sign in sign up
<<
Home , Northeast Philadelphia

Northeast , a section of the that puzzles many visitors.

This confusion is not without its merit. Upon completion of a quick tour of the city it becomes abundantly clear that the Northeast does not compare to the rest of the city. Believe it or not, there is a perfectly good reason for this difference.

Long ago, Philadelphia was once a growing, bustling city, without (that’s right I said without) the Northeast. During this period of time the Northeast was more of a rural area with a few businesses, but mostly farm land. Recently this area of the city has become increasingly denser in population, but has also seen an influx of corporate businesses with smaller, privately owned businesses sprouting up on the outskirts of the strip malls that house these corporate businesses. As the entire city continues to grow, the Northeast has continually seen a decrease in public services including reduction in police officers, closings of community centers and volunteer organizations, and a serious lacking in government attention. The problem has many causes, but it seems as though the most threatening cause is the rest of the city. Year after year the crime rate in areas such as West, Southwest, North, and has been exponentially growing. Due to this, projects such as Operation Sunrise and Operation Safe

Streets were put into effect to curb these growing concerns. Unfortunately, these projects only are concerned with ridding crime in the pre determined targeted areas. What these projects overlook is what the deterrent force of increased police patrolling does to the rest of the city. As reported by the Philadelphia

Police Department, “As these criminals become more desperate under the intense pressure, they have begun to move and change their modes of

operation.1” Seemingly a benign remark is only too stinging to residents of the

Northeast who have seen not only an increase in section eight housing, but also a mass movement of the drug trafficking and violence being removed from the

“crime ridden” areas of the city into Northeast. So, a realistic interpretation of the police department’s remark is that the criminals are moving…to the Northeast, and the criminals are changing their modes of operation (from on-the-street drug dealing)…to dealing within section eight housing.

While the area known as the Northeast has been diversifying at its own pace, certain government decisions are forcing diversity onto the Northeast. One method, a term I had just mentioned, section eight housing has been an effective way to forcibly diversify a neighborhood, but another method, busing in students from “urban” areas of the city is aiding in this forced diversification. What this amounts to is an all too common dissatisfaction with both the government and the “urban” (or should I say black) migrants who appear to be forcing themselves upon the mostly white population of the Northeast. Section Eight housing is a major problem to the aesthetic and cultural aspects of the city since the tenants of those residences rarely take care of their borrowed property and a minority of those residents are inclined to criminal activity. In case this term needs clarification, Section eight housing refers to The Housing Choice Voucher

Program, in which a tenant pays on average 30% of the rent for the property and the government subsidizes the rest. I obviously cannot make a general sweeping statement about all Section 8 housing, however many residents of the

1 PPD, “Philadelphia Police Department :: Operation Safe Streets.” March 28, 2007. http://www.ppdonline.org/ops/ops_safestreets.php

community, including myself, experience living with these tenants on a daily basis. Many of us have experienced the increase in crime, pollution, and decrease in property values once a house or apartment complex had been deemed section 8 by the government. Section 8 housing turns neighborhoods into games of “good block-bad block.” For those of you unfamiliar with this

“game” it is a continual wave of relief quickly overshadowed by fear as you go from a block with property owners to a block with section 8 housing. It pains me to reach this conclusion but if the government wishes to grant citizens section 8 housing opportunities they should be in centralized areas instead of being scattered throughout neighborhoods.

The other problem, busing students from one area to another I wish to give sufficient attention to. This may be another concept that needs clarification, especially for those of you who live in areas where long distance school busing is nothing new. It was apparently made clear to the government of Philadelphia that schools in areas such as the Northeast, areas that saw lower crime rates and higher graduation numbers, were housing all of the “good schools.” A confounding factor of this entire problem is that these schools were all located in primarily white neighborhoods. To curb this supposed “racism” the Philadelphia

Board of Education decided to bus in urban youths. I said it earlier, but I must reiterate, by urban they merely meant black. A quick glance at the passengers of one of these buses would confirm this statement. You would find no Asians, no

Whites, and possibly one, maybe two persons of Spanish descent riding these buses. I scoff at the idea that the only people living in “urban” areas are of

African descent, but this is the apparent mode of thinking of the Philadelphia

Board of Education. My sympathies do go out to those youths who wish to learn, but are put into situations that prohibit them from learning, however forced busing of students has led to a decrease in the quality of education of schools in the

Northeast as well as an increase in school violence, including the occasional and usually devastating race riot.

So far as I have noted the residents of the Northeast have seen a gradual deterioration of their once beautiful part of Philadelphia. The main cause of this deterioration, as many Northeastern Philadelphians agree, is the Philadelphia government. “In the 1980s, the Northeast developed along a separate path from much of the rest of the city. In addition to the racial differences mentioned above, the political climate in the Northeast was balanced evenly between Republicans and Democrats, while the rest of the city almost uniformly voted for the latter party. As a result, many Northeasters became more and more discontented with the high city taxes and a perceived imbalance in the services they received for them. This discontent grew sufficiently to give rise to a secessionist movement…2” I think the call for secession is needed once more. Northeast

Philadelphia did not begin as a part of Philadelphia and therein lies the problem.

This community is an area that has been adopted by a city that is too large to control with the Northeast still attached. Not only would the Northeast prosper by being allowed to form its own government, but the rest of the city would also flourish with the lessened burden. When considering the concentrations in

2 Wikipedia, “Northeast Philadelphia,” March 9, 2007. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Northeast_Philadelphia

populations throughout the city it seems logical that the division be made between Philadelphia and the Northeast. The city of Philadelphia boasts a population of approximately 1.5 million citizens, of that 1.5 million, 300,000 to

450,000 of those citizens live in the Northeast. This sizable portion of the city’s population could easily be turned into another city. It is a common belief amongst Northeastern Philadelphians that much of their taxes do not go to projects directed at their part of the city, that the government no longer listens to their pleas, too much of the police force is being pulled out of the Northeast, and community based non-profit organizations are being replaced with for-profit corporate businesses. Noberto Bobbio poses the question perfectly in his “The

Future of Democracy” when he queried, “But how can government respond if the demands generated by a free society are increasingly numerous, pressing, and onerous?3“ Although Noberto was speaking on the ‘ungovernability’ of democracy when he answered with, “This results in the so-called ‘overloading’ of government and the necessity for the political system to make drastic choices.

But one choice excludes another, and not making certain choices produces dissatisfaction,4” I believe he was right but misinterpreted the problem.

Democracy is “governable,” however it is only possible on a small scale. I submit to all of you that for the successful, democratic future of the Northeast section of

Philadelphia, and the rest of Philadelphia for that matter, it is necessary for the two sections of the city to part ways. It seems as though for the past two hundred years or so American governmental theory has been to consolidate and

3 Bobbio, Noberto. The Future of Democracy. American Political Thought. Pg. 198 4 Bobbio, Noberto. The Future of Democracy. American Political Thought. Pg. 198

create super governments among areas that may need smaller and more involved governments. It is time that this trend of consolidation ends and we reach a happy medium between consolidation and proliferation of governmental powers.

I propose that Philadelphia has two very distinct paths in its future. On the one hand Philadelphia can choose to split itself into the Northeast section and the rest of Philadelphia, as I have already mentioned. The other option is for

Philadelphia to continue its current path staying as one giant entity, growing and incorporating more citizens as it grows. Following this path Philadelphia may one day engulf Bensalem and other surrounding suburbs that are becoming increasingly populated with ex-Philadelphians leaving the city. Considering the second option I can only propose that the new version of the city will decline into a sort of destructive mediocrity as more forms of governmental interference make the sociological and economical playing fields “equal.” Developing the future of this route, it would be plausible to assume that within the first five years of a

Philadelphia that remained unified the economic gaps within the city would close while the economic gaps between Philadelphia and its surrounding suburbs would increase. This trend would gradually continue for the next ten to fifteen years as the Northeast section of the city slowly declined and decayed. Portions of have already began to anticipate this trend. The realization is slowly creeping in that the suburbs themselves are becoming exhausted and overpopulated and developments are springing up in West Philadelphia. The result of this trend is that West Philadelphians are being ejected from their homes

due to rising property taxes and then subsequently the displaced gradually have begun to move into other parts of the city, such as the Northeast. What we may then see within twenty to thirty years from the present is a complete reversal of

West Philadelphians and Northeast Philadelphians. Instead of the city improvements helping the citizens of West Philadelphia, the rebuilding of the

Western section of the city merely gave the Northeasterners a new place to move and the West Philadelphians an abandoned shell of a community to move into. Although I cannot cite a credible source, neighbors and friends of mine and other people I have had contact with over the years have all shared a similar belief about Philadelphia. The belief is a bit of a saying and it goes somewhat like, “Every fifty years a neighborhood is destroyed and a new one is built.” Of course, these renewal projects are answers to public outcry concerning their own neighborhoods, but as George Fitzhugh points out, “Immediate interest is all the mass look to…[d]ivide all property today, and a year hence the inequalities of property would provoke a re-division.5” Going by this shared sentiment it is no wonder that as most developments of the Northeast have been established for a little more than fifty years they are increasingly seeing signs of decay. What is missing in governmental planning in Philadelphia is that the grouping of communities is based primarily on career levels. The exceptions to this rule are found in section eight housing projects. When a portion of the city is rebuilt the city neglects the fact that the citizens the renewal is aimed at cannot afford the newly built houses the project was supposed to provide.

A Philadelphia that remains unified will cause increasing harm to the

5 Fitzhugh, George. Cannibals All! American Political Thought. Pg. 231

environment as more land is used to create low income housing projects, strip malls, and other uses of land that are required by an increasing population of poor and lower class citizens. I wish I could project a rebound after five or even ten years of destruction to the environment, but one quick trip through parts of

Kensington and Fishtown (areas that could be considered the oldest parts of the developed Northeast) give me no sign of hope. I have traveled through these parts of the city since I was a little boy and almost a decade has passed, but still the pollution and the abandoned buildings remain, even to a certain extent they have increased. If Northeast Philadelphia were to continue to see an influx of poorer and lower class individuals there would be no other path for the rest of the

Northeast but a gradual decline into a polluted wasteland. Maybe when the cycle turned over once again and the Northeast was the city’s proposed project to rebuild, the Northeast would be cleaned and restored, but as I had already pointed out, this rebirth will take much longer than thirty years. As the community of the Northeast continued to decline as a member of a monstrous city, not only would the environment suffer, but the community as a whole would begin to fall apart. In the near future, as it has been in the recent past and the present, the city will ignore the pleas of the citizens of the Northeast while attempting to “fix” the problems of the other decaying parts of the city. As these please continue to go unheard gang violence will increase, drug activity will grow with even more force than it is now and petty crime statistics will sky rocket. We may see in fifteen to twenty years, as the problem begins to gain media attention, a call for action since acting on the problem then would be a positive move for politicians

looking for reelection. Thirty years from the present if the problem is left to simmer for as long as I propose no sort of operation or project will effectively remove the deeply embedded criminal activity short of police occupation on every crime infested street corner such as Operation Safe Streets.

Finally, on the subject of what may be expected of the population of those in the Northeast it is without question that the population will increase. As the population increased, as already mentioned, pollution will increase, but so will corporate businesses who feed on the lower class and with these types of businesses comes low income housing. What can be expected is an increase in large businesses such as Walmart, Forman Mills, and McDonald’s while businesses such as local delis, super markets, and farmer’s markets will move to safer and more prosperous locations. Corporate businesses will in turn hire those individuals who attempt to make an honest living and thus the types of jobs found in the Northeast will decline. The majority of those currently living in the

Northeast include Doctors, Nurses, Police, and other professionals. Once big businesses move in and these professionals move out the only source of jobs will be found at those giant corporations that take over the land. As the Northeast continued to be transformed into a lower class community it would only be a matter of time before the Commission would be forced to fold under pressure and would be transformed into corporate land and with it low income housing developments. This unfortunate event is already taking place as parts of the park are being sold off to create these developments.

I could only speculate that as the community became inhabited by more and

more poor people the park would suffer to accommodate the increasing population. There seems to me no plausible way to get out of this increasing demand on the environment without government interference on population growth, which is completely illogical. Pollution would be almost impossible to control without an increase in taxation, which would hardly be affordable for the poor living in the polluted area.

I would like now to turn to a brighter future for Philadelphia. This future is the future with Northeast Philadelphia seceded from Philadelphia. Beginning again with the economic factors, I believe that the economic gaps would close in on each other, but in this scenario there would be a better distribution of wealth.

Instead of a large lower class and a small portion of upper class citizens the distribution of wealth would cause a larger middle class. How a seceded

Northeast would create this economic condition is relatively simple. The newly established Northeast Philadelphia would free a large number of jobs that would need to be filled, which would decrease the unemployment rate in the Northeast.

This same occurrence would happen in Philadelphia, since nearly half of the old city would now be in a different city. The criticism may be raised that redundancy may occur in the job market, especially in the public sector, but I believe that in a city of 1.5 million certain jobs necessitate redundancy. For example one police commissioner in the city of Philadelphia is not enough. If the city were divided in two, separate police forces could be established that could effectively patrol each city as the deemed necessary. Returning to the private sector of jobs, if a citizen of one city wanted to continue to work in the other city the income tax

collected would help fund the respective city, making it more plausible for the citizens to want to work in their home city. This logic is followed from the reasoning that the citizen would want their taxes to affect where they live. As we continued into the future both cities would prosper as each city was relieved of the pressures of an overcrowded mega-city.

When discussing environmental issues it would be much easier for the

Northeast to deal with sanitation on its own since it would have a much smaller area to manage. With the smaller area, effective methods of waste management would be easier to implement. In an assessment of the future, it could be possible that within the first five years the community could invest money that was being invested in other parts of the city in restoring Pennypack park to a more pristine and natural environment. Meanwhile, as the future progressed in the developed parts of the Northeast a stronger effort could be made to include more parts of the Northeast in recycling. Currently parts of the Northeast are without recycling services because the recycling department of the city is stretched too thin. A newly established Northeast would be able to better afford recycling services for the entire city. In thirty years from now if the Northeast was allowed to prosper on its own the citizens could transform the area into a cleaner, healthier environment. Turning back to Pennypack park, in thirty years I could imagine a beautiful park remaining clean due to sufficient funding to protect the park from pollutants such as illegal dumping. Currently, the condition of the park is deteriorating due to insufficient resources to protect the park. This is another example of how secession from the city of Philadelphia would help the Northeast.

One final issue to discuss is what the population trends would look like in the seceded Northeast Philadelphia. Once the city split, both newly established cities would be better off and would be able to handle their respective problems in a more efficient matter. In the near future some of these issues may not be fully resolved so the migration to the Northeast may continue, but it would most likely be at a reduced pace. This would be for two reasons. One, if section 8 housing were to continue citizen requirements would hinder any unwanted movement into the community. Secondly, the opening of jobs would persuade a good number individuals to remain in their current location. As we moved further from the present date and both cities began to become more efficient and flourish as independent from each other movement between each city would merely be based on preference rather than economic potential or an escape from crime ridden, dilapidated neighborhoods. The Northeast in thirty years will be a better place for small businesses, pollution would be better handled, the number of jobs would increase, and the area would lose less of its population to migration into the suburbs. I believe now that I should turn to the democratic theories behind all of the predictions I have made for the future of Northeast Philadelphia.

When considering the two theories of Democracy that are of most importance to the Northeast section of Philadelphia, Participatory and Pluralist theories are in need of some consideration. After conducting several interviews with locals in the community I found common concerns that surprisingly relate to these two theories. Firstly, when asked what improvements are needed in the community regardless of age I found two answers that continually appeared.

One improvement was the need for a stronger police presence. The other improvement was that citizens felt the community needed to invest more in social services concerning all age groups. They wish to see an increase in youth centers, social welfare programs for the struggling working class, and also citizens would like to see more places for the elderly citizens of the community to enjoy life. What these two desires reflect is a lacking in the participatory theory of democracy. Although other aspects of this theory, which I will discuss in a moment, are strong, the area of public services is in need of a serious revamping. It may be possible to resolve some of these issues with an increased presence of citizens in volunteer organizations. The number of willing volunteers in the Northeast is shamefully low, the community would rather have the government give them the service, but if volunteer numbers increased the number one source of crime respondents claimed would most likely decrease.

That source was the youth. Most respondents felt that the youth of the neighborhoods vandalize, rob, and conduct drug business in the streets. If more citizens volunteered to aid in programs such as big brother or PAL they would simultaneously reduce the need for police, increase the number of social services, and rid themselves of the problem of delinquent youths. A positive aspect found in the surveys was that the majority of respondents felt that neighbor relations were friendly and that they trusted their neighbors and were good friends with their neighbors. In fact, when asked what the best part of their community was, the number one response was the respondent’s neighbors.

These respondents mostly claimed that they voted, but felt that the government

was not adequately caring for their community. Again, a free Northeast would give these amiable neighbors a chance to better their situation. As John Dewey mentioned in the closing of his “The Public and Its Problems:”

In its deepest and richest sense a community must always remain a

matter of face-to-face intercourse. This is why the family and

neighborhood, with all their deficiencies, have always been the chief

agencies of nurture, the means by which dispositions are stably formed

and ideas acquired which laid hold on the roots of character. The Great

Community, in the sense of free and full intercommunication, is

conceivable. But it can never possess all the qualities which mark a local

community…Vital and thorough attachments are bred only in the intimacy

of an intercourse which is of necessity restricted in range.6

The seeds of a better participatory democracy are there. I have heard it in the conviction of those whom I interviewed, what needs to happen next is those individuals who enjoy living with their neighbors need to begin helping one another instead of waiting for the government to help them. For this to begin the inhabitants of the Northeast need to feel as though their energies and donations will affect their community and not go elsewhere.

As far as the pluralist theory of democracy is concerned, I believe there is a sufficient number of organizations dedicated to promoting a varying range of values. The critique has been made that too many organizations can harm the democratic values of a society, but an odd phenomena has occurred in the

Northeast. Although there are various organizations such as the various labor

unions, veteran associations, and numerous others, all of these associations have nearly similar goals. Although some disagreement is found on what types of social programs are most needed, those divides usually occurred between varying age groups, which I believe would be found even if these various organizations did not exist. When considering the democratic health of Northeast

Philadelphia I believe that there are many aspects of the community that show a healthy democracy, even though there are some deficiencies that could be worked on. I would not immediately dismiss the possibility of a democratic future in the Northeast. “There is no substitute for intelligence and integrity in cultural life;7” if the Northeast wished to become a perfectly democratic community it would be beneficial for the community to instill in the youth at an early age the notion that volunteering in social programs is a very respectable undertaking.

For the adults for whom education is too late, I would suggest that they sincerely consider how volunteering even seven hours a week of their time to a community organization could very well be the end of their crime problems. Concerning the pluralist theory of democracy, there are plenty of organizations for citizens to become informed voters, and both the voter and organization voice very similar concerns for their community. All this in mind, does democracy have a future in

Northeast Philadelphia? After an assessment of two critiques of democracy I hope to shed some light on the matter. I believe the Northeast does have a democratic future, however without the rest of the city of Philadelphia. Let us turn now to these critiques to see if they have any insight on this belief.

6 Dewey, John. The Public and Its Problems. American Political Thought. Pg. 171 7 Dewey, John. Democratic Ends Need Democratic Methods for Their Realization. American Political

There are many varying critiques of democracy, but for the sake of this project I would like to examine the Realist critique with inclusion of the Neorealist critique and the critique based on Diversity. I will begin this examination by dealing with the Realist critique. The argument has been offered that democracy necessitates bureaucratic governance. This governance in effect would not serve the people as best as possible since it would require governments to act without emotion and it would also cause the bureaucracy to become deeper entrenched the more citizens were involved in government. When this critique is applied to large areas such as the entire I believe this critique holds some merit, however when dealing with smaller areas such as the

Northeast section of Philadelphia I feel the critique fails. Why does the critique work in the former case and not the latter? Well, purely the vast number of citizens under the control of the government in the case of the United States would require that some emotional aspects lack in governmental decisions, for there will come times where some parts of the nations must out of necessity suffer, in which case a person controlled with emotion would not be able to act.

Also, as far as a positive correlation between an increase in bureaucratic institutions and an increase in public participation in government as Noberto

Bobbio suggests, the answer to that is simple, the sheer numbers would require some sort of formalization of the process which could be construed as a bureaucratic process. Turning to the smaller area, in this case Northeast

Philadelphia, decisions that affect the area will affect basically all of the inhabitants of the area so a decision that would hurt that area would be felt by all,

Thought. Pg. 167

and if it were an absolutely necessary decision the entire community would suffer through the consequences together, which in turn would be a strengthening of emotional bonds between the community. Secondly, the number of participants involved in governmental affairs in a small area such as this would require some formalization, but no where near the extent that would cause the democratic process to freeze. It may even be possible to organize all of the participants into of some sort whereas the majority opinion of that could be heard in a forum where all districts are represented, this would be a formalization, but the people who originated the debate would not lose their democratic freedom, they would merely be represented, but in effect the representatives would represent a much smaller group of people. This would allow the representatives to better serve those individuals instead of the current representative method whereas the representative speaks for a mass of people so large that many voices go unheard. To close on this critique of democracy I would like to restate that it is possible for democracy to flourish in small areas such as Northeast

Philadelphia, but as Max Weber correctly speculated, democracy in larger areas such as the United States will always be confounded by the red tape of bureaucracy.

My final point to make is on the critique of democracy dealing with diversity. I feel I cannot go too in depth on this matter, further than what I have previously stated, but I shall try. Northeast Philadelphia is an area that is predominantly white. There is some diversity in the house owning and renting citizens in the area, but the majority of diversity can be found in the section 8

housing. By the responses I was given in my surveys it appears as though this diversity is increasing. While walking the streets or tuning into the news race relations appear to be friendly. I rarely hear or see evidence of racial discrimination, except by those individuals who are by their very nature bigots.

For those individuals I hold both contempt and sympathy for, since they are usually some of the most ignorant individuals I encounter. Regardless of those very few individuals the only other area of racial intolerance found is in the schools. Whether these children are learning from their parents or it is simply a matter of picking on the kid who is different (as is the case when most young children pick on another child) I cannot speculate. However, what I can say is that forcibly busing students of one race into an area of the city that is predominantly another race is simply not working. It would be one thing if the children were constantly exposed to one another, including after school, but the reality is when they go home they are placed back into their racially divided communities. A better solution to the problem of unequal educational opportunities would be to equally invest in each school instead of placing emphasis on one area and not the other. Iris Young’s interpretation of the assimilitionist stance on social justice is one that I believe works best. He stated that, “The assimilitionist ideal assumes that equal social status for all persons requires treating everyone according to the same principles, rules and, standards.8” If Northeast Philadelphia (as I mentioned a predominantly white area) were to secede from Philadelphia, tax money from Philadelphia could then be concentrated a bit more heavily in areas that need the most assistance in the

8 Young, Iris Marion. Justice and the Politics of Difference. American Political Thought. Pg. 269

area of education. In sum, racial differences may divide large areas of the country, but it seems to me that the racial divisions in the Northeast section of

Philadelphia are not caused by Whites, Blacks, Asians, etc., but by the programs the government attempts to implement to ensure racial equality.

Northeast Philadelphia does indeed have a democratic future. This future is possible with the rest of Philadelphia, but if this is the case the entire city will continue its decline and the Northeast will go kicking and screaming as more and more Northeast Philadelphians migrate to the suburbs to escape the government’s ignorance to their pleas. As it has been said numerous times throughout this paper, it is absolutely necessary for the betterment of both

Philadelphia and Northeast Philadelphia that the two areas separate and govern themselves on their own. For all the reasons stated above and possibly others that may have been missed, this course of action is the most plausible. We must remember that Northeast Philadelphia began as a separate entity and only became a part of Philadelphia because the number of citizens originally located in Northeast Philadelphia made it a logical decision to fuse the two entities into one. Now that we are at an age where 1.5 million people live in the city and nearly half of those people live in the Northeast it now seems that the opposite is now the logical decision. Northeast Philadelphia has proven its desire to live in a democratic city, but as its own city, not part of an oversized sea of unheard voices.

Can Northeast Philadelphia Live with Democracy? By: James Gallagher 4/19/07 Pol380

Bibliography

Bobbio, Noberto. The Future of Democracy. American Political Thought. Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, Inc., Lanham, 2001. Pg. 198

Dewey, John. Democratic Ends Need Democratic Methods for Their Realization. American Political Thought. Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, Inc., Lanham, 2001. Pg. 167

Dewey, John. The Public and Its Problems. American Political Thought. Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, Inc., Lanham, 2001. Pg. 171

Fitzhugh, George. Cannibals All! American Political Thought. Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, Inc., Lanham, 2001. Pg. 231

Google Earth. All Arial Images of Philadelphia. Europa Technologies. 2007

PhillyHistory.org. All Images of Philadelphia Past. Department of Records, City of Philadelphia. Dates range from 1954 to 1979

Philadelphia Police Department, “Philadelphia Police Department :: Operation Safe Streets.” March 28, 2007. http://www.ppdonline.org/ops/ops_safestreets.php

Survey Conducted by author. Thirty respondents. March 9, 2007- March 25, 2007

U.S Census Bureau. American Fact Finder. Census 2000 Demographic Profile Highlights. April 18, 2007. http://factfinder.census.gov/servlet/SAFFFacts?_sse=on. Path: Enter Philadelphia, ; Select Philadelphia under city option. Wikipedia, “Northeast Philadelphia,” March 9, 2007. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Northeast_Philadelphia

Wagner, Christina. All Ground Level Images of Current Day Philadelphia. March 18, 2007.

Young, Iris Marion. Justice and the Politics of Difference. American Political Thought. Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, Inc., Lanham, 2001. Pg. 269