GreatExpectations2007 - Logan / Olney REPORT ON CITIZENS FORUM

Date: Jan. 27, 2007

Location: LaSalle University Student Center

Inquirer observer: Chris Satullo, Editorial Page editor

Check out reports from the dialogues:

Group One: Led by moderator Ed Hanna.

Group Two: Led by Louise Giugliano and Josh Warner.

Participants in each group were first asked to describe one hope or one fear as the city enters its election year.

Participants were then asked to imagine they were giving a good friend’s family advice on whether to move to Philadelphia.

What would be the pros and cons of that move?
What forces and factors underlie those pros and cons?
What steps could the city and region take to strengthen those pros or weaken those cons?

For a full description of the exercise, see http://go.philly.com/friendsdilemma

Observer's Notes:

Chris Satullo

Editorial Page editor

A lively and very diverse group gathered on this blustery, sunny Saturday morning in the music room at the university’s student center.

The group of 24 was half white, half African American, with an interesting mix of nearby residents and suburbanites who used to live in the neighborhood and returned for the event.

It was a day of memorable quotes from participants. Here are a few:

“We don’t give these children what they need at 5. We don’t give them what they need at 8. We don’t give them what they need at 10. Then when they are 15 and they go out with a gun and shoot somebody, we ask, ‘How in the world did that happen?’”

“I was a SEPTA bus driver for 25 years, and I trained drivers there for years. And I look at these people behind the wheel now, and they do not know how to drive. Now, don’t yell at me ladies, but too many of them are women and they just do not know how to handle the vehicle. But this is because SEPTA can’t find enough men to do the work because none of them can pass the drug test. It’s terrible.”

“I grew up here but lived in Los Angeles for a long time. Now, I’ve come back here, and I cannot believe how much more there is to do here culturally. It’s just amazing. In L.A., it was just the Getty. Here, there are so many museums, and the Avenue of the Arts and so much going on culturally in the neighborhoods. There just is no comparison.”

“The city is just so beautiful and has so much history. My husband and I come into the city, say, to go to a movie at the Ritz and you suddenly realize, ‘These bricks I’m walking across, George Washington walked across the same spot.’ It’s just thrilling.”

“The young ones, they just do not have any respect or pride anymore. Even my own granddaughters, who have been taught better, they come into my house and they just throw their coats down in a heap. Don’t hang them up. I tell them, ‘Look at that coat there. It represents you. It is you. And it is saying you don’t have any respect.’”

On action steps, where there was a great deal of talk about education, several women in attendance work at Project H.O.M.E’s Honickman Learning Center, and they extolled the teaching value of the electronic SmartBoards that adorn each classroom there. SmartBoards are digital blackboards that are connected to the Internet and can show work done by students on their individual laptops. The dream of Paul Vallas at the Philadelphia School District is to get a SmartBoard into each district classroom, and he has redirected some money inside the district’s capital program to begin installing them; at this point, it’s hard to tell how the district’s financial woes will compromise that initiative.