Victoria Brownworth

My parents were Socialists and civil rights workers, so I was raised with the core belief that everyone is equal. It’s imbedded in my DNA. As a consequence, I am always stunned when people I otherwise respect show themselves to be bigots.

I felt that shock on Monday while listening to NPR as I do every day and heard WHYY News Director Chris Satullo’s editorial about former PA senator and presidential hopeful Rick Santorum.

One might have expected an excoriating screed on NPR. After all, it’s the one remaining liberal voice on the radio airwaves and does nothing to disguise that center-left-leaning bias. But Satullo, previously editorial page editor at the Inquirer, gave a paean to Santorum, saying, “he is a thoughtful, ethical person.”

Satullo ended with this caveat: “I know my gay friends will never agree. How could they, given Santorum’s iron stance against homosexuality? But in Rick Santorum, there is an intellectual consistency deserving of respect. I don’t expect his moment of success on the presidential trail to last, but I’m glad it happened.”

Insert the sound of my screaming here.

Alas, our own community deserves some blame for this editorial embrace of homophobia. Even as President Obama repeatedly fought against the overturning of DADT (which he now takes full credit for, even though it was Congress who repealed it), continues to joke about his “continuing to evolve” on marriage equality and holds Bradley Manning in indefinite detention, we act like he’s not a bigot, but our ally. So why wouldn’t Satullo think it was okay to salute Santorum as “ethical” and act, along with Obama, like it is us queers who are at fault for expecting more?

It’s not just Satullo’s “gay friends” who should disagree with him–it’s every non-bigot in the listening audience. You can’t have a “stance against homosexuality” without dismissing a full ten percent or more of the population. This isn’t arguing over school vouchers or meatless Mondays in the cafeteria. It’s the civil rights of an entire community.

Bigotry is not okay. Not the blatant bigotry of Santorum, the jocular bigotry of Obama nor the some-of-my-best-friends-are bigotry of Satullo. Were a white president to jokes about “still evolving” on black civil rights or an NPR exec to editorialize on the ethics of a racist or a presidential candidate to proclaim that people of color were the same as animals, would it be tolerated? Of course not. Yet that’s what all three of these guys are doing, at our expense.

The moral relativism that Santorum, Obama and Satullo are using to disguise or excuse their bigotry is hardly ethical and deserves a level of outrage that goes beyond the occasional glitter bomb or sweater-vest jibe. Why do we make excuses for straight people who claim to be our allies? Satullo is right: Santorum is honest about his bigotry; he doesn’t put it back on us, making us think our belief that we deserve equality is a collective character flaw.

We should call for Satullo’s resignation. NPR pundit Juan Williams was fired for just implying that Muslims were terrorists. How is this different?

Raise the bar, people. In our eagerness to be mainstreamed we seem to forget that casual, off-hand bigotry like Satullo’s or Obama’s is no different from the blatant sort expounded by Santorum. If we’re going to boo Santorum off the stage, then we shouldn’t vote for Obama again and we should call for Satullo’s ouster.

There’s no such thing as a little bit of bigotry. If you wouldn’t say it about your own kind, then don’t say it about mine. Satullo insulted every LGBT person in America with his commentary. Does he have a First Amendment right to be a bigot? Sure. But let him promote his admiration of a hater from a street corner instead of from a six figure post at NPR.

 

 

 

In Philadelphia, the new year started much like the old one ended. Between Saturday afternoon and Sunday morning there were more than a dozen reported shootings and six murders.

For residents of the 14^th and 39^th Districts, this was nothing new. Both districts are among the city’s top ten for violent crimes.

Last week, as 2011 drew to a close, the year-end crime-statistics report secured the city an unenviable first, yet again: Not only was Philadelphia’s murder rate up, but Philadelphia once again leads the nation in per capita murders, with 21 murders per 100,000 residents. The next closest cities are Chicago, with a mere 15 murders per 100,000 residents and Dallas with 13.

Among the top ten most populous cities–Philadelphia is the fifth largest–the city not only has the highest murder rate, it also has the lowest murder closure rate.

City leaders were quick to point out that the 2011 rates were still lower than they were a decade ago. The Mayor and Police Commissioner preferred to look at the numbers from 2007, the year Mayor Nutter first took office, when the numbers were higher than in 2011.

But that spin was cold comfort to Philadelphians weary of the violence as well as of hearing their city referred to as “Kill-adelphia” by national news media. Violent crime has decreased throughout the U.S. in the past decade with an even bigger drop since 2006. But while murder rates were down in other major American cities, Philadelphia’s murder rate is up yet again, bucking the national trend.

One reason for the increase cited by Mayor Nutter last week is the abundance of guns in the city as well as the ready access to them, due to lax gun laws and the volume of straw purchases, where people without criminal records buy guns and sell them to felons. Nutter did not mention gang violence in his response to the new stats, but gangs remain an issue in the city.

According members of the local anti-violence group Mothers in Charge, which convened a motorcade protesting the violence on Dec. 30, guns are even being rented out for drive-by shootings in neighborhoods like North Philadelphia, Nicetown, Germantown and West Oak Lane.

At the swearing-in speech for his second term on Jan.2, Mayor Nutter was asked about the murder rate. He proffered additional statistics unknown to many Philadelphians. Nutter said nearly 75 percent of Philadelphia’s murder victims are black males as are more than 80 percent of the perpetrators. Nutter declared these statistics on Philadelphia’s violence “a local and national epidemic that is insufficiently discussed, let alone taken on.”

Nutter asserted that the new murder stats would be taken seriously, that foot patrols would be increased by 120 and that there would be more car patrols in areas of the city where violent crime is most prevalent. But according to the Mayor, one-third of the city’s budget is already being used for criminal justice spending. And Nutter noted that money is desperately needed for other services, like the city’s seriously troubled school district.

As the only black mayor of a top-ten city, Nutter is under significant pressure to combat a murder epidemic where the demographic of both victims and perpetrators is disproportionately black. Some of the discontent with Nutter’s first term as mayor was directly related to what many in the African-American community saw as over-reaching with his stop-and-frisk program and conversely, what others saw as not enough attention to the crime problem.

Thus, while the Mayor didn’t shirk the issue, for those living with the day-to-day violence, his suggestions and promises seemed like more lip-service to a dangerous reality for which there seems no actual solution and insufficient response to the breadth of the problem.

Germantown and West Oak Lane are two of the neighborhoods facing a dramatic upswing in shootings. The 14^th and 39^th Districts are both in the top ten districts for murders, attempted murders and other violent crimes in the city, but a recent spate of shootings over the holidays has put residents in those areas more on edge than usual.

A few days after Christmas a woman on Rittenhouse Street was shot in the face as she lay sleeping in her bed at home–a stray bullet had gone through her window. The two men responsible for the shooting, brothers, were the subjects of a manhunt. One was captured and the other turned himself in to police.

Last week in West Oak Lane, a 67-year-old man staggered into a hoagie shop bleeding from gunshot wounds. He said he’d been shot multiple times by a man he didn’t know. No suspects were arrested.

Another man was shot at Germantown and Haines and left in critical condition in the same week. Again, no suspects.

A mother shot and killed a man in West Oak Lane who was allegedly beating and robbing her son outside their apartment building. After reviewing the evidence, police determined the shooting was justified.

Grim as these crimes are, they are hardly unusual. A quick check of the police blotter for any given week in Philadelphia puts Germantown and Oak Lane in the top tier for murders and attempted murders in the city. Gunfire has been a constant in my lower Germantown neighborhood for the past 20 years. Wayne Avenue near Wayne Junction is often like the Wild West with random shooting at all hours.

One issue not discussed by the Mayor nor Police Commissioner Ramsey is the closure rate on cases, which at 60 percent, is much lower than either Chicago or Dallas. The Mayor also did not mention that he had promised to lower the murder rate in Philadelphia by between 30 and 50 percent when he took office. Those who remember that promise found the spin put on the new stats bothersome. (Some in the Mayor’s office said the stats were artificially skewed by the seven infants murdered by Dr. Kermit Gosnell at the abortion clinic in West Philadelphia. “Take those killings out and the numbers aren’t that bad.”)

The numbers are indeed that bad no matter how one spins them. Philadelphia has yet to find ways to either control the plethora of illegal guns in the city or alter the no-snitching “philosophy” that prevails in most of the cities more violent neighborhoods and which impedes the police in closing murder cases. In addition, the young black men who are the perpetrators of the majority of these killings have been raised on murder as a staple of daily life. Talk to anyone on the street in these high-risk neighborhoods and they can recite a list of victims of shootings, many of them resulting in death.

The Mayor adding some foot patrols and revving up the car details in some neighborhood hardly seems enough to address the rate and extent of the violence. That said, Nutter can’t fight this battle to keep Philadelphia’s young black men from killing on his own. We have a responsibility as members of this community to help staunch the bloodletting. The question for 2012 is, how and where do we start?

 

 

 

 

 

If you love Philadelphia, you hate Arlene Ackerman. It’s difficult to imagine a more despised figure in recent city history than former School Superintendent Ackerman, who has bilked Philly school kids of millions since she landed her half-million-a-year job with the School District. At the height of the controversy over former dog-killer Michael Vick being hired by the Eagles, the quarterback wasn’t as despised as Ackerman is. But then unlike Vick, Ackerman has never been punished and seems to think the only person deserving of restitution is herself. She just shatters kids lives wherever she goes.

If you are one of the handful of very vocal people in the city who keep defending her (and yes, I am talking to you Jannie Blackwell and Kenny Gamble), you may think that’s an unfair statement. But Ackerman isn’t who deserves defending. It’s the 200,000+ kids in Philadelphia’s public schools who should be our concern. Unfortunately for Philadelphia, those children were never on Ackerman’s radar while she was Superintendent. Only the city’s money was.

I’ve written numerous columns about Ackerman. I protested when she was hired, citing her record of divisiveness and controversy in previous superintendent positions and questioning why she was chosen, given the fragile nature of the Philadelphia School District. I continued to call her out over her brief but costly tenure here, like when she was being investigated, when she owed the IRS, despite her half million dollar salary, when she targeted whistle-blowers within the school district, when she failed repeatedly to address issues of violence and black-on- Asian racial attacks in several city schools which resulted in a federal civil rights investigation and citation against the city.

When Ackerman’s contract was about to be up, I urged the Mayor to seek out Michele Rhee, one of the best educators in the country, who was then available. And if not Rhee, I argued, at least not more Ackerman. Because, I asserted, Ackerman would do what she had done previously–create a problem, leave the school district and demand a big payout.

I would have liked to have been wrong about Ackerman, but a pattern is a pattern and Ackerman’s pattern, had anyone bothered to vet her before she was hired, was clearly defined. Take the money and run.

Philadelphia has always had an ethics problem. All big cities do, but Philadelphia is second only to Chicago for through-and-through corruption and the sheer volume of political figures who end up at the least, indicted, or actually in prison.

That was supposed to change under Michael Nutter’s mayoralty, and while it hasn’t been the pay-to-play revolving door between the U.S. Attorney’s office and Graterford that existed under John Street, it definitely hasn’t been as clean as most of us would have liked.

The Ackerman situation has smacked of corruption from the outset. Why was she hired? Why was her salary so munificent when the School District was in financial peril? Who vetted her? What happened to sunder her relationship with the School District between her being rehired in January 2011 and her being–what?–fired, forced to resign, eased out–back in September?

The latest slap to the city–all the way from New Mexico where Ackerman is currently living–is that the former Superintendent, who squeezed just under $1million from the city when her tenure mysteriously ended a few months ago now wants to collect unemployment.

It takes some bold brass ones to be sitting on a million dollars in another city and still want to collect $600 a week from school kids in the poorest big city in America.

In the big picture of the School District’s money woes, another $2,400 a month isn’t a lot of money. Maybe just a portion of one of the food programs that help the largely poor and hungry demographic of Philly public school kids, two-thirds of whom are living below the poverty level. Which is, in case you aren’t one of the families living at that level, less than half of what Ackerman will be collecting from those kids for doing nothing.

And make no mistake, the money to pay for Ackerman’s unemployment compensation, which could run as long as 24 months under current recession guidelines, will be coming directly out of the School District coffers.

Ackerman, who has become adept at playing both the diva and the victim over the years, released a statement about filing for unemployment. She noted, “I loved my job with the School District of Philadelphia. I did not quit my job. I am not working right now. And therefore I am entitled to unemployment.”

Entitled was perhaps a poor choice of words for Ackerman, since the main complaint about her during her tenure in Philadelphia was her sense of entitlement. She ran roughshod over everyone from the Mayor to PFT President Jerry Jordan to the teachers and the students themselves. When she and the city severed their connection back in September, Ackerman had been MIA for weeks. Then suddenly she was out without explanation. Leading inexorably back to the inevitable question of why she was ever hired in the first place.

Nutter was as non-plussed by Ackerman’s latest stunner as most Philadelphians were.

He told reporters, “Given the financial crisis facing the Philadelphia School District and the nearly one million dollar settlement agreement that the former superintendent received, it’s astounding to me that she’s coming back to the District seeking unemployment compensation.”

Jordan was equally stunned, telling 6ABC,

“I thought Halloween was last month. This is clearly a trick on the public and on the members of my union and other unions who were laid off and clearly, it sounds like a treat for her.”

Fernando Gallard, the School District spokesperson said that in accordance with her separation agreement with the School District, there would be no contesting of her unemployment.

Why not? Ackerman suggests that she was fired. She doesn’t come out and say “fired,” but she does say she didn’t quit. She certainly wasn’t laid off. So she was fired. Which means she isn’t eligible for unemployment–unless her separation agreement says she is.

Which brings us back yet again to the question of what happened between January and September that caused the city to kick Ackerman off the active payroll.

Philadelphians should be demanding some answers about the entire Ackerman controversy. This woman has taken a huge wad of cash from Philly school kids and I would like to know why she was allowed to do so. What kind of deal was brokered with her that created this expensive mess? And how will this be averted in the future?

For weeks Philadelphians have been hearing about the huge costs to the city of Occupy Philly. The hundreds of protestors cost the city nearly $1million in police overtime and sanitation clean up. Why hasn’t there been equal coverage given to Ackerman’s bilking of the city?

There are many questions that still demand answers regarding the Ackerman debacle. I’d personally like to see an audit of what services she is supposed to have provided for her $350,000 annual salary plus $100,000 bonus. I’d like to know why when so many teachers and other vital School District staff like nurses and janitors were laid off, Ackerman is still coming to the city for a handout. Perhaps the reason she is currently unemployed is because she either doesn’t want to work if she can still take money from us, or she can’t find another school district to take her on after she has pulled her buyout gambit on yet another city–ours.

Accountability has never been high on the list of concerns of Philadelphia politicians, but the Ackerman debacle, since Ackerman herself refuses to go away, demands it.

This isn’t just a question of money–although that is certainly at issue. But the point that has yet to be made in any of the discourse on Ackerman is this: Philadelphia public schools are among the worst in the country–most violent, least effective, highest drop-out rates. The demographic for public schools is 65 percent African-American, 17 percent Latino, 13 percent white and 5 percent Asian. The kids who do graduate–and they represent less than half of the student population–are often functionally illiterate. I know, because I have taught literacy classes as well as remedial reading to students enrolled in local associate colleges in the city.

One reason I’d like an audit of Ackerman’s alleged achievements is because the kids in my neighborhood are virtually illiterate. The elementary school a block from my house has no library and the kids who go there, nearly 100 percent of whom are African American, have so little working knowledge of English, reading and math, that their chances grow slimmer by the day.

What are we doing about that? Why can’t we address it? It’s a crisis–an absolute crisis. There’s a reason why Philadelphia is the poorest of the top ten largest cities–we’ve created a permanent underclass in this town.

Ackerman was hired to help fix what is broken in this city: the educational system for the city’s most vulnerable and most at-risk kids, the ones who can’t afford to go to anywhere but the local public school. She didn’t create the problem, but she did absolutely nothing to fix it. And then she got a big payout and even received an award for ignoring the hideous levels of violence and shifting some test score numbers around. I dare anyone in city government or on the School Review Board to come to my neighborhood and quiz kids here. Finding a child who can read at their grade level is like finding the proverbial needle in a haystack: it can’t be done.

Ackerman’s greed and insensitivity and the Mayor’s and Jerry Jordan’s faux outrage are only part of the problem.

Local NAACP head Jerry Mondesire was quick to say that the vilification of Ackerman was racist. Seriously? Everyone involved is black–the review board, the Mayor, most of City Council, Jordan. In point of fact, one would have hoped that Ackerman, as a woman of color, would have shown a little more concern for a student body that was 87 percent of color.

The concerns in this city are utterly skewed. The terms of Ackerman’s severance package should be made public, her bid for more money should be denied and the School District should be making some semblance of effort to make literacy a goal of our schools. This isn’t about ginned up test scores, it’s about whether kids can actually read or understand English or do basic math or comprehend science, history and geography.

Our kids deserve so much better than they are getting. But until we stop putting the entitled before the vulnerable and needy, Philadelphia school kids will continue to achieve less and less and the school crisis will get worse and worse. Public schools are broken in Philadelphia. It’s time to say no to the Ackermans and find someone who can help save our schools and the lives of our most needy children.

 

 

 

When Republicans and Democrats join forces on reproductive issues, women always lose. Such was the case last week. President Obama decided to go the anti-science route and refute an FDA finding on Plan B while the Pennsylvania legislature voted in SB732, which will likely further restrict abortion in Pennsylvania. Both measures were cited as “protections” for women seeking to end their pregnancies. The end result of both moves, one promulgated by a Democratic president and his Democratic Secretary of Health and Human Services and the other by a predominantly Republican legislature, was the same: covert restriction of women’s access to dealing with unplanned/unwanted pregnancies under the guise of “helping” them. Yet one has to ask how forcing women, especially teenagers, to have unwanted children benefits anyone–woman, child or society.

I’ll insert my disclaimer here: I am pro-life. I would like to see abortion become as rare as possible. As a consequence, I am a strong supporter of Plan B and have been for some time. I think every woman/girl who is physically able to get pregnant, whether she’s my age or the age of my 12-year-old niece, should have Plan B in her dresser drawer for emergencies. (A contraceptive emergency is everything from rape and incest to consensual sex without contraception.)

Plan B is not an abortifacient, nor is it dangerous. The FDA has established that. Plan B is, however, a simple, painless way to prevent an unwanted/unplanned pregnancy from happening and at about $40 per pill, affordable. It can also be purchased at any pharmacy or chain drugstore. Plan B is also about as private a means of preventing a pregnancy (other than regular, consistent use of contraception) as possible. It is ideal for women and girls who feel too shamed, embarrassed or frightened by an unwanted/unplanned pregnancy to deal with decision-making until it is too late for an abortion.

Abortion is complicated, harder and harder to get, especially for poor women, teenagers and women living in rural areas, as well as painful and expensive. Plus, abortion does kill the fetus. With Plan B there never is a fetus because fertilization never takes place.

Every woman in America should be disturbed by these political actions last week. As a woman who has yet to go into menopause but who definitely has no interest in having a child in middle age, I know I would not want to be faced with an unplanned pregnancy. Nine years ago, before Plan B was available, I was raped. Fortunately, I was not among the percentage of rape victims who is impregnated by her rapist. But had I been, I would have had to make the awful choice between carrying the child of my rapist or having an abortion. Many women face these choices every day. The option of Plan B is a tremendous relief.

Pennsylvania bill SB732 was ostensibly in response to the horrific scene uncovered earlier this year at the West Philadelphia Women’s Clinic run by Dr. Kermit Gosnell and his wife. Gosnell was operating outside pretty much every law in place for free-standing ) abortion clinics (that is, a clinic not associated with a hospital, Planned Parenthood or other oversight agency). He was allegedly dispensing drugs illegally and he was allegedly performing third-trimester abortions, which are not legal outside a surgical center or hospital setting because they require that a woman go into actual labor and the complications are manifold and the woman’s health is at tremendous risk.

He was also committing murder. Gosnell is charged with killing seven live infants by snipping their spinal cords and brain stems with scissors. Bodies of infants and fetuses were found in storage at the clinic, which was also filthy. Conditions at the clinic came to light when a woman died from complications of a third-trimester abortion. Gosnell is also charged with her murder. No one can argue that the Gosnell clinic was serving women. Gosnell made money off desperate women, like the one he is accused of killing, who was an immigrant who had tried to get a late-stage abortion in Maryland before coming to Philadelphia.

SB 732 places new licensing and other restrictions on independent clinics that are supposed to protect women from predatory health care providers like Gosnell. But if the Department of Health had been performing regular inspections as required by already existing laws, the Gosnell clinic would likely have been closed down before any of the eight murders attributed to Gosnell were perpetrated.

SB 732 is unnecessary. What is necessary is having health inspectors do the required checks on all health clinics, including those that primarily perform abortions, to make sure that patients are getting the appropriate standard of care in a safe, clean, antiseptic environment with trained personnel. (The Grand Jury found that among other illegalities, the Gosnells’ clinic was staffed predominately with high-school students who often administered anesthesia.)

Pennsylvania already has the most restrictive abortion laws in the nation. In addition, according to the Pennsylvania Department of Health, only ten counties (out of 67) have abortion providers and there are only 20 independent clinics in the state. Which means poor women–and Pennsylvania is largely rural and has a significant poverty demographic–are the least likely to be able to access abortions.

Which brings me back to President Obama’s anti-science/election year decision last week to over-rule the FDA on making Plan B available to girls under 18. In supporting HHS Secretary Kathleen Sebelius’s decision to go against the FDA’s ruling, Obama noted that he didn’t want his daughters finding Plan B “next to the bubble gum and band aids.” This is the kind of rabid, anti-science statement one would expect from someone on the extremist right, not a Democratic president who campaigned on standing for science.

First, Plan B won’t be anywhere near “bubble gum and band aids” in any pharmacy. And the Malia and Sasha Obama are not likely to be the girls who would need it. But if the president ever left his insular meet and greets to actually come to the inner city like my neighborhood, or the poverty-stricken rural areas of America, like Mississippi where teen pregnancy is pandemic, he would know why Plan B is so important and why its availability to girls between 12 and 17 is essential.

Fifteen years ago I taught in a program at Lutheran Settlement for pregnant teenagers. The girls took GED and other high school equivalency courses in the morning and in the afternoons they were taught life skills. My students ranged in age from 12 to 17. The 17-year-old was on her third baby. The 12-year-old implied in several talks with me that the father of her baby was her own father. Statistics show that the women most likely to seek out a late-stage abortion for reasons that are non-medical are teenagers. Plan B might not be a panacea that will stop all teen pregnancies, but it is one more stop-gap and also one more safe way to prevent abortions.

In the debate over who controls women’s bodies, women lose. President Obama’s daughters may be in the age range covered by the FDA’s ruling, but they are not the demographic that needs access to Plan B. When Sebelius and Obama both say that parents need to be involved in the decisions regarding their child’s health, they ignore the realities: there are many drugs available over the counter to kids that actually are dangerous, including Tylenol, aspirin and cough medicines. Yet Sebelius and Obama are not suggesting restricting those to people over 18. What’s more, when these two upper-middle-class parents talk about parental involvement, they pre-suppose two things: first, that a teenage girl’s parents care enough to be involved and second, that a teenage girl’s parents aren’t part of the reason she’s had unprotected sex.

 One in four girls is a victim of sexual abuse before she turns 18. Many of the perpetrators are family members. Shouldn’t she be allowed access to Plan B rather than being forced to bear the child of one of her male relatives? The Plan B decision was 100 percent political, as was the 155-44 vote passing SB 732. These were not decisions based on science or protecting women, but politically motivated dictates meant to interfere in women’s personal lives and make a statement to voters in an election year.

Here’s what politicians on both sides of the aisle should be considering rather than votes: No woman wants to have an abortion. Women who choose abortion do so because they feel it is their only option, and so it should be accessible and safe. But Plan B also gives many women a safe, inexpensive, reliable and accessible alternative that is also guilt-free.

Every pro-life advocate should be a huge supporter of Plan B. I’d be handing Plan B (and condoms) out in the schools, if I could. But if Plan B is not an option because too much time has passed, then abortion–which has been legal for nearly 40 years–should be made as accessible as possible. Women don’t make the abortion decision lightly. Making abortion difficult for them only adds an unnecessary burden of shame and guilt. Meanwhile, making first trimester abortions–which are reasonably safe and in which the fetus is not viable–accessible, women are less likely to be forced to have second or even third-trimester abortions where there is a viable fetus and there is also great risk to the health of the woman. Making early abortions more difficult to obtain only means there will be more late-term abortions. If a woman wants an abortion, she will find one–if not at a real clinic, then at the kind of over-priced butcher shop Gosnell was running.

As for Plan B, Obama implies that kids under 18 are not having sex. He seems to forget his own mother was a pregnant teenager before she married his father–and that was 50 years ago when teen pregnancy was considered shameful, rather than the commonplace it has become in 2011.

Yet common as it now is, what we know about teen pregnancy is all bad. Girls who have babies before they are 20 are the least likely to finish school, get a secondary education or be able to find a good job. One baby before a girl is 20 is almost always followed by a second. Children of teenage mothers are at risk physically from health issues, but are also then twice as likely to drop out of school and/or become teen parents themselves.

Teen pregnancy benefits no one. And as so-called abstinence programs have proven, teens will have sex, regardless of what parents or peers say. While the President believes his daughters will never be those girls, he really can’t know for sure. Over 70 percent of girls have had sex by the time they turn 17.

Last week was a bad week for women with these two decisions. And neither will lead where the politicians involved want. Obama’s anti-science rhetoric won’t stop teenagers from having sex, but it may mean that some will be forced to have abortions and others babies, rather than have access to a simple pill. The Pennsylvania legislature can sit back smugly, noting that they are saving women’s lives, but the artificial restrictions it has placed on abortion clinics is likely to create more Gosnells, not punish them. Extremist, anti-science politics–whether purveyed by a Republicans or Democrats–benefit no one. But they have the potential to hurt millions of women. Turning back the reproductive clock is impossible but the results of these continued efforts will be nothing less than catastrophic.

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When Joe “JoePa” Paterno’s weekly press conference was cancelled Tuesday mere minutes before he was scheduled to speak, Pennsylvanians following the sex abuse scandal that has rocked Penn State and the national college football scene knew it was over–JoePa’s legendary career, that is.

The weekly press conference was cancelled by president Graham Spanier who is attempting to exert damage control over scandal and the subsequent arrests of former Penn State defensive coordinator Jerry Sandusky, athletic director Tim Curley and Penn State vice president Gary Schultz. The arrests were made Nov. 7 following a three-year investigation and a grand jury report that Sandusky, considered heir apparent to one of the most successful coaching gigs in college football history, had raped, sodomized and sexually assaulted young boys he was mentoring.

One of the sexual assaults was allegedly witnessed on campus, reported to Paterno who then told Curley. Paterno asserted that he followed school protocol in making a report to Curley, but said he did not feel he should contact police.

Curley did not contact police, either. No one contacted police. As a result, boys were sexually assaulted over a period of at least nine more years.

The reason Paterno’s press conference was cancelled, according to Paterno’s son, Scott, was because the 84-year-old coach intended to read a statement about the allegations and arrests and was prepared to answer questions. It is rumored that Paterno will be forced to resign in the coming days, ending what has been the longest coaching gig in college football history.

The case has become a lead story locally and nationally because Paterno has legendary status as a coach. But details of the grand jury report are repugnant and appalling. As the District Attorney for State College has made clear, this case is not about football or coaching, but about the sexual molestation of children.

The terms “sexual abuse” and “sexual molestation,” however, have become unpleasant euphemisms in American society–stand-ins for rape, sodomy and other coercive sexual acts by adults against minors. The terms sexual abuse and sexual molestation are used when priests, teachers, coaches and family members sexually assault minors. If a stranger did any of these things to a child, it would be called what it is: forcible rape and/or sodomy. These euphemisms only protect the perpetrators.

Sandusky is accused in the grand jury report of raping and sodomizing children on a regular basis. Curley and Schultz have been charged with covering up his crimes. Paterno has not been charged, but the stink of these viles crimes has stuck to him. And he is not blameless.

College sports, football in particular, has taken on the same self-protective modality as the Catholic Church when it comes to sexual assaults of minors. Victims are treated shabbily while colleges which depend on sports for funding revenue often hide or dismiss charges brought by complainants. In recent years there have been rape scandals involving basketball and football stars at many national colleges, including, locally, La Salle. Almost all of these cases have involved female students who have often asserted that they were intimidated by college officials into dropping charges or risk being accused of personal sexual mores that would smear their own reputations or even cause them to be expelled. Many young women have asserted that sexual assaults by college sports stars routinely go unreported because the victims know nothing will be done.

Sandusky coached at Penn State in State College for 32 years after he graduated from the school. Throughout that period the grand jury asserts he culled victims from the ranks of students and players. In addition, Sandusky founded a foster home, The Second Mile, in 1977, for troubled boys. The Second Mile expanded to a large, statewide charity that helped boys from dysfunctional families with absent fathers. Sandusky took a personal interest in the boys, mentoring them on many levels. Including, according to the grand jury report, in sexual assault.

Supporters of Penn State, JoePa and the Nittany Lions have been quick to assert that everyone is innocent until proven guilty, and that JoePa himself hasn’t been charged. These are the same excuses Philadelphians heard about their parish priests when three separate grand jury reports were released showing a decades-long pattern of rape, sodomy, sexual assault and intimidation of minors and a concerted effort by the church hierarchy to keep the crimes covered up and out of police jurisdiction.

College sports has long been a bastion of the “boys will be boys” mentality. Excuses have been made for football and basketball stars regarding everything from poor grades to bad behavior, even when that behavior is criminal. That same attitude has also been accrued to coaches and athletic directors. Maintaining an insular society where the rules of the outside world do not apply has been a norm rather than an anomaly. The current Penn State scandal is indicative of just how normative it has become.

Paterno filed his one and only complaint against Sandusky in 2002. Nine years ago. How many kids have been sexually assaulted in the interim?

The incident that Paterno knew about wasn’t some lingering shoulder rub that might have been misconstrued by the graduate assistant who witnessed it as sexual in nature. Rather, it was a rape in progress.

According to the grand jury report, the graduate assistant entered the shower area at Penn State because he heard sounds of what he thought were sexual activity. There he witnessed Sandusky, naked, engaging in anal intercourse with a boy the graduate assistant estimated to be about ten years old. Both the boy and Sandusky saw the graduate assistant, who left, “distraught,” according to the grand jury report.

The graduate assistant called his own father, who insisted that the incident be reported to Paterno. Paterno then notified Curley. Curley had a meeting with Schultz and later the two told the graduate assistant that Sandusky’s keys had been taken away.

Neither the University police, child protective services nor any other criminal authority–like the police–were contacted about the incident. After Paterno, no one interviewed the graduate student. According to the grand jury report, President Graham Spanier was apprised of the incident, however.

Consider this: a young grad student sees an anal rape by an adult man of a child in a shower. He’s completely freaked out. (Paterno testified to the grand jury that the young man was “very upset” when he came to Paterno’s house on a Saturday to report the incident with his father.) He doesn’t know what to do because, as he testified, he’d never witnessed anything like that before. He calls his father. His father can’t imagine a grown man having sex with a ten-year-old boy in a campus athletic shower. But Paterno understands, because this isn’t the first time he’s heard this: Sandusky had been under suspicion for similar behavior in 1998. Plus, what is a grown man doing naked in a shower with a child not his own anyway? That would be inappropriate at best.

At that point, then, knowing what he knew, shouldn’t Paterno have called police, not Curley?

The grand jury report makes clear that no one wanted to indict Sandusky. Sandusky had emeritus status at the university, he was groomed to be Paterno’s replacement when he finally retired and the school had a lot invested in him. Much more of an investment than they did in a few kids from the inner city who were lucky enough to be mentored by Sandusky and brought to Penn State for athletic training.

And anal rape in the showers.

Sandusky’s alleged rape of the ten year old–listed in the grand jury report as Victim 2–occurred in 2002. Had any one of the adults who knew about the incident called police, Sandusky would have been arrested then. Nine years ago. Victim 2 would not have led to Victim 9. And those are just the number of victims whose testimony is in the report. There were other boys who testified, but they were not actual rape victims–merely victims of fondling and unwanted advances–and so they are indicated by initials in the report, not victim status.

Anyone saying this story is going to play out and Sandusky, Curley and Schultz will be exonerated and Paterno won’t be forced to resign needs to read the dozens of pages of the grand jury report. All three men who have been charged deserve prison time and Paterno should have resigned when he testified to the grand jury in 2010. Paterno could have ended his stellar career on a grace note instead of this vile and despicable taint. Because he is indeed tainted. A boy was raped while he was in charge, raped by the man he had groomed for decades to be his successor, and when he picked up the phone to called someone about that rape, it was Curley, not the police.

Rape is a crime and a college where it occurs is just another crime scene, not some sanctuary for rapists. It doesn’t matter who the victim is–if it’s a drunk college girl at a frat party where a football star has sex with her when she’s half unconscious or it’s a ten-year-old from the inner city with no dad who is thrilled to have a nationally renowned coach taking an interest in him. When a victim is taken advantage of by a perpetrator in a milieu where everyone looks the other way at the violent and criminal behaviors of either college sports stars or their leaders, it’s no different from some random guy dragging a woman into a back alley or luring a child into a car. What Sandusky is accused of isn’t euphemistic, it’s rape.

Sandusky was–is–a serial predator. He lured kids repeatedly. He used his influence to lure boys who were already vulnerable, already at risk for almost anything bad from gang leaders to drug dealers to serial child rapists. He took them to Eagles games and allegedly fondled them in the car on the way. He played sports with them, took them on trips, gave them computers, games, meals, gifts, money. He bought them and their silence and most of them–but not the victims cited in the grand jury testimony–kept that silence.

Curley and Schultz are just as guilty. They knew who and what Sandusky was–a serial child rapist–and they supported and protected him and did nothing to stop him. They reported to Spanier and he did nothing. And Paterno–the legend, our JoePa–knew and also did nothing.

Sandusky looks just like the handsome guy next door who coached your kid on a Sunday and was always smiling and slapping you on the back. But in reality, according to the details of the grand jury report, Sandusky is a truly sick and twisted guy. A serial rapist. Yet if any one of these other men had thought for a second about the children being raped, rather than their own careers and the reputation of their college, they could have stopped him early and saved countless victims.

Sandusky was a coach for 32 years. Does anyone believe he just suddenly woke up in 1998–the first reported incident where he was caught–and decided to become a serial child rapist? Rape is the most recidivist of crimes. Pedophile rape is considered almost untreatable by psychiatrists, because the disturbed desire is so ingrained in the perpetrators that it’s compulsive. The perpetrators simply can’t stop themselves. Sandusky is alleged to have been caught raping a child in the open showers of a college athletic department. That’s compulsion.

But Sandusky’s compulsion to rape young boys was fed by every adult man around him who looked the other way. Curley and Schultz may be the only ones indicted–because they lied to the grand jury under oath and subverted the criminal justice system–but they were hardly the only people who allowed Sandusky to continue his behavior.

Sandusky is married and has six kids. He brought these boys from The Second Mile to his home and they stayed over night in a basement bedroom where Sandusky is alleged to have gone and had sex with them while his wife and kids were upstairs.

The news is focused on whether Paterno can weather the storm and not have to resign. He should resign. He should have resigned the day of his grand jury testimony. Spanier should also resign. He runs the university. He is responsible for every student on campus. And every faculty and administrative member and visitor–especially the naked ten-year-olds in the showers.

Heads should roll at Penn State until the entire community of the school and State College can be assured that such a despicable and horrific pattern of criminality can never occur at the school again. Until that happens, it’s not just JoePa’s legacy that’s in question, but an entire community that allowed vulnerable children to be expendable for the sake of legacy. It’s beyond shameful. Let’s stop talking about poor JoePa and start talking about Sandusky’s many victims and the environment the school created that allowed them to be taken by a predator with impunity while the college hierarchy looked the other way.

I’ve been watching the Occupy Philly actions with avid attention over the past few weeks. I’m in that middle-age demographic that has mostly been complaining that there’s no focus, no leadership, no direction, no end game to the protest. As one friend explained, “These are middle-class kids with the privilege to hang out night and day and say the economy sucks. And sure, it’s bad that you went to college and can’t get a job. But where is the actual protest? Where is the civil disobedience? Why don’t they try registering people to vote if they want to create change? Sit down in front of the Stock Exchange and refuse to move until you are arrested en masse–that will do something.”

I’ve heard similar remarks from friends and colleagues about the Occupy movement. Perhaps because I am under-employed and the recession has hit me really hard, I feel both solidarity and sympathy with the Occupy movement. I went down to the protest site at City Hall one recent chilly night and wandered through. I took some notes and some photos. I admit I liked the call and response nature of the “non-hierarchical structure.” And while another friend says “It’s just like a big be-in,” it seems like more than that to me.

It may not be like the European protests against the austerity programs in the U.K., Spain and Greece. Those protests have resulted in many arrests and a fair amount of violence. And it’s no American version of the Arab spring, either. There weren’t cell phone charging tents in Tahrir Square.

But it’s not nothing.

The Occupy movement–be it in New York or Philadelphia or Los Angeles–is a statement. It’s a statement about where many of us feel we stand in this double-dip recession. We hear President Obama reiterating that it’s much better than it was, even if we don’t feel it yet and the jobs are coming as long as we all want to do construction work and don’t mind that 99 percent of the jobs have gone to men.

The Republicans keep saying jobs are important, but we have to protect the tax cuts for the rich or there won’t be any jobs because there’s a link we don’t understand between those two things.

Then everyone gets back on their Canadian-made campaign buses and moves on.

But we’re still here. We’re still suffering. And as the holidays loom closer, those of us who are now chronically under-employed or in the second year without a job or down-sized or among the 47 million Americans now collecting food stamps, we envision those Wall Street holiday bonuses while many of us will be getting holiday lay-off slips.

The placards the Occupy folks carry are declarative in their messy, not-slick way. The average American feels ignored, co-opted and abused by our local and federal governments. The Occupy movement reflects that.

The fact that no one knows exactly how to respond to this broad-based, no-specific-agenda movement is exactly what makes it noteworthy. The first protest was Sept. 17 in New York. Five weeks later, there are Occupy encampments nationwide and across Europe, including the one outside City Hall on Dilworth Plaza.

Politicians don’t know what to say in the face of this movement which polls show a majority of Americans approve of. Democrats have tried to embrace the Occupy movement, but the Obama Administration has given Wall Street everything it ever wanted, so they are hardly in concert with the Occupy ideals.

Republicans haven’t been sure how to address it, either, though some of the presidential candidates have done the same pseudo embrace the Democratic hierarchy has attempted.

But Eric Cantor called the Occupiers “mobs.” They are anything but. In fact, a prime complaint from many Progressives is that the Occupy protesters aren’t the least bit mobbish, but are placid and noncommittal.

Thus when Cantor refused to speak at Penn last week because he “feared” the Occupy folks, it just seemed silly. What was there to fear? If Cantor was scheduled to talk to Philadelphians about important political issues, why would questions from the local citizenry be a problem?

Conversely, if Obama and his cadre really do agree with the Occupy protests (which is contraindicated by their own policies and the fact that Obama has taken three times as much campaign money from Wall Streeters this year than Mitt Romney and twice what George W. Bush took in 2004), then why hasn’t any of the Obama Administration’s hierarchy gone to one of the sites to talk with the protestors?

Next Tuesday is Election Day in Philadelphia. Like most Philadelphia elections it will be regrettably pro-forma. I could write the results now and they wouldn’t be any different from what will be printed in the newspaper the day after the votes are tallied.

One of the basic precepts of the Occupy movement has been the lack of affiliation with either of the two main political parties (although Ron Paul does seem to be an outlier favorite of the young protestors; his campaign signs are the only ones in evidence).

As someone who has become utterly disenchanted with the two-party system–or the one party system as it is in Philadelphia–I want to Occupy the vote. I checked out the sample ballot before I sat down to write this and I saw only one candidate I truly want to vote for: Cheri Honkala for Sheriff.

Weird choice? Not really. Honkala started the original Occupy movement in Philadelphia 20 years ago. Honkala, who founded and ran the Kensington Welfare Rights Union (KWRU), built a tent city in Kensington and organized to take over buildings that were vacant to house homeless women and families.

Honkala is running as the Green Party candidate for Sheriff and I will be voting for her. In fact, her presence on the ballot makes me eager to vote–it’s one vote I will cast with no trepidation or regret. Because Honkala is a true activist. She has worked for the citizenry of Philadelphia since she came here with her infant son from Minneapolis nearly three decades ago. Honkala has a plan for re-organizing the Sheriff’s office (one of the more corrupt offices in the city system) and Honkala will do everything in her power to create change if she’s elected. Honkala wants to alter the system to keep people in their houses, stop evictions wherever possible and get vacant properties filled with homeless families.

I’d like to get everyone camped out at Dilworth Plaza to rock the vote for Honkala. She’s earned her place on the ballot more than most of the people on it and if the Occupy folks want to create some change and make some serious political noise, then getting Honkala elected would be fantastic.

There are few candidates running outside the Democratic and Republican parties. A handful of Green and Independent candidates. In the 8^th District, Brian Rudnick, a Chestnut Hill attorney and librarian is running as a Green Party candidate challenging Cindy Bass, the Democrat.

There are five Republicans running for the City Council at Large seats. I’m too far to the left politically to suggest voting for one of them, but isn’t it time Philadelphia had an Asian council person in a city with such a large Asian demographic? David Oh should win one of the two minority vote seats for Republicans.

A lot of what’s wrong with City Council will be gone by the end of the year–Donna Reed Miller being, for those of us in the 8^th District, the worst offender. But has anyone from Council, any of the incoming candidates or those vying for the at-large seats ventured outside City Hall onto Dilworth Plaza to talk with the Occupy protesters?

Throughout my years in Philadelphia, city government has run at cross-purposes with the citizenry. Is there another city that has had as many City Council persons and state legislators come under indictment or actually end up in prison?

It’s easy to say Philadelphia is a corrupt town. It is and has been for generations. With each new administration and Council revamping we hope for a better city, a city more in tune with the needs of its citizens, a city less lining the pockets of the pay-to-players.

The people encamped at Dilworth Plaza are asking for exactly that: That our government and financial institutions, police departments and housing developers all work in concert for the people, rather than for themselves and their own agendas.

Is that an unformed, unfocused, undeliberated concept? I think not. I think that what Occupy Philly’s people are saying is that those who run the hierarchy of society are not meeting the needs of those within that society.

So how do we do it? Do the five million people who live in Philadelphia and environs make a run on City Hall? Do we walk by the protestors and drop off a few dollars or some medical supplies or some cans of food with a wink and a nod? Or do we just plod on and hope for the best?

I’d like to see that run on City Hall, myself, but that ain’t happening. In lieu of that I’d like to see Cheri Honkala grab that Sheriff’s seat with an activist’s vengeance. I’d like to see the Independent candidate for mayor, Wali Rahman, get a sizeable number of votes. I’d like to see some cages rattled and some teeth set on edge and some status quo unseated.

The Occupy Philly people say they are there for the duration. I’m not sure what that means–if it means the first really cold night, the first big snow, the approach of the holidays or if they will indeed still be there for next November’s election.

What I do know is that regardless of whether you think their presence is stupid or right on, unfocused or anarchistic, costing taxpayers money in police protection that is better spent elsewhere or worth every cent, the Occupy Philly people are a visible, physical reminder of what we aren’t getting from the men and women we elect–or let others elect while we sit home.

On Oct. 24^th Tunisians went out to vote in their first free election. They were the first nation to begin the wave of the Arab spring. The lines were endlessly long and people waited in them for hours. Ninety percent of the people voted.

If ninety percent of Philadelphians voted–ever–we would have a different ballot and a different city.

Occupy Philly isn’t the Arab spring, but we can be our own Arab spring. We just have to really want change more than we want the ease of the status quo.

We just really have to ask ourselves how much longer we are willing to accommodate and accept and ignore and concede. Or if we will at least make an effort with our votes on election day.

visit my political blog at victoriabrownworth.com or follow me on Twitter @VABVOX.

OCCUPY (THE VOTE) PHILLY

by Victoria A. Brownworth

I’ve been watching the Occupy Philly actions with avid attention over the past few weeks. I’m in that middle-age demographic that has mostly been complaining that there’s no focus, no leadership, no direction, no end game to the protest. As one friend explained, “These are middle-class kids with the privilege to hang out night and day and say the economy sucks. And sure, it’s bad that you went to college and can’t get a job. But where is the actual protest? Where is the civil disobedience? Why don’t they try registering people to vote if they want to create change? Sit down in front of the Stock Exchange and refuse to move until you are arrested en masse–that will do something.”

I’ve heard similar remarks from friends and colleagues about the Occupy movement. Perhaps because I am under-employed and the recession has hit me really hard, I feel both solidarity and sympathy with the Occupy movement. I went down to the protest site at City Hall one recent chilly night and wandered through. I took some notes and some photos. I admit I liked the call and response nature of the “non-hierarchical structure.” And while another friend says “It’s just like a big be-in,” it seems like more than that to me.

It may not be like the European protests against the austerity programs in the U.K., Spain and Greece. Those protests have resulted in many arrests and a fair amount of violence. And it’s no American version of the Arab spring, either. There weren’t cell phone charging tents in Tahrir Square.

But it’s not nothing.

The Occupy movement–be it in New York or Philadelphia or Los Angeles–is a statement. It’s a statement about where many of us feel we stand in this double-dip recession. We hear President Obama reiterating that it’s much better than it was, even if we don’t feel it yet and the jobs are coming as long as we all want to do construction work and don’t mind that 99 percent of the jobs have gone to men.

The Republicans keep saying jobs are important, but we have to protect the tax cuts for the rich or there won’t be any jobs because there’s a link we don’t understand between those two things.

Then everyone gets back on their Canadian-made campaign buses and moves on.

But we’re still here. We’re still suffering. And as the holidays loom closer, those of us who are now chronically under-employed or in the second year without a job or down-sized or among the 47 million Americans now collecting food stamps, we envision those Wall Street holiday bonuses while many of us will be getting holiday lay-off slips.

The placards the Occupy folks carry are declarative in their messy, not-slick way. The average American feels ignored, co-opted and abused by our local and federal governments. The Occupy movement reflects that.

The fact that no one knows exactly how to respond to this broad-based, no-specific-agenda movement is exactly what makes it noteworthy. The first protest was Sept. 17 in New York. Five weeks later, there are Occupy encampments nationwide and across Europe, including the one outside City Hall on Dilworth Plaza.

Politicians don’t know what to say in the face of this movement which polls show a majority of Americans approve of. Democrats have tried to embrace the Occupy movement, but the Obama Administration has given Wall Street everything it ever wanted, so they are hardly in concert with the Occupy ideals.

Republicans haven’t been sure how to address it, either, though some of the presidential candidates have done the same pseudo embrace the Democratic hierarchy has attempted.

But Eric Cantor called the Occupiers “mobs.” They are anything but. In fact, a prime complaint from many Progressives is that the Occupy protesters aren’t the least bit mobbish, but are placid and noncommittal.

Thus when Cantor refused to speak at Penn last week because he “feared” the Occupy folks, it just seemed silly. What was there to fear? If Cantor was scheduled to talk to Philadelphians about important political issues, why would questions from the local citizenry be a problem?

Conversely, if Obama and his cadre really do agree with the Occupy protests (which is contraindicated by their own policies and the fact that Obama has taken three times as much campaign money from Wall Streeters this year than Mitt Romney and twice what George W. Bush took in 2004), then why hasn’t any of the Obama Administration’s hierarchy gone to one of the sites to talk with the protestors?

Next Tuesday is Election Day in Philadelphia. Like most Philadelphia elections it will be regrettably pro-forma. I could write the results now and they wouldn’t be any different from what will be printed in the newspaper the day after the votes are tallied.

One of the basic precepts of the Occupy movement has been the lack of affiliation with either of the two main political parties (although Ron Paul does seem to be an outlier favorite of the young protestors; his campaign signs are the only ones in evidence).

As someone who has become utterly disenchanted with the two-party system–or the one party system as it is in Philadelphia–I want to Occupy the vote. I checked out the sample ballot before I sat down to write this and I saw only one candidate I truly want to vote for: Cheri Honkala for Sheriff.

Weird choice? Not really. Honkala started the original Occupy movement in Philadelphia 20 years ago. Honkala, who founded and ran the Kensington Welfare Rights Union (KWRU), built a tent city in Kensington and organized to take over buildings that were vacant to house homeless women and families.

Honkala is running as the Green Party candidate for Sheriff and I will be voting for her. In fact, her presence on the ballot makes me eager to vote–it’s one vote I will cast with no trepidation or regret. Because Honkala is a true activist. She has worked for the citizenry of Philadelphia since she came here with her infant son from Minneapolis nearly three decades ago. Honkala has a plan for re-organizing the Sheriff’s office (one of the more corrupt offices in the city system) and Honkala will do everything in her power to create change if she’s elected. Honkala wants to alter the system to keep people in their houses, stop evictions wherever possible and get vacant properties filled with homeless families.

I’d like to get everyone camped out at Dilworth Plaza to rock the vote for Honkala. She’s earned her place on the ballot more than most of the people on it and if the Occupy folks want to create some change and make some serious political noise, then getting Honkala elected would be fantastic.

There are few candidates running outside the Democratic and Republican parties. A handful of Green and Independent candidates. In the 8^th District, Brian Rudnick, a Chestnut Hill attorney and librarian is running as a Green Party candidate challenging Cindy Bass, the Democrat.

There are five Republicans running for the City Council at Large seats. I’m too far to the left politically to suggest voting for one of them, but isn’t it time Philadelphia had an Asian council person in a city with such a large Asian demographic? David Oh should win one of the two minority vote seats for Republicans.

A lot of what’s wrong with City Council will be gone by the end of the year–Donna Reed Miller being, for those of us in the 8^th District, the worst offender. But has anyone from Council, any of the incoming candidates or those vying for the at-large seats ventured outside City Hall onto Dilworth Plaza to talk with the Occupy protesters?

Throughout my years in Philadelphia, city government has run at cross-purposes with the citizenry. Is there another city that has had as many City Council persons and state legislators come under indictment or actually end up in prison?

It’s easy to say Philadelphia is a corrupt town. It is and has been for generations. With each new administration and Council revamping we hope for a better city, a city more in tune with the needs of its citizens, a city less lining the pockets of the pay-to-players.

The people encamped at Dilworth Plaza are asking for exactly that: That our government and financial institutions, police departments and housing developers all work in concert for the people, rather than for themselves and their own agendas.

Is that an unformed, unfocused, undeliberated concept? I think not. I think that what Occupy Philly’s people are saying is that those who run the hierarchy of society are not meeting the needs of those within that society.

So how do we do it? Do the five million people who live in Philadelphia and environs make a run on City Hall? Do we walk by the protestors and drop off a few dollars or some medical supplies or some cans of food with a wink and a nod? Or do we just plod on and hope for the best?

I’d like to see that run on City Hall, myself, but that ain’t happening. In lieu of that I’d like to see Cheri Honkala grab that Sheriff’s seat with an activist’s vengeance. I’d like to see the Independent candidate for mayor, Wali Rahman, get a sizeable number of votes. I’d like to see some cages rattled and some teeth set on edge and some status quo unseated.

The Occupy Philly people say they are there for the duration. I’m not sure what that means–if it means the first really cold night, the first big snow, the approach of the holidays or if they will indeed still be there for next November’s election.

What I do know is that regardless of whether you think their presence is stupid or right on, unfocused or anarchistic, costing taxpayers money in police protection that is better spent elsewhere or worth every cent, the Occupy Philly people are a visible, physical reminder of what we aren’t getting from the men and women we elect–or let others elect while we sit home.

On Oct. 24^th Tunisians went out to vote in their first free election. They were the first nation to begin the wave of the Arab spring. The lines were endlessly long and people waited in them for hours. Ninety percent of the people voted.

If ninety percent of Philadelphians voted–ever–we would have a different ballot and a different city.

Occupy Philly isn’t the Arab spring, but we can be our own Arab spring. We just have to really want change more than we want the ease of the status quo.

We just really have to ask ourselves how much longer we are willing to accommodate and accept and ignore and concede. Or if we will at least make an effort with our votes on election day.

CAN MY NEIGHBORHOOD BE SAVED?

by Victoria A. Brownworth

The November election can’t come soon enough for me. It will end what has been one of the worst, most damaging plagues on my neighborhood of lower Germantown–the reign of Donna Reed Miller in City Council.

We’ve withstood a lot down here in the no man’s land between East Falls and the more upscale parts of Germantown and Mt. Airy–drugs, crime, bad schools, danger and blight wherever you go. But the worst thing for us has been Miller and the do-nothing attitude of her office that has haunted us here since 1996.

How fitting that as her final slap in the face of her constituents, she accepted the DROP payment.

The November election will bring an official end to her tenure and will–I hope–usher in a new era with the arrival of Cindy Bass come January.

I voted for Bass. A few years back I supported and endorsed the Green Party candidate for Miller’s seat. I had even considered running for the seat myself. All I ever wanted was a councilperson who cared about my neighborhood as much as I do.

That was never Miller. One of the last times Miller’s name hit the news was just before the primary in May when Miller’s office was raided by the Philadelphia Police Civil Affairs unit and Council’s own Ethics Board. Miller was accused of using city equipment to print campaign materials for Verna Tyner, the candidate Miller had endorsed for her seat.

I wish I could say this was an anomaly in an otherwise long and distinguished career in Council, but there was no such career.

I hope Cindy Bass will be different.

I’ve been writing about my neighborhood since I moved here in 1989. I have a unique perspective since I grew up in Germantown before moving away after college. So I know what Germantown was and what I firmly believe–with the help of strong city leadership and the support of local business persons and banks–it could be again.

I live near Germantown’s most historic district–a few blocks from the avenue that includes Grumblethorpe, Market Square, St. Luke’s Church, Germantown Friends School and the site where people were treated during the Yellow Fever epidemic. I am a block and a half from the Germantown Cricket Club, one of the oldest in the nation.

However, I am also a block and a half from one of the worst elementary schools in the city, John B. Kelly. I’m a block and a half from Happy Hollow playground where children vie with drug dealers for the space and where shoot outs regularly occur in broad daylight.

I used to be five blocks from the Fresh Grocer supermarket, the best supermarket my neighborhood has had since I was a child living on Rittenhouse Street and the space was occupied by Food Fair. The old Food Fair/former Fresh Grocer site has maintained some kind of supermarket for years. For more than a decade previously, Shop Rite leased that space.

Fresh Grocer was closed a few months ago and building has been fast and furious on just what my neighborhood doesn’t need: More limited resource markets. Yet another Save-a-lot and yet another dollar store, when two identical stores lie just two blocks away. We need a full service market with produce and fresh meats, fish and poultry.

Now I drive over to LaSalle to the Fresh Grocer there, or up to Chestnut Hill to the Pathmark. Not good for the carbon footprint and also not good for my own neighborhood, because my dollars end up elsewhere.

The thing is, I don’t want to leave my neighborhood to shop. Apart from the inconvenience, there’s the benefit to the neighborhood from having a thriving business district. But Germantown has anything but. Take the four block walk from where the Fresh Grocer was at Pulaski and Chelten to Germantown and Chelten where Rowell’s department store used to be, along with a huge Woolworth’s with a lunch counter and booths, plus a thriving and charming little string of shops down Maplewood Mall and you can chart the decline and fall of a neighborhood.

Chelten Avenue and Germantown Avenue are now nothing but a string of shops with cheap made elsewhere products. The sole exceptions are a Payless shoe store and several chain drugstores–CVS, Rite Aid and Walgreens. There is one bank–it used to be a Provident years ago, and there was another sister branch at Market Square and several other banks in between. Now there is the one bank. And if there are no banks, how can there be a thriving business district?

When I was a child there were three major department stores in the two blocks between Wayne and Germantown Avenues on Chelten. Allens, Franklin-Simon and Rowell’s. There were two Woolworth’s. A Sears and a Robert Hall. Numerous small gift and furniture shops. A piano store. The Seven Arts book store. Leaves of Grass bookstore. Several jewelry stores. Several opticians. Several coffeehouses. Imhof’s restaurant. Green Hedges restaurant. The Boswell House restaurant. Two Horn and Hardhart’s. A Hanscom’s.

One of the best repertory film houses on the East Coast–the Band Box, run by local cinematist Art Carduner–was on Armat Street. Also on Chelten was the first-run theatre, the Orpheum. And two blocks from where I live now was the Lyric, another first run theatre. Now the closest movie theatre is on Main Street in Manayunk.

Manayunk is now what lower Germantown could be with the same kind of support Manayunk received 20 years ago. Back when I lived in the old, thriving Germantown, Manayunk was a working class neighborhood with little outlet stores with factory made goods and corner taprooms. It was a grimy and grim little district with nothing but the canal to lure anyone, including locals.

Now it is one of the most dynamic neighborhoods in the city. Tiny row homes sell for $250,000 while the gorgeous sprawling homes in my area are lucky to fetch half that.

How did Manayunk differ from lower Germantown? It didn’t, really. The houses were always grander here and the neighborhood was always racially mixed–at least from my childhood on–with ethnic working class, but the neighborhoods were similar in that they were stable and the residents stayed. Churches, businesses and schools all anchored both neighborhoods. Proximity to Center City made both places accessible: you could live in Germantown or Manayunk and be in town in 20 minutes by train or car.

But where Manayunk has been revitalized, Germantown has turned into a blighted also-ran neighborhood.

I want my old neighborhood back and I believe it can be done. Perhaps not to the breadth of its status in the 1970s, and perhaps not as magnificent as Manayunk, but certainly as solid as areas of Mt. Airy and West Philly.

Here’s what it will take: A City Councilwoman who is as concerned about Germantown as she is about Chestnut Hill. A City Councilwoman determined to meet with local people like myself who want to create meaningful and lasting change for our area. A City Councilwoman who wants to revitalize our business district, our schools and our neighborhood. A City Councilwoman who delivers on the promises she made when she was running against Miller–and Bass ran several times before winning in May.

Philadelphia has always suffered from the stranglehold some politicians have had over the city, a death grip that has maintained their own personal power but ceded none to their constituents.

Those of us who live in Germantown and love this neighborhood as I do need to demand more. Every election I voted against Miller and I would invariably see people who were there solely to try and vote her out. But votes split among several candidates allowed Miller to squeak through time and again.

Now we have the chance to move forward–create real change, have our voices heard. Bass has promised not to be a knee-jerk, lock-step politician of the pay-to-play school Philadelphians have become all too familiar with. She promises to hear our cries for help and answer them.

I, for one, am hopeful. Because I have to be. Unlike many of my neighbors, I don’t resent the Asian shopkeepers who are the only people willing to take the risks to keep their stores open in a neighborhood known primarily for danger. But there is no incentive for these shopkeepers to do more for us than they do. As it is they often are literally risking their lives to sell groceries or cheap clothes or school supplies. And they are constant victims of racial epithets and violence.

Why can’t we have more? Why can’t we have a real department store? I wouldn’t be so bothered if the Fresh Grocer had closed so that a Target opened. Or if it had closed so that a string of small mid-scale shops had taken over the space. But we have set the bar so low in this neighborhood, that we think it’s okay to have schools without libraries, supermarkets without fresh produce, clothing stores with nothing but cheap T-shirts and no-name jeans.

Why can’t we have more?

Arguments are made all the time that business won’t come to crime-ridden areas. But Germantown is no more crime-ridden than Manayunk was when it was revitalized. Can’t we try to bring it back?

The onus is on us and our soon-to-be Councilwoman Bass. But it is also on business people throughout the city. Giving up on Germantown is racist, classist and above all, stupid: If we had more options to buy, we’d exercise them. We’ve started with Cindy Bass. The question is, what happens next?

 It’s a hot, sticky, summer-won’t-let-go kind of September Sunday afternoon. Just the kind of day to mull over two topics I am passionate about: the politics of race and the politics of writing.

I didn’t just read something about these two confluent issues in the New York Times Sunday Book Review. Nor was there anything in this week’s New Yorker. But I did just get off the phone with an African-American editor I know; we talked about this for close to an hour.

It’s been a little over a year since I established Tiny Satchel Press, an independent publisher of young adult books. The primary focus of our press is to publish books by and for youth of color and LGBT youth. Our two most recent books were Dreaming in Color by Jamaican-American lesbian writer Fiona Lewis (known to most readers by her pen name, Fiona Zedde) and a collection of short stories I edited, From Where We Sit: Black Writers Write Black Youth, which includes pieces from African-American lesbian icon, Jewelle Gomez, as well as Lambda Award-winner Craig L. Gidney and black romance publisher Leslie Thompson.

It was Thompson who gave me the idea that I could publish books, not just write and edit them, and publish books that would resonate for a readership that was desperate for books that reflected them and their lives.

Thompson was on a panel on women and publishing that I chaired in Philadelphia in December 2009. She told the audience how she kept writing romance novels–some of them historical–with black characters. Editors kept turning down her books with the caveat that if she could just make her books more white–and turn her black historical characters into slaves–they would sell.

Thompson decided to found Freedom of Love Press instead; a devotee of romance novels herself, she wanted to write romances specifically for readers of color.

I spent years editing romance novels for several major houses. I never saw one book with a central character of color. Yet I would see black women on the subway reading romances all the time. But the books they were reading were by white authors.

When I started editing anthologies in the 1990s, my good friend, the late photographer Tee Corinne, told me, “A third of every book must be women of color.”

I said okay. She paused and asked, “You aren’t going to fight with me about this?” I said no, I appreciated her advice. She told me I was the first person she’d ever said that to who hadn’t argued with her that people of color don’t read and white people wouldn’t read books with people of color in them.

A decade later, as an acquisitions editor for young adult books, I heard it all again: people of color didn’t buy books and white readers wouldn’t read books with people of color in them.

In his book, Breaking Bread: Insurgent Black Intellectual Life, noted Princeton professor and African-American philosopher Cornel West states, “Aesthetics have substantial political consequences. How one views oneself as beautiful or notbeautiful or desirable or not desirable has deep consequences in terms of one’s feelings of self-worth and one’s capacity to be a political agent.”

In other words, Dan Savage and Oprah can tell you till the cows come home that “it gets better,” but if there are no accurate cultural representations of who you are, how will you ever feel better? How will you ever know who you really are, or believe in who you are?

Those of us who are queer, female and/or of color grew up without books about us. We were invisible. Unreflected in literature or anywhere else in a white patriarchy.

Yet, how do we learn to be visible if we can’t see ourselves?

That would seem to be the most compelling argument conceivable for books by and about everyone: Visibility. Learning how to be.

About 15 years ago one of the major editors in New York publishing told me in an interview that the “trend” of gay and lesbian books was fading, just as the “trend” of African-American books had faded. More than a few dozen books by queer or African-American authors was enough, apparently.

Except the “trend” of people’s existence hasn’t faded. We are all still here. In fact, one could say there are more queers (at least out of the closet) than ever and demographics show that there are more people of color than ever.

As a consequence there should be more books for us, not fewer. Yet the “trend” in publishing remains as static as ever with huge gaps that need to be filled.

Where are the artful, literary books about now? laments one black editor.

When it comes to black literature–called African-American literature, which is a limiting sub-genre within a sub-genre, since not all black writing is American or even African (one thinks immediately, for example, of Zadie Smith)–we are all still reading the writers of the Harlem Renaissance. But where is today’s renaissance of black literature?

Constriction by editors is apparent everywhere. The majority of queer writing being published is genre fiction–romance, mystery, sci-fi/fantasy. And not to slam genre fiction, because it is dear to my heart and I write it myself, but can’t we have the erstwhile serious literary fiction as well?

Meanwhile, black fiction has been restricted to the pimp/ho “urban” stories of Zane and his copycats or the ultra-intellectualized and inaccessible fiction of Toni Morrison and her acolytes. Queer publishers are not seeking work by writers of color and anthologies are overwhelmingly white.

So where are the editors who can recognize that we need–and deserve–more?

Gate-keeping is both an exquisite art and a bullying tactic. The reality is, however, that editors can create writing sensations–and trends–whenever they want to. Is the Harry Potter series really better than any fantasy fiction since Tolkien? Are the “Girl Who” books really amazing recovered novels from a dead author–or just frankly tedious and provocatively well-hyped?

Sapphire has just published her first book in 15 years, The Kid. It was a best-seller before it actually hit the shelves. Why? Hype. Sapphire’s previous novel, Push, became the object of a publishing bidding war which garnered Sapphire a million dollar advance for the trade-paperback original. It has since sold several hundred thousand copies and been turned into an Oscar-nominated film–”Precious.”

Push and The Kid both exemplify exactly how much power white editors have over black writing. They also beg the question of what those editors will accept from black writers. Sapphire is a millionaire and grew up middle class, yet her two books are about poor urban black life.

Did she write about these things because she wants to or because she knows this is what the culture–and gate-keeper editors–want: Books by black authors that show just how corrupt and empty and violent black life in America is.

We have to ask ourselves as readers, writers and editors what our roles are when it comes to minority representation–be it queer or of color–in books. Do we want to maintain the fiction that all gay men are sex-crazed and/or closet pedophiles and all black men are pimps and/or murderers, or do we want to broaden the discourse on race and sexuality to include strong, artful, literary representations of the range of our lives in our individual minority cultures?

We need the mirror of literature to see ourselves reflected. The question is, then, who is responsible for holding up that mirror–the market or ourselves?

Sometimes I feel like one of the few remaining leftist progressives in Philadelphia. The consensus for Democrats in the city regarding political candidates, be they local, state or federal, is to just accept whatever political candidate is proffered, regardless of how anti-progressive they might be.

Each time I have criticized President Obama for his right-wing policies, I’ve gotten angry phone calls and letters. But facts are facts: True progressives cannot be allowed to pretend the things we abhorred when a Republican president did them (more wars, indefinite detention, torture, extraordinary rendition, gutting the poor, ignoring the EPA, etc.) are okay when a Democratic president does them.

The same thing should hold true for members of Congress.

Sen. Bob Casey (D-PA) is up for re-election in 2012. He was elected with an eight percent majority of the vote over then-incumbent and current Republican presidential candidate Rick Santorum who most progressives, myself included believed was a political extremist who was damaging to the state and to the country.

Casey is indeed less dangerous than Santorum. But less dangerous shouldn’t be the litmus test. Effective for the state and in the federal government should be the criteria for re-election. On the basis of that criteria, Pennsylvanians of all party affiliations deserve alternative choices to Casey in 2012.

Those of us who grew up with clear distinctions between the Democratic and Republican parties have become increasingly disturbed in our middle age as the line between the two parties hasn’t just blurred but merged.

I and other progressives dislike the current Democratic Party because it has become virtually interchangeable with the Republican Party–that is, a party of corporations over people, rich over poor, wars over peace, torture over trial, restricting civil liberties versus supporting traditional American freedoms.

Casey symbolizes much of what is wrong with the Democratic Party in 2011. His politics are staunchly opposed to traditional Democratic Party platform issues. But because the entire Democratic Party has moved so far to the right, Casey is not perceived to be the extremist Santorum was, but only because we have now embraced extremism as politically expedient.

The most recent polls indicate that 35 percent of Pennsylvanians think Casey deserves re-election and 35 percent do not. The remaining 30 percent are undecided.

Progressives should want–and demand–a primary challenge to Casey’s candidacy. Casey is the kind of Democrat, along with Obama and many others in the Administration and Congress, dragging the entire Democratic Party to the right under the guise of “bipartisanship.”

Bipartisanship is a canard; it doesn’t exist in Washington. For nearly two decades bipartisanship has meant Democrats capitulating to Republicans on their core values.

Casey doesn’t need to capitulate as much as some, like Obama, Harry Reid or Nancy Pelosi. He doesn’t need to because he came to Washington with a set of core conservative values.

Casey is known for his strong anti-choice stance. He has said repeatedly that he opposes a woman’s right to abortion and supports legal protection of human life from conception.

He opposes abortion in all circumstances except rape, incest and to save the life of the mother. He wants to see Roe v. Wade overturned and has pledged to do so. He opposes any tax-funded abortions or public funding of abortion, opposes embryonic stem-cell research and has voted against expanding stem-cell research. Casey also opposes laws that would “force pharmacists to fill a prescription contrary to their moral beliefs.”

While in the Senate, Casey has voted yes on restricting UN funding for population control policies, voted yes on prohibiting minors from crossing state lines for abortions, voted yes on defining the unborn child as eligible for the SCHIP health care program. He supports teaching abstinence in the schools.

Many voters say focusing on Casey’s abortion stance is single-issue. But Casey’s stance on choice is far from his only conservative view. Despite claiming to be pro-life, Casey is a strong supporter of the death penalty (unlike his father, who did not perform any executions during his years as governor) and opposes any gun control laws.

Casey voted yes on carrying guns in baggage on Amtrak and also voted yes on prohibiting foreign and UN aid that restricts U.S. gun ownership.

On the issues where President Obama has maintained the Bush Administration’s assault on civil liberties, Casey is in lock-step. He voted to keep former President Bush from being censured for domestic spying, voted to expand warrantless wiretaps on U.S. citizens, voted for the renewal of the Patriot Act, saying it is vital in the war against terror. He voted to approve both John Roberts and Samuel Alito to the U.S. Supreme Court–two of the youngest and most conservative justices.

His Catholic faith drives his “private and public life,” Casey says. Which is why in addition to his stance on abortion and related issues, he also supports the teaching of Intelligent Design in the schools, teacher-led prayer in the schools and posting the Ten Commandments in/on public buildings. He does not support legalization of any drugs, including medical marijuana.

Casey also wants churches to be allowed to register as childcare providers covered by federal welfare payments. He opposes same-sex marriage and supports keeping DOMA in place, but voted to repeal DADT, which was dissolved last week.

Casey gets a rating of “moderate” by many political watch groups, but there’s nothing moderate about any of the views listed above. These are conservative views, not Democratic Party platform views.

Replace Casey’s name with that of say, Rep. Michele Bachmann and progressives would be up in arms, railing about the inconsistencies of being pro-gun, pro-death penalty and pro-war with the adamant position on abortion. The Intelligent Design issue would have progressives rolling their eyes and talking about “crazy ideas,” while the anti-stem cell research stance would garner “anti-science” comments and the same-sex marriage question receive grumbles of homophobia.

So which is it? Are these stands anti-progressive or they are all acceptable when the candidate is a Democrat, not a Republican?

And it’s not just Casey’s conservatism that is at issue. Other questions about Casey go to presence. Where has he been the past five years? During the health care reform debates Pennsylvanians witnessed then-Sen. Arlen Specter traveling statewide to defend President Obama’s health care plan. Where was Casey? Absent because it wasn’t an election year for him?

And where has Casey been during the brutal debates over the Marcellus Shale and fracking? Again–absent, despite a consistent pro-environment stand–his one liberal stance.

The first time Casey talked publicly about anything in recent months was when he spoke out against Obama’s latest jobs stimulus package, saying it needed to be paired down.

It’s just over a year until the next election. No one has come forward as a challenger to Casey–either among Republicans or Democrats. But that needs to change. Over his time in the Senate, Casey has failed to represent the state with any strength of voice or principle. What’s more, his conservative views on core Democratic issues are a cause for concern in an increasingly right-wing political environment. With over 13 months till the election, there’s time for other candidates to emerge. Pennsylvanians must ask what Casey has done for them, the state and the country. When the answer is “not much,” it’s definitely time for a change.

The past week has been filled with grief and remembrance for the nation as we commemorate the tenth anniversary of the worst terrorist attack in U.S. history.

I, however, was also marking another anniversary of violence.

Nine years ago, one week before the first anniversary of 9/11, I was raped outside my house in lower Germantown. As with that morning of 9/11, it was a beautiful, sun-drenched, blue-sky day. The first day of school meant that my block was deserted for the first time in months, empty of children playing.

Empty of everyone except the man who politely–yet with a sexual aside–offered to help me bring my trash cans up from the street. A man who, when I told him thanks, but I was fine, was suddenly behind me, pinning my arms behind my back and forcing me into the alleyway alongside my house and onto the ground in a neighbor’s yard where he proceeded to slap, punch, bite and threaten to kill me as he raped me.

Like many victims of sexual assault, my experience with the Philadelphia Police Department–the oldest municipal police department in the country–was problematic. The male police officer who came to my house was as sensitive as he could be, although the overall tone toward assault victims seems to be that they are lying until proven otherwise.

Sexual assault victims in Philadelphia are often treated like criminals themselves–something Police Commissioner Charles Ramsey has said ceased in 2000. Yet the first thing I was told by the male detective (there were no female detectives in the SVU) who interviewed me was that if I was lying, I would be prosecuted.

That was, however, before he saw the severity of my injuries, which could not have been self-inflicted.

Statistics show, however, that the percentage of false rape reports is actually about two percent, nationally. According to the detective interviewing me, it was “about half.” The Philadelphia Police Department actually reports ten percent false reporting–much higher than the national average.

In the nine years since I was attacked–an attack that changed my life in many ways, both significant and minor–my rapist has never been caught.

While this is not unusual in rape cases, it’s significant in my case because the man who raped me wasn’t just my rapist. According to the detective who interviewed me at SVU, four other young women had been raped by the same man with his distinctive arm-pinning M.O.

At the time I was raped, local news attention was focused on a man dubbed “the Center City rapist,” who was attacking and sexually assaulting women in the heart of upscale Center City.

A serial rapist in Germantown where all the victims before me had been African-American hadn’t garnered even a neighborhood warning, which made me wonder then and now, how many other women had been raped by the same man, but had not reported their rapes. The SVU had dozens of rapist sketches on its corridor walls, but how many of those had been circulated in the neighborhoods where the attacks occured?

According to the U.S. Department of Justice Crime Statistics and the FBI, rape is the second most common violent crime after domestic violence. One in five American women will report a rape in her lifetime, but it is estimated that one in three women is actually raped–meaning nearly half of all women who are raped are not reporting the crimes against them.

White women comprise the majority of victims overall–80 percent–but minority women are slightly more likely to be attacked with the exception of Native American women who are attacked twice as often as any other racial or ethnic group.

The highest risk for sexual assault and rape occurs between the ages of 12 and 44; 15 percent of victims are under 12, 80 percent are under 30. Young women between the ages of 16 and 19 are four times more likely to be assaulted than any other age group. Among girls under 12, over 95 percent know their attackers–a family member, a teacher, the parish priest, a neighbor. There are no statistics on how many women have been raped more than once.

According to the FBI, rape is the most recidivist violent crime after domestic violence, and it is also the least likely to convict a perpetrator. Only 50 percent of rapists are caught. Of those, 58 percent are prosecuted, but less than 20 percent of prosecutions result in conviction. So while Mayor Nutter reported last year that 70 percent of sexual assault cases “cleared,” that does not mean the perpetrators went to prison.

In 1999, while John Timoney was still Philadelphia Police Commissioner, local news investigations reported that Philadelphia was one of the least likely cities for rape kits to be processed appropriately. A subsequent CBS news investigation in May 2010 noting the tens of thousands of rape kits lying untested nationwide garnered this response: “Joseph Szarka,

Lab Manager at Philadelphia Police Department’s Forensic Science Center, tells CBS News that his department, like New York City, tests every rape kit. ‘How could we not?’ he asked in a phone interview.”

Women’s Law Project director Carol Tracy, who facilitated many of the changes in the processing, agreed with that assessment.

However, the reason that processing happening with such regularity may have a problematic side to it. In Philadelphia, there are only two hospitals certified to administer rape kits: Jefferson Hospital and the Episcopal Hospital campus at Temple University Hospital. This means the majority of women in the city must travel at least a half hour to be “processed” with a longer waiting time for “collection.” A woman raped in the Northeast or West Philadelphia or Germantown/Mt. Airy will be traveling almost an hour to a certified center–often covered in dirt, blood and semen. This could easily be one more reason for women to not report assaults.

Rape kits taken at other hospitals or at private doctor’s offices, like mine was, are not considered evidence. And while in Philadelphia rape victims are not charged for their rape kits–unlike in many cities–that only applies in the city proper and if the kit is processed at one of the two certified hospitals.

In September 2010, Carol Tracy and Philadelphia Police Commissioner Charles Ramsey testified at a Senate Subcommittee Hearing on The Chronic Failure to Investigate and Report Rape Cases. The hearing was chaired by former Sen. Arlen Specter (D-PA), long an advocate for women’s rights who as Philadelphia District Attorney, established the Special Victims Unit in the city.

Ramsey noted that significant changes had been made in the police department’s handling of rape cases in 2000.

This was certainly necessary considering that in 1999 Philadelphia police still deemed more than 50 percent of rape reports “unfounded,” SVU was called “the lying bitches unit” internally and police officers gave reasons for women reporting rape as “free abortions, revenge [this is what I was told], covering up truancy and covering up infidelity.”

At the Senate hearing Tracy said the Uniformed Crime Report definition of rape had not changed since 1927 and in her opinion this greatly impacted both reportage and prosecution. The definition–”carnal knowledge of a female forcibly and against her will” leaves out, as Tracy testified, “anal, oral and statutory rape, incest, rape with an object, finger or fist, rape of men.” Tracy also noted that at least five percent of rape reports were deemed “unfounded” solely due to the guidelines.

Most states and municipalities have a statute of limitation on rapes that do not include kidnaping or murder. In Pennsylvania that statute is 12 years. The crimes in this category include rape, statutory sexual assault, sexual assault, involuntary deviate sexual intercourse, aggravated indecent assault, incest and child sexual abuse.

This is why the majority of sexual assault cases linked to Philadelphia’s Catholic priests in several highly publicized grand jury reports cannot be prosecuted–the statute of limitations has expired.

Sexual assault victims in Philadelphia may also have been alarmed by recent cases of police officers alleged to have sexually assaulted women while on duty. In August, two women were allegedly forced to perform sex acts by police officers who initially–like my own rapist–offered to help them. (The officers have since been arraigned.) A series of cases of men posing as law enforcement in recent years may also have impacted victims.

Three years remain to catch the man who raped me and at least four other women before the statute of limitations runs out on his prosecution. The question for the one in five–or one in three–women in Philadelphia who have been assaulted but whose attackers have not been caught remains the same: Are the crimes against us being taken as seriously as they could and should be, or are rapists being allowed to rape with impunity, with little fear of either arrest or prosecution?

For many of us there can be no closure without an arrest–or at least the knowledge that an effort has been made to get our rapists off the streets. And for one in five women, the clock is ticking.