One of the biggest themes here at the Local Knowledge Blog is how we talk about Camden. Does talking about the good mean we’re “ignoring” the bad? Is the ever-present focus on “poorest” and “most violent” poverty porn or an accurate description? That’s a topic that the Courier-Post addressed directly, and that I was proud to see my alma mater (Penn) take a stab at as well. Kudos to Mike Tony (@Mike__Tony), not many students can write a nuanced piece about Camden. Here’s his take on Fr. Jeff Putthoff and Hopeworks:
Father Jeff Putthoff sees very little good to write about. As executive director of Hopeworks ‘N Camden, a nonprofit dedicated to getting youth ages 14-23 back in school, Putthoff has become convinced that Camden is far more ravaged than resilient.
“I actually think the Rolling Stone article was spot on,” Putthoff said. “I think the reaction, ‘Oh, but you’re missing the good,’ misses the fact that people are wounded. It is terrible here. We need to claim that every day.”
In fact, Putthoff, one of Camden’s most prominent nonprofit leaders, has an analogy to demonstrate just how egregiously he thinks Camden is hurting itself.
“[NFL running back] Adrian Peterson hurt his knee really badly,” Putthoff, a 16-year resident of Camden, said. “Then he came back in 10 months and almost broke every NFL rushing record. Everyone’s like, ‘Oh my god, how does that happen?’ The very first thing that happens to him after he hurts his knee is people run out on the field. He gets surgery. My experience in Camden is when people get hurt, no one responds.”
Two years ago, Putthoff was part of a protest group that planted nearly 100 white crosses bearing the names and ages of victims from 2012 and earlier in front of Camden’s City Hall.
“The mayor and city government got really upset and said we were giving Camden a bad name by drawing attention to this,” Putthoff said. “We’ve normalized the violence and trauma so much that we now say the problem is when you talk about it.”
And here’s a few of our loyal readers over at the Courier-Post opining about coverage there:
“Camden is the latest battleground between public school advocates and the corporate-financed and -led movement to privatize education in our poor urban centers,” writes Jose Delgado.
He believes we need to dig further into the school district’s spending, both past and present, and hold champions of school choice and charters to harsher questioning and greater scrutiny.
…
“I didn’t see the C-P as part of Camden,” resident Mike Morgan writes. But, he says, “coverage of Camden has improved especially within the last year, focusing more on daily-life issues of Camden and less on the dramatic.”
Collingswood resident Joseph Russell was once annoyed by our negative stories about crime and the schools, but lately, he says, we’ve gotten better.
“Obviously crime will always be covered, but I was very happy to see the paper cover the Camden Night Gardens event, both before and after. And I loved reading the in-depth article about demolishing abandoned properties and the challenges it brings to residents and city officials.”
“Articles like those, which show Camden as a real place with real people trying to overcome problems with barely any help from the city government or otherwise, are important to publish,” he adds, “because people’s perception of the city is basically a crime-ridden city with dangerous minorities …
“Barely anyone in the suburbs talks about Camden as a real place and I think that’s sad.”
I know this is something I struggle with daily on this blog, and in discussing Camden in a number of different circles. Glad to see the discussion extending to places like the Courier-Post and Daily Pennsylvanian.
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