Election Day in ‘The Land that Everybody Forgets’
*There was one Latino candidate in Tuesday’s Mayoral primary election in Philadelphia. Nelson Diaz came in a distant 5th. In Philadelphia, as is custom in Latino enclaves across the country, the candidates visited when it was time to gather votes. Many barrios remain places that “everyone forgets.” This is a good portrait of one such place. VL
By Nick Newall, Philadelphia Inquirer
The people around here call this the Land That Everybody Forgets.
If there is a capital of the Land That Everybody Forgets, it is Tent City, a community of tents and shanties tucked inside a clearing near the freight tracks in Fairhill, near Second and Indiana Avenue.
Dozens of men live there in the dirt and trash. Men from halfway houses. Men lost in drugs. Men who have built a fence out of wood and rocks to keep strangers away. Tent City did not exist four years ago. The cops come whenever someone overdoses.
It’s Election Day, but in Tent City that means almost nothing.
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[Photo by Mike Newall, courtesy of The Philadelphia Inquirer]
