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
