I had been thinking a lot about the death of Sean Patrick Conroy last week. Conroy suffered an asthma attack, and died, after being jumped by a group of boys in the Concourse at 13th and Market. He suffered a very unfair and brutal death in a place I have spent a lot of time myself.

And just when I gathered my thoughts enough to write about it, something else happened...

Today's Inquirer has a story about Tyesha Tazwell, attacked underground at 8th and Market by a group of kids whose ages ranged from 16 to 20. Tazwell was jumped and injured, but is alive and likely to recover. from the Inky:

Tazwell said she couldn't explain the ordeal she suffered, but believes that the root of the problem extends beyond the teens themselves.

"It starts at home. They don't have strong foundations in their households, and that's why they come out and do senseless things."

I agree. And that is why the plan to charge the five Gratz High School students involved in last week's incident as adults seems ludicrous to me.

Of what practical use is it to throw the kids who attacked Sean Patrick Conroy in jail for the rest of their lives, or charge them with the death penalty? Or to encourage homicide investigators to dig up whatever evidence they can to make them stick?

How does it help us to have our DA find the most stringent charges she can in either case?

Is the logic here that punishing all of these kids as severely as possible will make the rest of us feel safe again?

Those that have developed a bloodlust for the 16 and 17 year old boys from last week, and maybe the kids from this week, are sadly mistaken if they think that life imprisonment, or execution, is going to end random acts of violence in this city. Or, make any of us feel safer in the Concourse.

I'm not saying that both sets of attackers shouldn't suffer the consequences of their actions. And obviously, we have to deal with these kids inside the confines of our current system, but we need to quickly develop a bigger, concrete response that gets down to the root of the problem here.

And not just because this is the "liberal" thing to do. My concerns are selfish: I have been jumped before, and I did not like it. And I don't want it to happen again. To me, or anyone else. And I don't think sending these kids to jail forever will help all that much.

So rather than demagoguery and hysterics, I'd like to see a response by our city's leaders that makes a difference.

I think these incidents are proof that we need to act urgently to improve our city's schools, access to jobs, and, perhaps less practically but equally important, offer a sense of hope to those whose reckless behavior comes, in some part, not from inherent evil, but a real sense of hopelessness.

If we can't move beyond panic, and actually hear the clarion call sounded by these incidents now, well, then when?

You gotta love Seth.

According to today's Daily News:

A report released yesterday by the city inspector general showed that when Jones left the Philadelphia Commercial Development Corporation to run for office, he took over the lease for his company car.

...

PCDC is a nonprofit entity that receives city, state and federal money, which it lends to neighborhood small businesses and start-ups.

...

But outgoing Inspector General Seth Williams said he hoped that the next administration would take a close look at quasi-government agencies like PCDC.

"It is clear to me that the next administration would be very prudent to review the number of quasi-government agencies that we have, many of which do very good work," Williams said. "We need to analyze the manner in which we allocate funds and how those funds are spent."

Mayor-elect Michael Nutter did not return a call for comment. He has named a new inspector general as part of his administration.

I am sure the new OIG selected by Mayor Nutter will do a good job, but this makes me sad Seth is leaving. I have no doubt he is going to be a great DA, but this is just one of the many things Seth did as OIG to prove that he was no politically-appointed hack.

After all, Curtis Jones is a part of the Fattah camp which was more friendly with Mayor Street than not. As someone who was appointed by Street, and is running for election for DA, were he a hack, he'd of probably kept quiet.

But he's not and you gotta love him for doing his job with integrity, regardless of the risk of political fall-out from Fattah or remaining members of the Street camp (if such a thing ever really existed).

I don't like the low conviction rate of the DA's office, nor do I like that Philadelphia's DA is also known as "America's deadliest DA" for the frequency with which she seeks the death penalty, and I really wish the DA's office would get more aggressive about going after illegal arms dealers, but...

...you have to agree that a standing rib roast is a great holiday treat.

Get Abraham's recipe in this Inky article. Here's how she describes it:

Abraham's standing order varies from four ribs, or about 10½ pounds, to two 5-rib roasts. Her dinner party, which is held between Christmas and New Year's Day, customarily has 10 diners, but some years she has a few more guests at the table.

Abraham doesn't believe in appetizers because they take the edge off appetites. Instead, she starts her meal with a first course of a very French sole mousse with tomato-cream sauce. She serves it with crisp white wine.

She says the dish is somewhat of "a pain to make, but I fell in love with it." She credits the recipe to Craig Claiborne, the late food critic, chef and writer, with Pierre Franey, published in a 1989 New York Times article headlined "How to Cook the Perfect Meal."

Happy hoildays!

The current wave of progressive and reform-oriented electoral energy in Philadelphia began in 2003 with the effort to nominate Howard Dean (and I am sure Wesley Clark and John Edwards and Al Sharpton and some of the others brought folks in too). The desire to beat George Bush in the 2004 General is what really galvanized a generation of voters, grassroots volunteers, and even political organizers. Even though we lost that election, a whole bunch of us made it our mission to take action and make progressive change a continuing priority.

It was 2005 in Philadelphia when some of us got a chance to apply some of the skills we'd learned in a big, national election to our local politics.

Fresh from my first gig working at MoveOn, after reading an amazing Kia Gregory piece in the PW, I emailed Seth Williams out of the blue and pitched myself as someone who could help him use the internet to organize his voters.

This was also a seminal moment for Young Philly Politics as a political blog. We made our bones, so to speak, on the Seth Williams for DA campaign. If you read YPP every day then, it would have been hard for you to imagine any problem Philadelphia faced that the DA was not in some way able to solve or impact.

Seth lost. The DA still played a huge role in terms of day-to-day quality of life in the city, and also as an architect helping to design Philadelphia's future. But other things came up, and the talk here, and in progressive offline groups, and in others places turned away from the District Attorney's office.

Goldfish memory.