"Hell No, I Don't Vote"

The campaigns (or lack thereof) in Kensington

by Nadia Stadnycki

apatheism

Two Fridays ago, Ivette Rivera, 45, was held up at gunpoint at her mini market on Front and Tioga streets in Kensington. The next day, she was back at work, standing behind her counter with crossed arms, talking about the upcoming election and its relationship to her neighborhood.

"I think that [the candidates] should just drive through and look," Rivera says. "We need more police protection and we have to do more for these kids so that they don't end up on the corners. We need a change."

There's that word — "change" — a buzzword in the Democratic presidential primary. But though Kensington residents like Rivera are looking to buy what the candidates are selling, there's no guarantee a transaction will be made. The 7th Ward, where Rivera lives, had the second-lowest voter turnout of any ward in the city in the 2004 general election. And while it's hard to say whether candidates don't come to Kensington because people here don't vote, or if people here don't vote because politicians won't help anyway, this much is clear: Kensington is stuck in a vicious cycle of apathy.

"I'm not even thinking about voting," says Samantha Maguire, 28, who is between jobs and hoping to move to Manayunk. "It's not going to make a difference. Someone just got shot on my street. How am I going to worry about national politics when I have to worry about my walk to the corner store?"

Julio Carrasquillo, 24, is also uninterested. "Hell no, I don't vote," he says. "I don't like the way Republicans are running things. But I do think that Obama should be president." Asked why he's still not voting, he says, "I'm against the government."

That's not to say no one here is paying attention. Eddie Torres, 28, who works at his brother-in-law's La Caribena bakery, has been following the election and intends to vote — though he still remains undecided, and isn't very pleased with what he's been hearing in the campaign thus far.

"Everybody is too focused on having a black or a female president. We should be focused on who is a better leader, and I don't think either candidate will be [a leader]."

Other residents do express some, shall we say, decisiveness.

"I can't stand Republicans and I'm prejudiced," says Robert Anderson, 57, standing outside the Old Philadelphia Bar. "I'm voting for Clinton."

"I'm for Clinton," agrees Judy Schneider, 54, a truck driver. "Men have fucked up the country enough. Get these drugs out of here and ship the foreigners back to where the hell they came from. I might sound prejudiced, but that's because I am."

City Paper tried to get a sense of what Kensingtonians thought might break this pattern of disillusionment and disgust. Ron Waite, a Clinton supporter who's owned a True Value hardware store in the neighborhood for 25 years, says he thinks that anyone who can bring industry back to the once-industrial neighborhood could do a lot of good. Patrick Seyler, interim pastor at the neighborhood's New Creation Church, says that, contrary to Anderson and Schneider, he thinks it would help if a president would try to close the racial divide.

"I would like to see Latino people appreciated in general for having made a historical contribution to this country," he says.

Oscar dePaz, a student who plays a leadership role at New Creation, says he thinks that more explicit investment in places like Kensington would help.

"If a candidate would push people more into social entrepreneurship and the money came from the government agencies ... for social advocacy programs for the inner city — places where poverty is high — that would make me consider a candidate," he says.

In general, the folks at New Creation say Kensington is controlled by drug dealers, and the realities of the streets register with residents far more than politics. They believe that politicians should put more effort into correcting the situation.

"It is worth investing in people," Seyler says. "When we talk about investment in a purely capitalistic paradigm, we're talking about profit. I would like to hear the candidates talk about the value of investing in people."

(nadia.stadnycki@citypaper.net)