Details are a little hard to piece together right now, but there's a protest happening tonight over an art show at the Art Institute. Art Students decided to put together a show featuring six artists on the theme of gun violence. Apparently, the President of the school decided to shroud one of the pieces, an installation by Steven Earl Weber, with a black curtain.

In an email I just received from David Kessler, another artist in the show, apparently the rest of the artists will shroud their work in the same way, to express their opposition to censorship.

I haven't found any photos of Weber's piece on-line, but you can see other examples of his work at the link above. Dealing with gun-violence is nothing new in his work.

Here's David Kessler's letter to the University president:

Dear Dr. Larkin,

I am one of the artists in the current Art Institute student curated exhibition ‘Killing Time’. I am writing to you to address your decision to censor fellow artist, Steven Earl Weber’s work from the show.

Sir, censorship of any sort is offensive and abhorrent and at an art school it is doubly so. The fact that artwork should be censored in an institution of higher learning in a major US city is disgusting and backwards.

I had been thinking a lot about the death of Sean Patrick Conroy last week. Conroy suffered an asthma attack, and died, after being jumped by a group of boys in the Concourse at 13th and Market. He suffered a very unfair and brutal death in a place I have spent a lot of time myself.

And just when I gathered my thoughts enough to write about it, something else happened...

Today's Inquirer has a story about Tyesha Tazwell, attacked underground at 8th and Market by a group of kids whose ages ranged from 16 to 20. Tazwell was jumped and injured, but is alive and likely to recover. from the Inky:

Tazwell said she couldn't explain the ordeal she suffered, but believes that the root of the problem extends beyond the teens themselves.

"It starts at home. They don't have strong foundations in their households, and that's why they come out and do senseless things."

I agree. And that is why the plan to charge the five Gratz High School students involved in last week's incident as adults seems ludicrous to me.

Of what practical use is it to throw the kids who attacked Sean Patrick Conroy in jail for the rest of their lives, or charge them with the death penalty? Or to encourage homicide investigators to dig up whatever evidence they can to make them stick?

How does it help us to have our DA find the most stringent charges she can in either case?

Is the logic here that punishing all of these kids as severely as possible will make the rest of us feel safe again?

Those that have developed a bloodlust for the 16 and 17 year old boys from last week, and maybe the kids from this week, are sadly mistaken if they think that life imprisonment, or execution, is going to end random acts of violence in this city. Or, make any of us feel safer in the Concourse.

I'm not saying that both sets of attackers shouldn't suffer the consequences of their actions. And obviously, we have to deal with these kids inside the confines of our current system, but we need to quickly develop a bigger, concrete response that gets down to the root of the problem here.

And not just because this is the "liberal" thing to do. My concerns are selfish: I have been jumped before, and I did not like it. And I don't want it to happen again. To me, or anyone else. And I don't think sending these kids to jail forever will help all that much.

So rather than demagoguery and hysterics, I'd like to see a response by our city's leaders that makes a difference.

I think these incidents are proof that we need to act urgently to improve our city's schools, access to jobs, and, perhaps less practically but equally important, offer a sense of hope to those whose reckless behavior comes, in some part, not from inherent evil, but a real sense of hopelessness.

If we can't move beyond panic, and actually hear the clarion call sounded by these incidents now, well, then when?

Guess which ones?

A. Michael Nutter
B. David Kairys
C. Brett Mandel
D. John McNesby
E. Mary Catherine Roper

No no, I love everyone. Anyway, if this gets past rhetoric and posturing, it seems like a great chance to hear what is really going on with the city's plans to get at gun violence and that awful murder rate. Regardless, that's a pretty interesting group of people to have in one room--the head of the ACLU, a giant of the civil rights bar, the head of the FOP, and whatever it is that Brett Mandel is.

Feb. 19, 2008 at 4:00-6:00. Free and open to the public (RSVP to SPIN@temple.edu). Temple University, Klein Hall Moot Court Room, 1719 N. Broad St.

The SPIN forum will explore legal, policy and political solutions to Philadelphia's most intractable problem - gun violence. In a city where 392 people were killed last year and three police officers were shot in a week, stemming the tide of gun violence is the key to Philadelphia's revitalization. Panelists will examine the positive and negative implications of Mayor Michael Nutter's “Stop and Frisk” plan and evaluate alternative approaches. Please join us to engage with members of the community, law enforcement, politicians, researchers, students, and advocates to inform the policy debate about how to eliminate the guns yet preserve civil rights.

Speakers: MICHAEL NUTTER, Mayor of Philadelphia; DAVID KAIRYS, Temple University, Beasley School of Law; BRETT MANDEL, Philadelphia Forward; JOHN J. MCNESBY, Philadelphia Fraternal Order of Police; MARY CATHERINE ROPER, Pennsylvania ACLU

Forum Sponsors: Temple University Beasley School of Law; Temple Law Student Bar Association; Government Affairs Society; National Lawyers Guild, Temple Law Chapter

Following the Forum, Temple will recognize members of the Rubin Public Interest Society.

Yesterday, Charles Ramsey and Mayor Nutter released the new crime plan that will be implemented, following Nutter's declaration (fulfilling a campaign promise) of a 'crime emergency' in the city. Despite worries centered around Nutter's "Safety Now" campaign plan, and his rhetoric about civil liberties ("you have the constitutional right not to be shot."), we have a plan centered around community policing...

Thank goodness!

In the 21-page report, stop-and-frisk, already used somewhat by the police force, is mentioned one time. They are also planning to greatly increase the use of surveillance cameras, which I am not a huge fan of.

However, the most worrisome part of Nutter's campaign plan- declaring a state of emergency over entire neighborhoods, with corresponding curfews, going after people 'gathering' on sidewalks, limiting cars going in and out of neighborhoods, etc., has basically vanished. Instead, the plan emphasizes sending more officers into communities, and get back to basics. As Ramsey said:

"There is nothing fancy about it," the former Washington, D.C., police chief said at a news conference. "It's fundamental, it's basic. This is not Batman and Robin coming out of a cave somewhere."

I don't know whether Nutter had a change of heart, whether Ramsey 'walked him back,' or what. And then, we have the the appointment of Everett Gillison as his Deputy Mayor for Public Safety:

"I have spent the majority of my adult life as a social worker or as an attorney representing these people," said Gillison, a lifelong Philadelphian. "We went through this whole bit of 'just lock everybody up' . . . but I always thought those people were our kids."

At the heart of Nutter's campaign was his pledge to reduce violent crime. He's hired a nationally renowned police commissioner who today releases a new crime plan.

But Nutter said he needed better oversight of the entire criminal-justice system. He wanted cooperation among police, judges and prisons. He wanted someone to analyze the big picture and develop new strategies for problems like youth violence and convicts' re-entry into society after prison.

....

Beyond that, Gillison is looking for projects that will help reduce violence in Philadelphia in the long term. He spoke about enhancing re-entry programs and expanding the number of community courts to handle smaller offenses.

Regardless of whether you thought it was a good thing at the time, Nutter ran on a crime platform that policy and rhetoric wise was very law-and-order. However, by his actions thus far, his crime policies as Mayor are pretty basic and reasonably progressive, and will decidedly not launch martial law in Philly neighborhoods. Count me relieved, and happy.

This is part three taken from my own blog written on November 21st. Despite being a few months old, everything still rings true. You can read the original here: http://markskull.blogspot.com/2007/11/civil-rights-and-possible-crime_19.html

I was going to post this yesterday, but I've been sick for a bit and it came to a head yesterday.

We've discussed the basic civil rights questions, and asked how long this Crime Emergency could last.

We've discussed the new Police Commissioner, his background in the issue, and and his impact on Crime.

Today, we're going to tackle a few things.

• Guns
• The impact Ramsey had in Washington D.C. (Part 2)
• What all of this boils down to.

So to start things off, we can kill two birds with one stone and discuss Ramsey, D.C., and Guns at once. Why? Because in case you didn't know, handguns have been banned in Washington D.C. for 31 years. OK, let's think about this: Despite BANNING HANDGUNS in Washington D.C., they still had ONE OF THE HIGHEST MURDER RATES IN AMERICA. So all that talk about "banning guns solve everything" is true, right? Ramsey's impact to lower the murder rate 50% during his time there must deal with simple enforcement of existing laws.

This is part two taken from my own blog written on November 19th. Despite being a few months old, everything still rings true. You can read the original here: http://markskull.blogspot.com/2007/11/civil-rights-and-possible-crime_19.html

THE CHARLES RAMSEY EFFECT

Hello, and welcome to Part 2 of my discussion of the Crime Emergency and the Crime Emergency. Yesterday, I discussed the basic civil rights issues that I feel could be threatened by declaring a Code 10, and asked the question of how long this would last and if it was needed.

Today, we'll start the discussion on the new Police Commissioner, Charles H. Ramsey. But before we do, I want to mention a few things first that I forgot to mention yesterday.

A large amount of my problem with this is, of course, Civil Rights. In all of my writing yesterday, I neglected to mention something that has been bugging me about all of this. Back in May, when Nutter's "Stop-and-Frisk" program was being called to task for violating civil rights, supporters brought up a Court Case where it was declared constitutional.

It was Nutter himself who coined this phase: "It's a Civil Right not to be Shot."

This bumper-sticker phrase was done so well, it is next to impossible to argue against it. To do so seems to allow for the same type of argument used by Conservative Republicans when you disagree with them; "What, do you mean you WANT people to be shot? You don't think it's wrong to kill and murder people?! No wonder you didn't win the election, you cold hearted bastard!"

The fact of the matter is, you don't. You have a right to live, a right to the pursuit of happiness. You have a right to be free and happy, and to live in a safe environment.

You don't have a right to not have bad things happen to you.

This is part one taken from my own blog written on November 17th. Despite being a few months old, everything still rings true. You can read the original here: http://markskull.blogspot.com/2007/11/civil-rights-and-possible-crime.html

I want to state one fact here: Despite how much I disagree with him on the Crime Emergency issue, I highly respect the man and was ready to hire him myself once elected. I agree with a large portion of what he wants, but on this issue and mainly this issue alone more than anything else, I feel he is wrong. This article, along with Part 2, are serious looks and criticisms I have about this and I have, and will, state as many facts as possible to back me up on not only my view, but the counterpoint as well.

When it comes to any and all comments, I ask you keep them civil. Thank you.

-Larry

The keystone of why I ran for mayor after the May Primary can be summed up into these words:

To make sure Nutter NEVER declares a Crime Emergency.

In essence, a Crime Emergency is this:

• prohibit or limit gatherings of people on sidewalks, streets, or any outdoor place in the designated neighborhoods;
• halt or limit the movement of vehicles through or within the designated neighborhoods;
• establish a curfew limiting the hours people could be outside their houses; and
• prohibit the sale, carrying or possession on the public street or public sidewalks, or in any public park or square, of weapons of any kind.

Let's stop for a second and look at this. To quote Nutter himself:

Title 10 of the Philadelphia Code authorizes the Mayor to take specified measures if the Mayor determines that “the City or any part thereof is suffering or is in imminent danger of suffering civil disturbance , disorder, riot or other occurrence which will seriously and substantially endanger the health, safety and property of the citizens.” Parts of Philadelphia are clearly suffering a wave of violence that endangers the safety of residents.

In other words, it's exactly what it sounds like: A last resort in case it is incredibly dangerous to even leave your house. For example, say we're under a real threat of terrorism and we've been attacked, that would be grounds to declare a Crime Emergency. Or a massive gang war erupted, where you have two rival gangs killing each other and anyone in their way. That's a good reason to declare it as well.

Barring massive tradgey or something out of the Wire Season 4, Philadelphia will have less murders in 2007 than it did in 2006. If you recall, 2006 was noted for having 406 murders - the highest number since 1998. And, earlier this year, it seemed we were on pace to surpass the 2006 mark. Somehow, some way, the murders slowed at the end of the Summer. Otherwise, we would have certainly surpassed 406.

Despite the issues pointed to by some, I am eager to see how the Nutter Adminsitration and Comm'n Ramsey respond to these numbers and gun violence in the City. After reading Dave Davies article in the Daily News today, it does seem that, a shift in policing strategy can lower the rate of gun violence and murder in Philadelphia. Check this out:

So you have a suburban readership. Today you started an article series that takes that fact and uses it for good. Shows your readers some serious institutional inequity in their own counties, and for good measure, tells us and our new mayor that Philadelphia has some lessons here too.

I was pretty mean about your dumb columns, like the one about the woman who moved to the suburbs and was finally happy, and the insultingly thin coverage of violent crime and the neighborhoods and people it affects.

You're not all bad after all.

Love,
Jennifer

The article, "Suburban Cops, Tough Tactics", takes a long hard look at the penchant for area cops to take on zero-tolerance policies that they enforce mainly in heavily-black areas. Pottstown, Darby, and Coatesville all have or had arrest rates for minor, nuisance-type crimes that way outpace the averages for other cities across the nation.

The laws they use to make the arrests are mostly vague, almost certainly unconsitutional anti-loitering ordinances. And the police doing the arrests are overwhelmingly white.

The Inquirer convened local and national experts to review the laws and arrests. There are revealing and useful graphs here. There is a lot of rich information that I sincerely hope leads to political and legal pressure and policy change.

But the Inquirer also turns the heat on Philadelphia. This article is the first measured look by a local media outlet at the sort of easy criminology-speak rhetoric that got bandied about during the mayoral primary and is invoked in columns all the time. It takes aim at those who claim the "broken windows" theory is some self-evident truth.

What the article has given us a window into is the effect of zero-tolerance, broken-windows-theory influenced policing. Well, the effect: a ton of low-level drug and other nonviolent arrests, and bad or very inconclusive numbers on the more serious crimes that the theory says should be dropping. Broken windows fixes the broken windows, and arrests a bunch of people who really shouldn't be in the system in the process.

(It's not that there is no truth to the theory. Broken windows are signs of deeper decay. But that decay cannot be reversed just through ramped-up policing tactics. It evidences real social breakdown that needs rehab grants for the decayed houses with the broken windows, among a host of other interventions.)

Granted, the suburbs are a cautionary tale. Most generously, the polices examined here seem clumsily applied. More realistically, there is direct and submerged racism at work. Well designed policing programs in the city, including a policy not to prosecute low-level drug possession charges that are the product of stop and frisk, will help. But the Inquirer raises some serious questions about how we go about cracking down on violent crime under the new mayoral administration, and to its great credit, it asks those questions directly to the mayor and to us.

The current wave of progressive and reform-oriented electoral energy in Philadelphia began in 2003 with the effort to nominate Howard Dean (and I am sure Wesley Clark and John Edwards and Al Sharpton and some of the others brought folks in too). The desire to beat George Bush in the 2004 General is what really galvanized a generation of voters, grassroots volunteers, and even political organizers. Even though we lost that election, a whole bunch of us made it our mission to take action and make progressive change a continuing priority.

It was 2005 in Philadelphia when some of us got a chance to apply some of the skills we'd learned in a big, national election to our local politics.

Fresh from my first gig working at MoveOn, after reading an amazing Kia Gregory piece in the PW, I emailed Seth Williams out of the blue and pitched myself as someone who could help him use the internet to organize his voters.

This was also a seminal moment for Young Philly Politics as a political blog. We made our bones, so to speak, on the Seth Williams for DA campaign. If you read YPP every day then, it would have been hard for you to imagine any problem Philadelphia faced that the DA was not in some way able to solve or impact.

Seth lost. The DA still played a huge role in terms of day-to-day quality of life in the city, and also as an architect helping to design Philadelphia's future. But other things came up, and the talk here, and in progressive offline groups, and in others places turned away from the District Attorney's office.

Goldfish memory.

Tonight, at Temple University, the "Next American City" magazine is putting on a panel discussion. M. Kay Harris (Temple University Professor of Social Work), Jerry Ratcliffe (Temple University Professor of Criminal Justice), John Phillips Yah-Ya Shabazz (Director of Alternative Disciplinary Program), and, yes, maybe even the much-romanticized John Timoney will all speak. Michael Nutter, Charles Ramsey, Chakah Fattah, Vince Fumo, and Allyson Schwartz may all appear as well. That's some group.

So, besides writing a post complaining that the New York Times incorrectly implied that we have more murders than NYC, I sent an email to the author of the story, and to the NYT Ombudsman. And, they acted.

This is the old passage from the article:

When Mr. Nutter takes office on Jan. 7, he will face a crime wave that has left at least 355 people dead so far this year and that gave Philadelphia the highest homicide rate of any big city in the country last year, with 406 killings — more than even New York City, which has six times the population.

This is the how the sentence reads now:

When Mr. Nutter takes office on Jan. 7, he will face a crime wave that has left at least 355 people dead so far this year and that gave Philadelphia the highest homicide rate of any big city in the country last year, with 406 killings — more per capita than even New York City, which has six times the population.

Small (and I mean small) victories. Anyway, at least they changed it.