‘Being together is medicine’: West Philly’s Peoplehood Parade marks 25th anniversary milestone

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Hundreds of people marched through the streets of West Philadelphia on Saturday, taking part in the 25th annual Peoplehood Parade & Pageant.

Participants from at least 42 groups carried artwork and played music while advocating for issues including Palestine, immigrant rights, affordable housing, ending cash bail, safe streets and public transit.

Jennifer Turnbull, co-executive director of Spiral Q, which organizes the parade and spends months building the artworks exhibited in both the parade and pageant, told the crowd that the event is “a handmade and people-powered celebration of solidarity, creativity and courage.”

“Peoplehood is not just a single day. It’s an art-making and community-building process that takes …. hundreds of artists, activists, families, students and you to create,” they said.

Turnbull told WHYY News that the 25th anniversary is a special moment.

“I’m most excited for us to be able to do this 25 times, and for it to always be something that is necessary and needed for our communities to have moments of solidarity and joy and collective assembly and exercising our First Amendment rights,” she said.

Themes of this year’s parade and pageant, Turnbull said, are centered, as they always are, on “protecting our communities.”

“It’s about making sure that all of our folks have access to their basic needs,” they said. “And it is when people don’t have access to their basic needs and being able to have freedom of expression, that’s when things start to break down … That’s what Spiral Q has always been about, making sure that our stories are told and heard and that we have agency to advocate for ourselves.”

Angelita Ellison, of Sharswood, marched in the parade for the first time. She participated with the Brewerytown Sharswood Neighborhood Coalition, advocating for affordable housing.

“I volunteer with them and in their housing committee, and we’re very interested in the mayor’s H.O.M.E program and how that’s gonna affect the city,” she said. “And we would just like to have that program focus on the folks who need it the most, lower income Philadelphians.”

Asad Abdurrahim, 16, and Mamady Toure, 17, both West Philadelphia residents, marched with their group, Neighborhood Bike Works.

Toure said the group worked with Spiral Q to create a float and read poetry for the pageant to highlight the importance of the organization.

“It likes to give back to the youth, and it likes to take care of us,” Tore said. “Because the whole point of the Neighborhood Bike Works programming is really to get kids off the street and stuff and teach them useful skills.”

Turnbull said the power of the event comes from its focus on celebration, joy and solidarity in the midst of grappling with painful issues and topics.

“If you’re mad all the time, then that takes up a lot of energy, and this is a moment for us to rejuvenate that energy, to come together, to be social creatures, to assemble, to commune, to express with one another, nonverbally, through all of the different artistic forms that parade encompasses,” she said. “Being able to walk and take over our Philadelphia neighborhood streets collectively in joyous solidarity means that we can pull all of our individual suffering, oppression, issues, whatever you want to call them, together, to the forefront, and just being together is a medicine.”

Hil O’Connell, a West Philadelphia resident, said they have “witnessed the parade’s glory before” as a spectator, but this was the first year they are participating as a member of the Rise Choir.

“I just think an opportunity to come together and hold in both hands, on one hand, the demands, the injustice, the deep pain that our world is feeling right now,” they said. “And on the other side, the deep celebration, the glory of people coming together in this way that we can hold both is magic to me.”