#PhillyFive What We're Reading: Dec. 2, 2014
What we're reading this morning. Recent good reads you may have missed.
Recent good reads you may have missed.
1) Hallowed Ground: Black colonial-era grave sites. An old potter's field connects local African Americans to the past of the ancestors who lived, loved, worked and died in the city. There are other places in Philadelphia where the resting remains have either been forgotten or uncared for in overgrown plots.
2) Is this the new Johnny Doc? Robert Huber in Phillymag with perhaps the definitive profile of Philadelphia power-broker John J. Dougherty, president of the electricians' union. Johnny Doc knows, perhaps better than anyone else in Philadelphia, how to get things done, Huber writes. And in the past few years, he's used the political power he's accumulated as a force for good, for bringing the city back.
3) In America, black children don't get to be children. Stacey Patton in the Washington Post writes that when black parents read about the killings of Jordan Davis, Darius Simmons, Trayvon Martin, Michael Brown and so many others, they are forced to instill fear in their children — warning them about the dangers of white people and the police.
4) Regulated tent cities for homeless pondered but improbable in Pennsylvania. Could Hoovervilles sprout anew in the Keystone State. WITF's Emily Previti looks at privately-run encampments that have sprung up across the country.
- Sam Wood