Of course, Governor Rendell’s gun showdown in Harrisburg today was bound to bring out strident Constitutionalists attempting to apply “It’s not guns, it’s crazy people!” logic to an excitable city in the throes of a murder crisis. People like former gubernatorial candidate Jim Panyard, who did God’s work this morning by offering up his conservative perspective about what’s really the cause of Killadelphia:
Traditional families are disappearing. North and West Philadelphia’s ghettos are as much poverty and alcohol soaked reservations as any tribal lands in the far west. Government schools are holding tanks and no longer provide even a basic education. Community standards no longer exist in an age of relativism. Over the last 33 years we have voluntarily aborted more than 47 million American lives, mostly the victims of “sexual mistakes.” We honor and worship what was once viewed as abhorrent behavior.
See? Even the most stringent gun laws are not going to make up for the fact that Philadelphia is a chaotic moral wasteland whose citizens are reckless Sodomites on the people-mover to hell.
But here’s the thing — if you strip out the right-wing rhetoric and thinly veiled racism, is it possible Panyard’s actually onto something? Given the state of the city, it’s tough to dismiss him entirely — and who hasn’t thought some version of his closing sentence: “All I know is the weight of a 9 mm. pistol on my hip gives me more peace-of-mind when I am strolling through the City of Brotherly Love at midnight than any political promise ever could.”
Can’t say I read the Philly-based quarterly The Next American City very much, but I came across a piece in their current issue about why some big cities — including one whose name rhymes with, ahem, Killadelphia — are seeing serious spikes in murder and violent crime.
Well, I didn’t exactly read the entire piece (mostly because it’s way long and talks more than anyone ever should about Phoenix), but here was the part I found fascinating: According to some criminologists, Philadelphians may be whacking each other like it’s going out of style because we don’t have enough immigrants:
Several criminologists are finding that cities with high legal immigration rates — including Chicago, New York, Los Angeles, and Miami — have stagnant or declining crime rates, whereas crime has increased in cities with a low legal immigration rate, such as Philadelphia, Baltimore, Milwaukee, and
Detroit.
Sherman argues that what drives immigrants to the country is hope for the future and that hope is infectious. The contagion of hope, hard work, and investing in education represents a new generation of people who are starting new enterprises or working for start-up companies … as Sherman suggests, rather than tighten immigration laws making it harder for immigrants to come into the country, high crime cities should provide incentives for immigrants to inject their skills, start-up money and work ethnic into otherwise stagnant low-income communities.
I considered calling Geno’s xenophobe Joey Vento for comment on this, but decided he was too much of a lunkhead to bother with. (Love your steaks, though, Joe.) — Tom McGrath
Evildoers beware! The initial batch of Call to Action town-watchers will be arriving in their first crime-riddled neighborhood in exactly three weeks.
Ever since the “10,000 Men Call to Action” event on October 21st, the organization has been following through with numerous orientation processes to get its community volunteer groups ready to “peacefully” attack the city’s horrific murder rate. According to Norm Bond, communications director for he CTA Movement, they’ve had close to 3,000 people volunteer for three-hour nightly shifts to be “eyes and ears” in unsafe neighborhoods.
Bond says the first deployment will target Southwest Philadelphia, with North Philadelphia next. The group is still working out some logistics, such as official CTA uniforms (jackets or armbands are still being debated), and finalizing the location of a neighborhood rec center that will serve as home base.
The big question mark, though, is what the men will actually be required to do. Bond says CTA is still “working all that out,” but he did offer that they’d be doing a lot of note-taking during their shifts and turning over their findings to the police.
One of the many obstacles the organization will have to deal with in the upcoming months are a new police commissioner and a new mayor. When asked how mayor-to-be Michael Nutter’s proposed “stop and frisk” style of policing might affect CTA’s plans, Bond wasn’t sure: “I don’t think it’ll negate it, but we’re both trying to do the same things. We’re both willing to work together.” (Read: Who knows?)
But barring any major setbacks, this kooky little plan to stop the violence is actually afoot.There are still major issues to be worked out over safety (”working on it with police”), communication (”working on it with police”) and general approach (”still feeling those things out”), but they’re plowing ahead regardless. So, gun-toting Southwest Philadelphians, you’ve been warned. If the Call to Action movement catches you, you might get written up in a notebook.
This inspired confectionary masterpiece is brought to you by the blogger “The GayPatriot,” a former Philadelphian who chooses to express outrage (or ironic disdain) for the murder epidemic in the form of baked goods:
For those of you not following news from The City of Brotherly Love, Philadelphia’s murder rate has skyrocketed in 2007 and is at an all time high. On Friday, October 19th Philadelphia’s death count due to murder hit Number 323. Thus, the cake marking the occasion for our visiting Philadelphia friends. We didn’t really celebrate, but instead derided Philadelphia Mayor John Street for his complete lack of leadership from the New Orleans-esque crime wave to economic development issues.
TGP is a pseudonym for Bruce Carroll, a North Carolina Log Cabin Republican who lived around here for a few years. Should we be flattered that he misses us or replused by his baker?
Yesterday’s “10,000 Men: A Call to Action” pep rally at Temple’s Liacouras Center was a success. We think. Most who attended say that, although just a little more than 8,000 people showed up — with numbers dwindling as the three-hour event started creeping closer to Eagles kick-off time — the takeaway appeared to be positive.
The idea is generating national attention. The execution, however, is still vague: The tactics to be employed by the volunteers pledging to give up three hours a day to patrol some of the most crime-infested neighborhoods in the city have yet to be determined. Calls to the 10,000 Men hotline were not returned, and, according to the person answering the phone, the group’s official media representative was absent. She said she would call back once she found a “working number” for that individual.
One attendee we spoke to told us that what is definitely known is that the efforts will be more Town Watch-y than Death Wish-y. While it may have appeared in the beginning that police commissioner Sylvester Johnson was deputizing citizens to start ju-jitsuing gun-toting gangsters in West Philadelphia, that’s not the case. This is to be a peacekeeping, Quaker-like approach, one striving to put more positive role models, not vigilantes, into black communities in peril. However, there still appears to be some questions about how long the movement will actually last and what will constitute its being considered a success, a failure or a dog-and-pony show adding up to a colossal waste of time.
Some highlights from yesterday’s event, from an attendee:
• “The media is the enemy” was a pervasive theme — one that was echoed by most of the organizers and by speakers Rep. Bob Brady and Rep. Chaka Fattah. It’s suspected the “media” in question in this case is the Daily News, which has published a few editorials suspicious of the program’s overall effect.
• Fattah showed up in a white T-shirt. Even though it was specifically requested that attendees wear black. Especially ones who were scheduled to speak.
• Michael Nutter showed up late. And when he spoke, he spoke briefly, and the response was tepid.
• Mayor John Street brought his A-game. The attendee said that regardless of what people think of him as a mayor, Street in preacher mode was quite effective and uplifting.
• Dick Gregory sat on stage front and center the whole time but said nothing.
• When one speaker finished his speech with “Vote for Barack Obama,” he was met with a small spattering of applause — and a few boos.
“Orientation” meetings for volunteers begin this week, with the hopes of getting patrols deployed soon after. The next question is, if this doesn’t work, then what? That’ll be Michael Nutter’s problem.
The Sylvester Johnson/Millions More Movement October 21st block party (also known as “A Call to Action: 10,000 Men”) announced yesterday has yet to attract ringing municipal leadership support. Mayor-to-be Michael Nutter tells the Daily Examiner that he’s holding off on fully commenting on the event until he learns more about it — especially the “safety of the volunteers” (translation: making sure they don’t get shot). But he said he’s in full support of the “idea” — communities taking action against the murder epidemic (85 percent of which, Nutter points out, are in predominantly black communities.)
However, the Daily News reported that, as of yesterday, Mayor John Street wasn’t fully committed either. One source close to the police department suggests this is because some of the organizers don’t want him that much involved: “My understanding is that the organizers don’t want to give him a chance to ‘adopt’ it as his. He’s notorious for that.”
Neither Mayor Street’s office nor the MMM returned phone calls seeking comment.
Police commissioner Sylvester Johnson has been (metaphorically) slaughtered for his mishandling of the police department and his seeming general apathy toward the city’s murder rate. Yesterday he offered support to a plan that, at the very least, shows slight concern. But what it doesn’t offer, again, is a real concrete solution.
Johnson’s battle cry asking for 10,000 volunteers to be “trained” to patrol city neighborhoods appears to be inviting more potential problems. (The minute the first “peacekeeper” gets shot, well, that’ll be a fun press conference.) It just seems silly to think that deploying ordinary, unarmed citizens into a battle zone won’t invite more trouble than it prevents. It’s a nice gesture, but that’s all it really is.
Johnson’s employed these tactics before — remember that whole “police chiefs pounding the pavement and driving around in squad cars idea” in early spring? That was great for the NBC10 audience. That’s what this “plan” is about, really: more half-assed headline-grabbing. A former Philadelphia Police detective recently summed up Johnson’s tenure as commissioner this way:
“Johnson is in so far over his head he needs all the help he can get. Problem is he won’t take help from any of his commanders. He’s so insecure he thinks all are out to sink him. He runs the PD by over-reacting to every single news story. He has lost the support of just about all his commanders because of this. So we have a situation where the best ideas are no longer brought up because they were always ignored. The city and the PD are sorely lacking in leadership. Johnson has always been a joke when it comes to that, but he’s gotten far worse in the past year. Don’t look for anything helpful from the PD until he’s gone.”
The fact that Mayor Street won’t openly commit to the 10,000-man plan and that mayor-to-be Michael Nutter essentially gave a lukewarm “anything that helps” quote to the Daily News about it suggests that this isn’t an idea that most of the real (or soon to be real) leaders in the city can get behind.
Stevie “S-Five” Johnson, grandson of Philadelphia Police Commissioner Sylvester Johnson, continues to promote his horrifying hip-hop career, oblivious to its undermining effects on his family and the city. Last night on FOX News’ “The Big Story With John Gibson,” S-Five explained once again why his sometimes anti-snitchin’, pro-violence lyrics shouldn’t be misconstrued by the city or his law-enforcement family.
KYW’s two top stories pretty much tell you everything you need to know about the city’s homicide crisis. First, a laudatory story talking about DA Lynne Abraham’s anti-gun task force “making a dent.” Right above it, however, is the story of the North Philadelphia teenager shot in the playground yesterday.
Of course, Governor Rendell’s gun showdown in Harrisburg today was bound to bring out strident Constitutionalists attempting to apply “It’s not guns, it’s crazy people!” logic to an excitable city in the throes of a murder crisis. People like former gubernatorial candidate Jim Panyard, who did God’s work this morning by offering up his conservative perspective about what’s really the cause of Killadelphia:
Can’t say I read the Philly-based quarterly The Next American City very much, but I came across a piece in their current issue about why some big cities — including one whose name rhymes with, ahem, Killadelphia — are seeing 
Evildoers beware! The initial batch of Call to Action town-watchers will be arriving in their first crime-riddled neighborhood in exactly three weeks.
Yesterday’s “10,000 Men: A Call to Action” pep rally at Temple’s Liacouras Center was a success. We think. Most who attended say that, although just a little more than 8,000 people showed up — with numbers dwindling as the three-hour event started creeping closer to Eagles kick-off time — the takeaway appeared to be positive.
The Sylvester Johnson/Millions More Movement October 21st block party (also known as “A Call to Action: 10,000 Men”) 
Police commissioner Sylvester Johnson has been (metaphorically) slaughtered for his mishandling of the police department and his seeming general apathy toward the city’s murder rate. Yesterday he offered support to a plan that, at the very least, shows slight concern. But what it doesn’t offer, again, is a real concrete solution. 
Stevie “S-Five” Johnson, grandson of Philadelphia Police Commissioner Sylvester Johnson, continues to promote his horrifying hip-hop career, oblivious to its undermining effects on his family and the city. Last night on FOX News’ “The Big Story With John Gibson,” S-Five explained once again why his sometimes anti-snitchin’, pro-violence lyrics shouldn’t be misconstrued by the city or his law-enforcement family.