Tent City: Bushville Day 2

July 28, 2000: We woke in the morning on our second Bushville site, after being removed from our original site yesterday. The new Bushville is located at 6th and Jefferson Streets, in Kensington. We spend the first part of the morning cleaning the lot. We were joined by several neighbors, and removed several hundred pounds of trash from the site. We raked the broken glass and old auto parts from the site, and trimmed the overgrowth to make a safe place to camp and something for our community to be proud of.

By the afternoon, member organizations of the Poor People's Economic Human Rights Campaign arrived, including members from the Women's Project in Little Rock, Arkansas; the Coalition to Protect Public Housing in Chicago, Illinois; The Voices of Illinois Poor People from Dekalb, Illinois; as well as people from ETS Atlanta, as well as other people from Western Massachusetts to California.

Participants were briefed about the situation in Philadelphia and were able to ask questions of the KWRU Legal Team: lawyers Cecilia Perry and Jon Blazer. They referred to the position published by Community Legal Services about the situation with DHS. They were accompanied by a team of legal observers who will be present at the Bushville and all KWRU events.

New Jerusalem Laura, a recovery community in North Philadelphia and member of the Poor People's Economic Human Rights Campaign, hosted all of the participants for dinner at their house in the community. After dinner, a stage was assembled on the lot to prepare for Human Rights Theater.

Human Rights Theater was organized by a group of poor youth from Philadelphia. They raised the issues of the March for Economic Human Rights in creative ways. They also included local youth who live near Tent City and came to join us. We heard some of the real stories of some of the people who are staying at Bushville, and renewed our committment to making sure that the poor will not be disappeared.

At the end of the Human Rights Theater presentation, Carol Finkle from Creative Access taught everyone some of the basics of Ameriacan Sign Language, so we can greet members of the Campaign who will be arriving tomorrow, the Deaf Committee for Universal Human Rights, and other local deaf people.

For more information about Bushville and other tent cities, we invite you to take our online Tour of Kensington. For those in the Philadelphia area for the convention, we will be conducting regular tours for the next several days, just contact us at (215) 203-1945.

Photographs by Jonah Birns.