Community Leaders

Madaline Dunn "got a feeling" from the leaders of the 300 Overbrook High School students who walked out of school last week to protest what they said was a racist article written by an Overbrook teacher. The feeling was anguish and frustration. It was the feeling of being the target of racism. Dunn, a community leader, felt she had been judged because of her race, "not on what I have inside," she said, touching her heart. "They look at your skin and kind of slough you off. " She and about 60 parents, students and community leaders met at Overbrook High last night to discuss the walkout and to let the students know they were proud of them.

There is a single character in the Chinese alphabet, which, depending on how it is used, can stand for either "crisis" or "opportunity. " Here we are at the dawn of the 21st century, a new beginning in America, and Philadelphia, the most amazing of urban places, is forced to apply this character to its future, to its neighborhoods and to its families. Despite the amazing revitalization of Center City, the City of Neighborhoods consistently loses population. Four hundred thousand residents have departed since 1950, and 68,000 residents fled during the booming 1990s.

Officials in Philadelphia and Camden assured community leaders yesterday that the neighborhoods themselves would have a leading voice in determining how the $100 million flowing into the empowerment zone over the next two years will be spent. "I support community involvement to the nth degree," said Mayor Arnold W. Webster of Camden. Mayor Rendell outlined a process in which community leaders would be elected to community trust boards that would set the budget for spending the federal money.

A proposal to create a municipal commission to help improve relations between diverse groups of residents has the unanimous support of council, but is getting a lukewarm reception from some community leaders and the mayor. Mayor George Ruch, a Republican, has told business administrator William Fiscella that he does not intend to appoint members to the Human Relations Committee if it is approved by council. Ruch will finish a two-year term as mayor in December and will not seek a second term.

Several North Philadelphia community leaders have rallied to the defense of a troubled mental-health service, hoping to pursuade the city to reverse its decision to cancel its $8 million contract. But Health Commissioner Robert Ross, saying he wants an organization that can provide "excellent services, yet be accountable to the terms of the contract," is standing firm in his decision. The controversy involves the Charles R. Drew Community Mental Health/Mental Retardation Center, which is headquartered at Broad Street and Old York Road in Logan and operates seven clinics.

City officials and community leaders have been quietly discussing plans to help keep Philadelphia calm if an acquittal in the Rodney King federal trial reignites violence in Los Angeles. But most are predicting that Philadelphia will remain immune from the rioting that nearly destroyed South Central Los Angeles and left small scars in other cities last spring after four Los Angeles police officers were acquitted in the beating of King. "Philadelphia behaved in just a sterling fashion after the last verdict, and we have every expectation our population will respond in the exact same way in the event of an adverse verdict this time," David L. Cohen, Mayor Rendell's chief of staff, said yesterday.

Community members would help teach students how to become successful adults under a program outlined yesterday by West Chester Area School District officials and community leaders. "Healthy Communities/Healthy Youth" calls for community members to help children learn 40 positive traits, including integrity, responsibility and self-esteem, said Superintendent Janet Shaner. Those teaching such values would include families, businesses, government agencies, religious organizations and civic groups, she said.

A half-dozen community leaders from Louisiana visited a firehouse in a quiet neighborhood of Upper Darby yesterday to say thanks to the people of Southeastern Pennsylvania for tons - literally, tons - of help in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina. And they got a little more help in the process - a $440,000 check for hurricane relief raised from businesses and individual local donors. R. David Paulison, acting director of the Federal Emergency Management Agency, came up from Washington for the gathering at the Primose-Secane-Westbrook Fire Company.

Despite six weeks of canvassing, cajoling and counseling, the city's summer immunization project is about halfway short of its goal of giving free shots to 5,000 Philadelphia children. So yesterday, Mayor Rendell and City Health Commissioner Robert K. Ross held a pep rally to energize about 150 community leaders, who were asked to help the city reach its goal before the program ends next Thursday. "We have seven working days to go on the ICARE project," Rendell said, referring to the acronym for the federally funded Immunize Children at Early Risk program.

Backed by a chorus of black community leaders charging racism, Eleanor "Betty" Loper, president of West Chester's Borough Council and its only African American member, has thwarted an attempt to boot her from office. Loper, all but out the door when Wednesday's council meeting began, ended up with a tighter grip than ever on West Chester's political power. Councilwoman Janet Colliton and former Council President Mitch Crane, two of her most vocal critics and supporters of the attempted ouster, announced they would resign.

VIVIAN HUGHES remembers the days when the streets in the Abbotsford Homes were alive with the sound of children playing double Dutch and marbles outside - a time when the community was a safe haven for its youngest and oldest members. Now, Hughes, 70, and other longtime tenants of the public-housing development, perched high on a hill in East Falls near the Roosevelt Expressway, say the violence in their community - and the stigma that's come with it - needs to be turned around. So she, along with a handful of other residents who were newly elected to Abbotsford's revamped tenant council, are banking on a resurgence in the tight-knit community.

Gregory Scott was trying to protect his mother's West Philadelphia front porch. The community leader known to friends as "Chops" lost his life Wednesday night in an ongoing dispute to keep an unwelcome relative away from the Delancey Street home, family members said. Thursday night, two men - including a cousin of the victim's - were charged in his slaying. Police said James Scott, the cousin, shot Gregory Scott after the latest episode in a series of confrontations that stretched over a year.

LINDA Rowe has lived in her two-story South Philly brick house for 28 years, most recently on a fixed income. Rowe, 58, who lives on Cantrell Street near 8th, is disabled and has been struggling over the years to keep up with her property-tax bills. She owes more than $2,240 in back taxes that have piled up since 2008. But come next year, Rowe fears what could happen when the city moves to a new property-tax system based on market values - known as the Actual Value Initiative.

HOWARD EARL FISHER had fond memories of his father and the lessons he passed on to him in his boyhood. "As a boy, my father often took me on outings to places of interest throughout the city of Philadelphia, to such places as Independence Hall, Fairmount Park, the Art Museum, excursions on the Delaware River and many other interesting places that few children in our neighborhood were afforded the opportunity to visit," he once wrote in a remembrance of...

Hoping to "turn up the heat" on the investigation into the abduction of a 5-year-old girl from her West Philadelphia school last week, community leaders and politicians announced Friday that the reward for information in the case had been raised to $75,000. That amount includes a $30,000 donation from the office of State Sen. Anthony Hardy Williams (D., Phila.), who represents the Eighth District, where the kidnapping took place, as well as $10,000 from the NAACP Philadelphia, Philadelphia Black Clergy, and other community leaders.

State representatives and community leaders said Friday that now's the time to "turn up the heat" on the kidnappers of a Bryant Elementary first-grader. How? By increasing the reward for their capture to a whopping $75,000. "We're going to continue to try to make this one of the highest bounties in the history of Philadelphia," state Sen. Anthony Williams said at news conference at police headquarters, which was also attended by Mayor Nutter and more than 10 other city leaders.

THE REWARD for the capture of the kidnappers who snatched a 5-year-old girl from her kindergarten classroom in West Philadelphia last week has been increased to $20,000. The NAACP of Philadelphia, black clergy members and other community leaders announced Wednesday that they're offering $10,000 for an arrest in the case. The Fraternal Order of Police last week put up $5,000 for an arrest, and the Citizens Crime Commission kicked in another $5,000 for the arrest and conviction of the abductors.

IN STRAWBERRY MANSION, parents, alumni and community leaders say they won't allow the Philadelphia School District to shut down their schools - at least not without a fight. Organizers have planned a community meeting for 5:30 p.m. Thursday at Strawberry Mansion High, on Ridge Avenue near 31st Street. They say they will seek to stop the district from shutting down either Mansion or L.P. Hill, the adjacent pre-kindergarten-to-eighth-grade school. "People are tired of things being taken away [from the neighborhood]

Salvatore J. "Sonny" Barbuto, 71, a community labor leader in the region for four decades, died Thursday, Dec. 13, of a pulmonary embolism at the Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania. A longtime South Philadelphia resident and a graduate of Bishop Neumann High School, Mr. Barbuto obtained his bachelor's degree in journalism from Temple University. Mr. Barbuto began his career in 1959 as an administrator for the Retail Clerks Union Local 1360 in South Jersey. He was hired in 1964 by a sister local, Retail Clerks Union 1357, AFL-CIO, in Philadelphia, as executive assistant to the president; the bargaining unit is now the United Food and Commercial Workers Union, Local 1776.

MATTHEW SHEPARD was a 21-year-old student at the University of Wyoming in October 1998 when he was tortured and murdered for being gay. His murder sparked nationwide outrage and focused attention on hate crimes. That year, his mother co-founded the Matthew Shepard Foundation, a group that seeks to "replace hate with understanding, compassion and acceptance" for the lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender community. Judy Shepard was the keynote speaker Wednesday at a hate-crimes conference for law-enforcement and community leaders at the National Constitution Center.