Can We Keep the Bathrooms After 250th? Plus, Slavery Exhibit Deadline & Dems' Infighting

It's the Tuesday News Roundup, and we're talking about more benches, bike racks, and bathrooms. The city's getting upgrades for tourists this summer, but is this stuff going to stay for us? A federal judge rules that panels at the president's house must be restored. But when's the deadline? And while Bob Brie remains chair of Democrats here in the city, progressives have won some power. So is the party ready for change? It's Tuesday, June 16th. I'm Trinari, and here's what Philly's talking about. If you had to give a TED talk at Dilworth Plaza at 2 a.m., what topic could you passionately rant about Lauren? I could probably give a really robust topic on the best dive bars in Philadelphia and their historical and cultural significance to the city of brotherly love. And that's why I love having you on the show. Okay. You're a wealth of knowledge. Okay. Well, now you've got to tell me what is the best dive bar in the city. I personally have three, and I actually do a dive bar history crawl to these three. How come you never tell me about this? I'm doing it for a friend's wedding in September as part of the wedding activities. We're doing a dive bar history crawl. So we meet in the Courtyard of City Hall, and then we wander down to Oscars Tavern on Sansom. And then from Oscars, we go to Dirty Franks, and then we end the tour at South Street's infamous, the wonderful Bob and Barbaris. So what this tells me is we have to be some wedding crashers. Yeah. It's, I mean, the bride is from Brazil. So it is, I anticipate it will be a very wild and raucous wedding. So I'm not sure that it would be crashing. It might just be a more than merrier situation. All right. Well, you heard it, y'all. That's Lauren Vitus, our political contributor here, giving us info about dive bars in the city and their history. Also, joining us is our newsletter editor, Siani Colon. Hey, Siani. I'm not going to forget about you. But I've got a rant. And this time it is about the freaking trash. I was standing on the corner of 22nd and South Street right outside of that Wawa during a doonday on Sunday. And I was catching up with a local journalist, Denise Clay Murray, from the Philadelphia Hall Monitor. And we're just chopping it up. And then something just smacks my leg. And I was like, ew, what the heck is this? It was a napkin. I don't know if it was used or not, but there was a breeze and more and more trash was circling around us. And I was like, I got to get inside a Wawa so I can get away from all this trash that blew on my leg. So the TED Talk is about putting some more damn trash cans on these blocks. Oh, God, just a thought.

Yeah, we don't have pernadoes in Philly. We have, like, trash vortexes, the cyclone, the trash cyclone. And I know you're probably going to hear these, like, same things over and over again, like, oh, you guys talk about trash cans because we need them. The only trash cans, and I have like the air quotes, the only trash cans I saw during a doonday was the trash bag that was, like, tied up next to, like, the lemonade's, like, a tent. The vendor, the vendor provided, yeah. It was tied to the side. And I was like, this is not good. All right, Siani, you thought something? Yeah, I know you said I'm always going for the rants, but it has to be another rant, I fear, because etiquette on SEPTA will continuously be on my mind. Okay. I can't deal with people who just stand right next to an empty seat. And it's not like there's anything wrong with the seat. They're just standing there. I don't care how close you think your stop is. We need to make room on this bus. Move to the back. Stop watching your TikToks in full volume without headphones. I can't take it anymore, guys, please. Stop the fighting. Stop the cheese steak eating. Buy some headphones. The man spreading. Ugh. What's the man's? Oh, like, like keeping their legs open? Yeah, when people sit down and they're like, they're like, they look like their squeeze, practically falling off the seat because they're taking so much space. I don't want my knee touching your knee, right? Like you need to, you need to like lock that in. Close your legs. Close your legs, dude. All right. Well, all of this has got me thinking about things that we've recently gotten. in the city, and they're pretty cool. And we've gotten this because of this neighborhood focus, ring it on. One Philly, a United Celebration Initiative, where our blocks and our parks are getting spruced up. And it's all because of the America's 250th celebration, the semi-Quincentennial. But I feel like you guys have a rant about this. You're saying that you want these things to last and stay in our city. Yeah, I personally, I... This frustrates me to see the potential. Like, Philadelphia deserves nice things, right? We deserve nice things. Our neighborhoods deserve nice things. And I think it does drive me a little nuts that the only time we invest in these amenities is when we feel like we have house guests coming over, when it's tourist or it's a major event. And I understand why they're willing to make that investment. But as a resident and talking to neighbors, like, this is stuff that we could be doing all the time, right? These are investments in our communities we should be making for our communities, not because, like, we're excited about the out-of-towners coming in to experience the city. Right, for a few weeks. And these amenities are 58 benches that have this.

City of Philadelphia at the top and there's like stars. And then it's got the Liberty Bell logo with the 250 in the kind of like the armrest. There's 63 bike racks, 161 planters, which I've seen in my neighborhood. And I like them, but I just wish they didn't look like black cauldrons. I wish there was like some color to it. And then. There's 27 replicas of Liberty Bell scattered across the city that were designed by some local artists. Yeah, and I'm like talking about, for instance, by the Reading Terminal where they closed Philbert Street to car traffic. And now it's like it's this very cool. Like if you've ever tried to get a table inside the Reading Terminal at lunchtime, you know it's like the hunger games in there. It's impossible. It is. It's impossible, right? This is stuff that we could have, you know, obviously you probably not the wintertime, but this is stuff we could have like every spring, every summer, every fall. And it's a perfect location because it, the, The structure, the building structures have the roof. And it's just, I just, I get frustrated that we only think big and we only try these neat, cool things and these amenities when, again, the focus is not on what we can do to make the city better for the people who are living here, but it's what can we do to make the city better for the people who are just coming to visit. And that's where I get frustrated because I think this is, this should be a lesson for us that we can do cool things. We can do big things. And, you know, we should be doing this proactively, not just reactively to special events. The project that. equally excites and frustrates me are the hospitality hubs that they've installed around Love Park, Logan Square, Ekin's Oval, where, you know, we know Philadelphians have to get creative when it comes to finding a free public restroom that is clean. We mourned a public restroom that was at Barnes & Noble in Rittenhouse. So these hubs will have like four like genderless stalls, water refill stations. like really great necessary thing to have, but they're only lasting through July for these large-scale events, like the World Cup and such. And it's like, this is something we need to have accessible all the time because we see such a desperate need. And we've... had pilots like the Philly Flesh, but that hasn't expanded since the initial launch? It's like, when are we going to continue to make these types of investments? But also just when you think about it, we don't just have, like, we do have these like large events. And I'm thinking even when we had the Pope and the NFL draft and the when Made in America Festival used to be on the parkway, I'm thinking also, you know, we have smaller scale events.

the holiday village during the wintertime, that would be perfect to have more bathrooms and places for people to go. And I think what the city will say is like, well, you know, we don't have the money to maintain this stuff. But you're solving like a very real problem here by giving people like an acceptable solution. So like take the bathrooms for instance, right? Think about all the money you're saving by not having to clean the septus stairs every day because people are using the steps of stairs because they don't have like an appropriate place to use the bathroom. No, I mean, we all know that smell. You know the smell, right? And so it's like, let's invest in, we invest so much in fixing people's bad behaviors instead of investing in giving them the option where they don't have to commit that bad behavior in the first place. talking about like lack of trash cans, right? To me, that's another example. How much do we spend on like sending crews out to clean up litter and pick up litter rather than investing that money on putting additional trash cans on the street and preventing the bad behavior in the first place? So I feel like the city often, you know, points to like budgetary constraints as a reason why they can't do this stuff. But I would argue that, you know, if you look at it as an investment instead of a cost, like you will get that money back and returns through. you know, savings down the line or through, you know, just increased economic activity for like the Reading Terminal, for example. Like that's going to make people come there and it makes it a destination. So I don't hear money as an excuse to doing cool and big things for the city, for its residents, not just for tourists and special events. And even when it comes to projects that are meant to last, like we've seen because of the large investments from FIFA, we have the MLB All-Star week coming up, the MLB is putting like $5 million worth of investments for legacy projects in the city. Like... MLB, they're investing in some accessibility improvements to the Veterans Multiservice Center, some upgrades to Ashburn Fields and FDR Park. But I read in The Enquirer that there were some baseball coaches in North Philly who were upset because they felt like they were being overlooked when it came to these legacy projects, which is especially something to consider when you think about baseball's history in North Philly and where the teams used to play there. Yeah, Shire Park. Monty Mac Stadium. Mm-hmm. Yeah, there was a coach who runs the Tioga United Baseball who said he felt hypocrisy and how MLB can pay for statues of Negro League players but not fix up the fields that his black, young underserved players use and deserve because the qualities of the fields aren't getting the resources that they need and are really being covered by volunteers who regularly support it, as opposed to having an organization like MLB put that large investment like they are doing.

at FDR Park. All right. We've got more conversations after this quick break. Okay, speaking of America's 250th, let's head down to Market Street, 6 and Market, to be specific. And I want to talk about some of the latest news that's coming out of the President's House saga. So quickly to catch you up, the President's House is the former residence of President George Washington. And at the time that he lived there, he brought in non-inslave men and women. And this is around the 1790s. Fast forward, there's a restoration of the site. It's turned into a free open-air exhibit with slavery-related history and panels that talk about the nine enslaved people that live there. Earlier this year, those panels were removed by the National Park Service because of an executive order from the Trump administration, restoring truth and sanity in American history. It was our nation's museums, parks, and landmarks, basically government censorship. Okay, so then the city of Philadelphia sues because they had a partnership with the federal government to maintain this site. A federal judge orders the panels to be restored, but the question still is when and the case is still ongoing. However, On Friday, a federal judge up in Massachusetts says the federal government has 21 days to restore any dismantled or altered content at national parts. That would mean the president's house. So this is all in the final weeks leading up to... July 4th, America's 250th. And I want to read this quote from that judge. This is U.S. District Court Judge Angel Kelly. And the judge said, Because defendants deemed it important to strip the parks of these undeniable truths in anticipation of the 250th anniversary of our great nation, it is equally important that our shared history be honestly told and fully restored by the 250th anniversary to properly honor the remarkable achievements of the United States. Guys, let's weigh in on this. How are you feeling about what this judge up in Massachusetts had to say? I mean, I love that they set the deadline so that it would be there on the 250th celebration. I think, you know, this administration has tried to...

history being erased or changed has really brought all sorts of groups together in part of this fight. So it'll be interesting to see how this continues to go on and what this battle will continue to look like in the courts because it seems like all these changes that are happening in the country right now are really in the hands of the court system. Yeah, no, I think Siani's right. You've seen the courts kind of step in over the last couple of weeks where you're seeing Trump's name removed from the Robert F. Kennedy Jr. Center while, you know, the Trump administration is being ordered to put signs back up at the president's house. And I think courts are taking a stand on this, you know, essentially individual's decision to try to rewrite history as they see fit. And they're putting their foot down and saying, like, that's not how this works in America. So I anticipate we'll probably see. more of these types of cases trying to overturn some of the actions that have been taken over the last year or so. And it's interesting because members of Congress, they are actually meeting at the Independence Hall to celebrate the nation's 250th, which is really interesting to me. I think inviting members that represent our nation to this site. I feel like this is going to be such a moving experience for them to just actually like be in the space where these conversations were going down. At the same time, the American irony where they wanted freedom, but yet other groups in this nation were not experiencing that same freedom. Going back to like. the roots, the values we claim to uphold in this country. Yeah. This is certainly a time for reflection, right? When you look at the partisanship, when you look at just the fact that politics has overtaken sort of any concept of common good and working for the benefit of the people where everything is a partisan issue, you know, we're stoking these culture wars. I hope that Congress is capable of reflection at this. point, because it's, honestly, I think it's the only way forward is for folks to kind of reunite around doing what's best for, you know, this country and the people in it instead of, you know, political donors and the like. All right. We've got more after this quick break.

All right, let's talk about some local politics. Democrats are reelecting their longtime chairman, Bob Brady, who's been in this position for quite some time since 1986. We don't have the results for the Monday night election because we're recording this Monday afternoon. But. Brady was expected to win yet another term as the party chair. And he's also a former U.S. representative. So he's been in this leadership role, like I said, for quite some time. But there is... some chatter from progressives in the Democratic Party. They're making some noise. They want to see some changes. And Brady's had some critics like DA, our district attorney, Larry Krasner, has called on him to resign. There's been some criticism from state rep, Chris Rapp, another progressive who recently won the Democratic primary last month. Lauren, you're our local politics expert on the panel today. Can you explain why? Monday night's election was so important. Yeah. So I think most folks sort of have heard of the word system before, but if you're not super familiar with it, you know, the city is divided into 66 words. And each of those wards is split up into divisions, and each of those divisions elects committee people. These are your boots on the ground party folks that get out the vote, all of that stuff. Committee people elect the ward leader for the ward, and then the war leaders to get together, and they elect the party chairman. And the party chairman is a very sort of important role. They have a lot of power and authority within the local political party. But they also have a lot of sway and influence. kind of, you know, in terms of just larger political presence, especially in a city like Philadelphia, where it's got such a huge democratic advantage. And as Trinay mentioned, the ward leaders met last night to elect the chair of the party. And the big talk is about whether there are enough progressive wards at this point to do an ouster of... Congressman, Chairman Brady. And the short answer is they just don't have the numbers just yet. And one of the reasons for that is because the party lines, the ward lines, haven't been redrawn since the 1950s. This means that, you know, The population has shifted considerably since the 1950s. Philadelphia had 2.1 million people in it in 1952, and now we're down to 1.6 million. And also where those people live has shifted, right? So we've lost population in North Philadelphia, parts of West Philadelphia, parts of Southwest Philadelphia. But we've seen Center City explode in population. South Philadelphia is exploded in population. Northeast Philly's exploded in population. So what this means is for a lot of the...

voters, they're all packed into only a handful of wards, which means as long as that exists, they're probably not going to be able to take over enough wards to actually change the party chair. So that's sort of the short of what's happening in terms of the ward system elections. Do you think that there is an identity crisis here as well? Because, you know, we hear names like... working families. We hear names like socialists, progressives. And I'm always like curious, where did that split in the Democratic Party come from? You know, I think it. It's funny because I think people think of Philadelphia as, you know, just or the Democratic Party as a monolith. And as you as you mentioned, it's really not. I think counsel is like a really good example of it's made up of a lot of like more conservative Democrats. This was this was a body that rejected tax increases to fund schools this year, right? Like. That's not something you would necessarily think from like a more leftist body. And, you know, I think for a lot of it, the labels are sort of... not interchangeable because I'm sure there are some, you know, very... Like nuances to it, yeah. A lot of... Yes, there are definitely nuances, but I think from a political standpoint, there's sort of the old school and the new school sees the new school is all one thing, and the new school sees the old school is all one thing, even though within those groups, there are definitely nuanced differences between the different labels. So then I say, okay, well, isn't it the chairman supposed to kind of be... Like a bridge builder, is Brady that bridge builder of all of these different nuanced groups? I'm not sure if the chairman sees his role as making everybody get along as it is into making sure everybody falls in line to vote the people that the party endorses and they're going to be Democrats. I think the shared goal is electing Democrats. I think everybody agrees within the party that's like the most important thing. what the Democrat looks like is going to be a big point of contention. And I'm not sure that you can build consensus around that when, you know, people have very different ideas of like what the candidate should should look like. Has anyone in past elections come close to kind of dethroning Brady? I know you mentioned the issue when it comes to how our ward system, our very outdated ward system is set up, kind of preventing progressives to kind of move forward. But even if there's someone maybe aligned a little bit more to the traditional Philly Democratic values that we've seen, like...

So the answer is no. I don't think anybody's come close to being able to get the votes needed. And it's sort of like a suicide mission to even try at this point because just the way the numbers work for the congressman, for the chairman, he's got the vast majority of ward leader support. I think... you know, what you see is that a lot of the progressive candidates that have been elected recently as word leaders, their problem is not with the party system. Their problem is how the party system's being used to get out the vote, how it's being used to actually, like, influence elections. And so what I think is you have a lot of progressive folks who are saying, I'm willing to, like, work with you and play by your rules. I just like, we just need to do a better job at making sure that Philadelphia turns out to vote so that we're winning these like critical statewide and national elections. You know, the municipal elections for all intents and purposes, the Democratic primary is the election because of just the voter registration advantage. But where it really matters is the statewide and federal stuff where those candidates are counting on Philadelphia to turn out. And, you know, our voter turnout is not that great. So I think a lot of this is like framed in ideological conversations when it really is less ideological. And it's more just like the effectiveness at the party in doing the only job that it exists to do, which is get Democrats to the polls to vote. See, I read this story about this in the Tribune. And when asked about working with progressives, Brady said this quote, show them the proper respect. The biggest thing for me is we need to defeat Republicans, especially with the guy in the White House. Make sure he's gone and making sure nobody follows him. So going back to my point, I feel like maybe there is some bridge building there, at least like building a bridge on like. a shared goal, a share focused for this party. And then that's when I then was like trying to see, well, what is the identity of this party when you have groups calling out for change? Yeah, I think it's a great point. As I said, like everybody's aligned and yet we need to elect Democrats. I think where the friction is, it's how do we do that? And I think there's like different types of power that the individual groups care about, whether it's like soft power or hard power. There's some differences in kind of motivation there that I think, you know, that I think. provide additional friction to this conversation, to this bridge getting built. Well, let's talk about that friction. While progressives have won some ward seats recently, there is tension over in the 22nd ward. And this has all come out in the last week or so. Councilmember Cindy Bass, who represents the 8th District, claimed that she won against her progressive challenger, Octavius Price, in this ward.

But when it came to do a roll call, and that's when the committee's people's votes would be counted one by one, just to clarify, like, which candidate they support, Bass had rejected that call. And now there's been allegations that she didn't follow procedures. So what's going on here? Yeah. So the words do their elections by voice vote. Like you have to say like yay or nay. Yeah. Like you can written vote is only if you get a majority of the people to agree to written votes and they never do written votes, which can be problematic. So usually it's a voice vote. And the rule is if anybody calls for a roll call vote where it's not just like completely obvious. Because a lot of times these votes are unanimous, right? Or it's like one person or two people who are protest voting. But when it's close, anybody is allowed to call for a rule call vote and the leader should do that roll call vote. And in this case, that did not happen. There was a lot of... You know, there was some testimony that some people had voted twice. And it just like, it was kind of chaotic. I think the councilwoman described it as chaotic. And so now they are going to be retaking that vote tomorrow on Wednesday to elect the ward leader. So it sort of went to city committee. City committee said, yeah, you should have done a roll call vote. So they're going to redo the vote. So stay tuned for the results of that. And would this vote make any changes in the 22nd ward? Yeah, I mean, so the councilwoman is the incumbent award leader there. So if, you know, she wins, I imagine the status quo would be the same. I'm not super familiar with Octavius or the platform that they're running on. So I can't say what sort of. you know, whether they're promising like major reforms or whatnot. So, you know, but anytime you have a leadership change, it does impact the direction of the ward. You know, a lot of the wards are what are known as closed wards. So this is an important concept. And this is one of the big platforms of the progressives that are running in the ward system. A closed ward, when they do candidate endorsements, and this is one of the main functions of a ward is to endorse candidates for office, it's usually whatever the award leader or whatever the party chairs tell them, these are the folks that you're endorsing, this is going to be on the ballot. On the other hand, an open ward has sort of like a more democratic process where the committee people will get together and they will vote on who the ward should endorse. So like if I'm running for city council and I come to... the 22nd ward for an endorsement, basically the war leader is the one that decides whether I get endorsed or not. If I go to the 30th ward...

I speak to the entire group of committee people, and they vote whether to endorse me or not. And so a big point of contention and a big policy line in the sand between what's considered a progressive ward and old school wards is whether that word is open or closed. And one of the things that you've seen is you've seen some sort of like party loyal war leaders who realize, hey, you know what, it's going to behoove me to allow for open ward in my ward. Because that's what people care about most. So I might be able to keep my chairmanship as long as I move over to an open ward. I'm seating a little bit of power to the committee people, but I still get to keep my position. And so that's kind of a dynamic that we've seen play out recently. So, yeah, so as I said, I don't know if the 22nd ward leader Challenger is a proponent of open awards. It sounds like they are. So that could be a very big change for the 22nd ward. I'm still stuck on the fact that the wards haven't been redrawn since the 50s. Yeah, I mean, it's a real problem. And, you know, congressmen elect or soon-to-be congressman-elect. Democratic nominee Chris Rab has proposed a bill that would require city council. So city council redistricts, they redraw their lines every 10 years. And congressman to be. unless something crazy happens, RAB is proposing a bill in the state house that would require. the ward lines to get redrawn every 10 years as well. And what this does is this is really meant to account for population shifts, right? Because you have some wards, especially in the Northeast, that are just bursting at the seams because when these ward lines were drawn in the 1950s, that was all farmland, right? So it's disproportionate representation in the party system. And, you know, the status quo benefits the people in power. So that's not something that anybody's looking at. to change. So it's really the folks who are part of the, you know, the progressive movement, the open wards movement who are really pushing for this because what that does is that that sort of unpacks these these wards and spreads the power out a little bit more. All right. That was Lauren Vetus, our political contributor and Siani Cologne, our newsletter writer. Y'all, thanks for chatting with me today on the Tuesday News Roundup. Always great to be here. Thanks for breaking it down.

I'm That's all for today here on CityCast Philly. If you enjoyed this Tuesday News Roundup, share this with a friend. Also, rate the show. Leave us a review and hit that subscribe button. Be sure to sign up for our morning newsletter to learn more about what else Philly's talking about. And don't forget, you can support the show and you can get some great perks by becoming a citycastfili neighbor at membership.citycass.fm. We'll be back tomorrow morning with more news from around the city. Bye.