8QWLWOHG LQ LQ %ODFN SOXV RQH SGI 3$5; &$6,12 *5((1:22' *$0,1*
NOVEMBER 2-9, 2016
TIVE PHILLY’S NEWS ALTERNA
JEWISH FILM FEST
ay Boobst&EveBrettrobriangdsw her Bridge llmore brash show to the Fi
Breaking the Ballot
Electing smarter voting options so America doesn’t get screwed.
PHILLYWEEKLY.COM
36 years of the best Jewish cinema returns to Philly PAGE 12
PAGE 14
Coltrane Crumbles Is the state of this house any way to treat a jazz legend? BY BRUCE KLAUBER
TIMAREE SCHMIDT
R
egardless of the result on Nov. 8, Americans can agree: We can’t take another one of
these. To prevent bloody civil war—or at least very annoying Facebook arguments—we must change how we do elections. Whether you feel strongly that your candidate is the best person to be president or you simply vote to prevent the catastrophic victory of the wrong millionaire, there is something deeply awed with a system that now requires we decide between the two least liked candidates in the history of favorability polling. Many things led us to this point and it will require great upheaval to get us out. One solution? Get rid of First Past the Post. Wait, what? First Past the Post (FPP) is an election model where each voter selects exactly one candidate and the winner is the candidate who gets more votes than any other. It’s pretty straight forward: everybody votes, then we perform some addition, compare numbers and, voila!, democracy. SEE PAGE 8
I
n 1999, the Strawberry Mansion row home of jazz legend John Coltrane was declared a National Historic Landmark, which ultimately commemorated where one of the most important jazz musicians in history lived and worked from 1952-58. In 2012, efforts to restore the property with hopes of using it as a museum or center for jazz studies were in high gear. The Greater Philadelphia Cultural Alliance, the Philadelphia Clef Club of the Performing Arts and lawyer Faye Anderson of “All That Philly Jazz� were committed to ensuring Coltrane’s home would become more than the lonely blue sign out front that denotes an homage to history. SEE PAGE 6