At the Pulaski Zeralda Community Garden in Germantown, the air is thick with the scent of green onions and okra. These vegetables grow from some of the 38 plots, including one dedicated to a local women’s center. This season alone, the garden yielded blackberries, strawberries, tomatoes, okra, peppers, corn and collards. The garden participates in
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Across the street from one of the last remaining Catholic girls’ schools in the city, the Hunting Park Community Garden sits unattended behind a padlocked fence. Where nettle and knotweed grow in abundance and raised beds sit empty, the garden waits for the return of its loyal stewards. Michael Wilcox has been involved with the
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At Spiral Q’s West Philadelphia headquarters, puppet artists cut out cardboard, shape it into bulldozers and paint it to prepare for a protest march against the 76ers’ plans for a Chinatown arena. “There’s something childlike about them,” says Jacque (who did not provide a last name), while taking a break from painting cardboard miniatures of
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After the protests sparked by the murder of George Floyd in 2020 and the racial reckoning that followed, enterprises from major corporations to independent businesses around the globe released statements of support for the protests and commitments to do better. But Weavers Way, a cooperative grocery store founded in the historically diverse neighborhood of Mount
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I was a student at King [High School] when I heard about the Men [Who Care of Germantown (MWCOG)],” says Jewel Gadson, 19. “I was a hothead. Sometimes I didn’t go to class,” says Gadson, the third oldest of 15 siblings. Gadson, like his brothers and sisters, was in and out of foster care from
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Nicole Chandler has tended Overbrook’s Morris Park for so long that, when she talks, one imagines the scent of clean earth. “The City had written the park out of its 2005 budget,” says Chandler, 53, who lives across the street from the 64-acre site. “They were … going to let it naturalize, which means let
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For residents of West Philadelphia, spring is a season for the senses. As trees and flowers break into full bloom, some of the city’s greenest neighborhoods reach their most beautiful state. The air feels fresh, the sun seems brighter than ever, and the community is rejuvenated. But there’s an unwelcome companion that also emerges at
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My boomer dad doesn’t do social media. So when he wanted to unload a decades-old desk ill-suited to his new condo, he went old school: He posted a flier on the bulletin board at MOM’s Organic Market in Bryn Mawr. “Free to a good home: pine desk in good condition.” He included the desk’s dimensions,
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Mrs. Brenda Whitfield moved to Eastwick over 40 years ago and settled in a house at the edge of the neighborhood, near the confluence of Cobbs Creek and Darby Creek. At the time she had one daughter and was expecting another. A third followed a year later. Whitfield says there were no fences to stop
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The Philly Children’s Movement (PCM), which promotes child-centered activism and social-justice campaigns, including marches, demonstrations and workshops, has further heightened social consciousness through its Radical Little Library, a free neighborhood book exchange box at 601 West Carpenter Lane, outside of the Charles W. Henry School, near the Mount Airy Weavers Way Co-op. “We stock the
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A group of 30 community gardening organizations and allies have issued a letter asking the Philadelphia Land Bank to change how it preserves properties for community gardening. At issue is the land bank’s practice of attaching a 30-year mortgage to properties that it gives to garden organizations. The “self-amortizing” mortgages are for the market rate
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