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District Attorney Seth Williams was lauded as a progressive after his 2009 election. Today, he is pushing hard to ensure that Terrance “Terry” Williams, a man who, according to his lawyers, murdered two men who had sexually abused him, is executed on Oct. 3. It will be Pennsylvania's first execution in 13 years, and the first contested execution since 1962. This is something even Seth Williams' conservative predecessor Lynne Abraham never did (though she surely would have).
The Pennsylvania Board of Pardons voted to deny Williams clemency yesterday, with only three of five members voting in favor. A unanimous decision was necessary to make a recommendation for clemency to Gov. Tom Corbett. Notably, Republican Attorney General Linda Kelly was amongst the majority who voted to save Terry's life.
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Republican Gov. Tom Corbett will be venturing behind enemy lines this Wednesday to hold a “town hall” meeting at the Art Museum (8 p.m., 2600 Benjamin Franklin Parkway). Protesters will gather outside to voice their opposition to his conservative policies.
The protest, organized by Decarcerate PA and Fight for Philly, is demanding that Corbett cancel new prison construction, reinstate the General Assistance cash welfare eliminated in the 2012 budget, and restore cut funding to public education.
In our ever-escalating mission to promulgate the hardest of hard news, the Naked City presents this puzzle to our readers: what's up with this abandoned-looking pier on the Schuylkill?
It was photographed by yours truly, whilst aboard my inflatable kayak a few weeks ago, just north/east of Bartram's Garden, on the downtown side of the freight rail tracks that cross the river south of the Grays Ferry bridge. (More pics below)
The pier is abandoned now. but there's still a small booth at the end of it (with a rather charming lamp hanging over it). Above is what looks like a warehouse or factory, from which a deck juts out over the water.
Visible on the deck (and in the picture) were a fishing net and chair, which looked, for reasons I can't quite articulate, like they had been used recently. Not visible in the picture is a small American flag that someone had planted near the net.
So: anybody know what it it, what it was, or ... anything about it? Comment here, or hit me up on Twitter.
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Lawyers this morning asked the Pennsylvania Supreme Court to issue an injunction blocking the state's controversial voter ID law, which could disenfranchise tens or hundreds of thousands of voters by requiring that they present ID at the polls, from going into effect before November's presidential election.
“The vice is not in requiring photo identification,” plaintiff's lawyer David Gersch told the six justices. “The vice is in requiring photo identification that people don't have, and have a hard time getting.”
And unlike laws in Virginia, which mails every voter the necessary ID, the Pennsylvania statute does not guarantee voters the ID they need to vote as a matter of right. It is uncertain when the court will issue its ruling. Outside the hearings, NAACP president Benjamin Jealous led a protest against the law.
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Sunshine illuminates the well-kept rowhouse block in West Philly’s Mill Creek neighborhood. It’s recess at James Rhoads Elementary School, and kids are outside hula-hooping, jumping rope and playing football. A crossing guard rests on a stoop. At LPC Grocery, men in line discuss their lottery success. “I hit for 27 and for 25 in the span of two months,” one brags. But it was just about a year ago that two men walked into this store, then known as Porfi Grocery or, sometimes, Lorena's, and shot owner Porfirio Nuñez, his wife, Carmen, and his sister Lina Sanchez to death.
Lina’s son Javish Sanchez, 29 years old when his mother was killed, stands behind the counter today.
“I’ve [told people] that I’m 100 percent good. But I’ve noticed that I need help,” he admits. “There’s too much violence going on in my head right now ― I guess, hate, because somebody got rid of my family.”
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Fifty-five days before the presidential election, Philadelphia civil rights, labor and civic activists are redoubling their efforts to ensure that everyone has the identification necessary to vote under the state's controversial new law. And they need more volunteers.
“It is onerous, it is unnecessary, and it does create a variety of barriers,” Mayor Michael Nutter told a room packed with representatives of organizations ranging from civil rights groups like the NAACP and National Action Network to the civic-minded League of Women Voters and Committee of Seventy. “But we have to deal with it.”
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Opponents are set to rally this Thursday as the Pennsylvania Supreme Court opens hearings on the state's controversial voter ID law.
“While we continue to fight this confusing, unnecessary and utterly disgraceful new law, it’s crucial that voters are made aware of their rights so that they are ready for Election Day,” state Sen. Hardy Williams said in an announcement.
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The front porch is one of the great privately-held public goods of city life. It provides the security of what Jane Jacobs calls “eyes on the street,” and fosters community. But the front porch, especially on hot summer nights, can also bring unexpected Philadelphia street life to your doorstep.
Such was the case on a recent evening, one of the last blazing-hot nights of summer. This reporter was enjoying a beverage on a friend’s West Philly porch, when a man appeared, wordlessly, and stood behind a young woman who lived at the house. Everyone in the group at first assumed he must have known someone there. But he just stood there. And his smile got weird. He looked high, or disturbed. Or like he was so far out that he had actually been kicked out of a Phish concert.
Upon being asked to leave, he started to laugh, and said something hard to understand, in an eerie voice. This reporter (in what seemed, at the time, like an appropriate response) grabbed a whiskey bottle ― which, in what turned out to be one friend’s greatest concern, was not yet empty ― and walked toward him. He darted out into the street. I followed, along with a friend and the whiskey bottle, and asked him, again, to leave. He kept hiding behind cars and then sprinting back toward the house.
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In the new issue of Harper's magazine, writer David Sirota makes a broadly compelling argument: as more cities become single-newspaper towns, the super-rich owners of surviving publications are all the more able, and likely, to abuse their monopoly news power in a self-interested manner.
But Sirota force-fits the story of Philadelphia's two dailies into the role of supporting actor in the service of a larger narrative of malicious corporate control. [FYI: The online version of the article is only available to Harper's magazine subscribers, God bless their pulpy souls.]
Sirota's Philadelphia story begins in 2006: Republican PR heavyweight Brian Tierney takes over The Inquirer, Daily News and Philly.com, removing any “internal friction between existing business structure and larger political goals,” he writes. “The professional influence industry simply swallowed the local newspaper monopoly in a single gulp.”
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Mitt Romney's non-fact-based accusation that President Barack Obama “gut[ted] welfare reform by dropping work requirements” takes place against the backdrop of states nationwide making severe cuts to an already-tattered safety net. But the candidates' racially charged political sparring has received far more media attention than the actual reduction in aid to poor people.
States have cited either fiscal crises or moral concerns for the ethical shortcomings of the poor in implementing punishing new welfare work requirements, slashing benefits and forcing recipients to undergo drug tests since the beginning of the recession.
In Pennsylvania, the debate over welfare work requirements is about to play out in real time. That's because Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) recipients will now be forced to apply for three jobs per week as soon as they submit their application for benefits, thanks to a provision quietly slipped into Republican Gov. Tom Corbett's new budget. Previously, work requirements only kicked in once cash assistance ― and the childcare support often necessary to actually go to work ― had been approved.
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