Tag: September to

You’ve been an advocate for shutting down the Berks County Residential Center. If we’re appalled by what we’re seeing at the border and the separation of families, then we should be equally appalled when we’re doing this less than an hour away from Philadelphia with families here in our own state, on our watch. So we’re pushing to end the 10-year tax abatement as we currently see it, and to create a much more fair and realistic program that we’re going to see across the city of Philadelphia. I will say and recognize that I believe I’m in the minority, when I talk about ending poverty I don’t believe that jobs alone will do it. Because the jobs that people get when they are poor are largely going to be in the service sector that we talked about earlier with my fair workweek legislation, they’re at $7.25 an hour. We’re putting blinders on when we talk about how we want to end poverty, when what we should really be talking about is how we’re going to end things that would directly address poverty. That means that we go out there and vote… It means that we go out there and make a lot of noise about the issues that we care about and the people that we love, and we make changes. We saw, with the ending of PARS, with the seize back of our local school system, with the fight to end horrible conditions for our young people, to fight for housing, those things don’t have to be on a 20 or 30-year trajectory. If we’re struggling to put a roof over our heads, our lives are going to be political. Councilwoman Helen Gym City Council fair work week Berks County Detention Center