from Instagram
“Fuck this shit”
Seen on an ad for The Linden, a Luxury Apartment building located across the street from Clark Park in West Philadelphia. Majority of the units and every store are currently vacant because the monthly rent is triple what the rest of the neighborhood is. No one in this neighborhood could afford to live here..it is also located right next door to a low income public health clinic.
Early this morning, 17 windows were smashed and messages were left.
from Mainstream Media
Indego is suffering from a dramatic upsurge in vandalism that forced the company to remove five stations, mostly in South Philadelphia.
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Philadelphia’s bike-share system, Indego, is suffering a wave of vandalism and theft so intense that it has had to remove five stations.
“Since July, we have had unprecedented level of vandalism to our stations,” said Nate Bowman-Johnston, Indego’s general manager. “It’s just a massive scale that we’re dealing with at this point.”
Thieves have been physically breaking bikes out of the docking stations where they are locked up waiting for paying users. In some cases, the damage to Indego’s infrastructure rendered entire stations inoperable.
Stations have been removed at 16th and Wolf Streets, Fourth Street and Oregon Avenue, 24th and Jackson Streets, 57th Street and Westminster Avenue, and 21st Street and Washington Avenue.
“South Philly’s been the epicenter of the activity for some reason,” Bowman-Johnston said. There are also some stations where only one or a handful of docks have been affected.
Indego is working with law enforcement on the issue. While there have been no arrests, Bowman-Johnston says there are several active investigations.
He said Indego is waiting for parts and plans to reinstall all of the lost stations in the next two months. “The goal is to reinstall every station,” he said.
Stations outfitted with the latest equipment have proven more vulnerable to this kind of theft, while the latching mechanisms on Indego’s more antiquated stations are more resilient. The 16th and Wolf station, for example, will likely be replaced with tougher, older equipment the company already has in its inventory.
Bowman-Johnston said that despite this summer’s setbacks, Indego ridership is up 20% year-over-year, and that this week it hit 1 million trips for the year so far. The network plans to expand into new neighborhoods soon.
Vandalism and theft have long plagued bike-share systems, and images of bikes or scooters floating in rivers or piled in parks occasionally go viral. But while the North American Bikeshare & Scootershare Association (NABSA) does not have data on the number of incidents, such attacks are not unique to Philadelphia and are less frequent than industry experts initially projected.
“When bike share and scooter share first started [in 2008 and 2009], the general consensus was that there would be a ton of vandalism,” said Laura Mallonee, membership and engagement director with NABSA. “But unlike other street infrastructure, we don’t necessarily see as much as we expected.”
*This story has been updated with the full list of shuttered stations.
from Unicorn Riot
Philadelphia, PA — The unionized workforce that handles concessions at the South Philadelphia Sports Complex started to strike on Monday, September 23. Hundreds of Aramark stadium workers that bargain with the UNITE HERE Philly Local 274 union are demanding new contracts.
Unicorn Riot was told that Aramark, which is headquartered in Center City Philadelphia with a market capitalization value of $9.8 billion, has tried to prevent the unionized workers from qualifying for healthcare plans by dividing their hours between the three stadiums – Citizens Bank Park, Lincoln Financial Field and the Wells Fargo Center. (In a statement to NBC10 Aramark claimed it has now offered to count all stadium hours towards health coverage in a new contract.)
“Our contracts have all expired in all three buildings so we’re trying to consolidate the work. So, three different buildings doing the same job, you get different pay rates now. We want it to be the same pay rate. So if you’re a cook, a cook, a cook [at those locations] you get the same pay. It’s not like that. We want the hours to count from all three buildings to qualify people for health care. Right now they keep the hours separate.”
Kathy Hazel, Aramark concessions worker at Wells Fargo Center for 24+ years
“We might have worked all three buildings in a week, we still get one check from Aramark. But we get three different wages, that’s the issue here. […] They don’t want to agree to benefits like PTO. I understand it’s a ‘part time’ in one building, but when you’re in all three buildings you’re working like full time, you’re getting full time hours… but they’re still trying to treat us as if we are part time.”
Tarell ‘Doe’ Martin, Aramark concessions worker
On Sept. 24, outside a Phillies baseball game, union members called on fans to avoid purchasing food, drink and clothing inside the stadium, to pressure the company to negotiate a better deal. Aramark touts that “total income inclusive of wages and tips for this group of employees have risen 61% over the past five years,” while we heard from the workers that this is disingenuous because the tips have come from the public, not their employer. For an hourly cost of living increase, Aramark offered fifty cents a year, then another ten cents on top of that a year,
Many of the Aramark workers are not tipped at all, so they want to improve their base pay and benefits. “I noticed that they did not thank the Philadelphia fans for helping pay the salaries of their workers,” said picketing union member Kathy Hazel. “They don’t get any credit for any money I get from tips. […] There’s a lot of workers that are not tipped workers. And we’re here to support them, so that the hourly workers get an increase. They’re not getting tips, and we stick together.”
Down the street, independent vendors offered pretzels with notes on their carts saying that Aramark was on strike. Anthony Oliver with the striking Aramark workers pointed out that once again the ‘Counter Terrorism’ unit of the Philadelphia Police has turned up at Aramark labor protests. Forty-five Aramark workers were arrested in June by a force that included the same type of police we saw outside the recent presidential debate with ‘Counter Terrorism’ markings. Outside a Biden fundraiser last December, one officer on that team told Unicorn Riot that they are always deployed to protests but declined to name the specific policy which enables this.
UNITE HERE Philly Local 274 represents about 4000 private sector hotel and food service workers throughout the Philadelphia region, according to their website.
Prison labor is “remarkably common within the food system,” according to the Hunter College New York City Food Policy Center, and Aramark is at the heart of this game: it is notorious for its role in the food side of the prison-industrial complex. Its subsidiary Aramark Correctional Services provides services to hundreds of U.S. prisons and jails, privatized Immigration and Customs Enforcement jails operated by CoreCivic, along with contracts in at least 35 states, according to an investigation by American Friends Service Committee. It has long been notorious for substandard, contaminated and undercooked food.
Aramark investors benefit from prison labor used to prepare and package food in some prisons under the In2Work program. Students at Barnard College, New York University and Ireland’s Trinity College successfully got Aramark campus contracts cancelled. Georgetown University has been another site of pressure against Aramark both because of its prison labor and over on-campus workers’ contract in March.
In its corrections FAQ, Aramark says it’s in this business because “all people deserve healthy, nutritious meals.” A September 2023 Prison Journalism Project report by Justin Slavinski, “Meet the Company Getting Rich Off My Prison’s Awful Food,” described how the “100-or-so” residents in a Florida penitentiary who cook and clean are “wholly unpaid,” slashing Aramark’s labor costs to a small fraction of what legal employees would cost. Jail inmates have pushed for wages, and a prison strike protested Aramark.
This isn’t the only major political issue with the stadiums and sports construction in the city. The 76ers professional basketball team is seeking to move away from the Sports Complex and into Center City in 2031, by demolishing part of the Fashion District mall and building a $1.55 billion new sports arena site called “76Place” which is said to include 395 residential units.
This plan is opposed by many people involved with the Chinatown neighborhood a block away. “Save Chinatown” supporters argue that the 76Place project will displace and damage their neighborhood. Nonetheless, on September 18 first-term mayor Cherelle Parker announced her administration reached an agreement to move the Center City arena forward. On Sept. 25, the mayor announced more details in a community meeting, while further protests are expected.
Earlier this month, we heard from local activists trying to “ban artificial turf installation on city property including parks and recreation centers,” specifically in a huge set of proposed soccer fields at the large FDR Park which is directly west of the Sports Complex. (The FDR Park construction project has attracted opposition and protests since 2022.)
Another corporate giant in the city, Comcast, has its own designs on the Sports Complex. In February, Comcast Spectacor unveiled a $2.5 billion multi-phase master plan. Some observers suspect that Comcast will once again fleece the public coffers and obtain a development subsidy, like the tens of millions it obtained for the construction of their Center City skyscraper, along with tax breaks.
Philadelphia will be hosting six games at an upcoming FIFA World Cup in the Lincoln Financial Center, which runs during June-July 2026. FIFA scandals may have affected Philadelphia’s earlier bid in 2015. The push for this bid started in 2016. The city got up to $10 million in aid for the FIFA event from the state legislature via House Bill 1300 which was signed by Democratic Governor Josh Shapiro on December. In 2021 the city pitched using FDR Park for practice fields; however, as we heard at the PFAS protest, FIFA does not host World Cup games on artificial turf, so all 2026 matches will need to be on natural grass.
from Abolition Media
Heavy Machinery Sabotaged at Hadddington Golf Course – Philadelphia, PA
August 19, 2024
The perennial struggle against development in Haddington and throughout Philadelphia continues. Weeks ago we sabotaged heavy machinery used for construction at the Haddington golf course construction site by introducing bleach into the filtration and fuel systems. We send solidarity to the saboteurs carrying out attacks at Kingsessing, Bartrams, FDR, and other sites of development and gentrification.
Free the land!
Free the city!
From: Unravel.noblogs.org
A Response to “Heavy Machinery Sabotaged at Haddington Golf Course”
A note on sabotage of heavy machinery: please don’t waste your time messing with fuel or filtration systems. The idea of adding something to a fuel tank is (unfortunately) a widely known sabotage technique that the average person might think of, but it is most likely ineffective on modern vehicles or heavy equipment. Filtration systems are designed to filter out contaminants.
Bleach is typically added to engine oil. The rule of thumb is to add 10 fluid ounces of bleach per gallon of engine oil. This equals one gallon of bleach per 12.8 gallons of engine oil, which should be enough for an average-sized piece of heavy machinery. Larger machines will need more, smaller machines will need less. You may want to look up the specifications of the particular models of equipment on site to be sure of their fluid capacities.
The fuel is probably the least sensitive fluid in the machine; in addition to engine oil, try messing with the transmission fluid, hydraulic fluid, or exhaust fluid. For starter ideas on what to add to these fluids, check out this old Dear Ned Ludd column. [https://efmechanicsguild.wordpress.com/2016/09/06/a-nice-dear-ned-ludd-from-an-ef-journal-last-year/]
Have fun out there!
From: Phlanticap.noblogs.org
Excerpt from the mentioned column:
et’s talk about the engines of tractor trailers used for hauling innocents to slaughter and the lab, pulling the wild from the wilderness, and delivering the ingredients of every destructive endeavor sick, corporate, profit-driven minds can concoct. These trailers move the dozers that level the land and the ships that strip life from the ocean. If anything keeps me awake it is the incessant drone from giant poison-containing, toxin-spewing engines; the heart of the machine.
Engine oil can be contaminated by many things, and the other fluids they contain or run on do not mix well with others… kind of like old-guard EF!ers at a dub step show. Hell, I don’t even need to haul around bleach most nights. (Bleach destroys the viscosity of oil and does some fun, expensive shit, too).
Engine Oil:
Engine oil hates water, especially when mixed with antifreeze. Water, because it will not compress, breaks gears. Antifreeze may taste like candy, but it does horrible shit to your body— do not ingest! Engine oil also hates fuel, which thins it out and makes the engine wear out and break. If either water or fuel are found in oil then there must be a problem with the engine and it needs to be opened to check.
Cost to repair: Up to $15,000 for a semi; MUCH more for heavy equipment.
Transmission Fluid:
Hates antifreeze; it destroys the main components in the transmission and the glue that holds connections together.
Cost to repair: $5,000+ for trucks; HOLY SHIT for heavy equipment.
Hydraulic Fluid:
HATES water, antifreeze, and diesel exhaust fluid (DEF; more on that stuff later). Adding water will break shit internally; DEF clogs small control passages over time.
Cost to repair: $3,000 and up.
Diesel Exhaust Fluid (DEF):
Made of pig urine from the slaughterhouse, this stuff is supposed to help clean the exhaust on trucks. It’s on the tank near the fuel cap, and has a blue lid. It is nasty, and antifreeze thinks so too. This stuff will kill a radiator and clog up the tiny spaces inside an engine fast. Looks like water, and gallon jugs of the stuff can be found in open trucks on construction sites so use your imagination. Causes a lot more damage than rice or dry flake mashed potatoes in the radiator. Do not ingest or get DEF on you…. beyond the fact that it is very refined pig urine, it is poisonous.
Cost to repair: $2,000 to $6,000 for trucks; heavy equipment easily $5,000 to $?!!!!
Diesel:
As above, bad for oil, but also BAD in the diesel exhaust fluid tank. Modern exhaust systems are delicate, so contaminating the DEF tank with fuel will cause extensive damage to the system. Because of this, the newest exhaust sensors are designed to shut down the truck when diesel is found. To extract diesel from a machine, all one would need is a small suction hose, a siphon, and maybe a bottle to catch the fuel in.
SAFETY NOTE!!!! Don’t use your mouth for this!!! Besides leaving evidence, a lot of the chemicals and fluids in an engine will kill your ass.
Cost to repair: $1,000–$10,000 if internal component are damaged.
Submission
The perennial struggle against development in Haddington and throughout Philadelphia continues. Weeks ago we sabotaged heavy machinery used for construction at the Haddington golf course construction site by introducing bleach into the filtration and fuel systems. We send solidarity to the saboteurs carrying out attacks at Kingsessing, Bartrams, FDR, and other sites of development and gentrification.
Free the land!
Free the city!
Submission
I attacked two construction sites. At one site I destroyed four Ring cameras, at another I threw paint on its sign and walls. These small actions were done in solidarity with anarchist prisoners and the struggle at SCI Rockview.
Fuck gentrification!
Free Palestine!
Long live anarchy!
from Mainstream Media
PHILADELPHIA (WPVI) — Police are working to identify a group of masked suspects caught on video vandalizing an apartment building in West Philadelphia.
It happened outside the Olympic Tower Apartments on the 4900 block of Spruce Street on May 1.
Surveillance video shows 10 suspects smashing windows on the first floor with hammers and throwing a glass bottle filled with purple paint on the sidewalk.
Police say the damage is estimated at $100,000.
We spoke with one of the owners of the apartment complex who described the frightening moments the people inside experienced.
He says employees were scared and hiding in a back room, thinking it was a shooting.
In all, 27 windows were smashed, the owner said, with glass shattered onto residents’ beds.
Police say this is an act of cowardly vandalism.
“You’re covering your face up and you’re going to go out and smash somebody else’s private property, not knowing what could possibly be on the other side of that glass,” said Capt. Robert McKeever, commanding officer for the Southwest Detective Division.
Police are asking people in the area to check their surveillance video. They say it’s possible once the vandals got further down the block they may have taken their masks off or fled in a getaway car.
We spoke with Andre Williams who lives in the neighborhood. He says he’s looking into moving into the building.
“There’s still tension about this area being newly gentrified but, you know, people have to still respect each other’s property,” Williams said.
Police are looking into an anarchist group that has claimed responsibility for the vandalism online, but they have yet to identify any suspects.
No one was injured.
Submission
Philly May Day demo-actions are back baby!!!!
This May Day, Philly anarchists went back to doing what we do best….anti-gentrification and anti-prison actions. The evening started out with a demo at the juvenile detention center in West Philly. Around 20 of us walked from the meet-up spot to the parking lot behind the facility, where demonstrators can be heard from the kids’ dorms. There were a bunch of loud fireworks, flares, and anti-cop chants, as locked-up kids pounded on their windows in response. This unfortunately only lasted about two minutes, as apparently the cops’ response times to these kinds of demos has dramatically improved. Cop cruisers immediately pulled up and blocked both exits we’d been planning to use, and one cop car attempted to run over a couple of our friends on their way out. Luckily as far as we know there were no arrests and everyone got out fine in the end, if a little shaken.
Around twelve of us met back up a couple hours later to attack a very ugly new apartment building on Spruce St and 49th St. This is another classic of Philly anarchy – terrorizing gentrifiers by mobbing up to attack a new building while its residents are already living in it. At least ten of its huge windows were taken out and a paint bomb or two got thrown.
Attacking isn’t always easy; most of the time it takes a lot of courage just to show up and a lot of planning to make sure everyone gets out safely. We appreciate how carefully these two actions were organized and everyone who showed up. Let’s keep being brave and supporting each other and maybe one day we can take down Amerikkka 😉
Solidarity to the comrades struggling in and around SCI Rockview, you are not alone! Long live anarchy! <3
from Unicorn Riot
Philadelphia, PA — Unicorn Riot has obtained a schedule for “cleanup” operations due in the next 72 hours in Philadelphia’s Kensington neighborhood, one element in new Mayor Cherelle Parker’s plan to dramatically change local conditions through state action. Some parts of Kensington have become well-known for open-air drug use and homelessness, which has become a subject of international attention, national political sniping and Internet clickbait. Days after Parker toured the area, “Kensington Cleanup Days” are slated to happen at certain locations. The “clearing” of encampments has been publicized in recent days.
Some local groups are concerned that Mayor Parker’s heavy-handed approach could increase incarceration or lay groundwork for wealthy developers to move in. Other parts of Kensington have seen rapid construction recently, just blocks away from the targeted area.
The Parker administration declared a State of Emergency just after swearing in (PDF of Executive Order 1-24 here). The previous mayor, Jim Kenney, refused to declare a State of Emergency. Now, a “Kensington Community Revival” “five-phase initiative” has been launched as well, but we hear that information on important plan features like specific treatment centers for people facing addiction in the area is hard to come by. (The police department also released a 100-day report (53 page PDF) last week as directed by the emergency order.)
We have learned imminent clearings are scheduled at the following locations under “Scheduled Kensington Cleanup Days” on Wednesday April 17th, 2024, and Friday April 19th, 2024, “at or after 8 AM.”
For many years, Kensington ‘revitalization’ plans have come and gone. According to local urban anthropologist Bill McKinney, the previous plans included:
- “All efforts have run through the city’s Managing Director’s Office or the often centralized efforts of the Philadelphia Police Department, which lack the expertise and resources to implement strategies to address poverty, addiction, violence, and helping the unsheltered.
- No authentic, participatory, community engagement processes that lead to sharing of power and co-creation of solutions with the community.
- Each effort has treated Kensington and its residents as the problem, thereby ignoring the actual causes of the core issues, vilifying residents, and encouraging additional exploitation of the community.
- After 20 years of interventions, racial disparities in areas ranging from housing to health outcomes have increased, and while every effort has claimed success at some point, none have had any form of measurable sustainable accomplishment for residents, only for those leading the efforts.”
“History is repeating in Kensington. It doesn’t have to be this way.” Bill McKinney, WHYY, May 2021
McKinney acknowledged the giant scale of the area’s shadow economy, which was a result of decades of disinvestment: “We’re trying to turn off a billion-dollar industry […] There was intentional disinvestment in this community — and so that economy was replaced with another economy. That other economy needs to be addressed. It’s not addressed just by picking up a few people and locking them up.”
From the perspective of people like former Kensington Neighborhood Association President Eduardo Esquivel, the government’s existing strategy has been to “keep a billion-dollar open-air drug market contained in Kensington.”
Other planning frameworks previously developed include the “North of Lehigh Neighborhood Revitalization Plan” (Dec. 2013 PDF) and the Heart of Kensington plan. KensingtonPlan.org has more information about these plans and the use of opioid settlement funds.
Apart from the Kensington Caucus at Philadelphia City Council, which has been openly hostile to well-known harm reduction programs like needle exchanges, there are other players to consider. (Council member Quetcy Lozada “asked the real estate developer who owns the building where Savage Sisters is located to terminate the organization’s lease,” CBS Philadelphia reported in February. Harm reduction nonprofit Savage Sisters provides services like wound care, caused by ‘tranq’ (xylazine) – a tranquilizer commonly found in the area drug supply.)
With Mayor Parker’s new pressure to remove people, any plan to force people into “treatment or jail” decisions hinges on District Attorney Larry Krasner’s discretion. The de facto policy right now doesn’t push jail time for simple drug possession. Therefore, the DA office would need a policy shift to impose this choice on detained people. (Paraphernalia or public intoxication charges could also be leveled.)
A source with close knowledge told Unicorn Riot that they heard the federal Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA) is also taking an interest in the situation. Federal agents have been photographed in the area in recent months. The source relayed that the DEA was concerned about violence around the clearing operations so they may want to reshape the marketplace by coercing dealers into leaving, hoping that would disperse open-air drug consumers to other areas of Philadelphia. (The DEA Philadelphia Field Division office conducts “Operation Engage Philadelphia” in the city.)
Unicorn Riot was also told that the Philadelphia Police Department has intentionally been dropping off intoxicated people at dispersed locations around the city.
This police operations pattern reminded us of multiple instances during the 2011-2012 Occupy Movement where police would drop off intoxicated people at the protest camps, as well as the 2012 Drug Recognition Evaluator (DRE) scandal in Minneapolis, where the Minnesota State Patrol was running a program to give unhoused people drugs at a shed by the MSP International Airport before dropping them off at the protest encampment at Peavey Plaza.
Cover image composition and photos by Dan Feidt.
from Unravel
Philadelphia police are searching for multiple suspects caught on video vandalizing cars in the city’s Fishtown neighborhood back on Friday, March 29.
In the social media video obtained by police, you can see the suspects jumping on hoods of parked cars and kicking in windshields along the 1400 block of Oxford Street. Police say the string of vandalism incidents along Oxford Street happened around 8:30 p.m.
Submission
Ghost Robotics Corporation is a Philadelphia-based robotics company. They are located in the Pennovation Works compound in the Grays Ferry neighborhood in South Philly. They specifically cater to the military and “defense” markets. This article will go over some basic information about the company that readers opposed to colonialism, militarism, technological advancement, or gentrification may find interesting. Others are encouraged to verify this research and supplement it with their own.
Ghost Robotics is best known for their robot dogs. The robot dog, officially known as the VISION 60 Q-UGV, is billed as a “mid-sized high-endurance, agile and durable all-weather ground drone.” It is being used by US and foreign militaries, border security, and commercial companies. The robot is able to operate autonomously to some degree or accept real time instruction from a human operator via remote control. The dog has the capability of accepting add-ons, the most controversial of which have been weapons such as SWORD’s SPUR (basically an unmanned sniper rifle). Researchers have also put together a “guide to combat robot war dogs” that addresses dealing with Spot, a very similar robot dog developed by Boston Dynamics, which is linked below.
Those opposed to the war on Gaza, and Israeli colonization generally, may be interested to know that Ghost Robotics Corporation partners with Rafael Advanced Defense Systems. Rafael is Israel’s national R&D defense laboratory, developing and producing weapons for the Israeli Occupation Forces. The Ghost Robotics website touts its “cutting edge solutions addressing defense, homeland, and enterprise customer needs.” In an article on The National Interest a journalist covers a demonstration of Rafael using a robot dog from Ghost Robotics alongside a Raven drone to “clear nine rooms and identify the threats there.” An archived version of the article is linked at the end.
In addition to the roboticization of war and policing, and assistance in the genocide of Palestinians, Ghost Robotics Corporation is also part of the Lower Schuylkill Master Plan. The master plan is a scheme concocted by University of Pennsylvania, the City of Philadelphia, and corporate interests to develop the lower Schuylkill River into an “Innovation District,” a “Logistics Hub,” and an “Energy Corridor.” The Pennovation Works compound that Ghost Robotics is located in is an early step in creation of the “Innovation District” along the Schuylkill in South and South West Philly. This same district threatens the Bartram’s Garden area with a bio-technology campus. Also of note is that the master plan’s “Logistics Hub” is responsible in part for the destruction of South Philly’s FDR meadows, building an artificial wetland in FDR Park to offset having destroyed wetlands by the Philadelphia Airport. The Lower Schuylkill Master Plan and the zine Fuck A “Cellicon Valley” are linked below.
Links and Information
Ghost Robotics Corporation
Address
Ghost Robotics Corporation
3401 Grays Ferry Ave, Bldg 200, 2nd Fl
Philadelphia, PA 1914
Website
ghostrobotics.io
Contact
sales@ghostrobotics.io
vendors@ghostrobotics.io
careers@ghostrobotics.io
press@ghostrobotics.io
Social Media
instagram.com/ghostrobotics
linkedin.com/company/ghostrobotics
twitter.com/ghost_robotics
Staff
CEO and co-founder Gavin Kenneally
CTO and co-founder Avik De
President and chief executive Jiren Parikh (died March 2022)
Guide to combat against robot war dogs
https://www.jwz.org/blog/2021/02/guide-to-combat-against-robot-war-dogs/
Archived News Article Regarding Relation With Israeli defense company Rafael
https://web.archive.org/web/20230206160050/https://nationalinterest.org/blog/buzz/how-israel-brings-together-robots-and-ai-lethal-combo-175518
More Information About Rafael
https://web.archive.org/web/20130514133537/http://duns100.dundb.co.il/ts.cgi?tsscript=comp_eng&duns=600024863
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rafael_Advanced_Defense_Systems
http://www.rafael.co.il/
Pennovation Works
https://pennovation.upenn.edu
Lower Schuylkill River Master Plan
https://www.design.upenn.edu/sites/default/files/LSMP_Exec.pdf
Fuck A “Cellicon Valley” zine
from Making Worlds Books
Cities are in the midst of a profound transformation as the wealthy price out the remnants of the urban working class, especially people of color. Defying Displacement, focused on the US but informed by global examples, investigates gentrification from the perspective of the people fighting some of the most powerful institutions on the planet. As mass displacement alters the composition of gentrifying cities, the avenues available for social change become unsettled as well, forcing us to reimagine our strategies for building a better world. Author Andrew Lee will be in conversation with Keyssh Datts of Decolonize Philly.
“So often gentrification is a process understood in limited terms as a flow of people or the impersonal and inevitable flow of capital. In Defying Displacement, Andrew Lee analyzes both in tandem, illuminating how gentrification transforms not only housing markets, but the horizon of possibility for revolt. Regardless of where they are reading from, readers will be able to understand this subject with a fresh appreciation of how global struggles past, present, and future are linked by the making and unmaking of cities.” —Ayesha Siddiqi, editor in chief of The New Inquiry
Advance registration recommended and appreciated.
About the Speakers
Defying Displacement author Andrew Lee participated in a multi-year fight against the construction of a Google campus in San José, California that culminated in the creation of the first community land trust in the so-called Silicon Valley. He currently lives in Philadelphia and is a member of the No Arena in Chinatown Solidarity group opposing the planned 76ers arena. Lee supports grassroots social movements as managing editor for The ARD and his work has previously appeared in Yes! Magazine, The New Inquiry, Teen Vogue, and ROAR Magazine.
Keyssh Datts is a multimedia creator, community organizer, and founder of Decolonize Philly, a racial and environmental justice group using media and direct action to bring changemakers together to build towards a land revolution.
Submission
We attacked two excavators that were demolishing the street dept warehouse in north bartrams. When we arrived we were delighted to realize that someone had already damaged the machines! In addition to smashing the machines, we poured quick-setting concrete into the exhaust pipe of a machine. We choose this method because of its simplicity and ease. The other machine we used various techniques that can be found in warriorup.noblogs.org. Good luck finding what we did!
Submission
On Tuesday, September 26, during the widespread looting, a small group attacked Clarkville. It’s another business that’s gentrifying West Philly and exploits its workers. After hearing about the looting we decided it was an easy way to contribute to the chaos. We read a cool zine called Toward Insurrection, in that zine they talk about anarchists interfacing with the riot. One way to do that is targeting our enemies just outside of where the riots are happening to overextend the police. Hopefully actions like these will grow the general disorder. We encourage other like-minded individuals to take action similar to this one next time.
Death to small businesses
Love to the looters
-some anarchists
Submission
Development is officially moving forward – though very slowly – in destroying the alluring wastelands of Bartram’s North, the wooded riverside area just north of Bartram’s Gardens in Southwest Philly. For years, this area has been a favorite hangout spot for anarchists, ravers, feminist nude sunbathers, and other companions in being up to no good. Within the past eight months, a fence has gone up – twice – around the fields adjacent to the bike path that runs through the area, and a nearby building is slated to be demolished at the end of July. Earlier that month, three surveillance cameras were installed high up along Botanic Ave, the street that leads up to Bartram’s North. An unpermitted rave at Bartram’s in mid-July was reportedly broken up by police, which was to our knowledge the first time cops had kicked a party out of that location.
Resistance to the project has also been moving along, but slowly. According to websites like Philly Anti-Cap, over this calendar year so far the following events and actions have taken place:
– January: A zine is released entitled “Fuck a ‘Cellicon Valley’: Against the Proposed Development of Bartram’s North and South.”
– February: “Fuck Cellicon Valley” graffiti goes up along with “No Cop City” slogans.
– February: A Valentine’s Day-themed communique entitled “ISO Fence4Fence” notes that the fence around Bartram’s North has been broken down and is accompanied by anti-Cellicon Valley graffiti nearby.
– February: Iffy Books hosts a zine launch and social to publicize “Fuck a ‘Cellicon Valley.'”
– March: A communique claims the sabotage of a machine at Bartram’s North that was in the process of destroying “one of our favorite post-industrial wildernesses.” Bleach was poured into the tanks and tools were stolen.
– March: An anarchist assembly meets to discuss the various ecological and place-based struggles across the city, connecting the proposed struggle at Bartram’s with other campaigns like Save the Meadows, Save the UC Townhomes, No Arena in Chinatown, and the fight against the Cobbs Creek golf course.
– March/April: Anti-development and other anarchist graffiti goes up in Bartram’s North, including “Land Back” and Developers GTFO (A).”
– April: A communique posts photos of graffiti at Bartram’s North (with slogans including “fuck in the forest (A)” and “developers GTFO”) “for those Sexy Elves and Fairies out there in the Sex Forest. Let’s make the space more fun and cute while we defend the land. ;-)”
– May: A “work party” takes down most of the fence around the Bartram’s North fields for a second time and puts up more graffiti.
– June: “Feral gnomes” write a claim taking responsibility for pouring grit into the lubricating system of an earth-destroying machine at Bartram’s.
The proposal for “Cellicon Valley,” part of the Lower Schuylkill Master Plan, threatens to build a biotech campus at the sites of Bartram’s North and Bartram’s South. As well as demolishing the green spaces in those areas, the proposal also likely involves razing Bartram’s Village (the project housing nearby), and displacing its residents to build a new road to the Bartram’s South site.
This proposal is part of an ongoing effort by Philadelphia’s city planners to attract tech investment and brand the city as a new tech hot spot in competition with innovation hubs like Boston, the Bay and Silicon Valley itself. The city has been trying to do this kind of thing for a while, with mixed results, for example with Philadelphia’s failed attempt around 2018 to win the bid to house Amazon’s second national headquarters.
It is critical that we help them continue to fail in this goal. The effects of gentrification have already been devastating, and taking it to this level would make the city unlivable for everyone except a newly arrived generation of yuppie tech gentry.
The city is still looking for a partner to actually carry out the development process at Bartram’s. The PIDC (Philadelphia Industrial Development Corporation) is reportedly in conversation with three development firms: Quaker Lane Capital, Gattuso Development Partners/AR Spruce, and Lincoln Property Company. The latest information we have, from February 2023, says they expected to select a partner and negotiate a development agreement by the second quarter of 2023.
It is much easier to intimidate potential developers, discouraging them from committing to the project in the first place, than it is to dissuade companies that have already signed a contract. Waiting until a developer is actually chosen might galvanize resistance by helping publicize the project and showing people it’s a real threat, but do we really want to wait til the deal is done, mainstream media has decided to start talking about (i.e. advertising) it, and everyone else on the opposition has been put on point to promote the project and squash resistance?
At this time, it’s not certain that any of the above development firms will even decide to commit to the project. If we act now, we can make this potential failure a reality. If we wait til later, we can still make construction a problem for the developers, but we’ll be at more of a disadvantage.
We don’t need to rely on our opposition’s timeline or their media; we can create our own. At this moment, we have the chance to widely publicize the project *ourselves*, spreading the information we want to see spread and finding potential accomplices, while the city waits around for their side of things to get finalized. It might not feel like it, but the time in which it’ll be most effective to act is now.
Who’s Responsible:
– PIDC (Philadelphia Industrial Development Corporation), a non-profit founded by the city of Philadelphia and the Chamber of Commerce that funds development, is the main vehicle of this project
– Anne Bovaird Nevins, President of PIDC
– Angie Fredrickson, Vice President of Real Estate Services of PIDC (oversees the group’s marketing efforts in the Lower Schuylkill)
– Tom Dalfo, Senior Vice President of Real Estate Services for PIDC (oversaw the implementation of the Lower Schuylkill Master Plan)
– Colliers Life Sciences, “elite” real estate advisors leading the effort to solicit developers for the biotech campus
– Joseph Fetterman, Executive Vice President
– Clifford Brechner, Vice President
– Matthew Barkann, Associate
– William Penn Foundation, funders of the Lower Schuylkill Master Plan, along with the City of Philadelphia
– PennPraxis, local advisors and facilitators for the Lower Schuylkill Master Plan
– PHA (Philadelphia Housing Authority)
– Urban Land Institute (ULI) Philadelphia – assembled the panel of experts in 2021 (sponsored by PIDC) that recommended and specified suggestions for the development of Bartram’s
– All development firms that have shown interest in the project
Some ideas:
– Counter-information about the project (on site and in general)
– Actions against people responsible for development
– Work parties
– Dare to dream >:)
