you go up to Harrisburg, take a peek into the House chambers and get a good look at the legislators who voted to reduce Philadelphia’s influence in the House. You’ll be able to recognize them; they’ll be the ones without the noses.

Oh, and by the way, while you’re out at the State Capitol building, also make a point of stopping into the Senate chambers to say hello to the Hon. Vincent Hughes, the newly elected minority chair of the Senate Appropriations Committee and the Hon. Anthony Hardy Williams, the new Minority Caucus Chair, in the Senate.

Senators Hughes and Williams are the only African-American legislators who will be holding leadership positions in either the House or the Senate, in the coming year, and two of only three Philadelphians with such a role in the Senate. Looks like, at least, a couple of people were wide awake.

Congratulations, Senators Hughes and Williams, but, as you do your jobs in the State Capitol Building, this year, please make sure that you take the time, every now and then, to “count all the noses” in the room.
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Buried In The Scandal, PHA’s Missed Opportunity For Meaningful Black Economic Inclusion

I'm sure it doesn't matter much to him, in the grand scheme of things, but the more I think about it, I must admit that I, too, have a serious issue with Carl Greene.

Why?

A mainstream contractor, last week, stepped forward to tell a Daily News reporter that, in Carl Greene’s Philadelphia Housing Authority, if a large contractor was having difficulty meeting the authority’s published, Power-Pointed and highly promoted minority participation guidelines, the contractor could simply contribute some cash to the “Carl Greene Scholarship Fund” and the PHA would make the mainstream contractor’s minority participation “hassle” go away.

That piece of hypocrisy – that the PHA has simply “winked” at white contractors and dismissed minority inclusion requirements in exchange for a few bucks contributed to a questionably established not-for-profit organization--is absolutely outrageous.

Where else are we in the African-American community supposed to turn to achieve fair levels of inclusion, finally, in the local construction industry, other than to entities that have substantial budgets, that do a great deal of work in our very own communities, whose majority clientele is African- American and that are headed by a black executive? If even those institutions and their leadership are “gaming us,” too, what’s left for us to believe?

The initial reaction to the Inquirer's "mortgage foreclosure story," on August 13, probably went like this: “Wow, how ironic! A guy who makes more than $300,000 a year and who has already invested nearly $230,000 in his $615,000 property, has gotten into a "beef” with his bank about payments due on his …house."

Many Philadelphians thought that Carl Greene was too big to lose a personal mortgage dispute, that he knew too much about the housing industry not to have done his homework on this issue and that it would only be a matter of time before he would mobilize his $300,000+ salary, his $44,000+ one-year bonus and his cadre of lawyers and high-ranking friends to bring the impudent Wells Fargo Bank to its knees

That, of course, was before all the other shoes began to drop, before there was full recognition of the extent of the sexual harassment allegations, before we learned of the $50,000+ in IRS tax liens, before the stunning revelation of the $33 million in fees paid to outside legal counsel since 2007, before the disclosure that, even as we were reading about the mortgage foreclosure debacle, there was, yet, another personal sexual harassment case in the process of being settled.

Right after that, the Inquirer carried an editorial page cartoon depicting Greene as the “Dirty Old Man who lived in a (Gucci) shoe.”

The paper’s editorial went on record as saying that the “PHA board seems out of the loop,” and reminded us all, in that early Wednesday edition, that “Mayor Nutter has had nothing to say … ditto for City Controller Alan Butkovitz,” each of whom, by the way, have two appointments to the PHA’s five-person board.

Finally, the Inquirer said it was time for the Mayor to “step up and exert his power.” Michael Nutter must have read it.

Shortly thereafter, and right on schedule, the Mayor released copies of a letter in which he condemned his longtime nemesis and the incumbent chairman of the PHA board, John Street, by saying, “Sadly (PHA) may be suffering from a lack of appropriate oversight," and “I am baffled, like most Philadelphians, to learn of your contention that you, as board chairman, had no knowledge of the sexual harassment cases brought against Mr. Greene.”

In the same letter, the Mayor suggested that Street and his fellow PHA board members should terminate Greene if the allegations of sexual harassment are "accurate" and if payments were made without the Board’s knowledge.

And, knowing just how much Nutter and Street “love and respect" each other, I’m sure that Mayor Nutter enjoyed adding, as part of his letter, that it appears that “the very leadership of PHA is in doubt.”

Responding to Nutter’s letter, Street was predictably dismissive. “He’s just talking,” he said.” He has to say something.”

Ouch! If you were standing close enough, you, too, might have gotten hit with a pie.

The Daily News editorial page also joined the fun, asserting that the PHA board “has been asleep at the switch” and that "it’s clear that no one has really been in control of PHA for a long time.”

After saying all of that, the editors added: “Carl Greene should do the right thing, and resign.”

Despite all of that, what has been uncovered about the PHA and its leadership is not the fault of the media, at all. It clearly is the fault of elected and appointed officials and the people who work with and for them, who grew entirely too comfortable in believing that there were no rules that couldn’t be ignored, bent or broken, no person who couldn’t be disrespected..

Even worse, in my opinion, even though most of the agency’s work was done in historically black communities and involved a largely African-American tenant base, there was a curious belief, somehow, that the economic benefits – the jobs and the contracts – should be reserved for the same, privileged, non-minority segment of the population that controls economic benefits in every other part of the city.

With the hundreds of millions of dollars in public funds he used to change the landscape of neighborhoods across the city, Greene also had a substantial opportunity, and a commensurate obligation, to impact the rules of economic engagement and to ensure, finally, that African Americans and other minorities would gain meaningful, legal access to the dollars that were spent over the 12 years of his tenure.

He chose, instead, to play the same game that his predecessors played, but with noble-sounding, largely hollow, inclusion statements, and misleading Power Point presentations that raised hopes, but delivered well below the agency’s potential.

According to a Tribune story at the time, by Larry Miller, Schenecqua Butts, a PHA tenant, and union carpenter, testified on June 27, 2008, at a public hearing on the Mayor’s Commission on Construction Industry Diversity that, “I went to school for four years and I’ve faced constant discrimination on job sites.”

When she was laid off at one site after just one day of work, she said the safety inspector on the site told her “Well, you know how it is, we have to take care of our own first.”

“If I had known how it really is," said a highly qualified but underutilized Ms. Butts, "I would never have gotten into this industry, in the first place.”

At the same public hearing, Pierce Keating, whose firm, Daniel J. Keating Company, is a listed PHA contractor, told the Commission that he was aware that minorities didn’t get a lot of opportunities in the construction industry and that the reason why was that contractors like him preferred dealing with the “old guard” (meaning people of European descent, he later admitted) as workers and sub-contractors.

I don’t know if Carl Greene can somehow survive the current media and political frenzy surrounding him and the PHA, but the sad fact is that if Mr. Greene finally does have to “get his hat,” it, sadly, won’t be seen as that great a loss to the African-American business community, to black construction workers or to black-owned construction companies.

The work done by PHA, over all those years of Carl Greene's tenure, could have and should have been a launching pad for a new generation of emerging black and minority contractors, who could have grown their portfolios and expanded their size, their capacity and their work forces.

Maybe the next PHA executive director will understand that.





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For Both Williams and Specter the Black Vote Was Never Really Engaged

Maybe the recent, Pennsylvania primary elections for governor and for the U.S. Senate, really had nothing at all to do with race.

There must be at least an outside possibility that the race of the candidates was not a factor, at all, on Election Day. It really is possible, I'm sure, that the voters simply went to the polling places and cast their votes for the candidates they knew best, the ones with the most experience, and the ones with the best ideas for addressing their issues.

It’s conceivable that politics in this city and in this state – unlike public school students’ demographics, residential housing patterns, access to mortgages and other bank loans, unemployment data and incarceration rates - is one of those rare things that is not impacted at all by the race or ethnicity of the participants.

Na-a-a-a-h!

I don’t believe it.

After reviewing the Primary Election results, I’m beginning to get suspicious that, in this case, the time-honored tradition of southeastern Pennsylvania Democrats voting overwhelmingly for one of their own during a gubernatorial primary, was blatantly disregarded. Regrettably, in this election, the otherwise qualified, and certainly uncontroversial, Anthony Hardy Williams, was largely overlooked by too many southeast Pennsylvania and Philadelphia voters, simply because he happeneed to be the black candidate.

The old adage --“all politics is local”-- had certainly been a guiding philosophy for electoral politics in this country, including Pennsylvania statewide elections, right up until May 18, Primary Election Day.

After all, the thinking always went, why would any sane, southeast Pennsylvania Democrat ever want to take the chance of nominating a candidate from the other side of the state and risk having reduced access to a new governor, whose longest-standing relationships and highest political priorities were in Allegheny County, or some other godforesaken part of Central or Western Pennsylvania?

It was an unwritten, but widely understood rule, and most voters and political operatives functioned accordingly, campaign in and campaign out.

If you think I’m kidding, check out what happened when Ed Rendell, the southeastern Pennsylvania/Philadelphia candidate, generally unknown outside of that part of the state, decided to run in the 2002 gubernatorial primary, against the best judgment of his own party.
What happened was that Rendell drew most of his victory margin in that primary over Robert Casey Jr. by winning just 10 out of 67 counties, in southeast Pennsylvania and in the Lehigh Valley area.

Subsequently, with the solid backing of that same part of the state, Rendell went on to win the general election in 2002 and to be re-elected governor of Pennsylvania in 2006.

Informed by that time-honored piece of political wisdom, the Williams camp didn’t expect political miracles from voters in the western part of the state, but they did assume they would receive the same levels of hometown and regional solidarity that the southeast always seemed to provide for one of their “favorite sons” in previous elections.

It didn’t happen.

In fact, when the polls closed on Tuesday, Allegheny County's Dan Onorato, a virtual unknown on this side of the state, who visited very infrequently here and whose campaign commercials failed to shed much light on what he actually stands for, had won the election very handily, with 45.1 percent of the statewide vote, far outdistancing second-place finisher Jack Wagner (also of Allegheny County), at 24.2 percent, Williams, at 18 percent, and Joe Hoeffel, at 12.7 percent.

The key to a Williams victory, said his campaign “handlers,” was to have him come out of Philadelphia with 250,000 votes – enough to overcome an expected weaker showing out west.

Williams did, in fact, win among Philadelphia voters, gaining 51.3 percent of the votes cast in the governor’s race, here in the city. But that represented only 79,968 votes, rather than 250,000. In addition, the entire Philadelphia Democratic turnout that day, at 18.8 percent, only amounted to a total of 155,678 votes being spread among all four Democratic candidates. By comparison, the rest of the state’s turnout has been estimated at about 25 percent--not good for Williams.

Also disappointing for Williams was the fact that the two western-based gubernatorial candidates – Onorato and Wagner – together walked away with 35.2 percent of the Philadelphia vote, numbers that were uncharacteristically high for out-of-region gubernatorial candidates.

In Tony Williams’ own southeast Pennsylvania "back yard," outside of Philadelphia, Onorato only lost one county, Montgomery, which gave 50 percent of its vote and a first-place finish to hometown favorite, Joe Hoeffel. It was the only county, statewide, that Hoeffel won.

Onorato also managed to place first in Bucks, Delaware and Chester Counties. Williams, by the way, finished third in Bucks, Chester and Montgomery, and second behind Onorato in Delaware County.

At that point, the case was clearly closed-- especially, when we realize that the Philadelphia vote, itself, seemed to break down largely along racial lines. In Philadelphia, wherein African Americans constitute about 60 percent of registered Democrats, Williams won 51.3 percent of the vote, and 44 out of 66 wards – most of those in predominantly black areas.

At the same time, however, Onorato was able to come in and claim 40,009 votes, or 25.7 percent of all those cast and to win 20 out of 66 wards.

Not entirely surprisingly, the 20 wards won by Onorato included those in the farthest reaches of the Great Northeast, those along the “river wards,” in Center City and in southeast Philadelphia. Whatever their reasons, they must have been strong enough – in those specific communities – to cause the residents to vote against their own regional interests, in a way that Philadelphians and southeast Pennsylvanians generally never do.

By the way, in Onorato’s own home county, Allegheny, the voters didn't bother to return the favor. Williams finished third out of the four candidates, there, with just 6.7 percent of the vote, while Onorato rolled to first place, with 52.3 percent.

At the end of the day, it will have to be said that Tony Williams started late, raised a good deal of money and ran what seemed to be a professionally managed, if not engaging, campaign.

In a gubernatorial race that was notable, primarily, for its general lack of drama, or voter interest, Tony Williams absolutely had to mount a campaign that moved beyond routine and formulaic. He also had to say and do enough to engage and excite the black electorate, without which he absolutely could not win. With some street-level "buzz," a "crusade" undercurrent and a sense of urgency driven by his campaign, it could have happened.

It reminds me of the first mayoral campaign between John Street and Sam Katz, whom some suspect is actually planning to run, again, for mayor of Philadelphia--this time as a Democrat. In any event, it was 1999, Street was the Democratic candidate and Katz was the Republican candidate, in a city wherein Democrats held a 5-to-1 registration advantage.

Black Philadelphians went to the polls and gave John Street 96 percent of their vote and, yet …. Street only beat Sam Katz by 9,000 votes. Since that time, I’ve heard John Street, curiously, say that he couldn’t have won that election without the support of the building trades unions. I say now what I said to Street then: Without a highly engaged black electorate, and an exceptionally high turnout by those voters, John Street would have lost that election. Period.

At the end of the day, too many African-American voters in Philadelphia didn’t show up last Tuesday to ensure an Anthony Hardy Williams or an Arlen Specter win. Too many perfectly good votes were left on the table in a political environment wherein Senator Williams couldn’t even trust his long-time, Democratic colleagues in neighboring counties to support him on Election Day--even when it was clearly in their own best interest to do so.

In retrospect, I’m sure he agrees.

Hey, even John Street probably agrees with that.



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Don't Sleep the Pennsylvania Governor's Race or the Philadelphia Ballot Questions.

Welcome to Pennsylvania, the Land of Gubernatorial Progressiveness!

It's starting to seem that way, isn't it? Right here in the same state where former Pittsburgh Steeler Lynn Swann ran in the Republican Gubernatorial Primary in 2006, four years later, Anthony Hardy Williams, an African-American state senator is now a candidate for governor, as a Democrat.

It almost makes you forget that in the entire history of the United States of America, only two African Americans--Deval Patrick, in Massachusetts, and Doug Wilder, in Virginia, in 1990--have ever been ELECTED governor of a state.

But, somehow, Pennsylvanians seem to have gotten comfortable with the concept. Mr. Williams is one of the leading Democratic candidates for all the right reasons--he's running a smart, professional campaign, he's raised a great deal of money in a short period of time, he has a proven track record as a state-level elected official, he's been endorsed by his party, and he just happens to have a portfolio of good, workable ideas, at a time when the state is sorely in need of them.

It seems as though the only thing that might derail Senator Williams' "train" is the fact that Philadelphia has had a long tradition of meager turnouts in “mid-term” primary elections. In fact, in the 2006 Primary, with Ed Rendell running as a Democrat and Swann running as a Republican, less than 10 percent of Philadelphia's registered voters showed up on Election Day. The fact that 61.5 percent of Philadelphia voters turned out in the 2008 Presidential Election, showed that they can, when they want to.

In places such as Arizona, New York, Illinois and Massachusetts, the gubernatorial elections are the source of nightly, national news coverage. People are rumbling and the political fur is flying.

Not here.

Philadelphia media, and the voters, themselves, have been largely disinterested in the four-way Democratic Primary. Even worse, the candidates in the Republican Primary, Tom Corbett and Sam Rohrer, have been notable only in how carefully they have both managed to avoid talking at all about any issues that impact directly upon the state's 1.3 million African-American residents.
But, there's more than the Governor's Office at stake on May 18.

In the Lieutenant Governor’s race, for example, there are actually nine Republican candidates on the ballot (wow!); secondly, Jonathan Saidel, the back-slapping, smack-talking, former Philadelphia City Controller, is running for the office on the Democratic side, with the support of his Party, in the eastern part of the state, and, third, there’s actually a black woman running as a Democrat for Lieutenant Governor – former Commonwealth Court Judge Doris Smith-Ribner. Smith-Ribner thought, for awhile, about running against Arlen Specter in the U.S. Senate Democratic Primary, but had a change of heart in December. As is her style, she’s been keeping an exceptionally low profile.

The City’s U.S. Congressmen-- Brady and Fattah-- are both unopposed in the Primary, so there’s not much conversation about those seats. At the same time, black folks can't seem to get comfortable with a notably low-key, former military guy named Sestak, with no previous profile in our community, who is challenging "newly Democratic" Arlen Specter. Black Philadelphians remember that--even when he was a Republican – Specter always managed to maintain a strong presence and a responsive staff in the black community.

If black folks show up in substantial numbers, at all, on election day, Arlen Specter should have no problem with the Philadelphia vote, and that should go a long way to boost his prospects statewide.

Out of the 28 Philadelphia–related State House seats that we reviewed, the incumbent is running unopposed in17 of them. That means that in more than 60 percent of Philadelphia’s State Representative Districts, comprising about one million residents, the incumbent-- Democratic or Republican, black or white-- has no opponent.

Hey, either the incumbents are doing an extraordinary job (and a number of them are), the potential challengers in those districts simply don’t have the courage to run against a strong incumbent, or the system, itself, is broken. In my opinion, even when an incumbent is doing an excellent job, the need to compete against strong challengers during each election cycle helps them to raise their “game” to the next level, and drives them to work even harder on behalf of their constituents.

On the subject of long-term incumbents who do have challengers, but who have clearly earned an opportunity to return to office, I would certainly count Black Caucus Chair Ron Waters (191st), Jewell Williams (197th), John Myers (201st), Babette Josephs (182nd), Curtis Thomas (181st) and Angel Cruz (180th), Pennsylvania's only Hispanic State Legislator. I just hope the people in Cruz’s district don’t confuse his challenger, Jon Ramos, with the well-respected, former City Councilman Juan Ramos, who’s definitely not on the ballot. Stranger things have happened.

Among the young, incumbent officeholders who have certainly worked diligently for voters, and who, in my opinion, should be returned to office to achieve their full potential, I would count Vanessa L. Brown (190th), Kenyatta Johnson (186th), and Tony Payton (179th), who’s unopposed in the Primary, but who will have a Republican opponent in the general election.

In the category of talented, high-potential challengers who deserve the support of the voters for their first "win," I'd certainly name Will Mega (192nd), who’s running a respectful, intelligent campaign, who is focusing on "the issues" and who’s time has come in that District. Candidates like Mega will help shape the future of politics in our community.

Finally, there are the ballot questions, here in Philadelphia. Even if you’re not excited about any of the candidates – go out and vote in your own interest on those.

Ballot Question #1 will seek voter support to give City Council the power to require that contractors and City financial assistance recipients submit Economic Opportunity Plans (for minority business and workforce inclusion). It will also give Council the power to enforce the requirement with penalties that go as far as barring non-cooperating contractors from doing future City work.

Curiously, but not surprisingly, the City's so-called "political and civic watch dog" organization, The Committee of 70, says on its website, that it will take “no position” on whether this question should be approved.

That should be all we need to know to make sure we do all that we can to ensure that black, Hispanic, Asian and white female voters turn out in droves to vote "Yes" on this question.

Ballot Question #2 seeks voter support to reduce the size of the Zoning Board of Adjustments from six to five members, eliminating a permanent appointee from the Department of Licenses and Inspections. This seems to be a move to further reduce L&I’s “clout” in the City.
This ought to happen.

Ballot Question #3 asks voter support to abolish the highly publicized and widely criticized Board of Revision of Taxes (BRT). Unlike the minority contract participation question, this one has earned a "Strong Yes" from the Committee of 70. Given all the recent negative coverage of the long-term, old-boy power base, I suspect that the BRT will be “toast” as of May 19th …but you decide.

Ballot Question #4 asks voter support for the City to borrow $65, 525,000 for transit, streets, sanitation, parks, recreation, museums and economic and community development.

Here, again, the "fat cats" on the Committee of 70 take “no position,” which probably means they believe this will provide a greater benefit for the predominantly black and minority base of City residents than to people like themselves, so they don’t care if it ever happens.

This should be all the info you need to realize that you should run right out and vote “yes” on question #4.

So, there you have it.

It's clear that there's work to be done, by all of us, on May 18.

Please, don't "sleep" these elections!
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For 2010, Let's Take Steps to Avoid More Economic Insanity

Quite frankly, I have to admit that, unless we in Philadelphia actually do something differently than we have, to date, about our economy, my expectations that we will really have a “Happy New Year” – for blacks, for minorities and for whites, are not that great.

The definition of insanity, it’s often said, is doing the same thing that you’ve always done and expecting a different outcome.

Make no mistake; 2009 was "no joke" economically, especially for black Americans, who, nationwide, suffered the highest unemployment levels, extraordinary rates of business failures, losses of up to $213 billion in foreclosure-related real estate wealth, and many broken families, as a direct result.

With all of that as backdrop, and with 2010 staring us all in the face, we simply cannot afford to repeat the same, ineffective, political and economic approaches, in the year to come.

Even as our economy continues to lose jobs at an alarming, record-setting rate, the fact is that no one in our national government is actually responsible for job creation. According to the increasingly powerful right-wing conservatives in our country, that kind of economic planning would be, somehow, too much like “socialism.” That's ridiculous.

The current business model stipulates that if large businesses want to hire people, then we will, as a consequence, have jobs. On the other hand, if they choose not to hire, then we simply won’t have jobs. That, our elected officials carefully explain, is part of the free-market system that we’ve lived by, now, for 222 years. It is, after all, the American way.

The problem is that such an approach includes absolutely no incentive for large, publicly traded corporations to create a single, new job--not one.

In fact, over the twelve-month period ending November 1, 2009, the 500 largest U.S. companies laid off 630,118 persons, including, in just the past three months, 8900 at Johnson and Johnson, 5,376 at Time Warner, 13,750 at Alcoa, 10,250 at Sprint/Nextel, 52,175 at Citigroup and 8,308 at Verizon.

Top executives at large corporations such as those get hired, promoted and handsomely paid for generating revenue, for creating ever-larger profit margins for their company’s products and services, and for doing what’s referred to as “enhancing share holder value," i.e., creating more wealth for the company’s investors. There’s absolutely nothing in the job description for most CEO’s that requires, or even, encourages them, or their companies, to create employment.

They also know that, under the current U.S. business model, the quickest way to reduce expenses, and increase margin, is to lay off thousands of people, and so they do. If they can improve their company's profits and create more wealth for their investors by having their company’s work done in places such as Indonesia, China, Thailand or Costa Rica, they do so-- in a “New York minute.” In fact, that’s precisely what they’ve been doing, and the major reason for job losses in our country.

Wage levels in the United States, according to a recent report by the World Bank, stand at $37,500. At the same time, wages in China are at $4990; in Indonesia, at $3210; in Thailand, at $7450; in Costa Rica, at $9040; in Sierra Leone, at $530, and in the Congo, at $640. It’s pretty easy to see why, when given the choice, under the current business model, our largest corporations continue to ship jobs over seas, despite all of the recent political rhetoric to the contrary.

The major source of net job creation in the United States over the past 25 years has been micro and small businesses. Those are the companies that will hire local people, if and when they do get a new contract. But, in this economy, their contracts, too, have been shipped overseas.

If we don't really address this problem, we will not have more farm workers, here; more call-center workers here; more cars, planes, DVD players, flat screen TV’s or laptop computers built here. The current crisis is not, in any way, as the tv pundits are fond of saying, just like the Great Depression, when our businesses relied almost exclusively on U.S. workers. It's worse. The economy is, simply, not going to "come back," of its own accord. This is not one in a series of normal business cycles, this is a "sea change," and if we don't take pro-active steps to fix it, the U.S. may very well become the next Portugal, the next Belgium, the next Roman Empire.

If you think I’m kidding, just go out or look online – right now – and see how many U.S.-made, flat-screen TV’s or laptop computers you can find. Or better yet, walk down the aisle at your neighborhood Wal Mart and see for yourself if it’s not true that 80 percent of every product on all of those shelves is made in China.

Years ago, products sold in U.S. stores were made largely in the U.S. Years ago, food sold in U.S. supermarkets was grown largely in the U.S. … not now. As compared to just a few generations ago when 50 percent of Americans worked on farms, today, less than two percent do.

If this is all starting to get a little too “global,” let’s break it down to a local, neighborhood level. Chances are you have heard me and others talk over the years about the need to “buy black,” if we wanted to create jobs at black-owned retailers and their suppliers.

Some people, not black people yet, unfortunately, are really starting to understand how that's supposed to work. For example, I was passing through Haddonfield, New Jersey, over the past two weeks, and saw that most of the town’s shops had little posters in their windows, with a close-up head shot of Santa Claus wearing a red, white, and blue "Uncle Sam-type" top hat. Under the picture were the words: “Buy Local.”

Haddonfield "gets it."

In the same way, over the past six or seven years, we have proposed to each of the last two Philadelphia mayors, and to each of the last two presidents of the Greater Philadelphia Chamber of Commerce, that the City, the 100 largest local corporations, and the entire five-county southeast Pennsylvania area, launch a program to begin to purchase at least 20 percent more of the goods and services they buy annually from local businesses – including a fair representation of black and minority businesses.

The annual purchases by these companies constitute billions of dollars. Bringing back just 20 percent of that amount from companies in California, Ohio, New York and India for contracts with small businesses and micro businesses, here, would definitely create new jobs.

“No skin off the companies' backs,” no significant changes in the amounts they spend overall, just a conscious plan to spend more of it locally and to include, this time, small and minority businesses.

If we’re as serious about creating new jobs in Philadelphia, as our elected officials have recently been saying we are, then we will certainly need to change our individual and business purchasing patterns, in programs such as that.

This year, let’s actually try to do something different to achieve local, small and minority job creation in the Philadelphia area---even if the federal government is, so far, still slow on the uptake.

It would be a significantly positive step for local job creation to see Mayor Nutter and the members of City Council join forces with the Greater Philadelphia Chamber and with the Black, Hispanic and Asian Chambers to get that ball rolling.

In the midst of the worst job market and economy in recent memory, just talking, once again, about jobs, in 2010, will be absolute insanity on our parts.

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Celebrating Bill and Ted, Condoning Throwback Racism

You know what 2009 is? Among other things, it’s the 20th anniversary of a very silly, but funny, movie called “Bill and Ted’s Excellent Adventure.”

You remember "Bill and Ted," don’t you? Don’t act like you didn’t see it…

That was the movie where the main characters, Bill S. Preston and Theodore “Ted” Logan, two high school students, who happened to be of European descent, began to have difficulty understanding the content in their history classes. The course, interestingly, was taught by old-school, black actor and former NFL star Bernie Casey.

The plot was that Bill and Ted ran into a guy named Rufus, played by comedian George Carlin, who promised to help the two boys to truly understand history by taking them back into time, through his phone booth/time machine device.

In the movie, the boys do actually wind up being transported back into time, where they meet Napoleon, Beethoven, Billy the Kid and Socrates, among others, each of whom help them to gain historical perspective and a "hands-on" command of their classroom subject matter.

Did I hear you say, “so what?” Well let me connect the dots for you….

More and more, over the summer months, here, in Philadelphia, I’ve been thinking that Rufus, on the 20th anniversary of the film, must have “snuck” into Philadelphia, slipped me into a phone booth and transported me back into time.

More and more, with regard to race relations, here in the City of Brotherly Love, it feels like I’ve been transported back into the 1950’s, or the 1930’s, or, even, the 1860’s.

It’s just like the movie. Twenty years later, it’s "Bill and Ted" all over again, except that, this time, it’s not funny.

What else but a time machine would allow us to explain how blacks in this city have reverted to a pre-Civil Rights acceptance of racial indignities? How else to explain the deathly, cowardly silence that has broken out across the black community as the City’s black children are banned from a swimming club in a predominantly white community because the club's managers believed the kids might negatively impact the pool’s “complexion,” as occurred in July, at the Valley Swim Club.

How else do you explain having the ongoing situation that’s been in place at the City-owned transfer station wherein black employees have been restricted from using “white-only” water fountains and “white-only rest rooms?” How else to even explain why some of those same, disrespected black men allowed the Philadelphia Daily News to take a front page photo of them, holding up a copy of John Hope Franklin and Loren Schweninger's book, "Runaway Slaves." Was that additional, visual indignity even necessary?

Where else but in a time-travel sequence would a noose be hung in a Philadelphia hospital by a black employee’s white co-worker? Where else would the case, in the resulting legal action, be heard by an all-white jury, in a city whose population is only 39 percent white? Where else, but in a historical flashback, would that same jury find the white perpetrator innocent and dismiss his actions as merely a poor "joke?"

And, how about that announcement in early August, from District Attorney Lynne Abraham? That couldn’t have happened in 2009, could it?

I’m talking about the one that included the Grand Jury report from that savage, brutal, way-out-of-control, beating and stomping of three innocent black men by 15 or more Philadelphia policemen, back on May 5, 2008. That incident was videotaped by FOX 29, made its way onto the Internet and was eventually seen by people all over the world, but the Grand Jury found that there was absolutely no evidence of police misconduct or excessive force. In fact, the Grand Jury report included the following: "We found that the design of the force applied by the police was helpful, rather than hurtful." The report went on to say that "The kinds of blows, in other words, were aimed not to inflict injury, but to facilitate quick and safe arrest." The District Attorney, herself, added, during the press announcement: "The video, in fact, did not speak for itself...A picture is just a picture."

By the way, the Grand Jury report was released about a month after a Common Pleas Court jury acquitted the three young, black men of the "attempted murder" charges brought by the arresting officers.

Seriously, it’s not just me, is it? The entire City of Philadelphia-- all 1.4 million of us-- must have also been stuffed into Bill and Ted’s phone booth. Maybe that slick, old Rufus decided to send us all back to that other Philadelphia-- Philadelphia, Mississippi-- during the “good old days” of Jim Crow segregation. That would explain it, wouldn't it?

There is absolutely no way that those kinds of things could still be happening today, in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania; not in 2009.

Is there?

I really do want to believe that if any of those things really were happening today, that not only black people but, also, whites, Hispanics and Asians of good conscience, would be up in arms.

But okay, let’s assume that we have all gone back in time and that we have re-lived the atrocities of blatant, racist behavior, segregated public facilities, black-focused police abuse and all-white, totally biased juries.

The question, now, boys and girls, is “What have we learned from this experience?”

So far, judging by the lack of a consistent, institutional, government or community-based response or outcry, it seems that we haven’t learned a damned thing.

I believe it was Spanish poet/philosopher George Santayana, who said, “Those who cannot learn from history are doomed to repeat it.”

George Santayana was dead right.

Given the increasing incidents of hate crimes here and across the country, it appears that we can reasonably expect to see a growing trend of this kind of behavior, especially if we continue to respond, locally and nationally, as we have.

It seems to me, regrettably, that black Philadelphians would rather accept the prospect of continuing malicious and disrespectful treatment than to stand up and demand the respect that we’ve earned, over the years, in this city and, in this country, over the past 390 years.

As dumb as they both were, even Bill and Ted would have figured out, by now, that it was time for the two of them to adopt a more effective strategy.

What’s wrong with us?



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New Black Female Leadership Making A Difference

When we talk about courageous, effective and visionary African-American leadership--nationally or locally – the same names, regrettably, always come up. At the national level, we trot out Malcolm X, Martin Luther King, Jesse Jackson, Al Sharpton, Louis Farrakhan, and so on, and so on, and so on.

Even when the recent incident between the Cambridge, Massachusetts police department and Harvard University professor Henry Louis Gates, Jr. came to light, most black folks had to go all the way back to the early 60’s and Malcolm X to come up with a quote by a black leader that appropriately described the situation.

In Philadelphia, no list of outspoken, effective black leaders is ever complete unless it includes names like Cecil B. Moore, David P. Richardson, Sam Evans, Hardy Williams, Wilson Goode, Sr. and Charlie Bowser.

Notwithstanding contributions to black advancement made by black female “giants” at the national level, people such as Sojourner Truth, Harriett Tubman, Rosa Parks, or our own local, female “giant,” the late C. Delores Tucker, it just seems that we don’t hear much about outspoken, black female community leadership, anymore – not in the media, not at the gym, not in the barber shop or in the beauty parlor.

Black women have certainly made great strides in business and in the professions, locally and nationally, over the past 50 years or so.

For example, no black man in America has more money, or more assets of any kind than Oprah Winfrey. Name the African-American man who cuts a higher profile in media property ownership, in this post-black-owned-BET era, than Radio One’s Cathy Hughes. And, locally, how do you ignore what Evelyn Smalls is doing in her role as President/CEO of black-owned United Bank?

But where have the black women gone who used to “speak truth to power,” in a clear, urgent and persuasive way, here in this city?

What happened to the black, female thought leaders, who caused us to understand “when enough really was enough," who directed the plan that led to real improvements in our community, whether the “entrenched powerful” – black or white – liked it or not.

I don’t worry about that issue as much, anymore, though, not since the recent emergence of two of my new heroes--strong, capable, black women at the top of their professions, who are not intimidated, at all, about speaking the truth or acting upon it.

I’m talking, of course, about School Superintendent Dr. Arlene Ackerman and Guardian Civic League President Rochelle Bilal.

I begin with this premise:Simply having the title of president, chairman, superintendent, executive director, CEO, state representative, councilperson, state senator, mayor or, even, Governor, does not automatically make the incumbent a leader.

Too often, the person in the seat is simply a “manager,” rather than a “leader.” It's not necessarily within a manager’s authority to make fundamental changes in an organization or system. A manager is a caretaker, an administrator, a person who is compensated to achieve precisely what the owners, or true leaders, of an institution, business, or bureaucracy want them to achieve. A leader, on the other hand, is a person who is committed to changing the "status quo." And, quite frankly, there are few places on earth that need a decisive break with the “status quo” more than black communities across this country.


To remind ourselves of just how true “leaders” function, let’s start with Dr. Ackerman.

The Superintendent, whom I thought, early on, was entirely too “laid back” to jump in and actively lead the "good fight" on behalf of Philadelphia’s long-suffering public school children, has quickly proved me absolutely wrong.

Working with the School Reform Commission, and its new chairman, Robert Archie, Ackerman, in a recent agreement resolved in Pennsylvania Commonwealth Court, brought closure to a 39-year-long desegregation case that had effectively allowed the district to “manage” a system wherein 85 of its lowest-performing schools had student bodies that were at least 90 percent comprised of black and minority children. The new agreement should produce substantive changes in the way that black and minority students are educated in the school district.

In her testimony, before Commonwealth Court Judge Doris A. Smith-Ribner, Ackerman said that, immediately upon assuming her new role a year ago, she realized that the School District of Philadelphia suffered from “glaring racial disparities.”

Those kinds of forthright and accurate assessments have not won Dr. Ackerman many friends among members of a large segment of public school teachers and principals, who have survived, prospered and received regularly scheduled promotions, even while the district has "enjoyed" a 49 percent graduation rate.

In addition, Dr. Ackerman has not been reluctant to strongly point out that the district’s student body is 68 percent African-American, while its teacher population is 70 percent white. There's certainly nothing inherently wrong with competent white teachers, but teachers also have to be culturally sensitive role models for their students, and having just 24 percent of the district's teachers African-American, makes that extraordinarily difficult. Unlike her predecessors, who also knew that the problem existed, Ackerman won SRC approval to recruit 50, new, qualified, black teachers into the district for the 2010 academic year.

She has also spoken emphatically about the need to tie principals' job security and compensation to the academic achievement of students in their schools…a touchy subject, one that “changes the status quo” for the teachers' union and for school principals, but something a leader, such as Ackerman, will do, after clearly identifying the need for a different and better approach.

Then, there’s my other hero, Rochelle Bilal.

In conversations, recently, with people who have been close to the Philadelphia Police Department, I was advised that the issue of the racially abusive, sexist web site, DomeLights.com, maintained by an active, Philadelphia police sergeant, Fred McQuiggan (Mc Q), has been around for a long time, at least as long as the year 2000, when the site was first posted. My friend told me that, since the site was not a new issue and had always been abusive to black officers and to the black community, in general, it really wasn't necessary for Ms. Bilal to make such a big deal about it, at this late date.

Sometimes, I guess, people don’t fully understand that they, too, have the power to change things that have always offended them.

Ms. Bilal and the Guardian Civic League have, in short order, taken steps to shut down DomeLights.com, once and for all. She led the organization in filing a lawsuit against the police department, the web site and McQuiggan. Three weeks ago, the Philadelphia Police Department restricted access to the site on its computers. Shortly thereafter, access was blocked to all Philadelphia-based computers, and the formerly belligerent and uncooperative McQuiggan, having been targeted by the law suit, took the reluctant step of restricting access only to registered users and decided not to accept any new members. Next comes an August hearing before a federal judge.

As a direct consequence of her leadership on this issue and the vile threats made against her on Domelights, Bilal now has a contingent of uniformed police officers who guard her, as she moves around the City. Doesn’t seem to faze her one bit.

Arlene Ackerman and Rochelle Bilal – two great ladies and two real leaders in the ongoing struggle for professional, economic, and social equity in our city. If you get a minute, let them know how much you appreciate their leadership and their courage. You’ve got e-mail, don’t you? Please, use it..

Hey, I no longer worry about the lack of black, female leadership in our city. I do, however, have a great deal of continuing concern about when the next group of black, male leaders--not administrators--will show up.

I guess we’ll have to wait and see.
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The PEW Report: Time for the Whole Philadelphia Story

I just read a recent publication of the PEW Charitable Trust’s Philadelphia Research Initiative, the report that calls itself, quite immodestly: “Philadelphia 2009, State of the City.” Lots of numbers, a bunch of charts and graphs, and, not unpredictably, an embarrassingly limited focus on the City’s largest population segment – African Americans – other than in the sections on “youth murder rates” and “high school drop-out rates.”

Here’s a news flash for busy people: There’s virtually no new information in the Report’s 54 pages, so, whatever you do, don’t "break your neck" going out to download a copy or make any special effort to get a printed version.

It’s not that there aren’t any interesting facts about the City buried in the report, it’s just that those facts are presented in the same, tired way they’ve always been presented by local, mainstream, suburban-oriented analysts. If you have the time to dig deeply into the data and if you don't get distracted by the themes in the press release, it is possible to find some useful bits of information--but, it's hard.

For example, if you didn’t know any better, even after you’ve read the entire contents of the document, you still would have almost no clue as to the true, comprehensive role played by blacks in the City’s overall social and economic infrastructure. You also wouldn't have a full appreciation of just how essential the historic lack of broad, economic access, for blacks and other minority City residents, has been to the creation of Philadelphia’s current, challenging economic, social and healthcare environment.

Yeah, black folks are predictably included in the “crime” and “lack of education” sections of the document, but there are no data on the number of blacks (the greatest percentage of the City’s population, at 43 percent, as compared to 39 percent for whites, 10 percent for Hispanics, and 5 percent for Asians) who have moved into the professions, who have started businesses, who have created arts organizations, who have graduated from colleges, or who have purchased (or built) homes in the City, over the report period.

What screams out at me as I read through the report is that the authors have absolutely failed to "connect the economic dots" in what they hope will be a benchmark document for measuring Philadelphia’s future progress. By inadvertently, or purposely, leaving blacks out of any of the report's positive or “upside” economic data, and by offering virtually no analysis of the lingering, “causal” issues that have brought us to our current, precarious state, the Philadelphia Research Initiative simply continues the stereotype that Philadelphia’s African-American community is no more than an uneducated, criminally inclined monolith, and a “drag” on the City’s progress.

It reminds me, once again, of the quote from the great African-American poet Jon Kasandra, who famously said: “All poor people ain’t black, and all black people ain’t poor.” Unfortunately, you wouldn’t know that by reading the PEW report.

Maybe we shouldn’t be surprised by the report’s perspective on the City’s residents, given that PEW’s Philadelphia Research Initiative could just as easily be named the “Philadelphia Inquirer Alumni Chapter.” After all, the former Inquirer editorial page deputy editor, Don Kimelman, is the managing director of the project. The former Inquirer reporter/columnist, Larry Eichel, is the project director and, now, we find, another former Inquirer columnist, Tom Ferrick Jr., has served as principal author and researcher for this State Report.

Not bad or malicious people, but they are people who, over many years, developed the habit of talking about Philadelphia and its residents in a certain “arms-length-to-the-black community way," and they all seem to be having a tough time breaking that habit, now that they have all moved into the “research business."

Hey, don’t get me wrong, if you like the Inquirer, whose readership, by design, has always been overwhelmingly comprised of people who lived outside the City and who were not predominantly African-American, then you’ll love the work being done by the Philadelphia Research Initiative.

For my taste, I strongly believe that PEW's, new team is capable of doing better. This ain’t it.

But, since the report does deal with crime as an issue, let’s get into it: Just as was the Inquirer’s style when it did cover “city stories,” the State Report, in its scarce mentions of blacks, at all, does it primarily within the context of crime statistics, as compared to data that might reveal an ongoing need for greater economic access, greater job preparedness and contracting opportunities for the City’s largest population segment.

While the researchers were on the subject, however, they did happen to disclose, in the sections of the report that they apparently didn't believe deserved to be "headlined," that the "major crime" rate in Philadelphia actually decreased by 15 percent during the eight years of the Street administration. In fact, when John Street became mayor in January 2000, 98,015 major crimes had been committed in the City, over a twelve-month period. By 2001, that number had dropped to 93,889 and, by 2007, the "major crime" number had dropped to 82,987 (a total reduction of 15,028). By comparison, after its first year of operation, the report's numbers show, the Nutter administration produced a reduction of 1,391 "major crimes."

The Philadelphia major daily newspapers never wrote much about "major crime" rate decreases while Street was mayor and Sylvester Johnson was police chief.

At the same time, the City’s homicide rate actually dropped from an average of 396 per year, during Ed Rendell’s eight years in the Mayor’s Office, to 345 per year over the eight John Street years. In other words, some 408 more homicides occurred under Ed Rendell than under John Street. Curiously, we never seemed to get that impression from the news coverage.

In fact, the City’s policeman-per-10,000 resident ratio was higher under Street (at 45.8) than it is under Nutter. And, Nutter’s police presence numbers are tied for second–highest (at 45.3) with Mayor Frank Rizzo’s in 1975. You wouldn’t know that, either, from a review of the PEW press release.

Here’s another thing that worries me about the report: The PEW press release took great pains to point out that Philadelphia public school test scores have risen, recently, “from miserable to poor.” Not included in the release, but buried back on page 28 of the report, was the fact that Philadelphia’s average expenditure per public school student in, 2006, stood at half the $17,421 per student in Boston public schools and less, also, than the average amount spent on public school students in such places as Washington DC, Pittsburgh, Cleveland, Baltimore, Chicago and Detroit.

It’s clear that our kids are still getting the "short end of the stick" when it comes to school funding.

It’s also interesting to note that, in the report, itself, predominantly black neighborhoods, where 70 percent of Philadelphia’s public school students live, are dramatically overrepresented among neighborhoods with household incomes less than $30,000. In fact, on the list of ten neighborhoods with the highest percentage of families earning less than $30,000, six were North Philadelphia communities. In those neighborhoods, as many as 76 percent of the households earn less than $30,000.

All in all, it would seem that a complete “State Report” would also have included a treatment of not only which neighborhoods have wealth, but also, how that wealth is acquired, in the first place, and why other City neighborhoods have not enjoyed the same access to opportunity.

Unless we eventually begin to track why businesses owned by African Americans in Philadelphia still only generate less than one percent of the City’s private and public revenues, we will never be able to break the cycle of this kind of depressing data collection that PEW and others have done consistently, with virtually no change, for at least the past 30 years.

I don’t know about you, but I believe we may very well have enough data now. What’s needed next is a plan to finally change the things that cause these horrible conditions.



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Poll Results Should Be A Call To Improve Philly Mayor's Black Support

If you haven’t already gotten yourself a copy of the recent survey results from the PEW Charitable Trust’s Philadelphia Research Initiative, you should run right out and get one, or download a copy from the Internet, right now.

That’s the report whose press release carried the headline: “Mayor Nutter Gets High Marks from Residents.” It goes on to say that Philadelphians are “More optimistic about their city than they have been for some time.“

That’s the survey that informed us on Thursday that Mayor Nutter received his highest approval rating from “whites, people making more than $100,000 and college graduates.”

My problem with the survey is that if Michael Nutter reads the report too quickly, he may get lulled to sleep and miss the most important point that should be drawn from the data, i.e., that the Mayor’s biggest base of support now resides among the people who constitute the smallest percentage of the city’s overall population.

If he just skims the headlines, he may very well miss the part of the story that says that he’s receiving his “lowest ratings,” "...from African Americans, from people making less than $30,000 a year, and from those who are not college graduates."

People with household incomes of $100,000+ think the Mayor’s doing a good job? That’s great, but that constitutes just 60,000 people out of 1.4 million Philadelphians, according to most recent data. In fact, the median household income in Philadelphia is $30,892. Only 15 percent of those with $100,000+ household incomes rated the mayor "unfavorable," as compared to the 24 percent and 25 percent "unfavorable" ratings he received from those in lower income classifications. Maybe people who have $100,000+ household incomes generally don't concern themselves as much about who the mayor is or what the mayor is up to.Maybe they think they can handle their own issues.

The Mayor has strong support among college graduates? That’s wonderful, except that college grads represent just 17.9 percent of our city’s population, leaving 82 percent of the population outside of that pro-Nutter category. The survey says that whites are relatively big Nutter supporters? That’s fine, except that non-Hispanic whites constitute just 39 percent of the city’s population, as compared to the 61 percent represented by blacks, Hispanics and Asians.

I say all of that to say that the Mayor probably shouldn’t see the PEW report as a reason to pop corks in celebration, just yet. No, he should look past the flowery language at the top of the press release and the related news reports, dig down into the numbers, and recognize that he has a great deal of work ahead of him to convince the City’s largest population segments--blacks, Hispanics, and Asians, collectively; people who are not college grads, blue collar workers and low-to-moderate income and poverty -evel households, that he wants to be their mayor, too.

So far, it seems they haven’t been getting that message.

Don’t just take my word for it, listen to Larry Eichel, long-time Inquirer journalist and now the Philadelphia Research Initiative’s executive director, who, in our conversation, agreed that: “It’s a fair reading of the poll to say that the Mayor is more popular among Philadelphians who comprise the smallest segments of the population.”

The fact is that despite Friday’s Inquirer story that said that Nutter received an “A” or “B” grade from 57 percent of whites, but from just 37 percent of blacks, was “consistent with the sort of support that Nutter had when he was elected." Here, we and the Mayor should both recall that he received significant Primary Election support from black voters (and, after all, in the last mayor’s race the Primary was the real election; the general was a foregone conclusion).

Notwithstanding the ongoing efforts by mainstream media to give the impression that white voters carried Nutter into the Mayor’s office and that blacks did not, the reality is that Nutter won 39 of the City’s 66 wards and, of those, 30 were predominantly black wards. By comparison, Nutter won just 8of the City’s 27 predominantly white wards (29.6 percent) and also lost the City’s two predominantly Hispanic wards to Tom Knox. Indeed, despite the Mayor having received support in upscale white wards in Center City and Chestnut Hill, Tom Knox and Bob Brady took virtually every other white ward.

In the City’s 27 predominantly white wards, the candidate with the highest vote tally was Tom Knox (35.2 percent) followed by Nutter (34.2 percent) and Brady (with 23.2 percent). Significantly, had the election been decided only by what white voters did on Election Day, Michael Nutter would have lost. Period.

In fact, Mayor Mike won each of the “West Philadelphia" wards, all four of the wards that comprise "Southwest, Grays Ferry, and Point Breeze," 8 out of 10 wards that constitute "North Philadelphia," and all five black-dominated wards in what the Committee of 70 describes in its neighborhood political profile as "Mt. Airy, Germantown and Logan."

Despite all of that, I clearly remember when the post-election campaign began to convince the new mayor that he should feel primarily beholden only to white voters for his victory.

That was the Sunday after Election Day, in an Inquirer editorial that congratulated the Mayor and “explained" to him and to all of us, that the true winners of the Mayor’s election, beyond Michael Nutter himself, were: the “New Philadelphians who make 'well over the City’s median income;' “young professionals or players in the creative community;” “affluent empty-nesters moving into Center City to savor the City’s cultural scene,” "Latino voters, the William Penn foundation, and the working press.”

The editorial, if you’ll recall, then went on to tell us who the “losers” were. They included, in the Inquirer’s opinion, the Democratic Machine, John Dougherty, Jannie Blackwell, Fattah’s Street Machine, Latinos (again), and the “race card,” because it “didn’t get played much,” and in Philadelphia, that’s big news."

Amazingly, black people, who comprise 45 percent of the City’s population and 61 percent of the City’s registered Democratic voters, were not mentioned in the editorial, at all. It was as if we, somehow, no longer existed, politically.

In light of the actual voting results, that was an omission that was, at least, fundamentally misleading and which began, in a very real way, the “myth” that Michael Nutter had no reason to be accountable to black voters.

Maybe he believed it. Maybe black voters believed it.

It shouldn’t have happened, in any event. The reality is that we have now reached the point where it appears that we have an African-American mayor and an African-American voting base, the largest in this overwhelmingly Democratic city, that have parted ways with one another in a significant way, if the survey is to be believed. For example, according to Pew, the mayor receives his lowest support, on a neighborhood basis, from West Philadelphia and North Philadelphia, and his highest support levels from South Philadelphia and the Great Northeast

I hope Michael Nutter pays careful attention to all of this. He's still got time to be “Mayor of all the People,” including wealthy and not-so-wealthy, including highly educated and lesser-educated, including blacks, whites, Hispanics, and Asians.

If the Mayor and the black community can get that done, it will be good for the Mayor, it will be good for the black community, and it will certainly be good for the viability of the City, as a whole. While we're on the subject, standing up for the highly respected Commissioner Ayers was a very good thing to do.

Uh-h-h, to coin a phrase: “Yes we can!”


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It's Time for Philadelphians to Step Up For Councilman Goode

You know, I've been watching this whole "Wilson Goode, Jr. thing" very closely, as many as you have and, in my opinion, it's way past the time for that issue to be over; I mean, really over, as in back to the Councilman and the media focusing on critically needed, constituent-based legislation.

Let me say for the record, that I believe that W. Wilson Goode, Jr. is one of those rare, African-American elected officials who has figured out how to command respect and make critical input across the entire legislative agenda without sacrificing, one bit, his commitment to speak for, and create legislation to serve, the needs of historically underserved black voters. He has, arguably, been the most productive City Council member, over the past eight years, on a wide number of mostly economic issues. Maybe that's why the Councilman always ranks among the highest vote-getters, overall, in Councilmanic elections and, certainly, why he has consistently been able to attract the greatest number of African-American votes among all City Council candidates.

All of that being said, in June, Jeff Cole, the local Fox-TV affiliate's investigative reporter, started out to do a story about whether Latrice Bryant, chief legislative assistant for Councilman Goode, had been improperly signing her time sheets in Goode's City Council office. When the reporter, who is apparently a credible journalist, visited City Council chambers in late September to ask Bryant questions, in person, she refused to be interviewed and was followed by him in City Hall. Recognizing that his employee was not comfortable being followed by the reporter, and a cameraman, Councilman Goode stepped in and said to Cole: "Don't you ever disrespect a black woman like that again."

For many black men and women across the city, I'm sure, the Councilman's action was seen as chivalrous and the right thing to do. I have absolutely no doubt that in barbershops all over the City, black men were assuring each other that, if THEY had been the Councilman and that same thing had happened to one of THEIR employees, they would have said and done the same thing. To Fox29 and to most of the members of the local journalism community, however, Goode's statement was akin to waving a red cape in the face of an already enraged bull. It was probably seen as a challenge to their collective First Amendment rights and they, as a group, and as a local profession, became "righteously indignant."

The whole issue moved quickly to another level, and Fox was able to score an even bigger and more sensational story, when Ms. Bryant decided, following the incident, to hold up the two, now-infamous signs in Council Chambers, alleging racist intent by Cole and by the t.v. station.

At that point, all hell had officially broken loose.

Local print outlets, by now in a self-righteous frenzy, all weighed in with their own coverage. In short order, editorial pages, with their opinion pieces, op-ed columns and political cartoons, joined the fray. In the following weeks, other columnists -- black and white -- jumped in to make it clear that there was complete media solidarity on this issue. One reporter even went so far as to lodge an official complaint with the City's Human Relations Commission.

In most of the stories, one of the biggest issues seemed to be reporters' almost universal unwillingness to accept that $90,000 might be reasonable compensation for Ms. Bryant, a relatively young black woman in a City Council office.

Subsequently, the TV station was able to obtain, apparently from a former friend of the Councilman, what were presented as "suggestive" photos of him and Ms. Bryant, vacationing in Jamaica. As far as I know, vacations with friends, who share professional, business or political offices, are not prohibited by law in Philadelphia. And if it is done, it's not really any of our business, even if we are taxpayers. These were also dated photos and, certainly, constituted “old news,”at best. But there they were, offered up as further proof that Wilson Goode Jr. and Latrice Bryant had done, and were doing, something terribly wrong and that they "had to go."

I had spoken a few times to the Councilman, over this period, to ask him if I could be helpful in any way in the issue. He seemed to believe, however, that Philadelphians, in their infinite wisdom and fairness, would eventually recognize that he had done nothing wrong, that his chief legislative assistant had apologized for her transgressions, that he had corrected the time sheet procedures in his office, and that city residents and local media outlets would balance this one, ill-advised incident against an entire career of good work, and the controversy would be quickly ended.

Earlier this week, however, I received a call from a friend of mine -- a guy named Tom Massaro, who served as City Housing Director under Mayor Bill Green. Massaro, who grew up in public housing in Newark, New Jersey, and I, who grew up in public housing in Philadelphia, have almost always been on the same side of public issues. I'd be the first to admit, though, that in most of those issues, Tom does a great deal more "heavy lifting" inside City Hall, sharing his years of experience with elected officials who seek it and need it.

Tom, by the way, does all of this while fighting his own long-running personal health challenges. But, that's another story.

In any event, Tom said that the "Wilson Goode thing" had definitely not been put to rest, that some of his long-running associates had not spoken to him since the Fox-TV stories broke, that even some of his Council colleagues have not called, and have been skittish, lately, about joining him in important legislative initiatives, since the "negative stories" have surfaced.

None of that is very good for our City.

As part of a larger, national, economic crisis, Philadelphia’s Mayor's Office is now in the process of adjusting the City's five-year budget projection to reflect what now looks to be an $850 million deficit. That implies that there will be city layoffs, program cuts, and service reductions. I believe these are all issues wherein W. Wilson Goode, Jr. can bring value to our city.

Hey, what's news is news, and I'm certainly not one who is opposed to valid news coverage. I am, at the same time, very much opposed to frivolous news coverage, “old news,” or unnecessarily damaging, "vendetta" news coverage, when there are so many more important issues that really deserve coverage and political attention.

If you agree that we need to get over this whole "Wilson Goode thing" and get back to business, if you believe that the Councilman has done creditable work in City Council, to date, and that he still has much to offer in the way of legislative expertise to our city, send him a letter, a fax, an e-mail or give him a call to let him know that. I think he'd certainly appreciate it.

Also take a few minutes to send similar expressions of support for Councilman Goode to local media outlets, print and broadcast. The purpose would not be to be argumentative or contentious, but to let them know, in no uncertain terms, that you do support the Councilman and all that he has done for this City over a long career of public service. In your correspondence, encourage both the Councilman and the TV station to "get over" this minor problem, and to get back to work on the bigger issues, without bearing grudges on either side. You may be surprised at just how much good that will do. Neither the Councilman nor the tv station can survive without your support.

Oh, and while you're at it, take some time to say a silent prayer that Tom Massaro will beat back his lingering health problems. He also needs our support, even though, like Wilson Goode, he'd never publicly admit it.



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