"A guy you used to hang out with and liked but weren't close to and haven't talked to in years and then is dead out of nowhere on Facebook" is one of those things I haven't gotten used to despite it happening with increasing regularity. A type of grieving that still feels new and unnatural all these years in.

Did you miss the most recent issue of Hell World? It was good! Austin L. Ray wrote on the return of TV on the Radio and how to make a life in the arts and Justin Glawe reported on election deniers in positions of local power around the country and the threat they face to this upcoming election.

They might do something about it.

The breathless madness of fear

Welcome to Hell WorldLuke O’Neil

I was just going to write that it is insane that a Republican elected official spread so many racist lies about a city in his own state that it's now being terrorized by his followers but then I remembered that's just pretty standard procedure now. It might be harder to find a Republican saying anything positive about any city come to think of it.

Two related tweets:

Today Max Freedman joins us to report on the efforts of residents in Philadelphia to prevent the construction of a new stadium for the 76ers despite Mayor Cherelle Parker's intentions to push it through.

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No process to vet

by Max Freedman

In all the times I’ve heard people talk about their trips to Washington, D.C., they’ve never mentioned the city’s Chinatown. Probably because it no longer exists. Developers destroyed it. The Washington Convention Center, built there in 1982, began the decimation, followed by the Capital One Arena in 1997, and in an October 2022 Philadelphia Inquirer piece, three former D.C. Chinatown residents warned that the same would happen to Philly’s Chinatown if the Philadelphia 76ers get city approval to build their new arena there.

Here in Philly discourse around this staggeringly unpopular arena, also known as 76Place (its disapproval rate is a whopping 69%) has come to a fever pitch in recent weeks following the publication of several long-awaited impact studies. An anti-arena rally on Saturday, September 7 drew 4,000 people. I went in expecting a small turnout and encountered a massive crowd tolerating the unbearable humidity, torrential rain, and pummeling wind. Turns out no matter how much we all love Joel Embiid, we still don’t care much for further enriching billionaires.

After that it was hard for City Hall not to take note. And so on Monday, September 9, Mayor Cherelle Parker announced a town hall for Wednesday, September 11. (Ironically enough, the town hall was held at the Philadelphia Convention Center, which displaced 200 Chinatown residents when it was built.) An email from the community organization No Arena Gayborhood rightly noted that Mayor Cherelle Parker gave “less than three days notice to seek community input on what’s been called a ‘citywide issue.’” The town hall happened 254 days into Parker’s mayorship — it’s taken her that long to directly interface with the community on the matter.

As I waited to get into the event (the entry line spanned two city blocks; roughly 800 people attended), No Arena Gayborhood member Jackson Morgan told me why so many people in Philly’s gay neighborhood (a frequent haunt of mine) are opposed to the arena. “What we’ve seen happen with other arenas, like at [the] Capital One Arena,” he said, “is, you take a cultural district, and it pushes out all of the cultural touchstones and replaces it with generic businesses.” 76Place threatens to do exactly this to Philly’s Chinatown, with ripple effects in the Gayborhood (adjacent to Chinatown) and the Washington Square West neighborhood (also close by).

The Parker administration (which is Democratic, by the way) doesn’t seem to care that Philly’s people by and large hate the idea of 76Place. After Parker’s brief opening remarks, representatives for the organizations that conducted the impact studies’ presented their findings, and their corporate PR-speak reflected the clear prioritization of billionaires’ profit over people’s livelihood. Some of their claims were debunked toward the end of the town hall to rapturous crowd applause.

Before the impact study teams spoke, Parker said, “We are going to hear directly from the community, both those in support and in opposition. … Before I make any decision on the arena proposal…I will listen to any stakeholders impacted.” As such, following the impact study reps’ time on stage, a slate of anti-arena community members shared their thoughts, followed by commentary from some pro-arena community members.

Holly Meng of Philadelphia Chinese Community Organizations United (PCCOU), which comprises roughly 40 member organizations of Chinatown residents and business owners, said that 95% of the group are against the arena. Margaret Chen, vice chair of Philadelphia Chinatown Development Corporation (PCDC) and an avowed 76ers fan, asked the team (whose representatives weren’t present) why they’ve targeted Chinatown with “no process to vet” other potential locations in Philly. 

She’s right. After the city lost its bid for a previously considered spot along I-95 near Penn’s Landing, about a year and a half before Chinatown was proposed as the arena’s site (the I-95 area will instead be home to a new park), neither the Parker administration nor the 76ers have considered any other location. None. This complete and total lack of interest in, you know, the well-being of the actual people of Chinatown — and Philly by and large — became even more salient as the pro-arena slate took the mic. I was far from alone among the crowd in feeling infuriated that a government body was once again making decisions at the behest of corporations and billionaires rather than so much as thinking about the people they supposedly represent. I was reminded that we stopped having a representative government long before I was born, or maybe we really never had one.

Most of the pro-arena speakers belonged to local unions. To be clear, I am of course pro-union. Many anti-arena speakers said the same. However, the pro-arena union speakers repeatedly put their need for steady jobs with good wages over the livelihood of Chinatown residents and businesses. I sympathize with this need, but not when it comes at the cost of anti-arena activists’ greatest (and fully valid) concerns: decimating a neighborhood, creating major traffic and congestion in Center City and blocking emergency access to nearby Jefferson Hospital. Notably, the town hall audience cheered far less for pro-arena speakers than anti-arena speakers, despite the Parker administration letting some pro-arena speakers talk for much longer than their allotted two minutes.

The first hour and a half of speakers were scheduled in advance, whereas audience members spoke during the last half hour. One Chinatown resident said that after reading the traffic impact study he was convinced that “even in the study’s best-case scenario…the chaos created by the traffic will negatively impact our corner of Philadelphia.” Another community member spoke directly to Mayor Parker. “Public servants are advocates of the people and…I believe you are especially needed in situations where there are power imbalances, and predatory developments cause power imbalances,” they said. 

A Philadelphia Tenants Union organizer delivered an especially powerful speech. “This is nothing more than a racist land grab,” they said. “We say no to the billionaires that do not live or vote in Philadelphia. … We say yes to Chinatown, because we know if Chinatown goes, who’s next?” 

The second-to-last speaker debunked an impact study. “Some folks from CSL say the new arena will generate $50 million for Philadelphia school districts,” they said, but the “$50 million will be paid to the city over 30 years [via] payment in lieu of taxes. … The 76ers won’t have to pay property taxes on this new arena.” 

It’s a proposal that will save the 76ers $420 million across 30 years. 

This speaker also asked pointedly, “Why is our policy for getting ACs into our school districts praying for [Philadelphia Eagles quarterback] Jalen Hurts to donate more units instead of making billionaires pay their fair share?” 

Great point — 76Place is far from the first instance of cities and states giving stadiums out like candy, at massive cost to taxpayers, and destroying neighborhoods in the process. The two D.C. arenas weren’t a flash in the pan either. Stadium construction has cost taxpayers $4.3 billion since 2000. And this has all happened after the D.C. arenas were built. Even the right-wing magazine The Atlantic reported that each time a stadium is built, more wealth is transferred from everyday people to sports team owners.

Despite the night’s vast anti-arena sentiment (hundreds of attendees wore white t-shirts with “NO ARENA IN CHINATOWN” in red), some folks felt that the whole thing was just a PR stunt. Now, no matter its decision, the Parker administration can claim that it listened to the community and made transparent decisions. Parker’s defensive, unhinged, paranoid thirteen minute closing rant (a crowd member described it as “a Trump speech”) basically confirmed this notion, but one part was less ballistic. “Whether we are for or against…I’m going to every neighborhood available [to] share and affirm why I have made the decision.”

I wondered what Parker thought when the night’s first pro-arena speaker ceded her time to two Chinatown high school seniors, who repeated their message from the September 7 rally. 

“Why should the city let a billionaire's playground destroy Chinatown when our schools don’t even have playgrounds?” 

They also spoke directly to Mayor Parker. 

“The Save Chinatown Coalition has invited you on multiple occasions to meet with us, to visit this special community. We asked September 2023, we asked January 2024, and we asked in February 2024. We asked in March 2024. In every instance, this request was declined or ignored.”

If Mayor Parker is really going to every neighborhood available, then she’ll finally take the people of Chinatown up on this offer. If she’s instead committed to billionaires, she has a final question to answer:

“Before you decide whether our community lives or dies,” the high school seniors asked Parker, “will you look into our neighbors’ eyes and see their futures?”

Max Freedman is a writer and journalist in Philadelphia. Maybe he’ll accept your follow request on Instagram. Maybe.

I liked this poem I got out of the experience very much but even better than that is that the other day I caught the son of a bitch in action and got to win the argument.

Ok paid subscribers stick around for another edition of the thing I still even now don't have a better name for besides Sentences of Note plus two of the most extraordinary photos I've seen in a long time and the song of the week.