Fishtown Library Rally on Channel 6 Action News

Chan­nel 6’s Jes­si­ca Borg cov­ered the Save the Fish­town Library ral­ly last night. You can see me sport­ing my Phillies play­offs hood­ie and hat 37 sec­onds into the clip. I want­ed to post this not only because I think that this is a sto­ry that deserves a great deal of vis­i­bil­i­ty, but also because I want­ed to note that not every­one present felt that Bill Green’s com­ments artic­u­lat­ed what we want from the City.

As a Philadel­phi­an, I want it all. I don’t want to sac­ri­fice things like the Office of Sus­tain­abil­i­ty. A lack of sus­tain­abi­ity is how we got here in the first place. The hous­ing mar­ket was­n’t sus­tain­able; now it beg­gars us. I want the City to pur­sue an aggres­sive pol­i­cy toward bik­ing. I ride a bike and want to be safer as I com­mute to work. Why can’t we have that and our libraries, too?

What we may be see­ing is the down­side to May­or Nut­ter and Gov­er­nor Ren­dell endors­ing Hillary in the pri­ma­ry. I hope that’s not the case and that Pres­i­dent-elect Oba­ma can see why our politi­cians endorsed his oppo­nent but then worked hard to ensure that Penn­syl­va­nia went his way in Novem­ber. If there is mon­ey out there for banks, insur­ers, the auto indus­try, and unpop­u­lar wars, there needs to be mon­ey for ordi­nary cit­i­zens, too.

This makes me won­der what’s next for Fair­mount Park. I vot­ed ‘no’ on that bal­lot ini­tia­tive specif­i­cal­ly because the only thing I’ve ever seen the Recre­ation Depart­ment do is close pools. I seri­ous­ly hope Nut­ter and City Coun­cil aren’t con­jur­ing up ways to sell off our com­mon wealth. We real­ly need to do better.