City Limits: Community in Crises

The area in North Philadelphia stretching from Dauphin Street to Allegheny Avenue between Front Street and Germantown Avenue -- just a 15-minute drive from the University -- has achieved a tragic notoriety as a poverty-ridden drug supermarket. The area is replete with crumbling graffiti-splattered townhouses that have been taken over and turned into shooting galleries and crackhouses. Young men with guns stand on street corners openly hawking their assortment of drugs. It is a community that has nothing to look forward to -- a community ruled by poverty and drugs. "The city doesn't care," said long-time North Philadelphia resident Bernard Merriwether. As for the drug dealers, Merriwether said "they don't give a damn about human life, property or anything else." But there is another side to the area. Around the corner from a 15-year-old selling crack, grade school kids play touch football under the watchful eye of a grandparent. Next to a boarded up crackhouse, an immaculately clean red-brick townhouse stands with flower pots on the window and a heart design on the shutters. Amidst the urban nightmare is a community that is quietly trying to rebuild and stake a claim on some sort of future. Reverend Isaac Smith has been pastor of Mars Hill Baptist Church at Ninth Street and Lehigh Avenue for 21 years. "When you see a neighborhood beginning to be run down, becoming a slum, people start losing that self-confidence, that self-instinct they need to really try to pull themselves out," he said. He added that there are many area residents who are not putting up with the degradation and are fighting back, often times without aid from the city. "We need to show [people] that there is a better way," he said. "You don't have to steal for a living, you don't have to push drugs for a living." City Council member Larry McElhatton has represented the seventh district, a large part of which lies in the area, for the past ten months. He said that progress is being made, but that many results would only be seen in the long run. "We were able to renovate area playgrounds and reopen the swimming pools," he said. "These are 'band-aid' remedies whose effects are readily visible. Achieving lasting changes takes more time, because you need to get a lot of funding and that is often difficult." McElhatton added that the community has shown a readiness to work hard to rebuild. Many of the changes so far were made possible by aid from the private sector, in addition to state and federal funding. "This shows the community's willingness to help the public sector," he said. Reverend Smith emphasized the role parents and family values play in shaping the future of the area. "It's up to parents to teach children not to get into drugs," he said. "It's not just the neighborhood, it's the parents -- there have been some very good kids that developed out of this neighborhood." The kids Smith refers to are ones like Rashine Leake, 14, William Wilkerson, 15, Jose Garcia, 14, and his brothers Carlos, 10 and Richard, 11, who live on Franklin Street and face crime and drugs daily. "It's bad," said Leake, referring to life on his street. "Sometimes it can be fun, but many kids can't come outside, 'cause it's so bad out here." Several children related stories about violence and shootings, not only by the drug users, but also by the police. Wilkerson complained that an officer had pulled a gun on him and his friends. "We was coming home one night and these cops shone their lights at me and my friends," he said. "They said they was checking on a robbery and they kept us for an hour and wouldn't let me call my mother." Jose Garcia told of three drunk security guards who sped down Franklin Street, "smashing into all the parked cars." Residents came out to subdue them, he said, but when the police came, the officers showed up in riot gear and used tear gas on the crowd. And Leake remembered a boy who was shot and killed for his jacket on Eighth Street -- a block away from Leake's home. "These dudes wanted to take his jacket and he didn't want to give it to them 'cause it was a present from his brother," Leake said. "So they shot him." · It seemes that almost everyone has a story in North Philadelphia. Merriwether is a 54-year-old HIV-positive crack user. He used to have a family, he used to have a bakery shop, he used to have a barbecue place. Now it's all gone. "I wound up becoming one of them," he said. "I smoke crack, I smoke weed, I drink wine, I drink beer. It all depends on the company you're with, it's as simple as that." Merriwether said that once his life started falling apart, drugs just heightened the downward spiral. Now he doesn't care anymore. "It doesn't matter anymore," he said. "I'm 54 years old, I lost my family, I lost my business, I lost my home. What the hell do I got to lose?" · Reverend Smith's Reach-Out Program at Mars Hill Baptist Church feeds 400 people once a week, and counsels area addicts on how to cope with drugs. In addition, Smith works outside his church, trying to be a leader in the community and slow down drug dealing in the area by working with drug addicts rather than against them. "We as community leaders have been trying to bring about a better relationship with the addicts and pushers," he said. "I can walk down the street and most people will recognize me." Last year, Smith said, he helped shut down a crackhouse across the street from his church on Lehigh Avenue. A bankrupt undertaker's parlor had been turned into a safehouse by drug addicts, he said. "They'd sell drugs there, do drugs there, and hide there after going out and robbing people," Smith said. He added that he thinks police did not go in and search the place because there were lookouts and the police did not feel safe searching the house. "The community got together and boarded the place up," Smith said. "Now it's cut down on a lot of crime in the area." But Merriwether disagreed, saying that in this area, crime does not get "cut down," it just moves a few blocks away. "The cops do what they can, but it makes no difference," he said. "They just move to the next corner." He added that it does not matter how many people get locked up because "two hours later, they'll have another group of people out there dealing." Last April, The Philadelphia Inquirer ran a series of articles on the area -- which it called the "Badlands" -- indicating Indiana Street between 4th and 8th streets as the areas of greatest activity. Two weeks ago, Indiana Street was relatively quiet, with dealers approaching buyers, but no open dealing on the street. A few blocks down, however, the rectangle formed by Mascher, Front, Cambria and Somerset streets resembled an open-air market. Money and goods were openly exchanged while children played in the streets and gun-toting teens kept a look-out. · Bernard Merriwether and Isaac Smith are about the same age. Both experience life in their North Philadelphia neighborhood in different ways, but while Merriwether sees no hope, Smith believes there is a future. "North Philly has been left completely out of the picture for years and years," Smith said. "We need to rebuild it so families can feel safe. We need to work hard and make a difference for ourselves." If North Philadelphia continues its decline, in a few years it might all look like the "Badlands." Then again, a grass-roots family-based community effort by people like Smith might rebuild the area and bring about permanent change. Only time will tell what kind of future kids like 10-year-old Carlos Garcia will have. "Sometimes it's bad and I don't want to go out because I don't want to see shooting," he said. "But sometimes it's not so bad and I go with my dad and my brother to the store and everybody says 'hi' to us and smiles."