NPR sets out for a tour of North Philadelphia with community activist and Clinton delegate Malcolm Kenyatta. He talks bout the triumphs and challenges happening in this essential, evolving neighborhood.
Listen to the story here.
Ahmad Nuruddin gave us a ride to the corner of Broad and Cecil B. Moore streets right in front of the Temple University Bookstore where community activist and yesterday's Barbershop guest Malcolm Kenyatta offered to take us on a walking tour of his North Philly neighborhood.
He had described it as the best and worst of the city. And when we got there, I wondered why. There were plenty of people, lots of shops, a lot going on. So I asked Malcolm why he wanted to meet there.
MALCOLM KENYATTA: Philadelphia is not only a city of neighborhoods. I think Philadelphia in a lot of cases is a city of blocks. We're right now still very close to the university...
KENYATTA: And that is the conundrum that we have to figure out. Philadelphia, I mean - we're hosting the DNC. We just had the pope here - first-world heritage city in North America. So all these great things that are happening but that progress is only hitting people in pockets.
MARTIN: We turned down a narrow side street with a hodgepodge of rundown row houses and ones with signs put up by management companies. A group of kids were playing basketball on a court nearby. Do you feel that either party is talking about the cities in a specific way - what the cities are for, what the city should do and specific ways to make the cities kind of engines of opportunity or to create opportunity that's more widely shared?
KENYATTA: No. In terms of a cohesive plan for this is what we're going to do for our American cities, no, I haven't seen that.
Original source: NPR
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