The New Green Jobs

by Bruce Schimmel

Many of the adolescents in the city's juvenile detention centers look like they're refugees from bizarro land. Heavily tattooed, their arms, necks and even their faces peek out through a forest of gang tags and girlfriends' names. These throwaway children brand themselves, I think, because these permanent symbols give the illusion of stability in their otherwise volatile lives. They name themselves, for the same reason you don't name an abandoned dog: because the naming makes them harder to ignore. So let's listen for a moment. For as reviled as these kids are, their fears reveal our own. About employment, for instance.

"Do you think someone would give me a good job?" asked one 17-year-old with a cluster of tattooed blue tears seeming to fall from an eye. The name "Weedy" — in truly beautiful calligraphy — scrolls up his left arm, finishing in the flourish of a cannabis leaf.

Ironically, Weedy might get a legal job in his chosen field, and surprisingly soon. The first question asked in Obama's first public video chat was about legalizing marijuana. Some say it would stimulate the economy. Of course it would.

But even if farming pot has yet to sprout, many jobs coming from Washington will be filled by people possessed of strength and manual dexterity — rather than by keyboard-diddling professionals.

To paraphrase Obama, it's a paradox of our time that there are millions of Americans searching for work, while there is so much work to be done. It's a mismatch of talent and need. It's the dysfunctional legacy of consumerism and greed — Reagan's faulty moral towers that are now, thankfully, falling.

So, while there's little stimulus money to help the hundreds of lawyers laid off by the city's once-invincible law firms, there's money aplenty to employ a chunk of an estimated 50,000 Philadelphians now looking for work. Money to fix roads, weatherize homes, provide food and generally contribute to the common good.

To prepare for the infusion from Washington, City Council recently commissioned an excellent study. Authored by former Councilman Ed Schwartz, it outlines a simple yet grand agenda (phillyneighborhoods.org/economicrecoveryreport.pdf).

Instead of showering wealth on the rich, hoping something will trickle down, Schwartz shows how Washington's money might be used to rebuild our foundations — literally and figuratively.

Among Philly's shovel-ready projects are: 300 vacant homes that the Philadelphia Housing Authority needs to rehabilitate; basic system repairs to some 1,800 homes, yearly; weatherization, as part of the greening of some 25,000 homes; $100 million in SEPTA upgrades; and hiring 200 more police.

Schwartz estimates that some 15,000 jobs, at a minimum, could be saved or created. Which would be good news, indeed, for kids ensconced in lockups, or for families trapped in the 'hood.

It is a radical, back-to-our-roots vision, of repairing, making and growing things that directly benefit the greatest number of people, a vision where useful, physical work is respected once again.

This is not to say that all those unemployed lawyers should toss out their degrees. Hardly. Even if their hands are too tender to pick up a shovel, lawyers are still needed to roll up their sleeves. There are plenty of wrongs to be righted, and justice to be done.

Still, what's coming right now from Washington is meaningful work that'll make Weedy proud. It's work he can do right away, while we all wait for legislators to ready themselves for the new world being born.

(bruce@schimmel.com)