posted by Amy Hillier

on May 18, 2007

What an exciting week. On Tuesday, I campaigned in West Philadelphia for one of the mayoral candidates. Canvassing door-to-door in neighborhoods where I had never been gave me a new appreciate for how big this city is and how much people care about it. Many of the people I worked with, and many of the people working for other candidates, were getting paid to help out. I was really pleased by how passionately the paid people working with me felt about the outcome, but other paid help seemed more interested in the personal financial outcome than political outcome. This led me to think a bit more about the long-standing tradition of street money and vote buying in Philadelphia.

The women of the Philadelphia College Settlement Association wanted Du Bois to come to Philadelphia in 1896 to study the "Negro problem." One aspect of this problem, in their minds, was the tendency for blacks to vote for the Republican machine rather than support the progressive candidates the women thought would actually improve the city and the lives of blacks. Apparently in return for their votes, blacks were able to secure a limited number of government jobs and protection for their "voting" (drinking and gambling) clubs. Du Bois knew this was among their concerns when he agreed to come to Philadelphia. He wrote a piece called "The Black Vote of Philadelphia" in 1905 in which is his somewhat sympathetic to blacks for selling their votes, but he called for greater civic education of these mostly new voters to make government truly democratic.

"There is no democratic government in Philadelphia, and has not been for a generation. There is an oligarcy of ward politicians and business men using public office for private gain." Could the same be said today? Is today's "street money" effective at mobilizing people on election day because we expect so little from government and because $100 is great money to a lot of people in Philadelphia? I'd be interested in exploring some of these issues more.