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Bill Butler (left), and Brannon Gilmore (right), director
and assistant director of the West Philadelphia
Community Center, chat with Maleeka Borders, 16,
in the computer room. The center has had to cut back
its hours because of lack of funding.
Daniel Rubin: Haven struggles, as do its youth
By Daniel Rubin
Inquirer Columnist
Trying to make sense of wolfpacks in subway concourses, I dropped in on the
West Philadelphia Community Center, a bullet-scarred wonder that struggles
to keep a light on at night.
The place was a swarm of activity - guys in their late teens and early 20s
playing fast and freestyle basketball, girls watching movies and music
videos in the computer room, center director Bill Butler setting take-out
pizza on a conference table, intended to coax some kids to talk.
Four teens sat around the long table, not saying much at first, as I asked
what would make someone attack a man or woman for sport.
The teenagers talked of a change in season. "When it starts to get nice,
people start to get crazy," said Maleeka Borders, 16, soft-spoken and
pretty, as she thumbed her cell phone.
"Nowadays it's getting crazier and crazier. People don't have nothing to do.
And when you have nothing to do, you spend your time doing anything. People
get caught up in the wrong thing."
She knows the craziness firsthand. Last summer, when budget problems
curtailed the Mantua center's hours, she had nothing to do all day, she
said, so she'd sleep until dinnertime.
"It was like 12:30 one morning. I was walking to 40th and Fairmount. I felt
something hit my back."
First she thought that a brick had struck her from behind. But a bullet had
slammed into her left shoulder. She walked home, and recovered in time to be
back in school that fall.
"Didn't cry?" asked Khiry Blaylock, 19, across the table.
"The only reason I started crying was because of the blood."
Up until four years ago, the center was open nights until 9, but the
nonprofit that runs it, Caring People Alliance, could no longer find the
money. Funding programs for kids over 13 is tough, says Arlene Bell, the
organization's president. "We have an age group of kids who are not safe on
the streets, and as a practical matter, there is no money to provide for
them. That is astonishing to me."
So, in 2004, the center started closing at 6 p.m.
Scared on the streets
Butler, the building's 36-year-old director, said he'd be working late and
on his way home would see kids - 8, 9 years old - running through the
streets. "They'd tell me they were scared, the younger ones in particular."
A teen delegation approached him last summer, led by Chaz Walker, 19, who
had been going there since he was 4, and who in his younger days was "the
Dennis the Menace of West Philly," as Butler puts it.
The teens needed the place, Walker told him. Butler promised to find a way.
And he did.
By staggering his employees' hours, he was able to keep five people working
late two nights a week. Since November, the center has stayed open Wednesday
and Thursday nights until 8:30.
What would you be doing if the place weren't open? I asked the teens.
"Be either at work or in the house," Blaylock said.
"Probably not that," Walker said. "Be on the corner."
The hard corner
But the corner is getting less hospitable. Four weeks ago, Blaylock's cousin
was shot to death outside the bar, called the Easy Corner.
Butler says the push of Drexel and Penn students has flushed the drug
dealers onto the community center's block.
"This was sacred ground, this block," Butler says.
The teens say the center offers more than an open door. Butler and his
assistant director, Branon Gilmore, have created a community. The men have
known each other since third grade, when they were city kids in Reading and
relied on its clubs and community centers and sports leagues. Best friends
for nearly 30 years.
Butler, a musician and Drexel grad in computers, has been at the center
since 2000. He recruited Gilmore, who had been working at Temple in
admissions.
"I'm just trying to bring the values I grew up with," says Gilmore, a former
high school quarterback.
I was still struggling with making sense of the subway attacks.
So what was going on with the Simon Gratz High School students accused of
beating a Starbucks manager? It was a lot to ask a conference room of teens
pulled from their games.
What were these Gratz kids looking for? I continued. Were they just looking
to fight? Did they need . . .
"A place to go where they're wanted," Chaz Walker said, finishing my
sentence, if not my thought.
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Contact Daniel Rubin at 215-854-5917 or drubin@phillynews.com.
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