West Philadelphia community comes together to clean up following riots, looting

WEST PHILADELPHIA - Dozens of people came out Monday to help clean up the community following a weekend of unrest throughout Philadelphia.

“They had enough of trying to get their voice heard and nobody’s hearing it or nobody’s listening or nobody’s caring. We’re tearing our city up. This doesn’t help the Floyd situation or the Trayvon Martin situation or any situation," one volunteer said.

After everything that the Philadelphia area has been through in the past few days, people are a lot of pain. People watched with sadness or anger as looting made its way through our region but focusing on the issues separates us, then the hundreds of people in West Philadelphia Monday morning wanted us to also take a look at some of the steps they, as a community, are taking to unite and help begin to heal.

First thing in the morning, after many saw 52nd Street trashed, hundreds came to together to show that they care about those same communities.

“It’s a community, it’s a family. I grew up in this community for years. You love your people, you love being around the community that you’re in, that’s why I came to help out this morning. When I saw what happened last night, I felt like I needed to come out and help,” said one of the residents

.It was a diverse crowd of residents, business people, politicians and many more who know that a broom can’t fix the issues that we are seeing across the country but a little unity and concern for their neighborhoods. Some of these issues have been neglected for years, but at least this may be the first step.

“We just did it because we care. That’s our store, we take care of the customers. We take care of each other, that’s what we’ve gotta do as people. The community needed a little help, we all got together and just came in and start cleaning up,” said one of the local business owners.

Most of the people still had some pretty strong feelings about what is going on. In a lot of ways, coming together Monday morning, despite the differences was their point. Demonstrating a commitment to meeting each other where we are with one common goal: progress.

“Brotherly love, sisterly affection, that’s what we saw today. I think people really love Philly, and we saw the best of it. It has to get better, it has to,” said another West Philadelphia resident.

And it can, if we can come together — for goodness sake.

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