The Philadelphia Inquirer includes a story today on changes in Philadelphia’s black population, which for the first time “clearly outnumbers” all other ethnic or racial groups. But the population is shifting, with large gains in population in places like the lower Northeast and Southwest, but losses here in West Philadelphia, the Northwest part of the city and in neighborhoods around Center City.
Whites leaving the city is the key factor in the increased percentage of blacks, the Inquirer reports. Middle-class blacks leaving the city for the suburbs is a related trend. The black population in the Pennsylvania suburbs increased 26 percent since 2000.
About 21 percent of the city’s population is now Asian and Hispanic.
About 50 people gathered outside of The Rotunda near 40th and Walnut to begin a march that would cross the city from “river to river” to protest upstate “fracking,” a process that uses toxic chemical to extract natural gas from shale.
Hundreds more protesters were expected to join in as the march proceeded across the Schuylkill River to Love Park and then on to Penn Treaty Park on the banks of the Delaware River for the annual Shadfest.
The march began with a reading from the Pennsylvania constitution and a brief explanation of the fracking process. The march is an attempt to raise awareness to the damage the process in northcentral Pennsylvania could do to the Delaware River watershed, which helps supply the Philadelphia area with drinking water.
Neighborhood residents can get an update of what’s in store for Baltimore Avenue this summer during the Cedar Park Neighbors annual board election meeting on Monday beginning at 7 p.m.
The meeting will be held at the Calvary Center for Culture and Community at 48th and Baltimore. The center will open at 6 p.m. for voting, which will continue until 7:30 p.m. Results will be announced at the end of the meeting.
UPDATE – The march has been moved up an hour so it will now start at 1 p.m. at The Rotunda near 40th and Walnut. The other stops are moved up an hour as well.
Community members and activists are marching from the Schuylkill to the Delaware on Saturday to draw attention to the effects of upstate natural gas extraction on the Delaware River watershed.
The march will begin at noon at The Rotunda near 40th and Walnut and proceed first to Love Park and then to the Penn Treaty Park where the annual Shadfest will be underway.
The groups River to River and Protecting Our Waters are sponsoring the march, which will converge on Love Park at 2 p.m. before heading east and then north on Third Street to Penn Treaty Park and the Shadfest.
The documentary film Gasland details natural gas extraction and the process known as “fracking” that entails forcing toxic chemicals into shale formations to force gas to the surface. Gasland is playing as part of a fundraiser for West Philly’s Mariposa Food Co-op on Wednesday.
This Thursday is a good night to get your science on in West Philly. Guion “Guy” Bluford, the first African American in space and a West Philly native, will speak at the University of the Sciences’ McNeil Science and Technology Center (43rd and Woodland) at 7 p.m.as part of the Philadelphia Science Festival.
Bluford participated in four space shuttle missions between 1983 and 1992. He graduated from Overbrook High School and received a B.S. in aerospace engineering from Penn State before completing graduate work at the Air Force Institute of Technology.
After the talk star gazers are welcome to grab a blanket and head out to Clark Park where amateur astronomers, telescopes in tow, will be on hand to help you folks navigate the cosmos.
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