By Mark Cohen
Running for the Democratic nomination for President on an anti-war platform forty years ago, Minnesota Senator Eugene J. McCarthy said something like this in description of his own candidacy: “In times of crisis, the cry goes out for a conventional candidate to lead our nation back to the way things used to be. [...]

by Shannon Curley

Philadelphia has closed more than half of its curfew centers in a move that officials say is not related to the $450+ million projected budget gap Mayor Michael Nutter announced in September. The closings went largely unnoticed. We only discovered this after after initiating a follow up to our earlier story on the [...]

The League of Women Voters ought to take lessons from Bruce Springsteen. This is how to run a voter registration drive. Bruce Springsteen, a supporter of Barack Obama, performed a seven song acoustic concert on a packed JFK Parkway. Yesterday’s event was aimed to boost Obama’s chances of winning in Pennsylvania by getting as many [...]

By Shannon Curley
Updated version 10/04/08 2:52pm

We can all hope that today’s passage of the $700 billion bailout of the struggling U.S. economy- the biggest federal government economic intervention since the Great Depression - will boost the fortunes of struggling American families, but for many families hard times are already here. It’s at times like these [...]

by K. Sayford-Wilson

As the mother of a child with special needs, I am concerned about the teacher shortage and the many problems in the School District of Philadelphia. However, regardless of how the School District decides to handle its problems, or how the State handles our funding, I do feel strongly about one [...]

by Andrew Forgotch and Amiekay Richcrick
Students at Temple University share their thoughts on last night’s Vice Presidential Debate between Republican Sarah Palin and Democrat Joseph Biden
This video was produced It’s Our City interns Andrew Forgotch and Amiekay Richcrick who are seniors at Temple University. Both are also on staff with Temple’s TV news program Temple [...]

Updated 12:40am
Updated 11:45pm
Thank you to the hundreds of Twitter participants in the Philadelphia area who posted comments on the Vice Presidential Debate.
If you missed the debate here’s a downloadable Mp3 file of tonight’s debate.
What follows is a collection of comments re-posted from Twitter participants that WHYY follows. With these comments we created a real-time Philly-centric [...]

by Shannon Curley
It’s Our City is a project that aims to give community activists access to a larger audience. One issue that has sparked strong community involvement has been where to place two planned casinos in Philadelphia.There has a vocal opposition to both casinos from both neighborhood associations and more professional groups like Casino-Free Philadelphia. [...]

by Shannon Curley
Yesterday a state court knocked down one of two strategies the City of Philadelphia is using to pass its own gun laws.  The ruling does not directly affect the three recently passed gun laws. The laws require gun owners to report lost or stolen firearms, make it illegal to have a handgun for [...]

By Shannon Curley
It’s no secret that many of Philadelphia’s public schools have the odds stacked against them. The district suffers from a teacher shortage, large class sizes, and lack of supplies. Improving education was a cornerstone of then candidate Michael Nutter’s 2007 mayoral campaign. Earlier this month, Nutter as mayor, outlined his vision for Philadelphia’s [...]