I Choose to Stay Here Transcript
- Late last year, we went to a meeting, some people in the community, and I went to a meeting that the Empowerment Zone held, and we saw that they were trying to straighten out American Street. And an interesting thing was that the maps or projections that they had were going straight through somebody's home that had been there for years. I didn't know them, but at that moment we said, why are you going through these people's homes when there's so much vacant land? But from that meeting, we got the alert that something was happening.
- I had heard from like one of my neighbors down the block, I live on 3rd and Cecil B Moore. I had heard from somebody down the block that, oh, your dad's house, the city's planning to take it. You might get a letter, you know, in a few like eight months. So, you know, I told my dad and my dad, he did not believe it was happening. My dad's like, what are they talking about? And all this can't happen because this is not a communist, you know, place. We're free here. Nobody can come and take my home. But little did we know that it did happen.
- And one of the people on this block on Bodine said, I don't want to sell my house. My husband invested $20,000. They're offering me $20,000. I thought the woman was babbling, except that at that meeting, somebody said to her, Doña Massa, if you don't move out when they tell you to move out, the sheriff comes and puts you out.
- They dealt us a bad hand to begin with. And now finally, because I say it from experience, I've been 15 years here on 2nd Street, and it took me all that time through all these struggles to finally get that little suburb that everybody's going so far to get. I got it right there. And I still can't have it because the city don't want to give up the land now.
- This is my block, and this is a block that was-- that's very well organized, has no abandoned houses other than the one for the PHA. There was a small fire in that one. It was only smoke damage and they still haven't fixed it. That's the only blight out of my block. But the city tried to take these three buildings, and my neighbor's house right there, which is bought, paid for no taxes owed, has legal title, is occupied, is repaired, is solid, no buckling, no nothing. So it's a matter of if they have a project for it, because they have these forms that if a developer-- you--might want my house. And if you have a better use or you can convince somebody that there's a better use than the one I give it, hey, it's yours. The city uses eminent domain to take my land.
- And then now we have, we're faced with the reality that my home could be tomorrow gone. After all those struggles with the city to get that little piece of land. My home can be taken tomorrow. Her whole block will be gone tomorrow.
- I came back, talked with some of my coworkers, they said, oh yes, we know these people and something is happening. We've heard it in the neighborhood. So they came over and visited and then invited me. And then I was able to meet with three of the families that were there. And I was shocked. I've grown up in this country since I was 1-year-old and I could not believe what I was hearing and reading.
- It's been a struggle throughout history in the '70s and the '80s and the '90s. And now in 2000, you know, we had-- I grew up here and so I remember going to the schools and it wasn't easy going to the schools. You had to fight gangs so that you could go to schools. I go to Penn Treaty. Penn Treaty. There's no gang, but all the white people that surround the school hated the blacks and the Puerto--and the Spanish speaking people who went there. So there was racism. And we have a police district two doors down who never did anything about it. That park was all white. You couldn't put a foot from American Street over to this side. You couldn't. It wasn't until the late '70s, '77, '78, '79 when all hell broke loose. And there was violence in that park 24/7 because the Latinos were going to come and the Latinos were going to stay.
- From the look of it, this is the largest group of takings in the history of Philadelphia. In the recent takings, there have been 5,334 properties taken by the city. 249 of those have been occupied homes. So we went back and started-- those of us that met with them--started informing our neighbors and said, something is happening. In a garage that fits maybe 50 people. we had 150 people that showed up on my block. People were scared. We put out the word that something was happening in this corridor. Little did we know that it was the whole city.
- Welcome, welcome. We miss you. We miss you.
- The agenda is over there, but you each have it in front of you.
- Iris Torres was the first person to knock on my door and tell me what was going on in this area. And she was like, you have to come to this meeting. And I kind of didn't believe her. I first, I thought about it and I say, "Wow, this really can happen?"
- For now, my house is not taken, but all around me, houses they're taking. So I'm part of everybody. I don't want to move. It's not you just losing house, you losing your, your neighbor. You're losing all your years experience in the house, all that good and bad.
- You are not just leaving your home, you're leaving a way of life that you know of. And that's hard to do, especially for peanuts, you know, for what they want to offer you.
- And I don't know if my home is in the list or anything like that, but I know it could be in the future. So I'm gonna fight again, you know, with them alongside of them, to make sure my home is not you know, going to be taken because I don't want to move. I've been there since 1963 and I refuse.
- And people that choose that they want to leave is fine for them to leave. But my main reason for being is I choose to personally stay in the neighborhood and I will want to fight for anybody that decides that they want to stay in the neighborhood. I have family here. I mean, I know my neighbors, I know the area and I choose to stay here.
- It's a new day. It's a difficult day. We have two new council people. You have copies in your packet. I can remember Bodine when what I admired was not, not the houses because I didn't often come down this block, but the grove of trees. We don't have groves of trees in North Philly.
- You know, when I lived on Bodine, we lived there about 10 years, eight to 10 years. And it was nice. It's a small, you know, small block like six houses, you know. And the neighbors, they were all mostly family. There was like four of them that were all related. And it was nice growing up there. The only thing, of course, many years ago there used to be a lot of drugs in every corner. But you know, as the years have gone by, now it's good.
- This was decades in building this community. And in my experience, the outside of a house, the outside of a block, only betters after their relationships have been solidified. And there's a lot of unity. Now, by unity, I don't mean everybody has to love each other, but there's enough unity that people care about the block and are willing to support each other. And that's what was on this block. I live two blocks away and this was happening and I know nothing about it. And I'm outraged. I'm outraged that my neighbors were targeted very quietly. Each one alone, individually by a large city government, that you had to move.
- I was raised all around here. This is all practically on my neighborhood. My father lived here, well one day it was sometime almost like Christmas, he received a letter just from out of the blue. Yo, you've got to leave in 90 days. Just like that. We didn't understand it. We didn't know what to do. And from now on, you know, like, our lives have all changed from the little granddaughter, my sister, me, myself, my dad, nerve problems, anxiety, aggression, you know, like in another way. I don't know. I don't know how to explain that. It's just bad, you know, just knowing that you live here for so many years and out of the blue you just got to get out. We are still here. You know, we try to fight a little bit here because we feel as though that we know we got the right that nobody just can't say you can leave. I mean, you know.
- When I used to come out my house, Bodine, Bodine used to be a beautiful neighborhood. It was clean, it was beautiful. People had trees. Now I come out of my house, look at it now, it's blighted, it's horrible. They made my neighborhood blighted, the city made my neighborhood blighted.
- Creating blight where there was unity and where people really put effort into their homes. So now you break that up, you break up the unity, the community and you scatter people and you give them next to nothing. That's just not acceptable.
- I asked the city in many meetings that I went to or CLI went to-- They don't have no idea what they're going to do with Bodine. They really don't. Every time we ask that question, they don't know what to say. They were going to build a factory to give the community work, which we know that's not going to happen. They bring their own people. They always bring their own people. They do not hire people from the community. They moved this community, destroyed this community for what?
- And so the city says it's trying to improve its economic base. Most of the businesses that have that have come in, if they have 25 jobs, we may get one or two. And that's just not acceptable to wipe out a neighborhood and give us that and say it's economic development when we know that there's tax forgiveness for the businesses for a period of time.
- Now we know that the city can do whatever they like. You know, it's like if we don't have any rights, you know, even though we get to vote and now, you know, the city tries to change things of, they try to change the meaning of eminent domain, you know. And really what they're doing is just they do whatever they want. They wanna move people out because these homes are not paying enough taxes.
- In December of last year, what we did was go to city council and testify. Three families were represented. They testified. This is the second taking testified that they did not want to give up their homes. They didn't want to move. They also didn't want to stop progress. At that point though, we still didn't know that as residents, as citizens, we had the right to stop this process. We were still being dutiful, responsible and, afraid because we just didn't know that we had the power to say, "No, this is unjust. You have to stop it." So at that point people didn't obstruct the taking of their homes. They said they wanted justice, they wanted fairness. One of them said they didn't want to move, but no one knew to say the words, "I will not move." The families that have been forced out. We can show them that.
- You know, what's going on around the city right now is not limited to any one neighborhood. There is under NTI and other programs, the use of eminent domain to take entire sections of desirable neighborhoods and make them ripe for development. We want development. But it has to be based on community interest and community needs. It has to be community-based development. And as Rosemary and CLI constantly say it cannot be developer-based development. It must be community-based development. Every city councilman must come to our neighborhoods and ask us what we want. They shouldn't dictate what they want.
- Everyone we're going to room 696.
- I'll get someone to deliver this. We're not planning any rowdy stuff. They have important business to discuss, but we have important messages to relay. The city is giving them to private developers. We know that for a fact because there's a list I can show you.
- In our block, there are the block that we are in. There's several rehab houses there, you know, that have been well kept up. The foundations are good. So why did you put that particular block on the block, you know, to take the house. And if we had not come to city council, we would've never found out that it's supposed to be a mistake.
- We've had all the neighbors sign in the 1800 block of Master Street asking Darryl Clark to rehab those houses and don't take our homes. We are a family.
- Are these regarding particular properties?
- Yeah, but they're, to make a point, you have no worry about these properties. They've been taken care of. But that's my point. But a diligent reporter recently found that the developer that was thought to want the property apparently doesn't. They have no response in writing, but feel that the information that was sought by the reporter tells them that it won't be taken. They were also in the newspaper. What we need here and what we've been holding up our signs and holding up our T-shirts. We need a moratorium. Like why can't they build houses instead of destroying them? Because for each house, an example, according to the study
- Well why not? Why buy? Why build houses that are only gonna last 30 years? Why not then refurnish or rebuild all those houses that are standing there and give them a little piece of land so that they could have their own parking space. So they could have a little piece of land to grow. Why not?
- Because there's no money in it for the pockets of the politicians. There's a lot of money going into new construction, a lot of money that is going to fill a lot of pockets in the city. And outside the city, developers are going to get money.
- They're taking a lot of our history and throwing it away. Because a lot of these buildings are-- the structure of these buildings-- they're wonderful. They're bricks. The new houses they're building now are paper. They are. And they destroying this history.
- And people say it's only 249 homes. But it's 249 families who have similar histories to the ones that we're telling you. In fact, longer, they're people who've spent 3, 4, 5 generations in their homes, and they're being displaced.
- We're not giving up. And I'm here for myself too and for Rose. We are not giving up for everybody. I just want to be there for everybody. So when it comes to my turn that everybody be there for me because that's important that you have somebody to help you when you feel like you're losing everything, your house.
- Nowhere during those processes was there any mention of taking people's homes for the progress that was reported to come. It was progress that was going to benefit the residents and bring in, it was a dream scape, and what it's turned out to be is a nightmare.
