Philadelphia local news, sports, jobs, cars, homes

Category: Opinion

  • Letters to the Editor | Dec. 24, 2025

    Letters to the Editor | Dec. 24, 2025

    Police corruption

    In your recent editorial, “Will the Philadelphia Police Department ever be free of scandal?” you provided a valuable albeit disheartening summary of the examples of police misconduct and corruption that surfaced in 2025. These recent events are part of “a systemic problem that has undermined the department for decades” and underscored the need for independent accountability. Our organization, the Citizens Police Oversight Commission (CPOC), has not conducted any police investigations because the police employment contract remains an obstacle to our efforts. Despite our public advocacy before City Council, broad support from lawmakers, community partners, and the public, and our groundbreaking testimony at the interest arbitration hearing, CPOC’s demand to carry out our public mandate was denied.

    Each day, when Philadelphians call us to report misconduct — as they do in increasing numbers every year — they expect us to investigate their complaints. They are let down when we have to tell them we can’t.

    Until we can perform the independent investigations Philadelphians voted for in 2020, the systemic misconduct of a small number of police officers will continue to plague the department and detract from the good work of many other officers. A fair and effective system of accountability is vital to any agency.

    We will continue to work — including performing real-time audits of the department’s internal investigations of police misconduct and exposing the problems with arbitration you mentioned in the editorial. We will work to reduce and address misconduct in the months and years to come, so that community trust can be built, wrongful convictions will be a thing of the past, and taxpayers will not pay such a high price for a failed system.

    Tonya McClary, Citizens Police Oversight Commission, Philadelphia

    . . .

    Who are the arbitrators who continue to let corrupt cops keep their jobs? And who is going to organize an effort to get them to change? It sounds counterintuitive, but shouldn’t the police union want to get rid of the rotten apples who make taxpayers question the integrity of police officers in general?

    Debbie Weiner, Quakertown

    . . .

    Your recent editorial about police misconduct raised several questions: Are members of the Citizens Police Oversight Commission being paid? If so, where does the money come from? How often do they meet? Why, in three years, has there not been one investigation? Why is the committee still in existence? Doesn’t anyone oversee them?

    By the way, I am definitely pro-police, my husband having served on the job for 38 years.

    And I have one more question: When will there be an investigation into the sheriff’s office? From the articles I’ve seen over the years, it appears that a serious look at what’s happening there is certainly needed.

    Florence Newman, Philadelphia

    . . .

    Your editorial questioned whether the Philadelphia Police Department will ever be free of scandal. The answer is no — at least for the foreseeable future. The underlying causes started well before the current commissioner. Issues with arbitration have been long-standing, and the city never seems to confront them during contract negotiations.

    The biggest issue, as the article pointed out, is recruitment. Lowering standards and the de-emphasis on education have hurt the department immeasurably. Many recruits have high school degrees, but can’t really read, write, or comprehend at a high school level. Understanding the laws of arrest, search and seizure, and the department’s voluminous directives is lost on many of them.

    The promotion system — which used to be completely anonymous (you were identified only by a number) — has become politicized, resulting in less competent supervisors managing less competent cops. The mayor needs to put together a task force to propose a new way forward — something far cheaper than budgeting tens of millions of dollars on legal settlements for misconduct, which will inevitably be needed each year.

    Charles Brennan, retired deputy commissioner, Philadelphia Police Department

    Rewriting history

    I am thankful my family and I were able to visit most of the museums that make up the Smithsonian Institution before the Trump administration began its content review.

    Once again, this administration is threatening to withhold funding unless the Smithsonian bows to the pressure to submit documentation so that this administration can purge “improper ideology” from the museum system. Donald Trump’s Executive Order 14253, titled “Restoring Truth and Sanity to American History,” is an attempt to rewrite what history can be shared with the public. It is a disgraceful attempt to remove and rewrite history in exhibits that target works and content mentioning slavery, race, transgender identity, and immigration. So instead of this nation learning from our errors of the past, we just rewrite history and never acknowledge these actions? How is this “restoring truth”?

    The Smithsonian Institution has served our country as an independent and nonpartisan institution for nearly 180 years. It needs to stay that way. Call your members of Congress to object to this administration’s attempts to rewrite history by bullying the Smithsonian Institution and other museums and historical exhibitions, including the President’s House Site on Independence Mall, which attempts to share nonpartisan, historically accurate information.

    This administration is now increasing its threats and pressure on institutions as the nation’s 250th anniversary celebration approaches. Use your voice before it is too late, and this administration purges what it — and only it — decides is “woke” ideology.

    An easy way to contact your senators and representatives is to use the 5Calls app, which is free, provides quick access, information on topics, and even scripts for your calls.

    Every voice counts. Please help block this administration’s efforts to rewrite our history.

    Judy Endicott, Fort Washington

    Insult to JFK’s memory

    Adding Donald Trump’s name to the Kennedy Center is an insult to John F. Kennedy, who, like our current president, came from a prominent family but instead devoted his life to serving others, not himself. During World War II, when Kennedy was disqualified from the Army due to his back problems, he enlisted in the Naval Reserves by downplaying those problems. He asked to be sent into active combat zones, subsequently becoming a decorated war hero. Always forward-thinking, Kennedy supported civil rights as president and paved the way for the U.S. to be the first to land men on the moon. Kennedy sought every opportunity to serve the American people. Trump, on the other hand, evaded military service, believing it beneath him. He is a backward-thinking man, rejecting science and concentrating on reversing scientific, economic, and social progress. Trump has exploited his position to enrich himself and his family by many millions, ignoring all laws and norms meant to prevent that. The Kennedy Center was built to honor one man, and Trump’s name does not belong on it.

    Jean A. Kozel, West Norriton

    Disbarred attorney

    I found it a bit ironic — and more than a little depressing — to learn that while our justice system is regularly being made a mockery of by baseless indictments filed by White House lawyers, the federal courts locally have disbarred an attorney who sought to overturn a death sentence.

    Mike Carroll, Philadelphia

    Join the conversation: Send letters to letters@inquirer.com. Limit length to 150 words and include home address and day and evening phone number. Letters run in The Inquirer six days a week on the editorial pages and online.

  • As long as [REDACTED] has his thumb on the scales of justice, the Epstein files were always going to be [REDACTED] | Editorial

    As long as [REDACTED] has his thumb on the scales of justice, the Epstein files were always going to be [REDACTED] | Editorial

    Of course, not all of the Jeffrey Epstein files were released.

    Even some files made available late Friday were quickly removed. Large portions were heavily redacted. Some portions contained boldfaced names, but there was little mention of Donald Trump.

    As long as Trump keeps his thumb on the scales at the U.S. Department of Justice, no one should ever expect a fair shake — let alone an honest accounting of the yearslong connection between a convicted sex offender and a convicted president who is a congenital liar.

    This is life under a brazenly corrupt administration that rewards billionaire cronies, punishes hundreds of political enemies, kills in broad daylight, and tramples the Constitution.

    Better to prepare for how to defend against three more years of authoritarian rule mixed with kabuki theater.

    In normal times, the Trump administration’s continued cover-up of the Epstein files would be an epic scandal, prompting hearings, investigations, and accountability.

    But the Republicans who control the House and Senate have been a profile in cowardice. Until enough voters wake up, Trump and the GOP will continue to provide misdirection, denials, and a flouting of the law.

    Gary Rush, of College Park, Md., holds a sign outside the U.S. Capitol urging the release of the full Epstein files in November.

    Trump has not been implicated in any wrongdoing, but his enablers — including Attorney General Pam Bondi and FBI Director Kash Patel, and most Republicans in Congress — inexplicably continue to protect him.

    Doing so obliterates any trust in the justice system and the rule of law.

    The main tragedy involves the yearslong sex trafficking, rape, and abuse of hundreds of underage girls, including one alleged 11-year-old, and young, vulnerable women by Epstein and his many rich and powerful friends.

    Epstein’s survivors have demanded that the files be released so there can be at least some public accounting of the horror they endured. But instead, the survivors have had to relive the trauma and fear of death threats.

    One survivor who Epstein recruited from Trump’s Mar-a-Lago spa when she was a teen took her own life earlier this year. In a telling admission of how Trump views women as objects, he said earlier this year that Epstein “stole” her from him.

    A recent story by the New York Times detailed how Trump and Epstein “pursued women in a game of ego and dominance” where “female bodies were currency.”

    But the American people have been misled and abused, as well, while other pressing issues have been ignored or made worse.

    Trump’s disregard for women has been well documented.

    More than two dozen women have accused Trump of sexual abuse. He was caught on tape bragging about grabbing women by their genitals.

    Danielle Bensky (left) and Anouska De Georgiou, victims of convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein, embrace during a news conference in Washington, D.C., in September.

    A separate video showed Trump and Epstein partying at Mar-a-Lago, while Trump patted a woman on her behind. In 2023, a jury found Trump liable for sexually abusing a woman.

    Everyone knew Trump was a lout, but more than 77 million Americans, including millions of women, voted for him anyway. And the Republicans in Congress have dutifully stood by him for years, bringing repeated shame to themselves and the country.

    During last year’s election campaign, Trump used the Epstein files to stoke conspiracies and rally his supporters. He promised to release the files if elected, but after returning to the White House, called them a hoax.

    (Trump also promised to lower prices, but that is a separate editorial, just as is his promise to end the war in Ukraine in one day.)

    After mounting pressure from his base, and a 427-1 House vote last month to release the Epstein files, Trump ultimately signed a bill to make them public by Dec. 19.

    The deadline passed, and all the files have yet to come out. Expect more gamesmanship and Truth Social rants.

    The Epstein saga is a microcosm of Trump’s modus operandi. Lie, steal, cheat. Deny, deflect, delay, and degrade. Blame, complain, pressure, and sue. Line pockets whenever possible. Always overpromise and underdeliver.

    Truth, honesty, humility, compassion, or responsibility are nowhere to be found.

    Trump’s sinking poll numbers indicate that many supporters are finally catching on. The midterms loom, but so does three more years of hell.

    But could the end of our long national nightmare be near?

  • Philly’s troubled history of militarized policing

    Philly’s troubled history of militarized policing

    More than a hundred years ago, the Lanzetta family seemed to be living the American dream in South Philly.

    Immigrants from Italy, the family patriarch, Ignazio, worked hard at local restaurants, while his wife, Michelina, tended to their growing family, which included six boys by the early 1920s.

    They lived in the heavily Italian Our Lady of Good Counsel parish, where neighbors described them as “religious” and “such nice people.”

    The former Our Lady of Good Counsel church on Christian Street.

    But times were hard in 1920s Little Italy, and some native-born Americans scapegoated the recent arrivals for much of Philadelphia’s woes.

    Mayor W. Freeland Kendrick, a Republican, decided to recruit a U.S. Marine general to “clean up” the whole city, where, he claimed, “vice and crime [were] rampant” and “disregard of law and order [was] almost unbelievable,” as the New York Times put it in July 1924.

    This required White House approval, ultimately causing clashes between local and federal officials — not unlike the ones we are seeing today, with National Guard troops and U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement and Border Patrol agents on the streets of many U.S. cities over the objections of state and municipal authorities.

    Just last month, federal law enforcement made over 130 arrests in Charlotte, N.C.

    W. Freeland Kendrick, a Republican, served as the 84th mayor of Philadelphia from 1924 to 1928.

    Democrats — including Gov. Josh Shapiro, who is often mentioned as a 2028 presidential candidate — have denounced President Donald Trump’s use of federal man power.

    “I think the way the President has chosen to deploy the [National Guard] … is extremely dangerous,” Shapiro said in October, as two dozen states tried to block what critics call Trump’s “militarization” of urban police work.

    Long forgotten today are the travails of immigrants like the Lanzettas. They and other newcomers to the United States were branded as undesirable and accused of turning Philadelphia into a city where “banditry, promiscuous sale of poisonous liquor, the sale of dope, viciousness and lawlessness of all kinds are rampant,” as Mayor Kendrick put it, according to The Inquirer in 1923.

    President Trump has used even harsher rhetoric to justify deploying federal agents and troops to Washington, D.C., Los Angeles, and Memphis, while threatening to do the same in Philadelphia.

    Back in the Roaring Twenties, city officials were particularly worried that organized crime, fueled in part by Prohibition, would mar the citywide Sesquicentennial celebrations marking America’s 150th birthday in July 1926.

    A poster for the Sesquicentennial International Exposition in Philadelphia.

    When President Calvin Coolidge finally gave the go-ahead for Brig. Gen. Smedley Darlington Butler to suspend his Marine duties in January 1924, the West Chester native and Haverford graduate swiftly established his authority as the city’s director of public safety.

    “You have a cesspool in Philadelphia,” declared Butler. “If necessary you should pass laws taking [Philadelphia’s] government away if they don’t know how to run it.”

    Butler had two decades of experience in Latin America, the Philippines, the Boxer Rebellion in China, as well as France during World War I, earning two Medals of Honor and eventually rising to the rank of major general. Only a tough, experienced Marine could tame Philly, Mayor Kendrick and local reformers believed.

    And while Butler didn’t have soldiers to command, he was later quoted as saying that his ideal job title would be “martial law commander of Philadelphia with 5,000 Marines under me. Then I would not be hampered by writs and magistrates hearings.”

    During Butler’s two-year tenure, as many as 17,000 Philadelphians were arrested for various offenses, big and small.

    “Cleaning up Philadelphia,” he later lamented, “was worse than any battle I was ever in.”

    By the end of 1925, even Kendrick had come to see some of Butler’s more authoritarian initiatives as “intolerable.” Criticisms of any federal role in combating local crime grew louder and louder.

    J. Hampton Moore, who preceded and then succeeded Kendrick as mayor, called the Butler controversy a “spectacular misuse of the White House.”

    According to an Associated Press article from Nov. 4, 1925, a congressman bluntly asked Kendrick: “Would you favor the president designating an Army or Navy or Marine to do police work in every one of the big cities of the country?”

    “Mine is an exceptional case,” Kendrick responded.

    To which the congressman snapped, “Some of us don’t see it that way.”

    Butler ultimately agreed and returned to the Marines.

    Though largely forgotten, this controversy has clear lessons — and warnings — for today.

    Polls show Americans are highly skeptical of recent ICE raids and National Guard patrols — a problem Republicans could have avoided if they stuck to their long-standing preference for local rather than federal solutions.

    But Gov. Shapiro should also remember that Trump won the 2024 election, in part, because voters didn’t trust Democrats on urban crime.

    This is no mere philosophical discussion.

    Consider Michelina and Ignacio Lanzetta, those striving South Philly immigrants. Their sons were pulled into “every vice and crime of the day,” historian Celeste A. Morello has written, and two of them were ultimately murdered.

    With the nation’s 250th birthday almost upon us, Philadelphia might finally guide Americans toward a resolution to these long-standing conflicts over local crime and federal power.

    Tom Deignan has written about history for the New York Times and the Washington Post. He is working on a book about violence in and around Philadelphia in the 1920s.

  • HUD funding shift would disregard proven solutions to homelessness and destabilize programs

    HUD funding shift would disregard proven solutions to homelessness and destabilize programs

    Organizations providing homelessness services were thrown into crisis mode last month when the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development announced an extreme shift in funding priorities.

    The department has since withdrawn the notice, but it offered a stark preview of an administration willing to gamble with the futures of our most vulnerable neighbors and the crippling changes that could still be coming — unless neighbors make their opposition known, and lawmakers work to stop it.

    HUD’s fiscal year 2025 Continuum of Care Competition Notice of Funding Opportunity brought widespread changes and signaled a drastic shift away from proven permanent supportive housing solutions to combat homelessness in favor of transitional housing.

    We at Project HOME immediately recognized the danger this posed to Philadelphia’s communities and the people we serve. The outcry from fellow organizations on the front lines and elected officials was swift and fierce. Gov. Josh Shapiro even joined a multistate lawsuit challenging HUD’s move.

    While HUD has temporarily paused the Notice of Funding Opportunity, the department remains intent on reshaping funding requirements to reflect new priorities. For now, organizations have been spared the chaotic rush to adjust grant applications based on the changes. But make no mistake: The administration’s intentions have been revealed, and if future funding notices are similar, the consequences could be devastating.

    At Project HOME, providing shelter is just one link in a chain that restores dignity and offers hope | Philly Gives

    The changes would disregard proven solutions and could destabilize established programs, putting people’s homes — and their lives — in jeopardy.

    The reality is, permanent supportive housing is a proven and effective approach to breaking the cycle of homelessness. Per the Urban Institute, “Rigorous studies consistently show that it is the most effective solution to increasing housing stability and reducing chronic homelessness.”

    At Project HOME, we witness the transformative power of permanent supportive housing every single day. Our model has leveraged permanent supportive housing as the foundation of our H-O-M-E model in tandem with opportunities for employment, medical care, and education services. The most critical step in a person’s journey to break the cycle of homelessness is to have a safe and stable place to call home.

    Consider David, who spent 25 years experiencing chronic homelessness before finding stability and hope in our community. With access to housing and supportive services through our H-O-M-E model, David rebuilt his life — moving into permanent supportive housing, pursuing adult education, and securing employment through our social enterprise program.

    Today, David is a pillar of our community: He organizes an annual back-to-school barbecue for neighborhood children and continually looks for ways to help others still struggling on the streets. Whether he’s distributing coats, offering comfort at memorials, or lending a helping hand, David embodies the power of proven solutions to break the cycle of homelessness, restore dignity, and inspire lasting change.

    Stories like David’s are not isolated — they are why we remain steadfast in our commitment to permanent supportive housing.

    Critics point to a rise in homelessness nationwide as a failure of permanent supportive housing approaches, but the real culprit is a nationwide shortage of affordable housing.

    According to the National Low Income Housing Coalition (NLIHC), there were only 35 rental homes that were affordable and available for every 100 extremely low-income households in 2024. That’s a shortfall of 7.1 million rental homes across the country. Without pathways to affordable, permanent supportive housing for people at risk of homelessness, the crisis would be so much worse, and more unsheltered people would be on the streets.

    We recognize it is not the administration’s intention to increase rates of unsheltered homelessness in Philadelphia and countless other communities nationwide. No one wants to see more people living on the streets — not neighbors, not service providers, not civic and business leaders, and certainly not the administration. Yet, if these changes go forward, that could very well be the outcome.

    Trump’s executive order on homelessness and mental illness discards what works | Opinion

    The reduction in permanent supportive housing threatens to have a drastic effect on people like David. They’d risk falling back into the cycle of homelessness, and local businesses and neighborhoods would be forced to grapple with the effects.

    Homelessness is the defining crisis of our time. Yes, we must always strive to improve our response and evolve best practices. But change must be rooted in evidence, not theory.

    Philadelphia has made steady progress over three decades and has been on the front line of developing best practices that work.

    We don’t want to go backward. We must hold our elected officials accountable and demand proven solutions that benefit communities and honor the dignity and progress of every person.

    Donna Bullock is the president and CEO of Project HOME.

  • Letters to the Editor | Dec. 23, 2025

    Letters to the Editor | Dec. 23, 2025

    A grand affair

    Having Pennsylvania politicians spend a weekend in New York City looking for money for their local elections adds a corrosive element to our elections. The $1,000-a-plate “money primary” that is the Pennsylvania Society dinner drowns out the voices of people who are running without the backing of corporate interests and party bosses. The entire point of the event is for the wealthy to influence things in the Keystone State. And it’s working. Both of the likely nominees in next year’s gubernatorial race appeared, along with several candidates for U.S. Rep. Dwight Evans’ 3rd Congressional District seat. And Sen. “Connecticut” Dave McCormick appeared. He won’t appear for an in-person town hall anywhere in his district, but he’ll go to New York, which shows how events like this reveal skewed priorities.

    Pennsylvania’s political elite run to have a fancy dinner in Manhattan, taking crucial dollars and time away from the commonwealth. At this time, more than 300,000 Philadelphians still live below the poverty line. There is a 10% increase in homeless Philadelphians. An estimated 40% of households in Pennsylvania were below the asset limited, income constrained, employed (ALICE) line, which included folks who are already at or below the poverty line.

    The focus is on fundraising, not generating the real political change people need. It’s really just moneyed people protecting their narrow self-interest, not building a movement that answers voters’ concerns, addresses crucial needs in the commonwealth, and creates a distinct branding in people’s minds. It’s insensitive and reeks of venality. Follow the money.

    Jayson Massey, Philadelphia

    Yorktown overlooked

    Twenty neighborhoods across Philadelphia are being given painted, miniature replicas of the Liberty Bell as part of the America 250 celebration, but my community — Yorktown — isn’t one of them.

    How could the history of North Philadelphia’s Yorktown be overlooked? Our neighborhood was named to commemorate the Battle of Yorktown. And it is historic because it was one of the city’s first urban renewal projects. It is also now on the National Register of Historic Places.

    In the late 1950s and early ’60s, when Levittown development projects were being built in the New York, New Jersey, and Pennsylvania suburbs — exclusively for white people — Philadelphia Mayor James Tate, City Planning Commissioner Edmund Bacon (Kevin’s dad), and the Rev. William H. Gray Jr. (U.S. Rep. Bill Gray’s father) put their heads together and began planning an urban renewal project for future Black homeowners in North Philadelphia.

    It was named Yorktown to celebrate the 1781 Franco-American victory in Yorktown, Va., where George Washington’s forces — with French naval support — trapped the British, forcing their surrender.

    Historians tell us the Battle of Yorktown and Washington’s victory directly led to serious peace negotiations resulting in the Treaty of Paris in 1783 and American independence.

    Designed by builder Norman Denny, the development featured suburban-style two- and three-story homes with front lawns and driveways. The sprawling area included cul-de-sacs named after significant historic figures, Betsy Ross, Patrick Henry, Marquis de Lafayette, etc.

    An artificial intelligence program I consulted while writing this letter even agrees that my neighborhood is significant, calling it a “unique North Philly community inspired by the decisive Battle of Yorktown in the Revolutionary War that has created a lasting middle-class enclave known for its distinct style and strong identity despite early predictions it wouldn’t last.”

    How much more history must Yorktown hold to get its own anniversary Liberty Bell?

    Karen Warrington, Philadelphia

    Join the conversation: Send letters to letters@inquirer.com. Limit length to 150 words and include home address and day and evening phone number. Letters run in The Inquirer six days a week on the editorial pages and online.

  • Bobby Kennedy sought to unite the nation. Junior is part of an administration that sows division.

    Bobby Kennedy sought to unite the nation. Junior is part of an administration that sows division.

    I find it impossible, like many my age, to think of Robert F. Kennedy Jr. without thinking about his father.

    It isn’t easy. Considering the late Attorney General Robert Kennedy and his son together requires a leap of memory but a far larger one of faith.

    Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy, right, wife Ethel Kennedy, and children, from left, Bobby, Joseph, and Kathleen, second right, at Kennedy International Airport in New York, July 1, 1964, shortly after they returned from a one-week trip to West Germany and Poland.

    Bobby Kennedy sought unity. His son, the secretary of Health and Human Services, is part of the same Donald Trump team that sells national division on every possible front.

    Americans of an older generation recall watching the funeral train back in 1968 that carried Sen. Robert F. Kennedy’s body from New York’s St. Patrick’s Cathedral to Washington, where he would join his brother already interred in Arlington Cemetery.

    Sen. Edward Kennedy, back, pauses at the grave of assassinated President John F. Kennedy in Arlington National Cemetery, Nov. 20, 1970, with his wife Joan, right. With them are the widow of former Sen. Robert F. Kennedy, Ethel Kennedy, and her five children.

    All along the tracks we saw the faces, white and Black, of working people for whom Bobby Kennedy held such promise. His presidential candidacy in 1968 meant an end to the brutal American conflict in Vietnam, an economic shift in our country’s wealth from the war in Southeast Asia to the dire needs of our major cities.

    10,000 pages of records about Robert F. Kennedy’s 1968 assassination are released, on Trump’s order

    That June Saturday offered none of the pageantry of President Kennedy’s death five years earlier. There were no marching bands, no riderless cavalry horse, no President Charles de Gaulle or Haile Selassie, no heroic “Day of Drums.”

    In Bobby’s case it was only about loss.

    I can still feel the anguish in Frank Mankiewicz’s words making the sad announcement:

    “Senator Robert Kennedy died at 1:44 this morning … June 6, 1968 … He was 42 years old.”

    Kennedy had made his name as a U.S. attorney general fighting for civil rights. He took on Deep South governors to desegregate Ole Miss and the University of Alabama. He pushed his brother behind the scenes, to give the historic Civil Rights speech of 1963.

    U.S. President John F. Kennedy, right, confers with his brother Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy at the White House in Washington, D.C., on Oct. 1, 1962, during the buildup of military tensions between the U.S. and the Soviet Union that became the Cuban missile crisis later that month.

    But what made him unique, as New York columnist Jack Newfield once wrote, was that he “felt the same empathy for white working men and women that he felt for Black, Latino, and Native American working men and women. He thought of police officers, waitresses, construction workers, and firefighters as his people.”

    Bobby made a call for racial unity a part of his 1968 presidential campaign.

    In the Indiana primary, he rode through the streets of Gary in an open convertible, Richard Hatcher (the city’s first African American mayor) on one side, Tony Zale, the middleweight boxing champ, so popular with the city’s white working people, on the other.

    “I have an association with those who are less well off, where perhaps we can accomplish something: bringing the country together.

    “I think we can end the divisions within the United States — whether it’s between Blacks and whites, between the poor and the more affluent, or between groups on the war in Vietnam. We can start to work together. We are a great country, an unselfish country. I intend to make that my basis for running,” Robert Kennedy said after winning the California Democratic Primary in 1968, minutes before his assassination.

    Sen. Edward M. Kennedy waves from the rear platform of the observation car bearing the remains of his slain brother, Sen. Robert F. Kennedy, as the funeral train passed through North Philadelphia Station, June 8, 1968. Others on the platform are unidentified.

    And these were the very people who showed up for Bobby when his funeral train passed through Newark and Trenton and Philadelphia and Baltimore that grim Saturday in June.

    Chris Matthews is the host of “Hardball” on Substack and the author of “Lessons from Bobby: Ten Reasons Robert F. Kennedy Still Matters.”

  • Combatting Islamophobia through days filled with ordinary decency

    Combatting Islamophobia through days filled with ordinary decency

    Stepping out of my apartment building, a neighbor stopped me to say he was sorry for the Islamophobia he felt circulating lately in Donald Trump’s America.

    At the post office, the man behind the counter asked if I could write “Happy Holidays” in Arabic for a sign he wanted to hang. I wrote it carefully, conscious of my uneven hand. He thanked me and taped it up. I hope the small sign does its modest work, easing someone without calling attention to itself, doing what such gestures often do best when they pass quietly.

    At the bus station, a large man asked to borrow my phone. When he handed it back, he asked where I was from. I said Egypt. He swore, laughed, and spoke with me for a few minutes about the world, about worry, about what people owe one another. Before boarding, he offered a blessing.

    These moments remind me how relatively easy my passage as an immigrant has been.

    I have not encountered violence directly. What I have met, mostly, is ignorance, and even that only recently.

    I have rarely felt compelled to take it personally. I tend to think that most people would not speak as they do if their lives had widened just enough to complicate what they take for granted, if familiarity had been allowed to interrogate fear.

    That belief comes from observation over decades and across cultures. People are rarely changed by argument alone. They are altered by proximity, by repeated exposure to what does not confirm the story they have been told about others or about themselves. Knowledge and kindness work slowly. They loosen bias and false certainty by degrees.

    I carry sorrow for the violent pain and murderous ignorance that continue to surface where I come from, and far beyond it. The point is not to rank suffering or distribute blame. The point is recognition: We are capable of living far better than we do.

    After the recent mass shooting at a Hanukkah celebration at Bondi Beach in Sydney, where 15 people were killed, a Muslim man, Ahmed al Ahmed, intervened by tackling and disarming one of the attackers. He was shot twice in the process and is credited with saving lives. Past narrow religious allegiances, this was a human refusal to stand aside.

    In this photo released by the Prime Minister’s office, Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese meets Ahmed al Ahmed at St George Hospital in Sydney on Dec. 16.

    That matters, because it interrupts the story we are encouraged to believe about what people inevitably are.

    In recent months, reported incidents of anti-Muslim harassment and threats have risen across the country, echoing what many Americans are experiencing in daily life.

    Living in the United States for nearly two decades, I am well aware that this country has inflicted violence both inside its borders and far from its shores, for generations, often while renaming it, often while insisting on its necessity.

    Any serious reckoning with this asks more of us than explanations shaped for a news cycle.

    It asks for patience, attention, and the willingness to trace continuities rather than isolated events. It asks us to notice how harms travel, and how language perpetuates those harms. It asks us to notice how easily whole communities are reduced to headlines, faiths are flattened into caricature, and violence becomes explanatory shorthand.

    When we make others suffer, we do not escape the damage. We carry it, often without knowing how it has narrowed us.

    But none of this survives sustained attention. What does endure are the small acts that refuse the terms we are handed and the gestures that loosen suspicion.

    Goodness is practiced. It appears in ordinary exchanges.

    In the traditions that have shaped my thinking, love is not postponed until some imagined future. Mercy is learned here, among people who misunderstand one another, who arrive carrying inherited fear, who fail but try again.

    Decency is possible. I encountered it on the street, from ordinary people who spoke plainly and put distance between the human being and the headlines.

    As a discipline of perception, it is worth the effort to try to see the Divine in everyone. Much depends on the effort, repeated daily, without witnesses.

    Yahia Lababidi is an Egyptian-American writer and poet, the author of 12 books, including Palestine Wail: Poems. His work has appeared in World Literature Today, The New Arab, NPR, and PBS.

  • Letters to the Editor | Dec. 22, 2025

    Letters to the Editor | Dec. 22, 2025

    Government healthcare

    Why is the federal government involved in healthcare at all? Private industry does most of the medical research, invents new drugs, and develops medical procedures. Private industry can deny coverage to anyone they choose; deny payment of any and all medical claims they choose; charge whatever they want for drugs, hospital stays, and treatment; withhold reimbursements to doctors; and lobby politicians to keep their hold on a healthcare industry that earns them millions of dollars every year.

    Following World War II, President Harry S. Truman tried to pass universal healthcare legislation. During the war, companies began offering healthcare benefits to workers as an incentive. Guess what the pharmaceutical, hospital associations, doctors’ associations, and healthcare insurance companies did? Big money to politicians’ campaigns guaranteed that no government plan would be adopted.

    Almost every president since has tried some form of legislation to help the American people, with the same results. President Barack Obama’s Affordable Care Act began as a dream of universal healthcare, but big money to politicians and negative advertising forced the final version to be a weak version of the original proposal.

    Tell your members of Congress and senators that Health Saving Accounts (HSAs) are not healthcare — they are your money being saved for specific medical events. Associations of small companies, trying to obtain better insurance premiums for their members, are at the mercy of the healthcare insurance companies.

    Why do the politicians not put pressure on the pharmaceutical companies, pharmacy benefit managers (middlemen who take a cut of every drug purchased), hospital associations, especially privately owned hospitals, doctors’ associations, and healthcare insurance companies? You guessed it. Political contributions and lobbying.

    Dave Savage, (ret.) Lieutenant Junior Grade, U.S. Navy, Collingswood

    Weaponizing lies

    President Donald Trump signed an executive order declaring fentanyl as a “weapon of mass destruction.”

    “No bomb does what this is doing,” he said of the drug. “200,000 to 300,000 people die each year.”

    Did he forget America’s bomb dropped on Hiroshima in 1945 killed between 90,000 to 166,000 people?

    No.

    Trump lies to us almost daily.

    The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) reports approximately 80,000 Americans died in 2024 from fentanyl usage, not “200,000 to 300,000.” Far deadlier, according to the CDC, are annual addiction deaths from American-made alcohol, which total about 180,000; and, from tobacco usage, 480,000.

    Trump’s lies are a “weapon of mass delusion” that will only be defused when responsible news media and brave Democratic politicians fact-check him with evidence — immediately — after every lie he spews.

    Reggie Regrut, Phillipsburg

    Objective criticism

    I appreciate and respect the passionate letters to the editor from Inquirer readers, including a recent submission calling out Republican lawmakers for seeking to corrupt the electoral process through manipulative gerrymandering. The criticism of Republicans is certainly warranted, but unless we can objectively call out equally damaging manipulation by Democratic lawmakers, including efforts in Illinois, New York, California. and other blue states, we will continue to dig our partisan holes deeper. Politicians respond to voter voices and behaviors. As long as they think a voting bloc is OK with gerrymandering that helps their party gain or stay in power while opposing the same actions by the other party, we will continue to get more of the same from Republicans and Democrats. Behavior like that should be an embarrassment to all American citizens.

    Larry Senour, Doylestown

    Join the conversation: Send letters to letters@inquirer.com. Limit length to 150 words and include home address and day and evening phone number. Letters run in The Inquirer six days a week on the editorial pages and online.

  • At SEAMAAC, long-settled immigrants devote themselves to helping new arrivals | Philly Gives

    At SEAMAAC, long-settled immigrants devote themselves to helping new arrivals | Philly Gives

    To escape the soldiers, Mai Ngoc Nguyen swam across the Mekong River as Laotian snipers on the riverbank fired into the water. She and four others fled Laos together, but only Nguyen made it to safety in Thailand. The rest drowned before they could reach the opposite shore.

    On her first night in Philadelphia, Kahina Guenfoud, an Algerian immigrant eight months pregnant with her first child, was exhausted. When it was time to sleep, she pulled what she could out of her single suitcase and tried to get comfortable on the floor of an empty house.

    To this day, Thoai Nguyen remembers how he, his parents, and seven siblings were airlifted from South Vietnam to an aircraft carrier in the ocean. As the North Vietnamese moved into the area at the end of the Vietnam War, there would have been no mercy for his father, who had worked for the American government.

    Every immigrant has a story and SEAMAAC can hold them all, serving the city’s low-income and immigrant community in more than 55 languages from its headquarters in South Philadelphia — just blocks from where Guenfoud spent her first night. Thoai Nguyen, the chief executive officer, still lives nearby in the South Philadelphia house where his family found refuge in 1975.

    The majority of people who work for SEAMAAC (Southeast Asian Mutual Assistance Associations Coalition) are immigrants in an organization that began in 1984 by serving people from countries like Vietnam and Cambodia and now assists all low-income and marginalized people, including immigrants from Asia, Africa, Europe, and South and Central America.

    A half century ago, Thoai Nguyen, his parents, and seven siblings were airlifted from South Vietnam to an aircraft carrier in the Pacific. Today, he is SEAMAAC’s chief executive officer.

    “It’s about the feelings,” Guenfoud, SEAMAAC’s adult literacy and access coordinator, said. “We feel what they feel. We have all left our families. We still have that emptiness inside.”

    It’s why staffer Biak Cuai, SEAMAAC’s outreach worker to Philadelphia’s Burmese community, keeps her phone next to her bed at night. Everyone has Cuai’s number and they call when there is an emergency. “They call me and ask me to call 911: `My stomach hurts and I can’t breathe.’”

    The hour doesn’t matter, she said, because she understands.

    Many of the people who come to Philadelphia from what is now known as Myanmar are illiterate in their own language because education is no longer readily available back home, Cuai said. Here, even the basics, like opening a bank account, using email, or dealing with paperwork from their children’s schools, seem insurmountable.

    “They come here because they feel America is the top country in the world, but the problem is that everything is new and unfamiliar,” she said. “They have fear. They are scared.

    “I feel the same way because I am an immigrant,” she said.

    Biak Cuai, SEAMAAC’s outreach worker to Philadelphia’s Burmese community, works with a client.

    “I prayed to my God to guide me to my dream job, so I can serve my people,” she said. “They knock on my door. I tell them, ‘if you have any problem, you can reach out at any time.’”

    The stories are dramatic and the help is real.

    In broad strokes, SEAMAAC provides education with classes in digital literacy and English as a second language (although for most immigrants, it’s English as a third, fourth, or fifth language).

    “It’s about feeling and belonging,” Guenfoud said. “When you learn English you learn the culture, and if you learn the culture, you belong in this country. You’ll find your place here.”

    There’s social work and legal assistance to help people obtain benefits or apply for citizenship. A separate stream of funding finances SEAMAAC’s support for children who are missing school due to difficult family situations.

    SEAMAAC works with domestic violence survivors and has co-produced a short, animated film offering hope and support in 10 languages — Lao, Cantonese, Hakha Chin, Nepali, Bahasa Indonesia, and Khmer, among others.

    Laura Rodriguez, from Colombia, discusses food for the Thanksgiving holiday during an English as a second language class at SEAMAAC. Seated behind her is Leo Boumaza, from Algeria.

    Art therapy helps survivors cope with trauma. A domestic violence survivors group produced a collection of mosaics, each with a teacup, surrounded by shards of glass. What was broken, explained Christa Loffelman, health and social services director, can become something beautiful.

    Many of the people who come to SEAMAAC have experienced trauma. “Everyone’s been through multiple layers of trauma,” she said. “You are displaced from your home country — not by choice — and you are going to a refugee camp in a different country. Their entire system has been disrupted.”

    Traditional Western-style talk therapy doesn’t help. For one thing, the language isn’t there, and secondly, it’s not part of many cultures. What has worked, Loffelman said, is expressing feelings through art, and being together while doing it.

    To counter the social isolation of seniors, SEAMAAC organizes meetings of “the Council of Elders.” They gather in a drafty gym at the Bok building, a former high school in South Philadelphia where SEAMAAC offers classes and counseling.

    Often, the elders practice qigong, a form of movement meditation, or on a less esoteric level, enjoy multicultural bingo. Languages may be different, but when someone holds up a G-32 poster, everyone understands. If they don’t, Mai Ngoc Nguyen, a volunteer who can speak Laotian, Thai, Vietnamese, and English can help.

    She has experienced plenty of trauma and heard plenty of traumatic stories. She’ll never forget the mother who gave her baby medicine so it wouldn’t cry in a boat carrying refugees away from their country. The boat capsized. The baby drowned.

    “She comes into the refugee camp and she became crazy, yelling `Where is my baby?’ Her brain got messed up” and she never recovered.

    Luckily for Mai Ngoc Nguyen, then age 12, she was a strong swimmer and ready to cross the Mekong as she made her escape. But she had to kick away a friend who was clinging to her, dragging her under. Her friend never made it to the opposite shore.

    “If you ask me, I’ll talk about it,” she said. “But if you don’t ask, I won’t talk.”

    But she will joke, saying that she knows the Mekong alligators didn’t get her because they knew she needed to help her family back home.

    It’s a lot of trauma, but every day at SEAMAAC isn’t full of anxiety. The elders coming out of the gym after bingo were smiling. And in a nearby classroom, students practicing their English last month traded jokes as they learned about Thanksgiving.

    Fatma Amara, from Algeria, has been here long enough that she’ll serve a turkey on Thanksgiving, but the apple pie she makes will be Algerian, with seasoned apples layered among thin sheets of dough.

    For her, SEAMAAC is more than a language class.

    “At first, you feel lonely. You’re anxious. It’s stressful,” said Amara, who works in a hospital and is getting better and more confident with her English. “I take the classes, and we talk together and I feel better.

    “Thanksgiving is my favorite holiday in America. It’s an international holiday. It’s about food and God and family,” she said. “You thank God for all you have.”

    For all the blessings SEAMAAC provides, these days, funding is a struggle.

    In 2024, SEAMAAC learned that the federal government had approved its application for a $400,000 multiyear federal grant to improve digital “equity.” But after President Donald Trump took office, federal staffers targeted “equity” programs. “That’s $400,000 we’ll never see,” said Thoai Nguyen, the executive director. “We would have had some of that money by now.”

    Federal cuts since Trump took office have slashed SEAMAAC’s budget by 20%, he said. Hunger relief programs had to be curtailed, with 1,500 families who relied on SEAMAAC for food losing that lifeline.

    “We’re in a moment,” he said, “where intentional cruelty is considered an acceptable form of political discourse.”

    This article is part of a series about Philly Gives — a community fund to support nonprofits through end-of-year giving. To learn more about Philly Gives, including how to donate, visit phillygives.org.

    For more information about Philly Gives, including how to donate, visit phillygives.org.

    About SEAMAAC

    Mission: To support and serve immigrants and refugees and other politically, socially, and economically vulnerable communities as they seek to advance the condition of their lives in the United States. Services include ESL classes, job readiness, domestic violence survivor support, services for low-income elders, food assistance, public benefit counseling, health and nutrition education, and civic engagement.

    People served: 8,000 families

    Annual spend: $3,360,401 in fiscal year 2024

    Point of pride: SEAMAAC plans to increase our impact to serve even more Philadelphians at its new South Philly East (SoPhiE) Community Center on Sixth Street and Snyder Avenue, scheduled to open in December 2026. In January, SEAMAAC, partnering with the American Swedish Historical Museum, will welcome visitors to “Indivisible: Stories of Strength,” an art exhibition showcasing the art and stories of South Philadelphians.

    You can help: SEAMAAC provides many volunteer opportunities through our work in beautifying and improving Philadelphia’s neighborhoods through our work in urban gardening, tree planting, neighborhood and public park cleanings, and beautification of public schools and places of worship. Additional opportunities are available through our civic engagement and neighborhood unity events as well as by delivering groceries in our hunger relief efforts.

    Support: phillygives.org

    What your SEAMAAC donation can do

    • $40 provides shelf stable foods for a family impacted by the SNAP shutoffs for one week.
    • $50 provides holiday presents for two children.
    • $100 helps maintain one plot in SEAMAAC’s community garden for an entire growing season, providing tools, culturally appropriate seedlings, and soil.
    • $100 covers the full cost of supplies for one youth participant in SEAMAAC’s summer programs — giving young people the tools they need for career and college readiness.
    • $200 covers four hours of ESL instruction.
    • $250 provides 50 elders with a freshly made breakfast.
    • $250 provides a family with emergency food, hygiene items, diapers, and social service support for one month.
    • $300 supports a domestic violence survivor moving into safe housing, by covering the cost of utility hookups and household supplies.
    • $300 provides ingredients and cooking supplies for a nutrition education workshop.
    • $1,000 covers the full cost for one high school student to participate in SEAMAAC’s eight-week summer career exploration program.
  • Letters to the Editor | Dec. 21, 2025

    Letters to the Editor | Dec. 21, 2025

    Nonviolent model

    In her recent op-ed about suspending military aid to Israel, Rabbi Linda Holtzman recognizes the need for another model that is nonviolent to resolve the situation in the Middle East.

    I think nearly everyone would support her view, but the threat of violence may be the only thing that works to bring lasting peace anywhere. Unfortunately, history has shown us that whenever there is a “nonviolent” model, without stipulations, it rarely works.

    Since Israel was created in 1948, it has been repeatedly attacked. Whenever it prevails, and subsequently withdraws from Gaza (a nonviolent solution), Israel gets attacked — again and again. Ukraine gives up its nuclear weapons to Russia, what happens? A nonviolent model results in a weakened Ukraine being attacked. The threat of nuclear retaliation was removed and Russia made its move.

    Munich 1938 — there was an agreement for “peace in our time” and what happened? One year later, on Sept. 1, 1939, Hitler invaded Poland. The United States stayed out of the war and “nonviolently” aided the United Kingdom in its fight against Germany. Then, the U.S. was attacked on Dec. 7, 1941 by Germany’s Axis partner Japan.

    The only ”model” that works after a peace agreement is that there is the threat of a consequence for the aggressor if it resorts to violence. Post-World War II, a combination of the creation of NATO and President Ronald Reagan’s “peace through strength” initiatives kept the Soviet Union reasonably in check. When I served in the Navy, I made seven submarine Polaris patrols and we never fired a missile, but the U.S.S.R. knew we could do so at any time — and with devastating accuracy.

    The rabbi is well intentioned in her thinking, but totally unrealistic.

    Tom Elsasser, Capt. (ret.), United States Navy, elsasser64@aol.com

    …

    In response to Henry Maurer’s recent letter to the editor, the writer says the “real aim” of Rabbi Linda Holtzman’s organization, Jewish Voice for Peace is “the destruction of the state of Israel as a homeland for the Jewish people.”

    Jewish Voice for Peace, and its allies, are bent on creating in Israel-Palestine a state where all are treated equally, regardless of religion, ethnicity, nationality.

    How this would result in, in his words, “the destruction of the state of Israel as a homeland for the Jewish people” is beyond me.

    Since when does a “homeland” require long-term residents to be treated in an abjectly discriminatory manner?

    Jews, Muslims, and Christians lived in peace and harmony for many years before the refusal of the West to accept the Jewish survivors of the Holocaust resulted in the flood of Jewish refugees to Palestine at the end of World War II, and the routing of Palestinian families from their homes.

    Why is Israel not the “homeland” of these Palestinians, while those of us Jews in the diaspora, who have no memory of life in Jerusalem, are afforded that claim?

    Are we to forget “Love thy neighbor as Thyself” (Leviticus 19:18)? A shanda.

    Barbara August Walker, Downingtown

    Join the conversation: Send letters to letters@inquirer.com. Limit length to 150 words and include home address and day and evening phone number. Letters run in The Inquirer six days a week on the editorial pages and online.