"Large Scale, Large Money Developers and Companies Are Trying to Move All of Us like Chess Pieces. A Clear Sign We need to be organizing with each other"
Philadelphia has been known as the city of brotherly love, and yet the city is seldom kind to its most vulnerable occupants. Public policy has often been delivered to favor the corporations over the people including the latest BIRT tax, set to eliminate business taxes and leave a 450 million dollar gap in income that can be used to help the city.
Philly residents and organizers like Meg are coming together to take a stand against this. Raised in Boston, Meg gained an early perspective on what social justice looks like. Living in a heavily integrated community, for most of her formative years, Meg did not have a public park in walking distance of the community that had a large number of children. There was a vacant lot that would be the perfect place for one to be built and give kids a healthy place to form bonds and avoid trouble. She would take a stand with her community and endure an 11 year fight to get that park built. While a long fight, Meg made sure to take those lessons with her as she moved to Philadelphia.
“The length and the labor that it took to get there provided immediate clarity that organizing take a lot of work and doesn’t happen overnight.” Meg has also correlated from organizing between Boston and Philly but both cities historically have not had leaders who are actual voices for the pain that the everyday person dealing with hardship. How can someone truly excel and speak truth to power for a community if they never had the challenges that the people have?
The noticeable issues in Philadelphia also happen to be how Meg has noticed that communities of color of so often disregarded and not included in large decision making. It’s no accident that these decisions are deliberate to maintain a system of income inequality.
From witnessing love ones be affected by police brutality, mass incarceration and being subjected herself to income inequality, Meg takes a stand, organizing for a better Philadelphia and better Pennsylvania for us all to thrive.
