Election Day in 'The Land that Everybody Forgets'

The people around here call this the Land That Everybody Forgets.

If there is a capital of the Land That Everybody Forgets, it is Tent City, a community of tents and shanties tucked inside a clearing near the freight tracks in Fairhill, near Second and Indiana Avenue.

Dozens of men live there in the dirt and trash. Men from halfway houses. Men lost in drugs. Men who have built a fence out of wood and rocks to keep strangers away. Tent City did not exist four years ago. The cops come whenever someone overdoses.

It's Election Day, but in Tent City that means almost nothing.

"They don't help us," one man said in Spanish, standing outside a shack constructed of pallets of wood, beer boxes, and tarps, as ward leader Carlos Matos translated for him. "Why would we want to help them?"

John Lopez, a Democratic committeeman, rose early for election day. He walked the three blocks to his polling station around 7 a.m. Less than an hour earlier, someone had been shot around the corner.

Gunfire startles Lopez, but doesn't shock him. Two weeks ago, in a matter of hours, two men were killed in separate shootings near his home on Fourth and Cambria, where he lives with his wife. During one of the shootings, Lopez's living room lit up from the flash of the guns.

Lopez cast his vote and then stood at the entrance to the polling station, inside the Congreso de Latinos Unidos on American Street. He looked out over vacant lots toward Center City.

For many in the neighborhood, it is a bitter view, he said.

"People are upset, because they are so close and they forget about us here," Lopez said, pointing toward the fog-obscured skyline. "That's the main issue everybody has with people in City Hall. The only time they remember us is today - election day. Otherwise, they sweep us under the rug."

In the distance, Lopez said, was one Philadelphia. A Philadelphia fueled by progress.

Behind him, he said, was his Philadelphia. A Philadelphia defined by endless violence and grinding poverty, one that has received so much lip service during this campaign. A Philadelphia that everyone must remember exists when the election is over - a Philadelphia that can no longer be left behind.

It's the Land That Everybody Forgets, he says. To prove his point, he offered a tour of just the few blocks surrounding the polling place.

We walked past the Pan American Charter School, where kids ran in the schoolyard and where, last fall, a man was shot and killed outside while the children sat in class.

The neighborhood falls within the 25th Police District, where 36 people have been shot since Jan. 1, more than in all but one other district. Ten people have been killed in that time.

We walked to Tent City, littered with needles and mountains of trash, and crowded with dazed men who stared out from shacks.

We walked down the street toward the Sabor Latino corner store. The last two owners of the store were killed, Lopez said. Inside, the new owner, Annemarie Vargas, 48, worked the counter. She sat for a few minutes at a table to talk. A shrine to the Blessed Mother decorated a shelf. A bouquet of some wilting Mother's Day flowers rested on a table. Spanish-language soap operas played on a television.

She has been robbed once since she bought the store three years ago. She and her husband can barely provide for their children, she said. Her husband will vote. She does not hope for much from the politicians, she said. Just maybe a stop sign out front to slow the speeding cars. And some street lighting.

She is not scared to work in the store since it is no more dangerous than anywhere else in the neighborhood, she said.

"Death can come at any time around here," she said in Spanish as Lopez translated.

Down the street, Wesley Robinson waved hello to Lopez from behind the metal bars that enclose his front porch.

Robinson, 70, a retired train worker, has lived in the neighborhood for 40 years.

When he heard the shooting Tuesday morning, he thought of his grown daughter, who lives nearby and was planning to get to the polls early. He called her and told her to stay home.

"I looked at my watch and it was only 6:12 a.m., and I said, 'I can't believe it's only 6:12 a.m. and they are already shooting at each other,' " he said.

Despite the gunfire, he said he would vote before day's end. This is the Land That Everybody Forgets. But the people who live here refuse to.