Too close to ignore

Tucked away amid the row houses and narrow streets of East Mt. Airy, the dimly-lit street corner that played host to last week's vigil against violence looks a world away from Chestnut Hill and West Mt. Airy, and in many ways, it is. The fears faced daily by the children who dropped in and out of the event, stopping for a few moments to listen to one or another tough-talking speaker before running back into their homes or off into the darkness, are unimaginable to those who live in most nearby communities. Yet, geographically, it is not very far-- a short walk away from Cliveden or the Lovett Library, for instance.

It is close in other ways, too. As West Mount Airy Neighbors president Marc Stier pointed out at the rally, "problems on the east side affect things on the west side ... It means people don't want to be on the streets. It means people don't' want to live here. It means businesses don't want to be here. Everything that happens is interconnected."

What doesn't affect others directly does affect them indirectly. Mount Airy has invested a great deal of money and effort into revitalizing Germantown Avenue, and can boast of many important successes. The Pelham development project represents a new push to bring revitalization to that section of the avenue that runs barley more than a block away from the site of last week's vigil-- and the recent triple shooting. Efforts to link the shopping of Chestnut Hill, the nightlife of upper Mt. Airy and the historic sites of Germantown, to the great benefit of all three, are a central goal of groups like Mt. Airy USA and the Historic Northwest Coalition. This will only happen if all of us in the northwest take an active role in working with the police to stem the spread of drugs and crime.

There are obvious moral reasons why we should care about our neighbors in East Mt. Airy. But it's also in the interest of economics and public safety that we do so-- to ensure the best possible quality of life for all of us.

James Sturdivant