Saturday, September 30, 2023, Philadelphia City Councilman Curtis Jones, Jr. and his staff pulled off a meaningful, well- thought-out, educational, and very positive gathering on the campus of Saint Joseph’s University. It was a Blueprint for a Safer Philadelphia Crime Summit, and almost everybody who needed to be in the room was there. The only ones missing were the people who are currently committing the crimes in our beloved city. I refer to them as the troublemakers.
The planning for this summit started nearly six months ago. The goal at the end of the day was to come out of the Summit with solutions that could help change the tide of violence in Philadelphia. The findings and solutions, if you will, are being combined in a document being prepared by students and professors at Saint Joseph’s University–and that report will then be made available to Philadelphia’s 100th Mayor and to the newly elected officials coming into Philadelphia government as of January 2, 2024, once being sworn in.
I commend Councilman Jones for making certain that young people were in the room on the day of the sum- mit. I also commend Councilman Jones for making sure that ex-offenders were in the room to share how they have turned their lives around and how they work with young people now to try and get them on a positive path.
On the first panel, during the Summit, former Philadelphia Mayor W. Wilson Goode was the first speaker. He spoke about being told he didn’t have what it takes to go to college when he was a senior in high school at John Bartram and how it took the people from his church, who believed in him and who encouraged him that he could become anything he wanted to and set him on a path of higher education. The rest of the Goode story is history. Ultimately, in his career, he went on to become Philadelphia’s first African-American Mayor. He was our city’s 95th Mayor. After two terms as Mayor, he went on to serve in the Federal Government in the Department of Education, and ultimately, after retiring from that position, he started his own non-profit called AMACHI. Amachi works to keep people who are incarcerated–connected to their children. It’s a mentoring program, and it’s a program that has gone nationwide.
The takeaway from Wilson Goode’s testimonial was that for all of us who have the ability to reach back and help young people, we need to do it. Whether it’s the Amachi Program, the Father’s Day Rally Committee Rites of Passage program, Mother’s In Charge, or some other positive nonprofit, we all need to become engaged in reaching back and lifting up other people around us who may be having ,…
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