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Also this issue: Sometimes They Come Back Not Who You Think |
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August 8-14, 2002
loose canon
Reading Terminal Market, Rittenhouse Square, Kelly Drive, Curtis Center, Kimmel Center -- places I wrote about last week -- are all great public spaces.
But in the current political climate, where privatization has been elevated to the status of a religion, public resources are being threatened and certain public spaces are at risk of becoming less public. With that, our basic freedoms are being challenged in more than a symbolic way.
The ultimate public space would allow the easiest access to the largest number of people, to do the widest variety of activities. The ultimate public space is a commons, the central pastureland around which many towns grew, and which has now almost disappeared from American cities.
Older Philadelphia public spaces like Rittenhouse Square and Kelly Drive are perhaps the closest to the ideal of a commons, where anyone and anything goes, although the only grazing animals left along Kelly Drive are geese and the only barnyard animal in Rittenhouse Square is a bronze goat. These are the places to go if you're in the mood to see a wide range of people and to express yourself in whatever reasonable manner. They are Philadelphia's closest equivalents to London's Hyde Park, where by tradition you're permitted to set up a soapbox and spiel.
Freedom of assembly and of speech are theoretically guaranteed by the Bill of Rights, but there is no guarantee that there are going be any public places left in which to exercise those freedoms. Even places owned by the public and built with public funds are being sold to private entities or are closely regulated by government authorities.
The airport, once open, is now locked down -- even though most of us realize by now that the searches serve no real practical purpose. The train shed leading into the Convention Center, also owned by the public and renovated with public funds, appears now to be off-limits. The waterfront and air rights of Penn's Landing are essentially being sold piecemeal to private developers, or are monopolized by so-called public authorities to hold what are essentially private parties.
But the ugliest closure, both physically and symbolically, is the militarization of Independence Hall and the Liberty Bell. To bring a foreign visitor to see the birthplace of liberty wrapped in steel and concrete makes a mockery of the freedoms it celebrates. It has become the antithesis of liberty.
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