Grays Ferry

Cardinal Anthony Bevilacqua (above, center) talks with residents of Grays Ferry after prayer service (below) at St. Gabriel's Catholic Church in which about 500 people of different races came to promote peace.

The saga of Grays Ferry continues. Catholic and Protestant clergy are holding an ecumenical prayer service and procession of hope in Grays Ferry tonight to encourage healing in the racially charged neighborhood. Community groups are coming up with proposals to ease tensions between black and white residents of the South Philadelphia community. A march through Grays Ferry to protest racial violence, called by the Nation of Islam, is set for April 14. Meanwhile, the city is being close-mouthed about its behind-the-scenes efforts to ease racial tensions in the community.

GRAYS FERRY gets a bad rap for community relations. It is commonly held that people just don't get along here, don't ever help one another across racial and social lines. The truth is that it is not so much black against white as it is those who care and want to fight for the neighborhood versus those who are indifferent to its fate - and by their indifference, contribute to the speed of its decline. Walk down the streets here, spend time getting to know the people, and you quickly realize that a war is being waged for this community's survival, a war whose stakes are impossibly high and whose outcome is all but certain.

Police arrested a third suspect yesterday in an attack on a black family by a group of white men in Grays Ferry that has stirred racial tension in the neighborhood. City Council President John F. Street, meanwhile, reiterated his appeal to the Nation of Islam and other groups not to stage protest marches through the community. "We hope we can avoid the risk that something terrible could happen down in Grays Ferry and forever scar the reputation of the people who live there and all over this city," Street said in an interview.

Some people in Grays Ferry believe the neighborhood's racial troubles would go away if Annette Williams would just move out. Her family - particularly her 18-year-old son and 17-year-old nephew - have been at the center of several confrontations in the neighborhood, including last spring's meltdown that created a dangerous uproar, prompting an invitation to Louis Farrakhan. But despite some prodding from her lawyer and offers of help from Mayor Rendell, the 34-year-old African-American hotel worker has decided to stay in Grays Ferry.

The situation in Grays Ferry is tragic, sad, ugly and dangerous. Young Christopher Brinkman, only 16 years old, is dead. And in the South Philadelphia neighborhood in which so many see their problems in terms of race, too many whites blame his death on blacks - instead of armed robbers. And Annette Williams, her son and nephew, who are black, are recovering - especially emotionally - from a Feb. 23 attack by a large group of white men who were leaving a party in a church (!

People of Grays Ferry: Is this really the way you want to live? It's a working-class neighborhood of tight rowhouses and, increasingly it seems, tight nerves. For economic and social reasons, you can't leave. This is home. And will be for a long time. For black and white, those are the facts. You can't change where you live. But you can change how you're living. If not, the Philadelphia Police Department will have to become an occupying force, newspapers and TV stations will have to open bureaus in the neighborhood to keep up with what's happening, and you'll be treated to the kind of scrutiny reserved for Bosnia and the Middle East.

"This is Grays Ferry. " That's how the prosecutor and defense lawyers in the trial of nine white men accused of beating a black family summed up the neighborhood. As the trial ended yesterday, a year of neighborhood conflict, racial divisiveness and intense media scrutiny boiled down to this: Was it a neighborhood brawl or a unified attack by angry whites against a black family because of their race? During passionate closing arguments yesterday, Assistant District Attorney Jan McDermott argued that the defendants hit and threatened to kill the family, trashed the front of their home, then threatened to blow it up. "This is a case of racial bias," she told Judge Albert J. Snite Jr. But defense lawyers argued yesterday and Thursday that the brawl had been merely a street fight that spiraled out of control.

Frank X. "Monk" Markey, a truck driver and strong union supporter who engendered the spirit of Grays Ferry pride, died yesterday. He was 49 and lived in the Grays Ferry section of South Philadelphia. "He was a corner guy who loved the neighborhood and hated the oil refineries. He was such a strong union man that, believe it or not, he wouldn't even go through the exact-change lanes on the bridge," said his brother, Joe "The Lord of Tasker" Markey. "He'd sit in a traffic jam (at the toll booth)

JUDGE KENNETH Powell, a judge who has never been elected a judge, wants to be elected May 21, but he has some handicaps. He likes to wear bow ties, and he's a Republican with a bad ballot position. He can ditch the bow ties during the campaign for a seat on the Court of Common Pleas (political insiders warn him voters don't like them), but he can't change his party or ballot position. He's No. 3 on the GOP line, but that hardly matters in Philly, where Dems enjoy a 6 ½-to-1 registration edge.

THE LINE between life and death is sliver thin on Corlies Street. It was 4:45 on a November afternoon in 2008 when Alicia Colter stood up from the computer in her dining room and took a few steps toward the kitchen to start dinner. She stopped and turned when her then-8-year-old twins summoned her to the living room to watch something on TV. That very instant, a .380 bullet exploded through the dining-room window and whizzed by, six inches from her skull. If Colter hadn't veered, the bullet, which lodged in the kitchen wall, likely would have struck her. "My children called me away and they saved my life," Colter said.

A police chase from Grays Ferry into Center City ended in gunfire late Thursday night, authorities said. About 10:15 p.m. around 27th and Tasker Streets, officers spotted several men, one of whom was firing a gun, Chief Inspector Scott Small said. "They heard the shots," Small said. "They saw the muzzle flash. " The gunman and two others fled in an SUV-type vehicle, with police in pursuit, Small said. A gun was tossed from the vehicle on the 600 block of South 27th Street, Small said.

APOLICE CHASE in Center City on Thursday night led to the arrest of two people, who at one point allegedly exchanged gunfire with cops. The car chase began in the 17th Police District in South Philadelphia and ended shortly after 10 p.m. at 24th and Locust streets, where one of the suspects was shot in the arm, police said. No officers were injured. Police said late Thursday that they were still unsure what led to the chase. But CBS3 reported that an officer witnessed a shooting in Grays Ferry and followed the gunman into Center City.

When did we become what we, on our worst days, seem to be? This nation trampled by poor compromise and misplaced screech, this drowning swell of hyper-caffeinated opinion, this landscape of the random and the ruined. We are increasingly disinclined toward rational debate. We rage about the inconsequential. We want to be heard, but we don't want to listen. We're quick to deplore the mess we're in, and tragically ill-equipped to fix it. Impotence has never been my thing. I believe in the kids I teach, the small heroics of neighbors, quantum generosity, anonymous kindness, in doing something, making something, being something.

WHENEVER national publications offer a checklist of fun and charming places to visit in Philadelphia, Point Breeze and Grays Ferry usually aren't neighborhoods that make the cut. Both areas have been plagued for years by poverty, blight, crime and struggling schools. Although there's no easy way to cure those deep-rooted urban ailments, Kenny Gamble's Universal Companies has given itself the task of trying to create a path forward for both communities, thanks to a $100,000 neighborhood planning grant it received earlier this month from the Wells Fargo Regional Foundation.

Six rivers have been nominated for Pennsylvania's 30th annual "River of the Year" award, which the public can vote on through Jan. 18. The Philadelphia region's very own Schuylkill River is among the nominees this year, with the award's state and non-profit sponsors touting the 128-mile Schuylkill's resurrection from a "dead river in the mid-1900s" to one that "touches countryside and urban life" alike. But the votes aren't flowing as quickly for the Schuylkill in the first week of voting as some of its competitors.

Exelon Generation plans to retire its 58-year-old Schuylkill Generating Station in Grays Ferry at the end of the year, the latest Eisenhower-era power plant to bow out in response to a changing energy environment. Increasingly, the oil-burning plant at 2800 Christian St. has been little used, said Tim Wirth, a spokesman for Exelon's power-generation unit in Kennett Square. "It's older, it's not used very frequently, and it no longer makes economic sense," Wirth said. In the last year, the plant's 166-megawatt main unit was fired up only once to serve the regional power grid.

AT FIRST, the family of Agnes C. Burke was a little embarrassed to see her outside every day sweeping the sidewalk at 29th and Tasker streets, in Grays Ferry. But they soon realized that the task gave Agnes tremendous satisfaction. Not only was she keeping the neighborhood where she had lived all her life free of what seemed a never-ending accumulation of trash and grit, but she met and communicated with passers-by and made a social occasion of the job. Agnes performed this labor from age 65 to 95, ignoring summer heat or the bitter cold of winter.

Keisha Jones - the West Philadelphia woman accused of fatally crushing her husband with her car - took the stand in her own defense Thursday, sobbing as she told a jury that her husband's death was an accident. After the prosecution and defense rested their cases Thursday afternoon in Common Pleas Court, the six men and six women on the jury began deliberations. They will resume Friday morning. Jones, 31, is charged with first-degree murder, third-degree murder, and possessing an instrument of crime, a 2002 Acura SUV. On Nov. 27, 2011, prosecutors say, she struck her husband, Tyrone Taylor, with the car, crushing him against a wall in an abandoned lot in Grays Ferry after a quarrel.