(Photo from WHYY’s Emma Lee)
Imagine my delight when WHYY news-boss Chris Satullo asked me to moderate the Milton Street portion of Wednesday’s mayoral forum that was co-sponsored by business group PENJERDEL.
Suffice it to say, Street and I had an insightful 20-minute chat covering matters of the economy, education and race-relations in the city. But one moment of attention-straying detail that stuck in my memory was when Street broke down how he would have handled the May 1985 MOVE disaster.
You can check out the audio of said interview via this link (it’s in the 7:30 range). But, here’s a brief transcription:
Milton Street on former Mayor W. Wilson Goode Sr.: He burned down half of Southwest Philly. Couldn’t think. When you have this radical group out there, there were other ways to deal with them. You gonna drop a bomb down, burn half Southwest Philly down?
Brian Hickey: What would you have done?
MS: I would have had enough guts to have gone there and talked to ’em. He was afraid. I’d have gone out there and said, ‘Bring your butt out here. Let’s talk.’ You know, I knew Delbert Africa; all of em. They were not people who you couldn’t talk to. You know, now, they didn’t smell too good, but you still had to go there and talk to them.
BH: True. Let’s turn to education…
And that’s all for this most recent update from the campaign trail.