Within days of a police raid in the home he shared with his parents in Krasnodar, southern Russia, Ilia Chernov, 26, a computer programmer and system administrator, went into hiding. Over five years, “I was subjected to repeated questioning, threats, police surveillance and house searches due to my political views and activism,” says Chernov. A
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Jeff Strahley, of Red Bank, New Jersey, spent an early November afternoon riding along the Delaware Canal towpath near Washington Crossing Park in Bucks County. He has mixed feelings about the increased e-bike presence on the popular trail. “There’s good and bad. The good is it gets more people out on the trails that might
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In September 2008, George W. Bush was president, the dominant fuel source for U.S. electricity generation was coal, and the Paris Agreement was seven years away. Much has changed in the commonwealth and the country since Grid spoke with The Energy Co-op for our first issue. Founded in 1979 by members of Weavers Way Food
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In 2008, Philadelphia had 205 miles of bicycle lanes. By 2021, that had expanded to nearly 300 miles of bike lanes across the city. But most of those, even today, are nothing more than a stripe of paint — and as John Boyle, research director for the Bicycle Coalition points out, “paint isn’t protection.” With
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Modern construction is notorious for producing waste. Perhaps nowhere is this more evident than in the amount of used soil abandoned to landfills. What’s needed is a cost-effective, environmentally responsible solution that keeps material in circulation and preserves its value. “Every day, thousands of tons of soil come off construction sites in and around Philadelphia.
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The streetlights lining Baltimore Avenue have been aglow for nearly two hours when Books Through Bars begins to bustle. Volunteers, stepping in from the stony November cold, come to support an often overlooked cause: providing reading material to people in prison. Incarcerated individuals often have little to read, and the range of books provided to
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Welcome to issue #200! I spent a lot of time over the past few weeks flipping through the pages of our debut issue. It may sound somewhat self-aggrandizing, but the first Grid was released as a prototype — not an actual issue — because the concept for a sustainable city magazine had no precedent. (Come
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The entrance to Stuart Leon’s office is adorned with a rack of luchador masks and rolls of “Loading Zone” stickers. Life-size cardboard cutouts of Leon and his legal team welcome guests into the office’s nerve center, where Stuart Leon Bicycle Crash Law T-shirts spill from the shelves. From under a pile of brightly patterned neckties,
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This story was originally published by The New Lede. When Philadelphia filed a lawsuit in September 2025 alleging two prominent companies were engaged in a “coordinated campaign of deception” regarding the recyclability of their plastic film products, the City joined a growing group of state and local governments hoping litigation can help stem a rising
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I am a 15-year-old resident of Chestnut Hill, and I live near Wissahickon Valley Park. In 2022, I started the group Monarch Defenders, which aims to plant native pocket meadows in Philadelphia and beyond to support endangered monarch butterflies and other pollinators. One of our local meadow restoration projects was done in partnership with Friends
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