Fineprint

WELCOME HOME: Once a decrepit warehouse, this Hamilton Street building is the city's newest shelter. Photo By: Michael T. Regan

Less words, more story.

Home Builders

With a plate of chicken and vegetables in front of him, Warren Bruckhart swaps conversation at a full dinner table. He makes plans to grab a cup of coffee next week with a friend before surveying a brightly lit cafeteria and talking about his tumultuous life.

The 50-year-old West Chester native was among more than 250 people who attended the Saturday grand opening ceremony for Our Brothers' Place, Philadelphia's newest homeless shelter. With a one-year contract from the city, a team from the Bethesda Project nonprofit spent the previous two weeks transforming a filthy warehouse at 907 Hamilton St. -- near Callowhill -- into an orderly sanctuary for up to 250 men.

There, patrons will be able to participate in a variety of personal-growth programs during the day. They can also find a shower, a change of clothes and a meal. No one will be turned away.

On a larger scale, Our Brothers' Place may help alleviate the increasing demand for shelter in the city. A recent Philadelphia Resources for Human Development, Inc. (RHD) study found that the homeless population is rising due to increased unemployment, higher living costs and cuts in government funding.

The Rev. William Taylor, site administrator, says the 40-person staff was gleaned from about 400 applications. (Some employees were once homeless themselves.) Volunteers provide resources and companionship -- including simple gestures like singing "Happy Birthday" before a guest makes his wish.

When Bruckhart, an invited guest at the event, describes the successful network between Bethesda, the Mayor's Task Force on Homeless Services and other regional groups, he speaks from experience.

In his memory, he sees a high-school graduate who worked at the same company for 17 years. Then, he sees a homeowner who was married for 11 years. Removing his glasses to wipe his eyes, slightly embarrassed that they've started to water, he says, "I was a regular, middle-class, blue-collar person until my behavior and substance abuse wrecked everything."

Before getting released from prison in July 2000 -- he served a 10-year sentence -- Bruckhart wrote to the Bethesda Project, which has more than a dozen facilities for men and women throughout Philadelphia. They wrote back and opened their doors to him.

"I stopped trying to change the world," he says. "I'm outnumbered six billion to one. Now, I tailor myself to fit into society."

Today, Bruckhart rents a place at Bethesda's North Broad Street location, where formerly homeless men and women lease rooms from the Philadelphia Housing Authority. He's also learning vocational skills, which he hopes will render him employable again. Bethesda officials hope to see more of those stories.

Bethesda's Executive Director Angelo Sgro told civic leaders and marginalized residents, "Our goal is nothing less than to make this place unnecessary." Father Domenic Rossi, who founded Bethesda in 1979, explained the organization's mission in simple terms: to provide a family for those who have none. That's exactly what Bethesda means to Bruckhart.

"Without them," he says, "I wouldn't have had a chance." —Alexa James

Amnesty Philadelphia

Before September, the region’s Amnesty International USA community was scattered about the Delaware Valley like disconnected pieces of a living jigsaw puzzle. There were student chapters, community groups and members at-large, but they lacked unity and a direct channel of communication.

But now, thanks to a new leadership structure, the volunteers are recharged and say they have plans to take on human rights injustices both in the region and around the world, according to Mary Shaw, who has the newly conceived title of Amnesty International Philadelphia area coordinator.

When not busy with her day job as a technical writer for a consulting firm, Shaw has spent nearly all of her waking hours in the past year devoted to the cause.

"Previously, you had local and student groups across the country off doing their own thing," she explains. In the "new and improved" system, quarterly meetings of local chapter leaders and monthly newsletters will help bring people together. (The new structure, an experimental model, was planned during the summer by Amnesty's Mid-Atlantic Regional headquarters.)

But what this really means -- locally -- is that Amnesty may very well ramp up its fight against the commonwealth's death penalty.

Today, Pennsylvania has the fourth largest death row population in the nation with 232 inmates awaiting lethal injection. A disproportionate number of these inmates come from Philadelphia. (While Philadelphians only represent 12 percent of the total population, 53 percent of the commonwealth's death row cases come from the City of Brotherly Love. Gary Heidnik was the last inmate to be executed.)

Already, Amnesty has held a student conference and, on Oct. 11, an anti-death-penalty rally outside the Statehouse. According to Shaw, 800 people attended, including George Ryan, the former Illinois governor who imposed a moratorium on the death penalty in that state in 2000 after finding that more death sentences had been overturned than carried out over a 13-year period.

"Gov. Rendell [needs to] face the fact that there are flaws in the justice system and innocent people are being sent to death row," says Shaw, who ultimately wants a death-penalty moratorium, followed by the worldwide abolition. "Nicholas Yarris is a case in point."

Nicholas James Yarris was convicted in 1982 for the rape and murder of an Upper Chichester resident at the Tri-State Mall in Delaware. After spending 21 years on Pennsylvania's death row, Yarris was granted another court date when DNA evidence proved, this July, that his semen was not found on the victim.

Still, Rendell's office was apparently unmoved by the rally. Spokesperson Kate Phillips says that "Gov. Rendell has no intention at this time" to bring a death-penalty moratorium here.

"Reading all of the studies, [Rendell] doesn't believe there is an institutional problem." Since his inauguration, the former DA has already signed nine death warrants. (Nobody's been executed, though).

Whether fighting against the death penalty or playing watchdog for LGBT rights locally or seeking humanitarian aid for the Congolese abroad, Amnesty's Philadelphia members say they will not be easily deterred. They're going for long-term strategy, believing that, over time, informing the public and petitioning the powerful gets results.—Morris Bracy IV