The fallout from SEPTA's budget deficit will impact the entire state. On this episode of Guest Commentary, the CEO of Brandywine Realty Trust wants every Pennsylvanian to see that SETPTA doesn't just survive, it thrives.

Join us for part two of the fascinating conversation between Ambassador David Cohen, now back from Canada, and Citizen co-founder Larry Platt. They talk about real diplomacy on the world stage and why diversity is so important for our city, state and nation. 

Forty years after the City bombed a house, killed 11 MOVE members and destroyed a neighborhood, Philadelphia still has not reckoned with what it says about us

Meet our Youth Citizen of the Year, who at just 15, has given 79,000 pairs of socks to vulnerable Philadelphians through his 501(c)(3) Socks for the Streets.

As we honor Juneteenth in 2021, let’s also remember the storytellers who are local heroes of the Black experience in America.

The Parkway was a bold idea a century ago. As the city embarks on a redesign, a local urbanist has ideas for making it grand again.

City Council is pushing the mayor to spend $100 million on gun violence prevention programs. Is that bold policy-making or just the appearance of it?

Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot is embedding the arts right into many city agencies. They have a goal Philly should be emulating: supporting art in every neighborhood in the city.

A former city official wonders if Philadelphia leaders can rise to the occasion and capitalize on city growth in the wake of Covid.

Legendary urbanist and Citizen columnist Bruce Katz chats with two infrastructure trailblazers—Oklahoma City mayor David Holt and Shalini Vajjhala, founder/CEO of re:Focus, a California social venture—about how best to use the trillions of dollars from the American Relief Plan.

Here's how we should use our American Rescue Plan windfall to grow jobs in Philly. Do our leaders understand this?

The North Broad Street corridor will never be the Avenue of the Arts—and that's a good thing. It's redeveloping to the beat of its own drum.

It's been a hundred years since the Black Wall Street massacre. Philly’s African American Chamber head says we must all help Black-owned businesses thrive

WURD host Charles Ellison talks with Citizen writer Christine Speer Lejeune about vaccination rates in Philly and some creative ways of boosting our numbers.

... but remember diversity, equity and inclusion. Longtime university president Elaine Maimon mourns the attack on the ideas — and very words — that are so vital to our democracy.

The former mayor, troubled by the problems tearing Philly apart, urges all of us to work together to revive the city he’s loved for 55 years.

States and cities across the U.S. are giving away big prizes for people who get vaccinated. It would be a great way to boost the rates in Philly, too.

Reason to Run is helping incarcerated women with their mental and physical health, while giving them the tools that discourage recidivism.

The modern-day retelling of MOVE has ignored a particular group that has been victimized time and again by both MOVE and the city.

Less than half of the murderers who committed crimes in Philadelphia in 2020 were brought to justice. There are Instagram and YouTube accounts dedicated to unsolved murders in Philadelphia. The mothers of the victims are fed the hell up and they have taken to the streets to solve the murders on their own. They’ve had no choice but to switch into detective mode.

Hassan Abdellah scored a check for $1,000 just for casting a ballot in West Philly. Hear what he had to say. 

We saw an unprecedented push to make living, working and participating in our civic life easier for Philly residents during the pandemic. Let's not slide backwards.

MSNBC anchor and Citizen board member Ali Velshi chats with Larry Platt and Roxanne Shepelavy about trillion-dollar deals, the broken Republican party and a new hope for bipartisanship.

Robert Rooks, CEO of Michael Rubin and Meek Mill’s REFORM Alliance, explains his new campaign to fix our failing parole and probation system.

The hours and days after a shooting are often called the golden hour for survivors of gun violence and for their families. This is a time when support, outreach and services can redirect anger and potentially stop a retaliatory shooting. 

In this podcast we have talked a lot about the number of homicides caused by gun violence. The number of people murdered by guns makes headlines. What isn’t talked about nearly as often are the survivors of violent crime and what happens to them.

Birthright citizenship is "an integral part of repudiating this nation's history of slavery," Ali Velshi explains. "To undermine [it], would be a return to some of our nation's darkest days." From slavery to the Chinese Exclusion Act of the nineteenth century, the 14th Amendment has been a remedy to our most discriminatory impulses. 

In this Idea We Should Steal, a volunteer chaperone service called Compassion in Oakland is helping to fight anti-Asian hate crimes. Philly should follow suit.

In this "Ideas We Should Steal" we look to New Jersey and the two cities that have made real progress in reducing gun violence by adopting smart policing techniques.

Larry Platt chats with author Jill Filopovic (Ok Boomer, Let's Talk: How My Generation Got Left Behind) about Millennials not being a bunch of avocado-toast eating snowflakes, but rather America's most educated, most engaged yet least wealthy generation. City Councilmember-at-large Katherine Gilmore Richardson stops by.

Philadelphia is the nation’s first startup. So, in this budget season, why not put old talking points behind us…and pivot?

One of the quotes that stayed with us the most while reporting Philly Under Fire came from Melany Nelson of Northwest Victim Services: “I've spoken to many youth and they said to me, ‘Ms. Nelson, either you're going to be the predator or the prey. So you have to pick one.’ So nine times out of 10, they're going to be the predator. They told me that they expect to die young.”

But as we'll hear in this episode, Philadelphia’s youth are also choosing to fight back against the violence.

We're not likely to lose the corruption-prone Sheriff's Office anytime soon, but adding this office to its rank would go a long way towards fixing it.

WURD host Charles Ellison talks with award-winning author & podcaster Jo Piazza about her new investigative audio series about gun violence in the city--Philly Under Fire, co-produced by The Philadelphia Citizen

Center City’s Tria Cafe brought back its beloved Fermentation School (virtually) to help it survive the pandemic. Who needs tables anyway?

At The Citizen’s most recent event, we talked with author/entrepreneur Brad Aronson and Dr. Vera Ludwig, neuroscientist, about the science and stories behind doing good for others

On the heels of the PA primary, we wonder: Has Philadelphia District Attorney Larry Krasner reformed prosecution, or just not prosecuted?

Phoenix Suns owner Mat Ishbia made concessions radically affordable. Another miss by Mayor Parker and City Council in the run-up to 76 Place ...

A recent Temple study found that gun violence surged as the Covid-19 pandemic worsened poverty, unemployment, and structural racism.  Poverty and a lack of jobs leads to desperation; desperation can lead to gun violence.

Over the course of our reporting, we heard this over and over again, that a key part of driving down gun violence is increasing job opportunities for the men most likely to fall into the illegal economy. We spent the past year talking to one organization that is trying to do exactly that.

For 33 years Sojourner House has been a haven for women who have been abused. Its necessity has changed little since then. Especially since the lockdowns of Covid-19.

The award-winning Unscripted Project is making an impact for teens in Philly’s public schools that's no laughing matter.

After six years on an intense spiritual quest, Pat Croce is back with a new mission: kickstarting HEALED, a wellness movement for cancer patients

So, are there any proven solutions to gun violence? In this episode, Jo introduces listeners to organizations in Philly and elsewhere—Chicago, Oakland—that have made meaningful progress even if it isn’t easy. Underlying these programs are strategies like using data to identify who’s most likely to be shot—and to shoot; talking to shooters; mediating and de-escalating “beefs” before they get too hot.

The Philadelphia Citizen’s 2021 Municipal Primary Voter Lottery will give three Philly citizens $1,000 each just for voting. It could be you.

Law students in India are working to rewrite the country’s laws using everyday language. What if we stole the idea?

The new podcast series from The Philadelphia Citizen and Jo Piazza examines Philly's gun violence epidemic—and searches for ways to fix it.

Remote work for Philadelphia employees is not one-size-fits-all. Even after the pandemic subsides, here’s how to plan for a technological future that benefits everyone.

On an average night Penn Presbyterian trauma nurse Rhonda Browning will see one or two shooting victims, usually young black men who are getting younger and younger each year. 

When Browning began working as a trauma nurse nearly twenty years ago the shooting victims were adults in their twenties and thirties and now they’re mostly teenagers. A lot of them are still in braces and the first thing they all do is ask for their mom.

A single mother of five boys, Browning becomes a de facto parent to countless teenagers in her trauma bay, until their real family arrives. She holds their hands and whispers in their ear that they need to hold on. Browning recorded an audio diary for Philly Under Fire as she tried to save the life of one gunshot victim. As someone who bears witness to the effects of violence nearly every night, Browning has her own scars and wonders how she can help to solve this epidemic. Because make no mistake, the explosion of gun violence in Philadelphia in 2020 was absolutely a public health crisis. 

As our reporting makes clear in this episode, calling out the crisis as a public health issue only gets cities so far—to really move the needle, we need the kind of urgency that accompanies an epidemic, the kind we have seen mobilized for COVID-19 this year. We need more data, a sustained investment in programs with proven effectiveness and a true willingness from city officials to regularly bring all stakeholders to the table and cooperate across agencies. 

"There's a writer for the Atlantic in 1894 who said, 'Every two years one party is obliterated, and then two years later, the other party is obliterated,' so I'm not saying this isn't the beginning of some grand realignment, but it might [simply] be the peak of a new cycle." Author Jon Grinspan put forward this observation in the second part of our opening panel at the 2024 Ideas We Should Steal Festival.

Philadelphia experienced a tragic surge in gun violence in 2020, with 499 of our fellow residents killed and another 2,200 shot. Like other cities across the country, there were several factors for the uptick in violence, including the Covid-19 pandemic, which devastated some neighborhoods and many residents physically and economically. But Philadelphia was already experiencing an uptick in shootings, even before the pandemic hit. And that violence continues unabated today.

In February 2020, The Citizen commissioned bestselling author/journalist/podcaster Jo Piazza to try to understand the causes, effects and fixes for gun violence. A month later, Covid-19 came to Philly. Piazza spent the ensuing months navigating the twin epidemics, recognizing the parallels in who was affected and how the afflictions manifested in certain neighborhoods—and the differences in how we as a city reacted. Her seven-episode podcast tells the stories of Philadelphians intimately affected by the city’s gun violence, those working to end it, those who have found solutions here and elsewhere—and those who have failed to step up to this moment when we most need them.

Philly Under Fire is a podcast of stories and solutions. You can’t solve a problem you can’t see. This first episode takes us behind the scenes of the city's ongoing meetings to address the current gun violence crisis. We highlight the work of the Philadelphia Obituary Project, a nonprofit organization that seeks to memorialize the lives of Philadelphians killed by gun violence. We also speak to Kimberly Kamara, an activist, a mother and a children’s book author who published a children’s book called “Where’s My Daddy?” to explain her son’s death by gun violence to the little boy he left behind.

Nearly 500 public buildings in Philly present barriers for people in wheelchairs. Let's help by stealing this brightly-colored idea from the "LEGO Granny."