When cinephile and Germantown resident Stephanye R. Watts entered the world of independent cinema, she discovered a troubling pattern. “I started to notice there were no other Black people in the theater, unless they were like 60-plus,” Watts says. “Black millennials are on the internet, talking about wanting to see more Black films, and …
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The Philadelphia Energy Authority (PEA) manages green energy projects for the City and raises the money to make investments that will save electricity in the long run. The PEA is celebrating its first 10 years and looking forward to the next energy wins. Katie Bartolotta, the PEA’s vice president of policy and strategic partnerships, spoke
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Along the sandy banks of the New Jersey Pine Barrens’ meandering streams, a small grasslike plant with clusters of white, star-shaped flowers bloomed unnoticed for millennia until botanist and Temple University professor Sasha Eisenman made a surprising discovery. This rare and endangered plant, previously unknown to science, is found nowhere else in the world but
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Organizers with Philly Thrive and People’s Tech Project aren’t waiting for an artificial intelligence data center in the Bellwether District to be announced. In the deep freeze of February, the Point Breeze environmental justice advocacy group took to the sidewalks of Grays Ferry, knocking on 1,876 doors and speaking with nearly 500 people. The advocates
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Iresha Picot wasn’t sure how many women would show up. It was the fifth day in a brutal stretch of summer heat, with Fourth of July fireworks having wrapped up just hours earlier. But by 10 a.m., 26 women had gathered at the Indego station at 33rd and Diamond streets for what has become their
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When a fellow volunteer at the Crossroads Kitchen Project announced that she didn’t like rice, Philipa Laster sensed a challenge. Laster, a native of Nigeria, grew up eating rice every day. She began thinking about a dish that would change her colleague’s mind. Masa cakes, a traditional northern Nigerian food that Laster’s mother made weekly,
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Along the wide and scenic Susquehanna River near Harrisburg, Microsoft is reviving the nuclear power plant Three Mile Island. Infamous for the 1979 partial meltdown of one of its two reactors, it has been idle since 2019. But last year, Microsoft announced a deal with plant owner Constellation Energy to bring the nuclear facility’s remaining
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By the Philadelphia Climate Justice Collective (Mantua Civic Association, SEAMAAC, Overbrook Environmental Education Center, Esperanza, and The Environmental Collaboratory at Drexel University) Philadelphia is heating up — and too many of our neighbors can’t escape it. In parts of North, West and South Philadelphia, summer temperatures can soar 20 degrees higher than in greener, wealthier
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“The Weight of Time,” a Morton Contemporary Art Gallery exhibition of paintings by 10 artists serving life sentences at Montgomery County’s Phoenix prison, lays bare heartache, hope and the crushing force of hour piling upon hour. “I served 20 years with [the artists],” says Eddie Ramirez, who was formerly incarcerated at Phoenix. “We painted together
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From April 24 to April 27, Philadelphia and its adjacent counties will strive to recruit people to find as many species as possible, alongside hundreds of other cities around the world. Using the iNaturalist app as a tool, the City Nature Challenge encourages us to explore and document the biodiversity right where we live while
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