“Black Summit” Hopes to Affect City Political Races

Leaders in Philadelphia’s African-American community are organizing a Philadelphia Black Political Summit for mid-April — the first such gathering in the city in 17 years.

KYW reports on Wednesday’s announcement of the summit. Bilal Qayyum, an anti-violence leader, discussed the need for the gathering. 

“We just felt that even though we have blacks in office, we’re still leading in all the negative indicators of what they call quality of life,” he said.

Qayyum says the goal is to create an agenda to pass along to the city’s political candidates.

“The developement of center city is great, but people are not going to come here if it’s high crime,” he noted.  “People are not coming here if the education system’s not working.   People are not going to come here if there’s not jobs.  So we’re going to be addressing all of those issues in the summit.”

The summit will be April 11-12 at Dobbins High School.