In another thread Sean a.k.a MrLuigi wrote:

“"Poverty" is kind of too vague a word for the multiple layers of social dysfunction that plague our city and feed into the cycle of violence. If it were simply "poverty" you could just write everyone a big check and they would stop shooting at each other over petty beefs. The young men shooting each other in this city are almost never killing each other because they literally can't afford to eat. Its a way more nefarious web of broken family structures, broken schools, chronic unemployment, drug enforcement that says "its OK to push this illicit economy into those kinds of neighborhoods, and culture of misplaced bravado and shallow materialism. If we dump everything into the word "poverty" without being more specific, its no longer targeted enough to do much good terms of figuring out the "how" of urban violence. Its not just lack of dollars that makes Philly's mean streets mean, its a very particular system of failure of the social fabric. That said there are million and one things we can do to direct people away from crime and the underground activity before they feel that their only choice. There are a million and two things to make sure they have other options once they do get caught up in it and, as eventually happens, they get busted.”

Sean, I may be reading you wrong but I find the distinction you draw between poverty and “social dysfunction” a bit too elegant.

Yesterday, Mayor Nutter signed into law some pretty serious measures to try to end gun violence. According to the Inky:

The five laws - called everything from unconstitutional to criminal by critics - do the following:

Limit handgun purchases to one a month.

Require lost or stolen firearms to be reported to police within 24 hours.

Prohibit individuals under protection-from-abuse orders from possessing guns if ordered by the court.

Allow removal of firearms from "persons posing a risk of imminent personal injury" to themselves or others.

Outlaw the possession and sale of certain assault weapons.

Cool! It's time the city stood up for itself, and Nutter's actions not only send a signal that his administration is going to devote resources to the fight, but also serve as a real incentive for our local state legislative delegation (including those suburban members who have a vested interest in seeing less guns on the streets) to fight for us too.

After we win, I hope this kind of resolve and logic...

Nutter embraced the idea of taking "direct action" to challenge a legal status quo to protect city residents.

"If we all sat around bemoaning what the law was on a regular basis," Nutter said. "I'd probably still be picking cotton somewhere as opposed to being mayor of the city of Philadelphia."

...will be extended to other areas of divergence between city residents and the state legislature, like allowing same-sex unions, or implementing progressive taxation, or requiring a fair distribution of education funds, or passing an even better campaign finance law, etc.

How awesome would it be if Mayor Nutter made the city solicitors' office into a totally activist office, responsible for challenging the state constitution every time it prohibits Philadelphia from passing progressive laws to the benefit of its people?

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?

Well, last year ended with 392 murders in Philadelphia, slightly less than 2006, despite a gruesome summer.

What was behind this violence, and its sudden decline. There is no one solution, but I think this NPR story holds some clues. What we saw was good law enforcement in action! Yes!

You see, according to federal drug enforcement officials, such as Drug Czar John Walters, there were major successes in curbing the amount of drugs, particularly cocaine, coming into the country early this year. One of the first places hit by the cocaine shortage was Philadelphia, where the scarcity started in May. In the following summer, there were massive amounts of violence.

Coincidence? I think not.

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.

Tonight, at Temple University, the "Next American City" magazine is putting on a panel discussion. M. Kay Harris (Temple University Professor of Social Work), Jerry Ratcliffe (Temple University Professor of Criminal Justice), John Phillips Yah-Ya Shabazz (Director of Alternative Disciplinary Program), and, yes, maybe even the much-romanticized John Timoney will all speak. Michael Nutter, Charles Ramsey, Chakah Fattah, Vince Fumo, and Allyson Schwartz may all appear as well. That's some group.

(Bumped back up. -Dan)

For both professional and personal reasons I've been trying to strengthen my ability to frame the work I do during my day job at Bread & Roses (note: posts under my personal ID are not at all representative of the organization)in a way that clearly and articulately conveys the relationship between violence in the city and the need to fund work for racial and economic justice in a way that will resonate with the greater public. The connections may seem obvious to most on this list, but it's difficult to really express the sense of urgency that is at hand for B&R to raise more money to help build community organizations' capacity in larger circles. As we reach out and expand our base, I want to feel solid in my ability to frame these connections.

In order to do this well I feel like I need to do a bit more reading and self-education.

I've been culling things that came up in past posts, but thought I'd just post a straight up request as well. Do you have any reports, studies, essays, etc. that are your "favorites" or that you have found impactful or resourceful that go beyond just looking at gun control policies? I know this request is a little vague and there are about ten million things we could all list here-- I guess I'm looking for a small handful of top favorites.

As I stood and watched the press conference for the up coming A Call To Action : 10,000 men event, I was a little proud to see all the elected officials who attended the event. Some wanted to make the news, some really wanted to make a difference. But as I stood by a proud Charlie Mack standing high near Kenny Gamble, a yell "It's A New Day" filled the room. Even though the crowd wasn't that big , the message was echoed from the Liacouras Center down Broad Street, its time for A New Day. But how long will this last and will 10,000 men be enough to save our streets from the crime and violence that have made Phila home?

Okay before we send the party out for this man, before we convict him for crimes that he might have confessed, will this black man receive his due process in Philadelphia? He's public enemy number 1 right now for the assassination of two armored car guards , that happen to be retired police officers.

There has been an increase in gun-related incidents in Philadelphia.

Over 300 people have been killed this year, and many more seriously injured. There’s been a tendency in the media to describe the increase of gun-related deaths as an indicator that our citizenry has become more prone to violence or to use murder as a solution to problems.

While there have been a lot of shootings, I am not sure that this is an indicator that more of our citizens are becoming more violent, so much as that their choice of weapon is having more serious consequences. In the past, conflicts and altercations left participants with black eyes, broken arms, and stab wounds—not an end to their life. The easy availability of guns, weapons that intentionally depersonalize the violence their users inflict, has obviously changed things.