A Dream Strip-Mined
One righteous woman, bull-dozed by Germantown Settlement.
A column is the right size for gnawing on the leg of something, and today it's the collapse of Germantown Settlement, the 126-year-old social services agency that was founded to raise the lives of those who lived in the venerable community and over the last several years has strip-mined the dreams of its constituents.
I write about one of its employees, Francine Hailey-Ferrell, who was also one of its tenants, who found herself without a job and facing eviction because the organization's set-up protects it from righteous people like her.
This is just one woman's story.
A magazine article is the right size for taking something out. If you want to get angrier, read Jason Fagone's excellent piece of digging in the current Philadelphia Magazine. In this old-school opus, he writes of fat deals for the children of the wired, wasted millions, and generations of political enabling that underlies the destruction of a neighborhood.