I have previously noted a major article in The Philadelphia Inquirer about the city’s open-air drug market near Kensington and Allegheny Avenues, complete with a photo of a man who appears to be shooting up right outside the SEPTA station. The photo shows the street littered with trash, and people just plain not caring.
The theme of the article, dated August 17, 2020, was that the COVID-19 crisis might have caused shortages in everything else, but not in the availability of drugs.
I continued to scan the newspaper for stories about how the Philadelphia Police Department had gotten their dander up about the Inquirer article, and had a massive raid to round up the drug dealers and close the drug trade down there, but it just never seemed to happen. Now there’s this, from Fox 29 News:
Philadelphia officials consider resolution designating Kensington a FEMA site
By Shawnette Wilson | April 13, 2022 | 11:30 PM EDT | Updated April 14, 2022 | 7:28AM EDT
KENSINGTON – Reported as the worst possible section of the United States, in terms of homelessness and drug abuse, city officials are looking for a federal and state government intervention in Kensington.
“When I was a teenager, this neighborhood was fine,” David Adcox stated. He says it’s different for his two teenage children he’s raising in Kensington, where he has lived about 45 years. “You could hang on the corner and play football. You used to be able to block Somerset off and have block parties,” Adcox added.
He says since the late nineties, things have steadily changed for the worse.
“Drugs happened and it’s been downhill since,” Adcox commented.
Some Philadelphia city officials announced last week they are taking drastic steps to address the open drug use and addiction on the streets of Kensington.
At least as of 8:08 AM on Friday morning, there was no story on the Inquirer’s website main page about this. One would think that the city considering turning this problem over to the federal government would make the news.
“What we’ve been doing has not worked. This has been going on for 10, 20, even 30 years,” Philadelphia Councilmember At-Large Allan Domb said and went to say it’s a humanitarian crisis.
“It’s the worst neighborhood in the United States, as far as homelessness and drug abuse,” Domb added.
Domb, Councilmember Maria Quinones-Sanchez and Councilmember Mark Squilla have announced a resolution requesting that Kensington be declared a FEMA and PEMA site, like areas hit with tornadoes, floods and hurricanes.
It would mean federal and state involvement with resources and financial assistance.
“40 percent might be Philadelphians, but at least 60 percent or more are not. They may have obtained ID’s for Philadelphia, but it’s not right that the city has to take care of this humanitarian crisis when the majority of the people are not from Philadelphia,” Domb explained. “We need to bring people back to the homes where they came from, take care of the population that’s Philadelphia and get them into the right services and help them.”
But, but, but, I thought that Philadelphia was a sanctuary city, welcoming everybody, regardless of immigration status. And Councilman Domb is a Democrat.
Mr Domb has been on the city council since January 4, 2016. Councilwoman Maria Quiñones-Sánchez has been in office since January 7, 2008, while Councilman Mark Squilla has been there since January 2, 2012. All are Democrats.
Have they not noticed the problem until now?
The Inquirer was all #woke and social justicey on August 17, 2020, when Aubrey Whelan’s article appeared — the firing resignation of Executive Editor Stan Wischnowski two months earlier, and “anti-racist” publisher Elizabeth ‘Lisa’ Hughes was in place the previous February — yet even the newspaper covered the story at the time. Kensington is a heavily Hispanic neighborhood, with the non-Hispanic black population being relatively low, so perhaps that allowed the Inky to cover it?
The solution is not that complicated: send in the police and clear out the druggies, users as well as dealers. When the next group of dealers move in, as they will, send in the police again. Being tough on crime was how Mayor Rudy Giuliani (R-NYC) cleaned up the Big Apple!
Philadelphia has been run by the Democrats for the last seven decades; the last Republican Mayor left office when Harry Truman was still President. And while the Democrats have not always been the squishes on law enforcement that they have been for a while, Democratic policies have enabled Kensington to become “the worst neighborhood in the United States, as far as homelessness and drug abuse” are concerned.
If you want to clean the place up, you need conservative policies, and conservative policies are not nice ones. To be a conservative, you have to be an [insert slang term for the rectum here] at times, because yielding to sympathy has meant allowing the existing problems to fester and get worse. It is better for the city, it is better for the United States, for [insert plural slang term for the rectum here] to be running the government, at all levels, people who will not allow sympathy and lenient policies to turn everything to [insert slang term for feces here], as has happened in all of our major cities.
Driving your way to the bottom. Just like Detroit, Memphis, Los Angeles, San Francisco and several others, who have been overtaken by leftist ideals.
Kensington? I thought Harrisburg might have surpassed the indecency of a suburb.
The common theme is what you said: leftist domination of politics, in all those cities. I wonder why that seems to never change?
Socioeconomic migration is pretty interesting, when people get fed up with the politics of the left. Look at all the folks leaving California, for better conditions. They even come to Tennessee to escape the mess.
Then, there is the example of the people just moving out of the political zone, as in Memphis, where many just fled to the suburbs outside Shelby County. Arlington, TN is a pretty nice place to stay. Memphis, not so much.
Mr Berwind wrote:
Kensington is not a suburb, but one of the major neighborhoods in Philadelphia.
Philadelphia is 38.3% non-Hispanic black, and with American blacks giving 90% of their votes to Democrats, Republicans have a huge mountain to climb to win elections.
But even non-Hispanic white Philadelphians, 34.3% of the population, give a lot of their votes to Democrats, because the liberal mindset pervades the city. Since the city is so heavily segregated, internally, the problems of the black neighborhoods don’t intrude that greatly on the white ones, so it’s safe to vote for liberal politicians.
I was actually slurring Harrisburg, ground zero for state politics, and if not still, one of the nastiest run state capitols in the country. Kinda glad I always got to ride up the highway by Enola Yard and the Susquehanna River in my childhood. Had a bunch of relatives in Bloomsburg.
Then again, in Pennsylvania, a Democrat and a Republican often look the same. Some of my relatives I could never figure out, politically speaking.
My dad grew up in Philly. I enjoyed hearing him describe all the neighborhoods, in all their ethnic glory.
Of course, if they deemed it a FEMA site, the agency would show up and give all of the homeless there a mini-trailer to live in, creating a trailer parking problem on top of everything else going on there.