My partner and I set out to catch random folks on their way to their offices and the like to ask them about transportation. We talked to one gentleman who called himself Rocky Robinson who said something that resinated with me. He talked about how the Strawberry Mansion and Brewerytown areas use SEPTA in a very high volume, perhaps the highest in the city. He pointed out that service was better in center city areas, but that the people in his neighborhood relied on the service more.
The neighborhood screams of poverty. It shows signs of living conditions I can not even fathom. After talking to Mr. Robinson it dawned on me that the people with the least always suffer the most. They are the first to lose their jobs. They lose their homes. They can lose their friends and family members to drugs and crime. Children lose fathers and drop out of school without the strong moral support that I was blessed with as a student. When the United States ventures into war, it is the poor who enlist, and the poor who die for their country.
These people living in Strawberry Mansion and Brewerytown, and in other neighborhoods in distress give more to this country than most of us who grow up in a nuclear family (or close to it) and in the suburbs ever will. As American's, they subscribe to the eternal and almost mythical idea that everyone, no matter what their background and economic situation can reach for their American Dream. It is painstaking to know that as far as I might feel I am from my highest of goals, there are many more people who are tenfold further from reaching theirs.
By Evan Macy and Joli McTerrel,l Brewerytown and Strawberry Mansion
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