Grid Magazine October 2021 [#149]

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Ida flood reveals our motor vehicle bias

Tech takes on trash

Mutual aid provides laundry to unhoused

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OCTOBER 2021 / ISSUE 149 / GRIDPHILLY.COM

T O W A R D A S U S TA I N A B L E P H I L A D E L P H I A

ROAD RULERS KRT and QRT cycling teams welcome people of color to life in the bike lane

Left to right: Ryan Haywood, Curran J and Hank Wallace

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EDI TO R ’S NOTES

by

alex mulcahy

Facing the Day

managing editor Alexandra W. Jones associate editor & distribution Timothy Mulcahy tim@gridphilly.com copy editor Geoff Smith art director Michael Wohlberg writers Bernard Brown Nichole Currie Constance Garcia-Barrio Gabrielle Houck Randy LoBasso Jason N. Peters Lois Volta photographers Chris Baker Evens Drew Dennis Milton Lindsay illustrator Lois Volta published by Red Flag Media 1032 Arch Street, 3rd Floor Philadelphia, PA 19107 215.625.9850 G R I D P H I L LY. C O M

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I

’m dying for a cup of coffee today.

Not just a regular black cup, the kind I used to drink daily for decades. No, I want one of those towering concoctions with billowing clouds of milk and mountains of sugar that are topped off with swirls of whipped cream. A milkshake disguised as coffee. I’ve never actually had one, but our office is next door to a Dunkin’ Donuts and the larger-than-life posters displayed in their windows, coupled with years of ubiquitous marketing, have planted seeds in my mind that are now in full bloom.

I quit my routine of drinking coffee a few months ago because I was having stomach problems. Faced with a choice of taking medication everyday or changing my habits, I decided to kick my old habit. It’s largely worked out for me: my stomach is much improved and the frequency of my migraines has plummeted, a welcome, though unexpected, consequence.

Despite the positives of caffeine abstinence, I still (wrongly) think I can get away with a cup every once in a while, mostly when I’m feeling low energy. Today I’m groggy because last night I was at a concert hanging out with friends I hadn’t seen since the pandemic began. Now my mind is hazy, a liability when we’re on deadline, and I have an intern coming in who shouldn’t be greeted with a yawn. The Dunkin’ Donuts stick figure, effortlessly sprinting from task to task, comes to mind. America runs on Dunkin’—why shouldn’t I? Feeling so sleepy and unmotivated is uncomfortable. When I indulge in some caffeine, the electric surge of adrenaline makes me feel indestructible. But after going without coffee for a while, it usually makes me feel agitated and even more prone to distraction. And then my stomach hurts. So it

becomes a question of do I want to suffer now, or do I want to suffer later?

This is not only a question for a weak-bellied, middle-aged man with a low-grade caffeine addiction, but for our society at large grappling with climate change. What convenience or comfort are we willing to forgo to limit further climate change, and what are we willing to sacrifice in the name of resilience? For example, models predict that The Navy Yard is a likely casualty of sea level rise. We should be planning a sensible retreat from the area, but instead 109 more acres are being developed. That economic boom might feel good now, but …

In some ways, I’m fortunate that my body rebels quickly to a substance that it doesn’t like. The immediate negative feedback leaves no doubt about the consequences of my choices. Perhaps if a tornado ripped through our neighborhood every time we went on an international flight we would be less inclined to travel.

Thanks for bearing with me as I outlasted my compulsion to relapse. Maybe if I had given in and enjoyed one of those well-marketed coffees, I would have unlocked some highly-charged words of inspiration. We’ll never know.

I think that, on a personal level, my decision will make for a better tomorrow. At the very least, it makes for a more honest today.

ALEX MULCAHY Editor-in-Chief alex@gridphilly.com

COV E R P HOTO G RAP H BY D RE W DENNI S

I L LU S T R AT E D P O R T R A I T BY J A M E S B O Y L E

publisher Alex Mulcahy

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by

lois volta

DEAR LOIS,

What are your thoughts about teaching kids how to clean?

B

y the time our kids move out of the house they should know how to tidy, clean, do their laundry and navigate a kitchen.

I consider this baseline behavior for an able-bodied adult human being.

As we watch our children grow, we learn how difficult it can be to teach them these skills. We also have our own set of struggles with domesticity, which makes this a tricky subject for parents to navigate. It’s almost as if we forget that the real work is to raise healthy, functioning, emotionally intelligent human beings whose internal compass points toward love.

There is a temptation for parents to turn a blind eye to how messy their children can be. It is easier to clean up after them, or just leave the mess, than to have a confrontation.

But every time we look away and remove ourselves from potential arguments or difficult discussions that we need to have, we perpetuate the behaviors of messiness.

Other times, parents struggle with being an authoritarian figure, commanding that chores be done as a punishment. This way of parenting creates emotional knots around basic living skills by causing children to garner negative feelings for domesticity. In turn, this dampens their desire to help around the house.

We want our children to know how they can make themselves, their homes and the world around them better. Teaching children how to clean up their toys and do the dishes is simultaneously teaching them to take responsibility for themselves and giving them the awareness that love is a verb.

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It feels good to love and be loved, and our children should understand this and know how to be a loving household member who can give positive energy back to the family.

There is no age requirement here. We are more receptive to familial love when everyone feels like they are supported by each other. We exude more positive energy outside of the home when we feel supported inside its walls.

When we complain about domesticity we give it a bad rap. Children learn from us to dislike housework at a very young age.

It’s a hard thing to unlearn—trust me. I am learning and growing as a parent as well.

The goal here is that our homes are loving, safe, creative and restorative places; they don’t always have to be spick and span, but at the least under control. This means

that we as parents need to be at peace with the amount of work it takes to raise children. Peace is something the adult has to bring, and the lack thereof should never be blamed on children for merely existing, having needs or being messy.

Parenting is hard work and the sooner that is understood, the sooner we can rise to the occasion with a good attitude. Sometimes the mess has the potential to bring us to our knees; give it a good cry and a prayer while you’re down there, then roll up your sleeves. The house isn’t going to clean itself and you are the grown-up.

We have all heard children bickering over what’s fair. Equality among children is a beautiful thing, although it doesn’t always manifest itself gracefully. It usually means arguing over who gets to do the least amount of work. Understanding that we are all equal yet carry different gifts can help us factor in how we decide to parent at the moment.

Developmentally, as parents, we should be prepared to guide our children to peaceful resolutions to establish what we think a healthy home is. Many times we get so caught up in the drudgery of how overwhelming life can be that we overlook that

P O R T R A I T BY J A M E S B O Y L E

TH E VO LTA WAY

IL LUSTRATIO N BY LO IS VOLTA

it’s the parents who need to model healthy cleaning habits for their children, and also be consistent.

I can’t expect my 12-year-old to respond with the same emotional maturity that my 15-year-old does when it comes to doing chores. I can expect my 12-year-old to trust that her sister cares for her and doesn’t want to exploit her labor.

The hope is to tamp down the squabbles around sibling “fairness” and to trust me, their mother, that I love them equally and want them all to be the best versions of themselves. This means that I trust them to be caring and thoughtful toward each other and the household. If they aren’t exercising this behavior, we talk about it. We come together and listen to where we are each coming from and why we feel the way we do.

Then together, we craft a solution for love to be experienced. This might mean going the extra mile when we really don’t feel like it.

Talking through domesticity with children is hard. No one wants to be told they made a mess or didn’t do a good job. We also don’t like to feel like we are letting anyone down. It does feel good to be proud of ourselves and a job well done. When teaching our children to have pride in their work, it includes fostering healthy respect for ourselves and the energy it takes to make our homes beautiful places. This means that we need to respect the work of cleaning and maintaining the home, with no exceptions.

To reach a bit further, how do we expect those who will inherit the Earth to care about the wellbeing of our planet if we are not properly teaching them to care about where they live? We must marry our ideals to how we treat our surroundings, those we live with, our communities and the world at large. Raising caring, respectful children will inspire the love that both your home and the planet deserve. lois volta is a home life consultant, artist and founder of The Volta Way. Send questions to info@thevoltaway.com.

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bike talk

Trailing Behind Motor vehicle emissions contribute to the climate change that brought Hurricane Ida. So why did the city clean up I-676 first and leave bike trails for later? by randy lobasso

W

hen the remnants of Hurricane Ida arrived in the Philadelphia region last month, it brought with it the kinds of chaos we used to just hear about: flooding, property destruction, mudslides and at least one dude backflipping into the sewage pit formerly known as I-676 in Center City.

“I definitely thought about the water quality,” the jumper, Justyn Myers, told local writer Brian Hickey after his dive.

“Could there have been [excrement] in there? There might have been.”

And while some were marveling at folks like Myers making the most of the flood, others were under water, cleaning out their 6 GRID P H IL LY.CO M O C TO B ER 20 21

houses and businesses in West Philadelphia, Manayunk and the western edges of Center City. The city’s on-street bike infrastructure was mostly left intact, but the trails so many of us have come to rely on as sources of physical exercise and mental relief, especially over the past 18 months, were a mess.

Days later, we saw maintenance updates to our infrastructure—I-676 was drained and motor vehicles were using it once again. But even after volunteer and official city cleanups, huge swaths of the Schuylkill River Trail in Philadelphia and Montgomery County were still closed indefinitely. It could be months before the trail is ready to use again.

Not only is this a shining (if sewage-slathered) example of how transportation pri-

orities are laid out in the region, it’s also telling of how cities might continue reacting to climate change-fueled disasters. Even in the face of life-changing warming and extreme weather, spaces dedicated to motor vehicle transportation are given priority over all others, all the time, and encouraging carbon-free or carbon-light transportation remains a lengthy, drawn-out process where a handful of loud or influential voices can upend safe routes for families to travel to school and work without using a car.

Scientists agree that storms are getting more intense due to climate change. In late August, Hurricane Ida was a Category 1 storm in the Caribbean. By the time it made landfall in Louisiana, it had intensified into a Category 4, in part because of the 85degree water in the Gulf of Mexico.

“The extra heat acted as fuel for the storm,” noted Rebecca Hersher of NPR’s “All Things Considered” in an August commentary. “Heat is energy, and hurricanes with more energy have faster wind speeds and larger storm surges.”

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Downpours from the remnants of Hurricane Ida left the Schuylkill River Trail underwater on Thursday, September 2.

After pulverising Louisiana coastal communities, Ida was no longer classified as an organized weather system. So it came as a shock to many residents of Pennsylvania, New Jersey and New York when we started getting emergency alerts on our phones instructing us to seek shelter immediately on the night of September 1. We woke up the next morning to devastation, including floods across I-676 and Main Street in Manayunk.

None of this came as a shock to scientists who study climate, nor our political leaders. “Extreme weather events like Ida are not isolated incidents,” Philadelphia Mayor James Kenney said at a press conference in the wake of the storm. “They are another indication of the worsening climate crisis.”

But the mayor did not offer a plan for Philadelphia to immediately begin combating climate change. Nor did the mayors of other affected areas.

But here’s the thing: transportation is the biggest source of greenhouse gas emissions in the U.S., with 29% of all emissions coming from transportation. That’s more than agriculture, commercial and residential combined.

According to the EPA, “The largest sources of transportation-related greenhouse gas emissions include passenger cars, medium- and heavy-duty trucks, and light-duty trucks … pickup trucks, and minivans. These sources account for over half of the emissions from the transportation sector.”

Any political leader who believes global warming is real should be figuring out ways to get folks out of their cars and onto alternative, cleaner forms of transportation.

Unfortunately, the most obvious solutions to these problems are the ones the public won’t like because it involves changing our habits. Even if collective behavioral changes will benefit society (and the planet), the discussion quickly devolves into a discussion about freedom.

But any leader committed to climate change should do everything they can to decrease motor vehicle usage in their catchment.

One place to begin is removing parking minimums requirements for new construction. Parking lots and on-street parking take up a massive amount of city space: there are

2.2 million spaces in Philadelphia for 1.6 million residents (3.7 spaces per household.)

Parking minimums not only add to that total, they encourage residents to choose their cars over our expansive public transportation system, walkable neighborhoods and expanding protected bike and scooter lanes.

This isn’t to say that everyone and their grandmother needs to get on bicycles now.

But car culture is subsidized by taxpayers, and it just keeps getting worse. Despite making combating climate change a national priority, President Biden touted the $115 billion in his infrastructure bill proposal for fixing highways and roads across the country. The president even called for an increase in oil production in order to bring down prices—in August 2021.

These are not serious proposals from leaders who talk tough about climate change. They do not represent the interests of the millions of folks affected by flooding in the eastern United States or fires in the West.

Things aren’t going to change until we start getting people out of their cars.

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urban naturalist

Diversity Watch Queer, Black and feminist birding groups encourage more people to get into the pandemicfriendly outdoor hobby by bernard brown

E

lise greenberg wasn’t expecting many people at the Philly Queer Birders’ first meetup at The Woodlands Cemetery in West Philadelphia this past April.

“I honestly expected two to four people to show up,” she recalls. Greenberg had launched the Philly Queer Birders as an Instagram account just a few weeks earlier, seeking community in her new hobby. She was not the only one.

Fifteen people showed up to the event.

Greenberg had long been casually interested in birding, but it took a rare avian visitor from Siberia to inspire her to buy a pair of binoculars and get serious. In January crowds of birders gathered near the Philadelphia Museum of Art to view a tundra bean goose, a bird that presumably had gotten lost and ended up in Philadelphia.

“My partner and I live pretty near there.

We walked down there expecting to see it with no binoculars, but got there and saw out-of-state plates and people with those lenses the size of your arm,” she says. Other birders let Greenberg take a look with their spotting scopes. She was hooked.

Her new interest in birding coincided with rising pandemic fatigue.

“Vaccines were just becoming available but it felt untenable for the world to come back to a normal space,” she says. “I was missing people in general but also the queer community, and I thought surely there are other queer people who are into birding.

I started the Instagram account thinking it would be a small group of people who would hang out and look at birds, but it has become much more than that.”

Philly Queer Birder meetups have followed every month, with demand exceeding capacity and registration spilling onto waiting lists.

The group’s June walk at Bartram’s Garden was led by Karla Noboa, who also co8 GRID P H I L LY.CO M O C TO B ER 20 21

organizes the new Philadelphia chapter of the Feminist Bird Club (FBC). Noboa, who uses pronouns they/them, serves as the chapter relations chair for the national organization, and first got involved in 2017 while they were living in Boston.

Noboa took up birding seriously after moving from Vermont to Wisconsin. Noboa, a hiker, was underwhelmed by the flat terrain of the Upper Midwest after living in the Green Mountain State. “I was like ‘Oh my God, this is so boring,’ and that’s how I actively started looking at birds.”

“When I started getting interested in birds I wanted to find people to go birding with. I had trouble finding a group I felt comfortable going out with,” Noboa says.

“Everyone was older, so knowledgeable, white. I’m Hispanic, non-binary, young.”

Then Noboa discovered the FBC, which started in New York City in 2016.

“I asked if they could start a chapter in Boston in 2017,” Noboa recalls. “It started going from there, and when I moved to Philadelphia I decided to start a chapter here as well.”

The FBC combines birding with a commitment to social justice.

“While we lead bird walks, we want to focus on the ‘feminist’ that’s in our name, which means being social justice-orientated. Every year we make a patch and sell it and donate proceeds to an outside cause.”

The FBC will donate proceeds from the 2021 patch, depicting a female yellow warbler, to the Native Wellness Institute,

Philly Queer Birders founder Elise Greenberg (front left) and walk leader Edge (front right) watch birds like the robin (opposite page) in FDR Park at a Saturday meetup.

P HOTO G RAP HY BY D RE W DENNI S

a group that supports the overall wellbeing of Native people through a variety of programs.

The new In Color Birding Club shares the same commitment to blending birding with social justice. Upper Darby resident Jason Hall, the founder of the club, was motivated to found the group after 2020’s Black Birder’s Week.

“It touched me tremendously,” Hall says.

“I remember looking at social media and tagging myself in some things and getting this response of so many people sharing my

story that I was out here, and I was Black, and I was a birder. I remember thinking I did not realize there were that many of us out there.”

Hall saw Black Birder’s Week as a call to action. He spent the next year thinking of how he could respond and posting on social media.

“I was put in touch with the Valley Forge Park Alliance and the Fairmount Park Conservancy. They asked if I would be interested in leading some bird walks,” Hall says. “Both groups were looking to expand outreach,

... I thought surely there are other queer people who are into birding.”

— e lise greenberg, Philly Queer Birders founder

including with Black and Brown folks.”

Starting in May, In Color Birding has led walks at Valley Forge as well as in Philadelphia parks, including FDR Park and Fairmount Park West.

Along with leading inclusive walks, the club is developing plans to introduce more Black and Brown children to birding and to give back to communities of color—for example with food or back-to-school drives.

“The idea is not just to show up and say, ‘Hey kids, do you want to look at birds?’ but also respond to other needs,” Hall says.

Too often bird walks can feel like contests among experts trying to identify a new bird first, leaving little time to ask questions or just enjoy watching. All three leaders emphasized the importance of making birding friendly for beginners.

“You don’t have to be a serious birder,” Greenberg says. “Even if you’ve never picked up a pair of binoculars, come out.

Birds are cool.”

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water

Teen Spirit Program empowers BIPOC youth to explore conservation and wildlife biology as potential careers by bernard brown

C

alvin keeys didn’t see many people like him working in conservation.

“Growing up I didn’t have a lot of Black naturalists to look up to,” Keeys says.

When his father brought home information about MobilizeGreen, an internship program at the John Heinz National Wildlife Refuge at Tinicum that connects young BIPOC people with careers in environmental conservation, Keeys, who lives in nearby Collingdale, signed up.

Over three sessions with MobilizeGreen (over the fall of 2020 and spring and summer of 2021) Keeys tackled projects like installing a pollinator garden, controlling invasive plant species at the refuge and planting trees and shrubs along Cobbs Creek. Now a freshman at Drexel University, Keeys plans to become a wildlife biologist.

MobilizeGreen youth participants work on projects developed by their host site along with challenge projects designed by the youth, known as “crew members.”

A current crew member and a senior at Central High School, Benita Balogun initially signed up for the spring 2021 session. She says she values the program’s flexibility.

“If I have a cool idea I can bring it up to the crew leaders and they’ll take it into account and weigh whether it will be beneficial to the community [and] to the program,” she says.

Keeys worked with a fellow crew member to lead a volunteer trash cleanup along Cobbs Creek, including an education portion “where we teach them how the creek itself ended up being as polluted as it is and possible solutions for that.”

Refuge Manager Lamar Gore is behind the program’s implementation at John Heinz. Gore had heard of MobilizeGreen’s 10 GR ID P H I L LY.CO M O C TO B E R 20 21

work in other locations, and in early 2019 he recruited the group to Philadelphia. The career development internships offered by the nonprofit fit into what Gore calls the refuge’s “youth engagement ladder.”

“Their model is built around recruiting a diverse workforce and introducing systematically excluded groups to conservation work,” Gore explains.

Community members can become involved at the refuge from elementary school through employment as adults. The flexibility of the program also serves John Heinz’s community engagement goals. “The National Wildlife Refuge System typically just works on site. We want the community

part. For many of them the program is their first exposure to the outdoors in a large green space.

Balogun, who lives in Northeast Philadelphia, says that in her neighborhood, “the closest thing we have to nature is a park with a playground.”

“I just wasn’t exposed to that kind of stuff,” she says.

At the refuge she found more variety. “[There were] trails with huge trees. You could see fish swimming in the water. There were deer. You could see families going on walks, kids riding their bikes,” she explains.

At John Heinz, Balogun fished for the first time and took a kayak out on Darby Creek as part of a cleanup and watershed education field trip.

Felix Agosto, one of Balogun’s crew leaders, recalls the transformation he witnessed in the members as they took to the water and learned about the issues facing the creek, like erosion. They also learned

Growing up I didn’t have a lot of Black naturalists to look up to.”

— c alvin keeys, MobilizeGreen crew member to start looking at the refuge as part of the community,” Gore says.

Crew members themselves took part in community engagement work outside the refuge boundaries. Along with other groups including Thomas Jefferson University, Audubon Mid-Atlantic and Eastwick Friends & Neighbors Coalition, the refuge has been working with the Eastwick community to identify open spaces that can be greened and revitalized. Balogun went door to door with her crew in Eastwick to help gather community input about the proposed greening projects.

Since MobilizeGreen launched in Philadelphia, 28 youth participants have taken

about the species living around the creek and picked up trash.

“There were plenty of kids who had never been in a kayak before,” says Agosto.

“They got on the water and they just went slowly at first, but at the end some of them were racing each other.”

Balogun, who initially heard about MobilizeGreen from a friend, is continuing the word-of-mouth outreach.

“Parents these days like to say that their kids are always on their phones and cooped up in the house,” she says. “Take advantage of this opportunity and get involved with nature. Sometimes it doesn’t hurt to step away from a screen and have fun out there.”

P HOTO G RAP HY BY CHRIS BAKER EVENS

Benita Balogun and Calvin Keeys are MobilizeGreen crew members at the John Heinz Natural Wildlife Refuge at Tinicum.

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healers in the city

Grow Your Own Nonprofit helps more than 400 Philadelphians a year garden and cook fresh vegetables by constance garcia-barrio

F

rom seed to supper” sums up the credo of Food Moxie, a Northwest Philadelphia nonprofit that “educates and inspires people to grow, prepare and eat healthy food,” says Lisa Mosca, executive director of this offshoot of Weavers Way Co-op.

Launched in 2006, Food Moxie grew from a project where Weavers Way in Mount Airy supplied students at the historic Charles W. Henry School, just across the street, with wholesome snacks. This initiative flourished and morphed into Food Moxie, a separate organization still related to Weavers Way. 14 GRID P H I L LY.CO M O C TO B E R 2021

“Food Moxie grows two-and-a-half tons of vegetables a year and has about 400 participants annually across all programs,” Mosca says. “About 5,000 volunteer hours a year go into supporting planting, weeding, watering, mulching and harvesting crops.”

Volunteers also pack seeds for distribution, create organic pest control kits, help with home deliveries to students, and more.

The organization also depends on volunteers for its board of directors and other tasks, Mosca says.

Food Moxie raises vegetables at three sites: W. B. Saul High School—the nation’s largest agricultural farm school—in

Roxborough; Martin Luther King High School in East Germantown; and Stenton Family Manor, a faith-based Mount Airy shelter for families experiencing homelessness.

“Altogether, we grow vegetables on about 1.5 acres of raised-bed space,” says Mosca, who gained a love of gardening from her mother, who grew up on a farm.

Education is the heart of Food Moxie.

“When people learn to grow and cook healthy foods, it strengthens the whole community,” says program manager Dorene Reggiani, an herbalist whose love of cooking and gardening stretches back to her great-grandparents, who farmed olives in Sicily.

Before participants even touch the earth, Brandon Ritter, manager of growing spaces, sets the stage for learning.

“You let people know that they’re respected, that every voice matters,” says P HOTO G RAP HY BY M ILTO N LI NDSAY

Clockwise from opposite page: Brandon Ritter of Food Moxie gardens with a group from PowerCorps PHL at Stenton Family Manor; Food Moxie Executive Director Lisa Mosca (second from right) stands with her team; PowerCorps gardens with Food Moxie.

Ritter, who began farming at age six with his grandmother. “For instance, when we cook harvested vegetables in Hope Kitchen at Stenton Manor, participants have different ideas about what spices to use, depending on their cultural heritage.”

The Henry Got Crops Farm involves a collaboration of Food Moxie, Weavers Way Co-op, Saul High School and Fairmount Park. “Saul students do everything from hands-on fieldwork to applied research and summer internships,” says Reggiani.

Food Moxie tailors its program to address the needs of participants. At MLK High School, Food Moxie’s Farm Club programming includes students affected by autism and intellectual disabilities. Students look forward to the sensory stimulation: the scent and feel of earth and plants and the taste of vegetables.

“They learn life skills related to urban farming and nutrition,” Ritter says. “Activities like planting seeds can help develop fine motor skills.” Programs always include tasting or cooking from scratch as well as gardening.

At Stenton, Food Moxie staffers guide families in both gardening and cooking.

Children from ages 5 to 11 can attend the Garden Club, an after-school program and summer camp in the backyard that began in 2009. The garden’s fresh produce provides healthful seasonal snacks and boosts the nutritional value of meals for residents. “It offers a safe space for young residents to explore and taste seasonal produce,” Mosca says of the city’s first such program for families experiencing homelessness.

Participants see how much you can grow in a small space, Ritter notes. “The program also includes vegetables with which they may not be familiar.”

The garden works in tandem with Hope Kitchen, which offers adult caregivers a chance to cook and garden. The focus is on good nutrition and eating fresh, seasonal foods.

“Participants gain basic cooking skills

and learn how to eat well on a budget,” says Reggiani.

COVID-19 posed challenges that they addressed in several ways.

“Food Moxie met the need for nutrient-dense produce by distributing free produce biweekly during the MLK grab-and-go lunch pickups,” Mosca says. “In 2020, with support from generous donors, Food Moxie gave out 150,000 pounds of regionally grown fresh produce and eggs to support good nutrition when many community members were facing hardships around access.”

To avoid “the COVID slide” where students lost academic ground, Food Moxie’s YouTube channel featured videos for remote learning support. Reggiani also designed kits for activities students could do at home, such as growing microgreens and making lip balm.

“PowerCorps, Penn Charter [School] and Villlanova students packed kit ingredients and dry goods while some Weavers Way [members] did their required hours by making home deliveries to almost 200 students and their families,” says Mosca.

Food Moxie encourages program graduates to continue growing and cooking their own food. Graduates from Stenton moving into their own homes receive a Fresh Start Kit. “If we know someone is moving to Southwest Philadelphia, for example, we tell them about Sankofa Community Farm at Bartram’s Garden,” Mosca says.

Food Moxie also lends a hand elsewhere, like East Mount Airy’s 48-bed community garden.

The city’s reopening has Food Moxie staff raring to go.

“We’re eager to support people who want to grow and cook their own food,” Mosca says.

For more information, visit foodmoxie.org O CTO B E R 20 21 G R I DP HI LLY.COM 1 5

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Morgan Berman, founder of tech company MilkCrate, and Terrill “Ya Fav Trashman” Haigler released the Glitter app this summer.

SPARKLING STREETS

A new app allows users to subscribe to a cleaner neighborhood story by nichole currie

E

—

mily rector had grown accustomed to walking by litter on Philadelphia’s streets.

The South Philly resident had spent years wishing for a practical solution to the city’s trash problem. So when she saw on Instagram that Terrill Haigler, 18 GR ID P H I L LY.CO M O C TO B E R 20 21

photography by drew dennis

aka “Ya Fav Trashman,” was involved with launching an app to address the problem, Rector was excited.

Haigler and Morgan Berman, founder of the mobile app company MilkCrate, developed Glitter, an app that allows people to subscribe to weekly cleanups, while also

paying others to do the cleanups.

Rector immediately signed up to be a cleaner and received an email from Haigler and Berman. She arrived at her first block cleanup in early September with gloves and a trash picker. Her first block was on Bainbridge Street in Southwest Center City, and the experience was positive.

“One of the big draws of this for me is that grassroots appeal,” Rector says. “Where I used to live, the amount of trash that was constantly there, it was just so overwhelming. I desperately wanted to do something.”

Rector says cleaning the block was more than picking up trash; she connected with neighbors and made new relationships.

“When you explain what you’re doing and explain the app, most people are really cool with it,” Rector says. “Everybody knows Philly trash is a real issue.”

cruiting cleaners, noting that the pandemic has left many city residents with financial burdens. He also says that Philly’s high crime rate indicates that people need additional income opportunities.

A Band-Aid for Blight

Berman and Haigler collect fast food litter around City Hall. Right: The Glitter app’s logo features an adorable cartoon trashcan.

One of the big draws of this for me is that grassroots appeal.”

— e mily re ctor, Glitter cleaner How It Began For Berman, the idea for Glitter was born on New Year’s Day in 2018. The Philadelphia native found herself walking through the Callowhill neighborhood to meet her friend for brunch, spotting litter at every turn.

It was a lightbulb moment: “I own an app company,” she thought. “We motivate behavior change. We track it. Why can’t I do that for litter?”

Thus, Glitter was conceived.

“The word ‘litter’ is the problem I’ve been trying to solve,” Berman says. The “G” in front was just the right twist.

Berman pitched the idea to the Streets Department, but they passed on funding it.

Berman then turned to Haigler.

Haigler is a former city sanitation worker whose social media savvy and success with organizing cleanups around the city have made him an important voice in activism around trash. In 2021 Haigler took his activism full time and began thinking about creating an app as well.

He says he was in a quarterly meeting with his manager, who helps steer his image as a public figure, when he wrote an idea

on a whiteboard in a rented office space.

Haigler told his manager, “My app will be a better way for people to communicate about trash [pickups] and delays.”

Four months later, Berman sent him an email describing her own idea and the collaboration began.

The app, dubbed “Glitter: Zero Litter,” launched for Android in July and iOS in August. (There’s also a separate back-end app for cleaners called “Glitter Cleaner.”)

Users can sign up for “clean block subscriptions,” a way of directly paying cleaners.

The residential block rate is $140 per month for a weekly cleaning, and $220 for a commercial block. Neighbors can cover the costs collectively, which can reduce the individual cost to just a few dollars per month.

Corporate and private giving kickstarted the funding, but the subscription model has since garnered interest from individuals, groups of neighbors and businesses. A recent private donation will allow 35 blocks in Kensington to be cleaned for free for the first month of subscription.

“We want to attract all types of people that need income right now,” Haigler says of re-

Though Berman and Haigler hope Glitter will help alleviate the city’s history of poor trash services, neither sees the app as a longterm solution. Ultimately, the amount of trash created must be dramatically reduced.

“Glitter is designed to treat a symptom of a very complicated disease,” Berman says.

Philadelphia is the largest city in America without city-wide street sweeping, and neighborhoods have felt the effects for years. Earlier this year, the Mayor’s Office proposed a budget that included $62 million for cleaning programs, allocating about $11 million per year for five years into several cleaning zones.

Additionally, the Streets Department introduced the Neighborhood Beautification and Litter Taskforce earlier this year.

Spokesperson Crystal Jacobs Shipman says the taskforce is still underway. She says its members have been meeting with leadership from the department and other city agencies to formulate neighborhood-specific litter-control plans.

The taskforce shares similarities with Glitter, including some community leaders and stakeholders, to help resolve the litter problem.

“The department looks to build sustainable solutions to litter and trash problems with these groups who … want to identify solutions for the challenges in their communities,” Jacobs Shipman says.

While the city works on the trash issue, Berman, Haigler and their team hope Glitter can offer a helping hand.

“Maybe the city adopts Glitter,” Haigler says, “and maybe it helps their department find an adequate way to communicate [to] residents versus tweeting something every six months and expecting everybody to know how to recycle.”

O CTO B E R 20 21 G R I DP HI LLY.COM 1 9

LEVELING THE FIELD

Frustrated by the lack of diversity, Philadelphia architects are laying the groundwork for a more inclusive discipline story by gabrielle houck

W

—

hen tya winn was in college, she was the only Black female student out of 500 in her architecture program.

“Five days a week, I’d have class until 6 p.m., and I’m the only Black female. It was alienating. When I’d come home from class, I never had someone who I could talk to that could relate to me and what I was feeling,” recalls Winn, who is now the executive director of the Community Design Collaborative, as well as a board member of the Philadelphia chapter of the American Institute of Architects (AIA).

Fifteen years later, her experience is still common. According to the 2019 National Council of Architectural Registration Boards annual report, only 2% of licensed architects are Black and only 0.3% of licensed architects are Black women.

“I think right now just in freshmen classes across all of the universities in the city, there are maybe 25 non-white students enrolled in architecture programs,” Winn says.

That’s why she, along with fellow architects and educators Michael Spain and Rob Fleming, are a part of the Justice Alliance for Design Education in Philadelphia (JADE-PHL), an organization formed in 2019 to address institutional racism within architecture education.

Though talks of forming the group began around 2016, Winn says the issue became impossible to ignore with Donald Trump’s ascendence to the presidency and the rise of 20 GRID P H I L LY.CO M O C TO BE R 2021

photograph by drew dennis

the #MeToo and Black Lives Matter movements. The lack of diversity in their field needed to be addressed.

“The first thing that brought us together was, ‘What does it take to get to architecture school?’ because we all thought it would be great to get more BIPOC students in architecture programs, but then we realized that these students get there and their experience is often less than desirable,” says Fleming, who co-chairs JADE-PHL alongside Winn.

According to Winn and Fleming, JADEPHL’s approach is a “slow burn,” meaning the result they want won’t be achieved without starting conversations that force their colleagues to reflect on their own racial biases.

Though people were quick to suggest scholarships for BIPOC students after the death of George Floyd, Fleming and his colleagues decided that such measures wouldn’t cut it.

“I was like, ‘Nope. We’re going to spend three months just talking about ourselves and our own biases, and our own inherent racism, and come to grips with the fact that we aren’t even at the point where we can have a realistic conversation about what we’re going to do,’” Fleming says.

Winn agreed, saying that scholarships would only put BIPOC students into potentially traumatic situations where they felt alone in their classes. Spain echoed her sentiment.

“There are students who have seen themselves as less-than, or even challenged more

From left: Rob Fleming, Michael Spain and Tya Winn aim to address institutional racism inside architecture education through the Justice Alliance for Design Education in Philadelphia.

by their professors, because of the color of their skin, and have personally come to me and asked ‘What’s up?’ wondering why they’re being challenged. Even worse, they wonder why this faculty member feels privileged enough to treat them like this,” Spain says.

The members of JADE-PHL believe that in order to get more BIPOC students into architecture programs and keep them there, they need to start sooner than a college student’s first year.

That is why they have created a tactical plan, including a proposal for a city-wide design studio across five universities (Jefferson, Temple, Drexel, Penn State and the University of Pennsylvania) and the Community College of Philadelphia. All of the schools will focus on the same neighborhood and build capacity there, using a road map that will help introduce kids to architecture as early as kindergarten.

“The K-12 space is where we start to introduce this idea that you can be in this field, and once you arrive at college you’ll be able to thrive,” Spain says.

Though Winn, Spain and Fleming would love to see programs all across the country become more inclusive, they’re focusing their attention solely on Philadelphia because of its unique traits, such as being home to the most schools of architecture and design per capita of any city in the United States.

Because of the number of design schools in the city, coupled with the fact that Philadelphia has the highest percentage of people living below the poverty line, Winn says there is an opportunity to explore urban conditions and how architecture can play a role in urban spaces.

“Because Philly is unique, it might not work everywhere else,” says Winn. “We can’t solve racism in architecture everywhere. What we can do is watch it change in Philadelphia.”

We can’t solve racism in architecture everywhere.

What we can do is watch it change in Philadelphia.”

— tya winn,

executive director of the Community Design Collaborative

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SPIN OFF

Mutual aid initiative provides free laundry services for those in need story by jason n. peters

W

Camp JTD, along with Camp Teddy in North Philadelphia, grew out of necessity in the wake of the George Floyd protests in June 2020, and continued through October 2020.

According to Jiacopello, a disorganized group of volunteers started to “walk up to random people, ask if they needed some laundry done and take it home.”

The person-to-person laundry process proved to be difficult, and according to Jiacopello, “a lot of laundry got lost in the process.”

Eventually the group set up a table and tent upon request from an encampment resident.

The city ultimately negotiated with encampment residents to provide them housing in a myriad of ways after attempting to evict them three times.

Jiacopello, along with her co-founder Bella Main and other volunteers, decided to

P H OTO S C O U R T E S Y O F M A DA S Y N A N D R E W S

hen you don’t have a home, you likely don’t have access to a laundry room, or a basket and quarters to go to the laundromat. A mutual aid group has stepped in to provide this need, which is not addressed through most charities or organizations.

It began as a tent and table atop muddy grounds at Von Colln Memorial Field on the Benjamin Franklin Parkway, with unhoused residents of Camp James Talib-Dean (JTD) dropping off dirty clothes and picking them up freshly laundered to take back to their tents.

“We pretty much started around the first eviction notice that the JTD encampment got,” explains Elizabeth Jiacopello, an activist and mutual aid organizer.

expand the scope of their services throughout the city. Now they operate as a mutual aid group that offers laundry services to the unhoused and housing insecure under the name PHL Laundry Support.

The group has grown to have more than a dozen volunteers and cleans the laundry for 50 to 60 people on a weekly basis. The operation is rather complex, now requiring a small fleet of drivers, coordination by phone and two days a week of volunteer work at a laundromat.

A volunteer and organizer who only gave the name Bengal expressed the importance of differentiating between charity and mutual aid, saying “we’re helping people that are similar to us, we’re in the same boat. I like to use mutual aid as a way to form relationships with our community.” To Bengal it’s about more than “helping someone that’s poorer than you, it’s about forming networks and relationships and understanding how to live in our society better by helping each other.”

In the words of PHL Laundry Support member Astrid Dong, “we kind of have a network of folks that we’ve built long-term

24 GRID P H IL LY.CO M O C TO B E R 20 21

I think it’s kind of a basic need that we all take for granted having access to.”

— e lizabeth jiacopell o, PHL Laundry Support organizer

relationships with, so we set up a time to pick up their laundry, drive it over to a laundromat, get that washed and folded then we drive it back.”

The process involves constant communication with participants.

“A big issue we’ve run into is people constantly changing numbers and phone plans,” explains Jiacopello. “It’s hard to keep in contact sometimes, but luckily the community that they all are a part of kind of looks out and [will] be like, ‘I know where this person’s staying next week.’”

The unhoused community is complex.

Although they are not a part of any formal group there is still a noticeable community with unwritten mores and networks.

Homelessness, by its nature, is transient.

“We’ve met a lot of people that have fulltime jobs that live in a tent for a period of time because of some raw deal they have with [a] landlord,” explains Bengal, referring to those who are housing insecure or have been evicted.

People served by PHL Laundry Sup-

port range from the unhoused who were sleeping in the Locust Street Subway Station to people who are living in tents in Kensington to people who have found housing after Camp JTD was shut down.

One member of Camp JTD who still relies on the group is Edwin “Beast” Jones, 61. Jones says that the laundry service gives him “the liberty to do the things I gotta do, like relax.” He estimated that it saves him a couple hours and more than a hundred dollars every month, but really stressed that he appreciates the time to himself.

“I think it’s kind of a basic need that we all take for granted having access to,” expresses Jiacopello. Bengal added, “It doesn’t seem as pressing to people, but it costs a lot to do a load of laundry and there are a lot of folks that have a hard time finding access to doing that. If you’re living in a tent, it makes your life much easier.”

Laundry days are Thursday and Saturday every week. Before laundry days, pickup times and routes need to be devised for their team of drivers. Laundry shifts nor-

Opposite page: Bella Main (left) and Elizabeth Jiacopello organize mutual aid group PHL Laundry Support; Above, (left) A clipboard is used to keep track of names of laundry service recipients; (right) volunteers wash laundry.

mally begin at 10 a.m. and can be as long as four or five hours.

PHL Laundry Support also offers “package support,” which Bengal describes as “giving people coins or cash and detergent for how many loads they need to try and help out with their laundry needs.” They normally distribute these packages on Sundays or alongside Homies Helping Homies, another mutual aid group, on Mondays.

“This helps everyone,” says Jones. “Even the people that are on drugs. People on drugs won’t wash their clothes, they’ll let them get dirty then steal some new ones.”

Beast added that “they need to keep doing it, hopefully more people donate to give them the funds to keep going.”

PHL Laundry Support currently welcomes donations and volunteers, as they seek solutions to stay afloat, says Jiacopello. “Funding has been so hard to keep consistent.”

To learn more about PHL Laundry Support or volunteer with the organization, find @PHLLaundrySupport on Instagram.

O CTO B E R 20 21 G R I DP HI LLY.COM 25

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From left, Kimberly Higgins, Curran J and Jenna Foley stop under the Falls Bridge during a Sunday ride. Opposite page: Curran J, founder of Kings Rule Together, greets members Ryan Haywood and Ryan Haywood Jr.

28 GRID P H IL LY.CO M O C TO BE R 20 21

RULING THE ROAD Cycling community helps people of color get in shape, compete and connect story by nichole currie

E

very sunday in manayunk, a swarm of cyclists meet in the Regal UA Main Street Theatre parking lot.

One group stands out from the rest.

More than 20 people of color pull bikes out of their vehicles and begin pumping their tires with air. Laughter and conversation fill the parking lot as the cyclists catch up with each other. They are usually dressed in blue, black and red cycling jerseys and shorts that read KRT (Kings Rule Together) for the men and QRT (Queens Rule Together) for the women.

KRT and QRT are cycling groups that pride themselves on rider education, diversity, inclusivity and, of course, the joy of cycling.

As the men and women begin their adventure, the riders feel a sense of ease.

“I’m always on a ride where there’s another woman, I’m always on a ride where there are Black people,” member Jenna Foley says of her experience riding with the group. “It’s a special thing that I honor, and I celebrate because we’re creating a space for it.”

KRT member Kenneth Alman says their cycling group is unique because they come together for a shared passion that makes any differences they might have secondary.

“It’s a brotherhood and sisterhood that you’re not going to find anywhere else,” Alman explains. “We all work together for one goal. It’s very rare that things happen like this—and from minority organizations.”

—

photography by drew dennis

small. What you’ve been doing?’” Curran J says. “He said, ‘I’ve been riding my bike.’”

The owner of Wild Styles, Ryan Haywood, was another barber who was riding.

He was initially drawn to the sport because he thought the jerseys looked cool, and valued it as a form of exercising. He then began

to learn more about the nuances of the sport and to really understand the equipment and the bicycles themselves.

“We didn’t even understand what bibs were for. We said, ‘Why do people wear these tight shorts and butt pads? What is that?’ Haywood says with a laugh.

I never saw cycling represented to me as a middle schooler or as an elementary student, let alone a Black woman who looked like me crushing it on a ride.”

— j enna foley, Queens Rule Together member

Switching into Gear It all started in 2017 when KRT founder Curran J went for a haircut at Wild Styles Barbershop in Germantown, and he noticed one of the barbers looked significantly different.

“I asked him, I say, ‘Yo bro, you got really O CTO B E R 20 21 G R I DP HI LLY.COM 29

Club members Jenna Foley (front), Yasmeen Watson (back left) and Trong Nguyen (back right) ride across the Falls Bridge.

Opposite page: Curran J founded Kings Rule Together.

Soon after his trip to the barbershop, Curran J borrowed a bike and helmet from his brother and began riding with friends from the barbershop every Sunday. His first ride began on Kelly Drive.

Though biking proved challenging, Curran J was intrigued by the sport. At the time, he was engaging in several activities aimed at self-improvement—and he was going to add cycling to the list. He began going on rides for 20 miles or more, and he purchased a new bike as he committed more seriously to the sport.

“After that, I was kind of like, ‘You know what, I like this. I can do this,’” Curran J says. “I looked at it as a way of therapy.”

Two years later, the group of four men had grown to nine. Things changed when they signed up for the 65-mile charity bike tour Ben to the Shore, from Philadelphia to Atlantic City. They raised money to purchase uniforms and cover racing costs, and officially became a team.

They also began to document their progress and training on social media as they prepared for the race. Basketball stars Reg30 GR ID P H I L LY.CO M O C TO BE R 20 21

gie Miller and Ray Allen and sports agent Maverick Carter were among the celebrities who took notice of KRT on social media.

Media including The Philadelphia Inquirer, Bicycling Magazine and USA Cycling all eventually covered their story.

It was becoming clear to Curran J that what started as a Sunday activity with a few friends had a lot of potential. He teamed up with an old friend, Hank Wallace, to develop the KRT Cycling brand in 2019.

“I was already doing a lot of solo rides,” Wallace says. “Then seeing pictures from their Ben to the Shore [trip], I was like, ‘Hey, this looks cool, I can actually do something like this.’ And this is what I’ve been doing.”

Another important development happened next—the formation of Queens Rule Together. “Women became interested in riding with us,” says Curran J, “but saw no representation. So once we got a bigger response from them we told them to all come out on a particular day and the rest was history.”

Today, KRT and QRT is a nationwide community—including a concentration

of riders in Hampton Roads, Virginia—of cyclists of all ages, genders, religious backgrounds and skill levels.

The group has a membership of more than 200 riders and its activities include designing and selling cycling apparel, team racing with USA Cycling, training, local group rides and youth cycling classes. Wallace says the cycling group began to grow into these divisions naturally.

“Everything’s just continued to start organically,” Wallace says. “Then based off of naturally being competitive, we ride enough to the point where it’s saying to one another, ‘Me and my friends used to race down the block. Why can’t we try and compete in some of these events?’”

Wheels of Inspiration The inspiration the group has provided to others is one of the most significant markers of its success. Cycling is historically and overwhelmingly a white and male sport. QRT member Foley says Philadelphia youth tend to be inspired when the group rides by because they see cyclists who are people of color.

I needed an outlet as an adult to engage with other people, build friendships and also refocus on my wellness.”

— k imberly higgins, Queens Rule Together member

“Their eyes just get so big, and they just look at me like I was a superhero,” Foley says. “And I just had this moment, and I smiled back at them, and I just saw their shoulders get a little bit higher.”

Because the group has a deep, diverse membership, they say Philadelphians often stop them and become interested in riding.

“It’s awesome to be something that I never saw,” Foley says. “I never saw cycling represented to me as a middle schooler or as an elementary student, let alone a Black woman who looked like me crushing it on a ride.”

Inspiration can also reach beyond the young and the local. Last year Leo Quinsing traveled from California to Philadelphia to visit his brother, who told him about a cyclist group he had joined: they were diverse, inclu-

sive and most importantly, family.

“My brother said it doesn’t matter what level you are; they’re so welcoming and inviting,” Quinsing says. “So I was like, ‘Okay, let’s see what I can do with the cycling thing.’”

The West Coast visitor met with the group for his first ride, leaving Manayunk and traveling to the Benjamin Franklin Bridge.

Though he remembers the ride as challenging, as he pedaled along with the group of Black and Brown men across the city and back to finish their journey in Manayunk, Quinsing realized he was hooked.

He moved to Philadelphia in less than a month, became an avid rider with KRT and lost more than 40 pounds in the process.

“When I got out here, it’s just a different vibe,” Quinsing says. “I really missed that cycling community. So I just picked up everything and moved, and I’ve been riding with them ever since.”

All are Welcome Kings and Queens members pride themselves on welcoming all riders, new and old alike. When the group meets up in Manayunk, founder Curran J instructs all new riders on how to change gears, and which bike chain you should be on. He also goes over the trail with them, asks about their

well-being, and passes out snacks and water.

KRT and QRT membership grew during the pandemic as many people were looking for COVID-safe activities when gyms were closed and socializing inside was a no-go.

Kimberly Higgins says she joined QRT last summer after realizing she needed social interaction and fitness for her overall health.

“I needed an outlet as an adult to engage with other people, build friendships and also refocus on my wellness,” Higgins says.

“And that’s what cycling did for me.”

Off the bike, the group comes together for game nights and dinners. Mikaela Martin has biked for seven years and belongs to several groups in the city, but Queens is her favorite.

“I’ve never spent so much time not riding with a riding group,” Martin says. “They’re the ones that I want to spend my weekends with. I want to travel with them. It’s a family.”

Wallace says the family dynamic naturally happened with KRT and QRT, but was unexpected.

“You can’t force people to be friends, you can’t force your family, but this is like an extended family,” Wallace says. “It’s forming organically, and it’s forming into something a lot greater than I think we initially set out.”

To learn more or join, visit www.krtcycling.com

O CTO B E R 20 21 G R I DP HILLY.COM 31

32 GRID P H IL LY.CO M O C TO B E R 2021

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