“A War on Poor People”: Speaking Out Against Drug Criminalization

How the Demographics and Community has Shifted over the Decades

Moses: So in the ’60s, there was a push, it happened a couple times, there was a push for Puerto Rican people to move off the island, and they’re doing it now, pushing people to Montana. They offered jobs in New York, in Chicago, and I want to say New Jersey. So my family moved from Puerto Rico to the South Bronx. In the South Bronx, they were people of color, like my dad’s family, they’re black, from Puerto Rico, but they’re descendants of slaves. When they got to the United States, they offered them jobs.

I want to say it [the job] was working in the fields, because when they moved to Philadelphia, even when I was a kid, I was picking blueberries in New Jersey with my grandparents for them to make money. They used to make about, for a full day’s work, they made about maybe like 60 hours, and there was six of us, me and my cousins and my grandparents. But there was a whole diaspora thing, they got sent here to the States to work, jobs dried up, they had to move because of crime in the Bronx, they moved to Philadelphia and a few years later I was born…….. they moved to Philadelphia in like ’75… because Philadelphia wasn’t that bad back then. It was a low crime rate.

There was two migrations[of Puerto Rican people], one to Spring Garden and then one to North Philadelphia. Actually, one to Spring Garden, one to South Street, because Puerto Ricans used to live on South Street. Then they were pushed out in the early ’80s, and they went to North Philadelphia…. ….  all of South Street. It was black and Puerto Rican people.

Paul:  When you say North Philly, you’re talking about Kensington?

Moses: Kensington and Fairhill.

Paul:  Kensington, Fairhill. I’m always wondering, is that where you were allowed to live?

Moses: Basically…. … that was what they could afford. I don’t know if you guys know much about Philadelphia’s history and segregation. Philadelphia’s always been super segregated, they would keep pockets of people like the Italians, they would keep them in South Philly. The more ethnic Italians used to live where I-95 is right there. They got rid of all of them, they were like, “Eminent domain, we’re going to build a highway on your houses.” And they pushed them all out, and that’s how they divided South Philadelphia into Italian and black.

North Philadelphia used to be Irish and Polish, and then they left, went to Mayfair. They did it to everybody, just kept pushing out. They put people of color in one area, and told everybody else, “Leave and we’ll give you some money if you move your stuff.”

 John Wanamaker was this rich guy, do you know where the Macy’s building is? It used to be the John Wanamaker building. He was a really famous guy, really rich guy, and all his factories were along Allegheny. So when people moved to North Philadelphia, they used to work in those factories. Then they shut them down, no more jobs….

 … Before they closed, Puerto Rican people started working there with the Irish and the Polish. Once all the Irish and the Polish got out, they closed up shop.

Moses: That time in Kensington, it was a little funny, because it was the mid ’80s like I said earlier, it was still Irish. Poor Irish and poor Polish still living in that area in Kensington. They were poor, but they were better off than the Puerto Ricans that had just moved into the neighborhood, because the Puerto Ricans were really, really poor when they moved into that section of the city…. … We used to run around the streets, play until the sun went down, lights came on.

But there was a little bit of tension there, because we were gentrifying the neighborhoods, and once the Polish and the Irish left, all the resources that were in the schools, the streets, everything dried up. Then you started seeing heroin coming to the neighborhood.

Paul : Is this like 1987, like heroin?

 

Moses: 1987. Before that, heroin was around, but people were in their houses. There weren’t needles on the streets. The most you’d find is like the caps to the syringes, and we knew not to touch them. “You can’t touch that.” So the kids knew not to touch them. Kids didn’t have to be afraid to go outside, could have fun, play until whenever. After heroin was introduced into the neighborhood, things got a little worse, but everybody still had jobs. Everybody still had their homes. The cops hadn’t yet started arresting people for being heroin users.

Back then, the neighborhood was pretty good. We had crime, there was drugs, but usually on the blocks we had about four or five houses through your family, all Puerto Rican neighborhoods. So there was about, I know on Somerset there was like six families that were on the block, but they were in multiple houses… … and everybody called each other cousin, because we all grew up on the same block.

Even then, this was like late ’80s going into the ’90s, there was drugs, everybody knew there was drugs, everybody knew who was using heroin, but those were your neighbors. So you saw them, “Hey, how are you doing?” You give them the respect, the greeting of the day with respect. You weren’t allowed to talk down to them, because they were adults. The community was pretty tightly knit until I left to the Army. I left in 1999 and came back to a different story. In ’99, I left, I joined the Army, I was in for 13 years before I retired. So 2013, I came back. In 2013, I couldn’t even believe what I was seeing, because things have gotten so bad in the 7th District, Fairhill and Kensington.

People were getting killed every day, there was the encampments had just started up. But what I had noticed, in the beginning I was like, “I don’t understand why these people can’t get their lives together, just like anybody else in Philadelphia. What is going on that they’re not? They must not be doing something right to help themselves.” Until I found out that it was a lack of resources. There’s a lack of resources starting from the schools that the kids go to, to when they’re adults. The only resources they have is maybe welfare, being on welfare, and they’re sent into a program where they learn to be … Nurses assistant or medical assistant, or something that’s very menial that doesn’t push education. Like, “This is your job, it’s a good job. Deal with it.” So people are suffering from that as well in North Philadelphia.

Paul: What is the relationship to the way people treat drug use generally?

 

Moses: In the neighborhoods, I think it’s mainly that people forgot how to treat each other, number one. Number two, it’s a lack of resources. Because the way I look at it is like this, you have these kids out running around in the streets and stuff like that, usually their parents aren’t home. Or you have one parent that’s home, but it’s not for real, because they’re working a job or two, so the kids are doing whatever they want. Acting crazy, breaking things, beating up people, treating people wrong, because there’s nobody there to say, “Hey, don’t do that.”

It’s a breakdown in the family structure, a breakdown in the schools, and in just the lack of resources. In North Philadelphia, this is me speaking honestly, North Philadelphia the problem is that the leadership in North Philadelphia is about making money and not about the citizens

So in the ’60s, there was a push, it happened a couple times, there was a push for Puerto Rican people to move off the island, and they’re doing it now, pushing people to Montana. They offered jobs in New York, in Chicago, and I want to say New Jersey. So my family moved from Puerto Rico to the South Bronx. In the South Bronx, they were people of color, like my dad’s family, they’re black, from Puerto Rico, but they’re descendants of slaves. When they got to the United States, they offered them jobs.

The thing is that I love Philadelphia and I love the people from my neighborhood, I just know that they need help. Those people, there was this speech I was writing for people in North Philly, and it was about surviving. People in North Philadelphia are always surviving. They have to survive, they have to survive the winters, because sometimes they don’t have heat. They have to survive the summers, because they don’t have air conditioning. They also have to survive the summers, because there’s a lot of shootings. There are so many things that put the brakes on people’s lives in North Philadelphia, you wouldn’t even believe it just if you actually really saw what’s going on for people in North Philadelphia.

You’re just getting a glimpse, you’re getting what’s on top. When you get to the root of it, it’s really, really systemic and it’s ingrained to them. People in North Philadelphia don’t believe that they can do more, that they deserve more. It’s like, “This is life. This is what it is.” Getting back to your question about the kids, how do I teach my kids differently? I tell them that there’s more, like go to college, study. I’m always on them about education. To me, then working, it’s not a big deal right now because they’re kids and they need education so that they can have generational wealth. That’s what I’m trying to give my kids right now. I want to get things so I can have land, so I can go, “Here, this is for you. This is for your sons when you have them, or your daughters.”

But we never had that. There was no wealth to be passed on from my grandparents, there was no wealth to be passed on from my parents. Right now, I’m trying to build something to pass onto my kids. That’s what, people in Philadelphia are all going through the same thing. There’s no generational wealth.

 People smoked crack, but it wasn’t like … People smoked crack, but back in those days it was different. People that were using drugs were people in your family that lived on your block, so nobody was like, “Get out of here.”… … Most of these people were in North Philadelphia, they’re from the neighborhood. 98% of the people, they did a survey to see if people were from Philadelphia or they were from Bucks County. 98% of the people out there were from Philadelphia.

You can’t get drugs out there.

But the one thing is, those people, they’re from the neighborhoods. The ones that you see running around intense sometimes, maybe some of them aren’t, but most of the people that are out there using drugs have houses in Fairhill. So they’re just going to run back to their house. The ones that have lost their houses are sleeping under the street, I assume maybe some people that are coming from somewhere else are probably out there too. But most of those people are from Philadelphia. Maybe not from North Philadelphia, but they’re from Philadelphia.

Recent Gentrification

Moses:

To me, my experience with that, I don’t believe that people should be gentrifying a poor neighborhood and bringing the rent up to $1000, $2000, $3000. Building properties, those properties are not going to help the people in the community. This goes back to politician, because it’s the politicians pushing that agenda to get kickbacks basically. I am completely against gentrifying a community if you’re going to get rid of the community basically. So if you’re not going to be part of that community, I don’t believe it should be gentrified. It upsets me, it really does.

Because a lot of those people in those neighborhoods are renters, and they’ve been generational renters, so meaning their parents rented that place and they just went along with it, paying the rent for it. But when you have those renters and the neighborhoods get gentrified, they have to leave, because usually they don’t want to sell the properties. Another thing that I want to get into North Philadelphia is help people own homes, so that they don’t have that issue. But since they don’t own their homes, some of them have to live on the streets, have to move in with other families, have to move into different neighborhoods.

Right now, they’re pushing a lot of people from North Philly into Northeast, and they’re going to do the same thing. They’re pushing into them into the Northeast because the houses are falling, they’re going into the ground. So they’ll push them there, and then after that, who knows? But I really want to stop it, I want to stop poor people getting pushed out of their homes and try to get them into owning their homes and owning businesses, black and brown businesses. I want to try to open up some, help black and brown people open up some dispensaries, to balance the academy here in Philly with poor people. 21% of the people of color, and poor white people too, 21% of Philadelphia is living in extreme poverty right now.