thomnickels1@aol.com

Philadelphia in 2035

We cannot always know the future, although there’s no law against speculation and armchair prophecy.  Here’s my dystopian vision of Philadelphia in the year 2035. 

    It’s 2035 and the mayor is Michael White, the alleged killer of real estate developer Sean Schellenger way back in 2018. How did Michael White get to become mayor? After his conviction of voluntary manslaughter charges (the third degree murder charge was eliminated by DA Krasner shortly before White’s trial), White went on to serve 10 years in prison but was released in five years for good behavior. While in jail he perfected his rap and slam poetry and became quite a talent at various city poetry events. He became a poetry sensation despite a few difficult years in the beginning when the memory of the alleged murder tainted his reputation. But since time heals all wounds—yes, even the most horrendous—and since people have a short memory, the public came around to accepting the poet’s terrific charisma and ability.

  White’s long rap poem on the night he met Schellenger was the poem that had people comparing him to Robert Lowell and Ezra Pound. His recitation of this poem at poetry slams always caused him to shed a few tears; this dramatic act alone was enough to win him several poetry awards. After his release from prison he was offered a scholarship to law school from the Southern Poverty Law Center. After law school, he ditched poetry for politics and ran for Philadelphia City Council. In 2030 he was named one of Philadelphia Magazine’s ‘Ten People to Watch.’ Shortly after this he ran for mayor and won. 

      As for Schellenger, his name was pretty much forgotten although as mayor, White insisted that Chancellor Street be named for the slain real estate developer. The empathic mayor shed a few tears at the ribbon cutting. 

    In 2035, DA Larry Krasner was long gone (he was safely ensconced in Roxborough’s Cathedral Village) but his criminal justice philosophy had worked its way into the consciousness of city government so that all the DA’s that followed him were known as “more Krasner than Krasner.” Most Philadelphians applauded this development but a tiny remnant protested what looked to them like a permanent change.  If you think that Philadelphia was a one party town in 2018, in 2035 the Republican Party had been pretty much eliminated. Republicans fled the city because they realized that “co-existence” with city Dems was pretty near impossible.

      This voluntary political banishment happened when President Trump, in his second term, applied lightning bolt screws to the nation’s sanctuary cities, especially Philadelphia, because by 2020 Philadelphia was the nation’s foremost sanctuary city, permitting illegal immigrants the right to vote and even offering illegals city jobs in various areas like Recreation and Sanitation. Mayor Kenney, in a whirlwind frenzy to outdo the radical mayors of NYC and San Francisco (his competition), allowed illegals to skip the standard qualifying tests that city job applicants have taken for decades.  Ordinary Philadelphians (aka, tax paying legals) were told they had to wait and apply for these jobs after the illegals in need had been processed and given their “fair slot” in the system. “It’s a new world order,” the mayor said to great applaud in City Hall courtyard. 

   It was after Mayor Kenney’s ramping up of the city’s sanctuary city status that the Republicans moved out of the city, making Philadelphia solidly (and explosively) Leftist. Gone was the old Democratic party; in its place was a totalitarian regime that wanted to ban everything, from straws to sugary drinks. It was hard to keep track of these new laws and restrictions. They included: the banning of firearms in advertisements, toys in McDonald’s Happy Meals, toy guns and water pistols for children, all sugary drinks, the Pledge of Allegiance, the sale of Barbie dolls (the philosophy being that Barbie dolls influence young girls into wanting to grow up and be beautiful), bottled water, goldfish (cruel and inhumane treatment in tiny fish bowl jails).

    City employees were also banned from traveling to red state areas like Arizona. Hate speech laws were enacted. Failing to address a transgendered person by their preferred pronoun resulted in one hundred dollar tickets. Criticism of Christianity was encouraged but the slightest criticism of Islam put the offender on an online ‘watch list.’

    New freedoms, if you want to call them that, were enacted, such as the freedom to walk the city in the nude provided that individuals got a parade permit.  Defecation on the sidewalks was permissible in certain areas (but not near upscale restaurants with sidewalk tables).  Heroin safe injection sites and free heroin for addicts became the new normal. Addicts were now seen as a protected minority group. Hate crimes against addicts included the use of “disparaging” terms like “junkie,” “lowlife,” and “derelict.” Heroin addicts from all over the country flocked to Philadelphia.  “Do your heroin Philly,” became the city’s new slogan in trade and travel magazines. 

      The Made in America concert, by 2035, had become a monthly event on the Parkway. Jay-Z, well into his mature years, was given the green light to make all decisions regarding the length and scope of these concerts, which was now ten days long.  Many Parkway residents, beaten down with weariness from the chronic traffic, drums, noise and celebratory mayhem, had left for the suburbs, in effect reversing the great trend of people moving from the suburbs into the city.  Great clouds of marijuana smoke, as thick as LA smog, hung over the Parkway 24/7. Philadelphia Museum of Art employees, including the erstwhile Timothy Rub, spend their days attempting to fight off unwanted highs.  It was, as many old people, exclaimed, “A sight for ore eyes.”   

  President Trump, in his second term, hit Philadelphia with a battery of assaults, all of them financial. He cut off all financial aid to the city. The city no longer had access to the Office of Federal Programs. This in turn affected Housing and Urban grants, the Department of Transportation, and the elimination of Community Development Block Grants.  Litter piled up in the streets, Septa trains were cut in half and the city’s delicate and already crumbling infrastructure began to crumble even more, since the city no longer received Tiger Grants.  Schools closed. Children in large groups, most of them screaming and yelling, now wandered the concourses of Suburban Station and along Penn’s Landing. 

  “This is a city that fights fascism!” banners along the Parkway read. “Humanity first!”

    Mayor Kenney, as one of his last deeds in office at the end of his second term, threw a punch at President Trump by inviting 40,000 Syrian immigrants into the city, and offering free tent cities for anyone wishing to migrate from South America.

  Philadelphia in 2035 was no longer recognizable but for many people this was a fantastic thing.  Gone was the Union League, that bastion of white, moneyed Republican privilege. The League was renamed the People’s Pavilion, a pay-as-you-can drop in community center (and safe injection site) with graffiti workshops sponsored by a radical art collective.

  Many of the Union League’s portraits of the city’s valued former leaders and historic figures were replaced with photographs of new city heroes: drag queen Resistance leaders, illegals raising clenched fists, and pussy hatted matriarchs calling for an end to the patriarchy, and more. 

  Sloppily chiseled onto the side of the Union League was this message from a monograph entitled Why Riot, from the Occupy ICE people way back in 2018.

  “…It is simply utopian to believe that the present system can be perpetuated indefinitely without great violence….Riots appear to produce little in terms of concrete results and, when you add up the numbers, often do less actual economic damage to large business interests than, for example, blockading the port. They produce a certain spectacle, but so does Jay Z.” 

Thom Nickels

Contributing Editor