Six months later, Fulton found himself 60 miles away from the posh neighborhood he used to work for before, as the general manager of the more modest Country Chef restaurant in Wilton, New Hampshire, a town with a population of less than 4,000 and a sketchy mobile signal.

The reasons for the downturn in his fortunes was the time Fulton took off to enter treatment for his alcohol and drug addiction. After seeking treatment, the Boston job was not there anymore.

New Hampshire is in the midst of an addiction crisis that is now a front-and-center issue in the Democratic primary here. According to the National Institute on Drug Abuse, the rate of overdose deaths in New Hampshire has climbed steadily since 1999 and peaked in 2017 with 490 deaths, which ranked the third in the country.

Even though the number is expected to drop to 364 in 2019, when the final tally is made, the drug crisis remains to be the Granite staters’ biggest concern, according to a 2019 poll conducted by the University of New Hampshire.

“Everyone living in New Hampshire knows someone who has been struggling with opioid overdose,” said Theo Groh, 29, a resident of Manchester.

Many Democratic candidates treated the opioid epidemic a healthcare problem, but for former addicts like Fulton, it was an economic problem. Fulton said it was “fateful” to run into Holly Cekala, the owner of The Country House, who opened the restaurant in December 2019 with a mission to hire former drug addicts and provide them with a normal working environment.

Fulton had a wonderful resume in the hospitality industry and had run five restaurants and bars. Before the Pour House, he owned Cowboys Bar and Grill, a $3-a-drink bar in Woonsocket, Rhode Island until July 2019. But his successful career in the food business paused after booze and cocaine became a serious issue for him.

“You work weekends and nights, often time because of the hours, people are using drugs as crutches to get through the shift or up for a shift,” said Fulton.

Cekala herself suffered from the alcohol and drug culture of the hospitality industry. As a teenager, she rewarded herself with a drink at the end of a shift, which is common in a lot of places. “Then you started to look forward to these drinks,” she said.

People who work in this industry “are susceptible to addiction,” Cekala said. Her alcoholic issue then caused a car accident in which she was injured, and which put her on morphine to relieve the pain. “It’s just a spiral of events once you are addicted,” she said.

The workers in the accommodation and food service industry have the highest rates of illicit drug use ­—19.1% of all workers— of any profession in the U.S., according to a report by Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration, a branch of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services.

There are 15.3 million Americans employed in the restaurant industry in 2019 and nearly 6 in 10 adults have worked in the restaurant industry at some point during their lives. “There are millions of us working at the bars and restaurants, we are the ones working the weekends, we are the ones working holidays for you,” Fulton said. “We should not be forgotten.”

When seven Democratic candidates took the debate stage in Manchester on February 7, many talked about their plans to tackle the substance abuse crisis. Each had a different proposal.

As she has before, Minnesota Senator Amy Klobuchar mentioned her dad’s alcoholic history and said “this is personal to me.” She proposed a $100 billion policy to tax opioid manufacturers and use the money to expand treatment. Vice President Joe Biden stressed his early work on curbing drug overdose. Entrepreneur Andrew Yang supported supervised withdrawal sites and mandatory three-day treatment. Mayor Pete Buttigieg called for “decriminalizing all drugs and treating it as a medical issue but not a moral failure.”

Cekala watched the debate from her restaurant on Friday night but none of the candidates’ words appealed to her. “It’s not a healthcare problem, it’s an economic problem. People can’t find a decent job, they can’t support their families and pay for their rents, that’s depressing,” Cekala said.

For Fulton and Cekala, the question is “what is next after treatment?” In rehab, “you disappear from the normal world for 3 months, you get healthy and clean, and you get out of there. But you don’t have a job,” said Fulton.

After leaving the hospitality industry, Cekala studied psychology at Rhode Island College and since then managed several recovery community centers, including one at the Rhode Island Women’s Prison. In Fulton’s words, “Holly was a recovery celebrity in Rhode Island.”

After 20 years of working in charity organizations and as a certified recovery counselor, she made the move to open a restaurant in December 2019. “There are too many restrictions. Don’t share the numbers, don’t become a friend,” Cekala said, referring to the restrictions placed on counselors. “Why would I charge someone to be his friend? But that’s essentially what he needs. A friend.”

Instead, she decided to reenter the industry that once failed her. She opened The Country Chef and hired ten employees, with eight of them were former addicts.

Cekala was not the first employer hiring former addicts. Republican Governor Chris Sununu launched The Recovery Friendly Workplaces in New Hampshire in 2018, to push employers to hire people who are in recovery and provide their employees with education and training related to substance misuse and behavioral health. Cekala applauded the effort, but she thought it was “a little bit behavioral health heavy.”

“I am not a behavioral health provider, just a small business owner to create a normal work environment,” said Cekala.

At 3pm on Saturday, the last group of late brunch eaters left. Fulton started to wipe the table and brought dirty dishes back to the kitchen while making small jokes with Cekala, who worked at the cashier. “They are all kids to me, I just want to cuddle them,” Cekala said.

“When we put the restaurant back together, Holly and I often went on and on, it almost felt like a counseling session, which is really helpful,” said Fulton.

Fulton has been sober for 80 days now. He now works 50 hours a week. Although the hours are still long, but “coffee is free” and he has “people, who have also gone through this to talk to all the time.”

Behind the cashier, there stands a wall of liquor bottles. Cekala has two designated people to make drinks and Fulton is one of them. The 33-year-old restaurant manager has been in this industry “since he could remember” and pouring drinks is a day-to-day job. “I was just made for this, what was I supposed to do?” said Fulton.

But the motivation is different for Fulton now. Besides being a successful manager, he wants to “fill this place with once lost adults and kids” and build a stepping stone for them to get their lives back. People with drug records are often seen as troublesome and incapable of holding on jobs. “But one good reference can fix that resume forever,” said Fulton. “If we can give them experience and solid training here, they at least have us to call.”

Although Fulton has never foreseen his future in a family-style restaurant in New Hampshire, he called it “an interesting twist in his life.” And if the model of Cekala’s recovery-friendly workplace works, it would be a new start of Fulton’s career.

“If I can blend my talent with my recovery, God bless it,” Fulton said.

 Zishu Sherry Qin is a graduate student in the Business and Economic Reporting Program

The post Thriving while Sober in A Drug Crippled Industry appeared first on Pavement Pieces.

In May 2018, Mayor Bill de Blasio announced four safe injection sites would be built across New York. Nearly a year later, while the opioid crisis rages on, the sites are no closer to reality due to a mix of legal and financial issues and questions about the research that suggests them as a solution.

Not everyone is convinced that the mayor’s office is genuine about wanting to get these sites operational.

“I think they just [announced them] to shut everybody up,” said Axcel Barboza, a syringe exchange and outreach specialist at New York Harm Reduction Educators (NYHRE). “It takes a lot to start a safe injection site up, a lot of money and s–t like that. I think they just said yes to calm everybody down.”

Solutions to the opioid crisis are in high demand as overdose deaths continue to rise across the country. Providing a place to do drugs may sound counter-productive, but according to advocates, these sites they could be the new front lines in the opioid crisis.

“When someone says ‘Oh, I think these things are a bad idea because X,’ I think the thing you need to add onto that sentence is, ‘And that’s why I believe people shooting up in McDonald’s bathrooms is a better thing,’’’ said Peter Davidson, Ph.D., an associate professor at the University of California.

Underneath an expressway off-ramp near 181st Street and Amsterdam Avenue in Washington Heights, used syringes, crack pipes and empty liquor bottles are left lying on the floor in a popular spot for drug use. Photo by Razi Syed.

While SISs do not officially exist in the United States, more than one hundred such sites are operating around the world, including in Canada, Australia, and Europe. They allow drug users to inject themselves in a safe environment, with medical professionals on hand; they provide clean syringes and stock overdose-reversing medications, as well as a place to ‘hang out’ while the high wears off.

Liz Evans has been involved with harm reduction for over two decades. Currently the executive director of NYHRE, she was a co-founder of Insite, a site in Vancouver, Canada, established in 2003 – the first safe injection site in North America. Between 2003 and 2017, three million people injected there.

“[Insite] quickly became so much more than just an injection site,” said Evans. “No one ever died there. Millions of injections have happened there, so for one thing, no one ever dies at an injection site, ever, because there’s staff to make sure you don’t, which is huge.”

According to Evans, these sites are meant to protect those dependent on drugs, while also increasing general public safety in high-risk areas. Research does seem to indicate that they’re doing just that – but there are some who think that the research itself is flawed.

“Many [studies] fail to use an actual control group. They don’t compare the results of safe injection sites to other solutions,” said Alex Titus, a public interest fellow based in Washington, D.C. “The research is sloppy.”

Naloxone, a drug on hand at clinics used to administer in cases of opioid overdose. Photo courtesy of Wikipedia

A significant blow to the safe-injection site discussion came in August, when a major study in the field was retracted. Another analysis, published in the International Journal of Drug Policy, found that the sites have no significant effect on overdose deaths and only a small effect on crime reduction, and found only eight studies that were “rigorous and transparent.”

Magdalena Cerda, DrPH, the Director of the Center on Opioid Epidemiology and Policy at New York University, points out that the research on safe injection sites is mostly preliminary and comes from out of the country, especially from Canada and Australia, where such sites are legal.

Even if safe injection sites can overcome the research-based hurdles they face, they still have to counter legal challenges. In many cities, they are on the brink of reality,  including a mock site in San Francisco and an attempted start up in Philadelphia that is currently being challenged by the federal government. Evans thinks that the future of safe injection sites depends on that case.

“The mayor isn’t going to move on it until the governor says it’s okay, and now that there’s this legal case that’s just come up in Philadelphia, I don’t think anyone is going to do anything about it until they hear what the outcome of that case is,” she explained.

The Philadelphia site is being challenged as violating the “Crackhouse Statute,” a law which makes it a felony to “knowingly open, lease, rent, use, or maintain any place for the purpose of manufacturing, distributing, or using any controlled substance.”

Despite these restrictions, there is at least one site operating illegally in an undisclosed location somewhere in the country.

“In about 2013 or 2014, an organization in the United States who provided services to people who use drugs was struggling with the fact that a lot of their service-users were dying of overdose, and they didn’t want to wait,” said Davidson. “They just opened one.”

Davidson performed a research study there, along with Alex Kral, Ph.D., an infectious disease epidemiologist at RTI Health Solutions. The study showed him that safe injection sites are a valid response to the crisis.

“It can be fairly difficult to study something that’s so underground, our research to date has basically said that this facility has saved multiple lives, and doesn’t seem to be having any negative impact on the surrounding community,” he said.

Titus seemed less convinced.

“These sites lead to drug normalization, which is exactly what we’ve been trying to fight,” said Titus. “Advocates claim such sites save lives. Sure, you’re saving that individual that single time they overdose, while continuing to allow them to be slaves to the drug.”

“People are going to shoot up wherever they’re going to shoot up,” said Evans. “That’s a given. This is a response to something that’s already happening.”

Davidson argues that the sites are especially useful when it comes to helping users get into treatment, which can break the cycle of addiction.

Davidson says that while the sites are backed by research, it almost doesn’t matter how effective these sites are – they are always a better option than the alternative.

The post Safe Injection Sites Stall in NYC appeared first on Pavement Pieces.

New York state is on the cusp of legalizing marijuana. While there are promises of billions of tax revenue for the state, many advocates are still weary of the proposed legislation.

Nancy Udell, a director of the advocacy group NORML, which fights to end the prohibition of cannabis in the United States, is pleased to see the push for legalization in the state of New York, but believes Governor Andrew Cuomo was swayed by the dollar signs.

“He maintained it was quote ‘a gateway drug’ until about a year and half ago,” Udell said. “I think the fact that Massachusetts, Maine, and D.C….all legalized, the governor saw that and realized that New York was going to lose out on tax revenue.”

According to the Boston Business Journal, Massachusetts sales tax from recreational marijuana could reach as high as $61.6 million in fiscal 2019 and $154.2 million in fiscal 2020.

It’s not just recreation and state tax revenue that would benefit from legalizing the substance. NORML and Udell are looking forward to the possible revenue in local communities that could be generated if legalization occurs, following in the footsteps of a state like Colorado.

According to the Colorado Government, recreational marijuana sales have had a steady increase since legalization in 2014, with total cannabis sales (including medical and recreational) equaling almost $1.4 billion as of November 2018.

Yet, legalization could spell trouble for black market dealers. One of those dealers, who wished to remain anonymous, understands that making cannabis legal may only increase their competition.

“It would mean less demand because there would be more supply,” they said. “I mean the biggest negative is more dealers and dispensaries opening, because people will be less on the fence for selling and buying knowing they won’t be punished for it.”

However the dealer understands that legalization is an important step for New York as it has gained momentum and acceptance. A recent Quinnipiac poll showed that 65 percent of New Yorkers voted in support of marijuana being legal, with 59 percent supporting the sale of legal marijuana in their community.

“Legalization would mean we are adapting to the times and opening up the floodgates of a billion dollar industry in a city,” the dealer said.

If legalized, the dealer said they would try and adapt to the change, and even pursue opening their own dispensary, with a variety of new cannabis products opening the door to a profitable and legal business.

“You’d be going from selling straight flower to a product like bath bombs with THC in them,” the dealer said. “It’s crazy!”

Although Udell and supporters of legalizing marijuana are pleased that legalization may finally have it’s moment in the state of New York, they’re also aware of the social equity issues that come with the legislation.

“What I mean [by social equity] is any taxes collected through marijuana sells or any related products, should be directed toward communities who have suffered in the war against cannabis,” Udell said. “And those communities are mostly minority communities.”

While the legislation proposed in New York mentions social equity, Udell says there is little substance behind the words.

“There’s no meat to those bones,” she said. “The legislation will appoint a commissioner who will make the final decision when it comes to social equity.”

“But that’s not what we want, we want it in the law that certain percentage of the revenue made from marijuana would go to these communities,” Udell said.

Udell and NORML continue to push for a proposal that includes social equity. The momentum is on the side of legalization, but the details of Cuomo’s proposed bill are still a concern for legalization advocates.

“What the governor proposed, some things we like but a lot of things we hate,” she said. “I mean that’s the most complicated part of this, you know, how to structure it so you can help these emerging businesses. I think there are a lot of good proposals people have put forward, but certainly you need to do this properly.”

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Around 6 p.m. on a breezy overcast Saturday evening, Jose Ramirez was getting ready to pick up the day’s heroin after several hours of panhandling in Washington Heights.

“Sometimes it take five minutes, sometimes it takes 45 minutes,” Ramirez said, explaining how long it takes to get the $30 to $40 for each day’s supply of drugs and food. “Sometimes it takes two hours.”

Ramirez, 36, is one of the several thousand homeless New Yorkers who have ruled out spending nights in the city’s shelters, preferring instead to take their chances on the streets and subways. The unsheltered homeless struggle with substance abuse issues and mental health issues , said Isaac McGinn, spokesman for the Homeless Services department.

McGinn said these issues make street homeless a uniquely challenging group to get off the street.

Beginning in 2016, the government of Mayor Bill de Blasio started Home-Stat, a program intended to provide daily outreach to street homeless and develop individualized plans for their eventual movement to a shelter or housing, said McGinn.

“It can take anywhere from one dozen to more than two hundred contacts to bring street homeless New Yorkers indoors,” he said.

Around 690 New Yorkers were helped off the street from March to October 2016.

Under Home-Stat, McGinn said, the city doubled the number of city outreach workers from 191 to 387. The outreach workers partner with existing homeless shelters and identify individuals for placement into drug rehabs, mental health facilities or explore possible transitional housing opportunities. Any homeless who appear to be a threat to themselves or others would be hospitalized.

But accepting the outreach efforts is voluntary and the homeless can’t be forced to utilize services or stay in a shelter, McGuinn said. Despite the city’s efforts, some of the street homeless are reluctant to move into shelters, citing safety and sanitary conditions, among other issues the facilities sometimes have.

“People get into fights in the shelters,” Ramirez said, “You never know what can happen to you.”

Instead, Ramirez spends each night in a sleeping bag underneath trees and other foliage in a closed-off area beside the Trans-Manhattan Expressway.

According to the New York Department of Homeless Services, the city’s homeless population has continued to rise over the past decade. In January 2017, more than 62,000 people slept in homeless shelters – 24,000 more than the roughly 38,000 people who were housed in shelters at the end of 2010. The numbers of homeless are now at the highest levels since the Great Depression of the 1930s.

In addition to the sheltered population, around 2,800 people, like Ramirez, sleep on the street each night, McGinn said.

Ramirez, who was born in Puerto Rico and settled in the Bronx with his mother when he was 15, has been living on the streets for seven years. During that time, day-to-day life has been a battle for survival and a focused effort to find funds for the day’s heroin to keep withdrawal symptoms at bay.

Symptoms of heroin withdrawal include muscle aches, nausea, sneezing, cold sweats and anxiety.

“Every time I wake up, I’m just thinking about getting $20 to get straight,” said Ramirez, while walking along Highbridge Park in black sweatpants and a navy blue raincoat. “Without the heroin, when you be a junkie, you can’t move. You don’t want to talk to people, you don’t want to do nothing.”

Ramirez said he started selling drugs when he was 17. By 19, he was using regularly.

“I started smoking weed. I started hanging out. Start working, making a little bit of money, and I ended with the wrong people – started selling drugs,” he said. “I was selling cocaine, then I started sniffing it, hanging out. Then I started selling dope, bagging it up – I caught a habit. I couldn’t get straight. Then the dope I was getting was garbage. I couldn’t get high so I started shooting.”

As Ramirez spoke, he stopped often to recall details and at times, struggled to articulate a timeline of events.

According to Ramirez, his mother passed away in 2010. Unable to make the rent payments from the apartment and trying to sustain a heroin addiction, Ramirez reluctantly went out to Washington Heights and found himself a place among the winding expressways to set himself up.

He chose to stay in Washington Heights, rather than the Bronx, where he had been living with his mother for around 14 years.

“This is where I used to come to cop and where I had all my friends,” he said.

Ramirez recalled how he felt the first time he had to panhandle to support himself.

“There was my friend – I was sick so I didn’t have no money – but he only had $10 and he said, ‘Yo, I’m going to go get straight,’” Ramirez said.

“I’d be like, ‘Yo, can you help me out today?’” Ramirez remembered. His friend suggested he grab a sign and panhandle next to the traffic. Ramirez countered that he was “jones,” or in pain from drug withdrawal, and passersby wouldn’t give him money.

Eventually, Ramirez said he was in too much pain and did what he had to do. He grabbed a sign and planted himself along the entrance to the Trans-Manhattan Expressway, near 179th Street. After around 40 minutes, he had collected $20 and purchased two bags of heroin. Since that day in 2009, Ramirez said panhandling has been the primary way of supporting himself.

Homeless panhandlers in Washington Heights is a familiar sight to residents.

Willie Blain, 57, has lived on the Washington Heights streets since 1989. He panhandles there to buy drugs.

Willie Blain, 57, stands alongside the Trans-Manhattan Expressway near his encampment in Washington Heights. Blain is among several thousand of New York’s homeless population that choose to live on the streets instead of entering the shelter system. Photo by Razi Syed.

He spoke quickly and confidently, with a rapid-fire, staccato cadence, but occasionally mumbled and veered fluidly from topic to topic. Blain said he struggled with schizophrenia.

“I always had been in the streets – wintertime, I was in the streets; summertime, I was in the streets,” he said. “Always in Washington Heights – these are like my stomping grounds.”

Alongside the Trans-Manhattan Expressway, Blain has carved out a living place for himself with a black computer chair cardboard boxes and plywood arranged together in a small fenced off area. The road barrier provides a small area of shelter from the rain.

“The thing with other people is –- I know how to hustle so good that they act like they like me, but they don’t like me,” Blain said. “They hate me ‘cause they can’t do like I do. I make money, a lot more money than they do. I panhandle. I help people with their cars, if they have a flat tire. I can do just about anything.”

Blain said he avoids the other homeless in Washington Heights, preferring to spend his time alone.
“I have trouble with people because they like me, want to be like me, but can’t be like me,” he said.

The New York winter, brutal and resolutely unforgiving with nighttime temperatures routinely dropping below freezing, are the most difficult times for the street homeless. During the 2013-2014 winter, the latest year for which statistics are available, six homeless people died of cold-related weather.

Ramirez said he suspects the heroin he uses daily helps him and other street homeless cope with the frigid weather.

“Most of the homeless out here are heroin addicts,” Ramirez said. “People be like, ‘How you survive out here in the wintertime?’ “I’ll be thinking that the heroin keep me warm.“Like as soon as you do the dope, you don’t feel the cold.”

Life on the street is largely a solitary struggle.

“Most of the time I be by myself ‘cause I always ended up getting fucked over,” he said. “I got tired of looking out for people – ‘yo, I’m sick,’ or ‘yo, I need a dollar to get over here.’ Most of these people, they never look out for you,” Ramirez said. “The heroin addicts here aren’t like before – you could be sick and someone would come and get you straight. Now it’s rough.”

The post Homeless and drug addicted appeared first on Pavement Pieces.

There are 46 people living at The Sarah Powell Huntington House, on the Lower East Side of Manhattan, a residence for formerly incarcerated women and their children. Some are lifelong drug addicts, some were imprisoned for other crimes. Many have been separated from their children.

The House is owned by the Women’s Prison Association who opened its doors yesterday to over 100 volunteers for “Rebuilding Together” an event held to improve the facility. Volunteers spent the day repainting walls, windows, and staircases and doing repairs in the units.

Irene Bonilla resides in apartment 5D. She moved in after leaving prison and a period of homelessness.

“By 17 [years old] I was addicted to crack,” she said. “By 24 I had four children. Incarcerated in 1996, incarcerated in 2005. I’ve got 10 children including this one,” said Bonilla, gesturing to her young son.

Bonilla’s had a hard week, her sister died two days prior. Despite the grief, Bonilla insisted that she’s going to be okay. She’s worked hard to be sober for 24 months.

“I didn’t go nowhere yesterday,” said Bonilla. “Even though I felt the urge, I stayed home, here.”

Diana McHugh, the director of communications of the WPA said she’s been with the group for over five years, and was one of the organizers of “Rebuilding Together.”

Prior to working for the WPA, McHugh taught a class for women at a correctional facility. In preparing for class one day, she opened the window blinds in the room to let some light in. Less than a minute later, a prison guard came in and shut the blinds, letting her know that it was forbidden to have them open.

“There’s no humanity in prison,” she said. “They’re being denied sunshine.”

That moment in the prison has stuck with McHugh for years and was part of the reason she sought out work at the WPA first as a volunteer and now a full-time employee. For her, Saturday was about letting the women know that they have people on their side. The WPA and all of the volunteers who came to paint the walls and staircases, make repairs and improvements, are there rooting for them.

“We provide a physical space. Someplace safer, more comfortable,” said McHugh. “The most inspiring part of today is to have so many volunteers share their time and let these women know that they matter.”

Statistics show that women in prison receive less visitors from family and friends than male prisoners. As much as 79% of incarcerated women were abused at some point in their lives. More than half of women in prison were the primary caretakers of their children prior to their jail sentences.

Bonilla was happy the volunteers are making her home more cheerful.

“When the walls are dull, it makes you feel depressed,” she said. “I go to my drug program, then come home here. Every day, same routine. The wall outside my apartment is green. That makes me really happy. Green is the color of money. Of life.”

Bonilla has been reunited with one of her 10 children, 6-year-old CJ. The WPA has helped her get her life back after prison. Bonilla compared her life in prison to her life now, grateful for what she has overcome.

“Not having to stand up and be counted,” said Bonilla.. “Not having to share a shower with five other women. Waiting for everything, in line to eat, waiting to go to the bathroom.”

The WPA helps women reunite with their children, find employment, and reestablish themselves after leaving the criminal justice system.

Tiffany Hallett manages the building. She has been at the residence for five years and helped oversee “Rebuilding Together.”

“People that are on the outside, that haven’t been in correctional facilities,think that these people are different. And they’re not. They’re no different,” said Hallett.” “It’s their choices that set them apart. And people may say, ‘Oh, why do they have to drugs because something happened?’ But they may not have had the same circumstances, or made the same choices.”

Bonilla recently received the good news that the New York City Housing Authority has approved her for permanent housing.

“No Regrets,” she said. “Twenty –eight years of crack and I’m proud of me now. I’m happy. Fridays are my best days. I go to parenting [program], come home, pick up CJ and got to my mom’s [house].”

The post A second chance for formerly incarcerated women appeared first on Pavement Pieces.

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Philadelphia’s Golden Block by Amanda Plasencia from Pavement Pieces on Vimeo.

PHILADELPHIA – Battling against neighborhood drug dealers and a rough economy, business owners in El Bloque de Oro are keeping a tight grip on their Latino traditions to sustain and revitalize their community with cultural programming.

In the Fairhill district of North Philadelphia, El Bloque de Oro is known as the Golden Block of Latino culture, art, music and food, but this commercial district does not appear as lustrous as it sounds. Taking many hits over the years, including a “badlands” reputation that was popularized by the novel Third and Indiana, community members struggle to maintain their beloved neighborhood.

“El Bloque de Oro is a community that is still embattered by very challenging economic pressures and that brings all of the ills of drug addiction and high levels of crime,” said Carmen Febo-San Miguel, executive director of Taller Puertorriqueno, an organization that promotes Latino art and cultural programs in the area.

Obtaining data from internal police memos, Philadelphia Weekly published a 2007 report listing the nearby intersection of Third Street and Indiana Avenue as number two for the top ten drug corners in Philadelphia.

Many business owners in the area do not agree with the dire portrayal of drugs in their community.

“There’s still some drug users in the surrounding neighborhood, but you don’t see them as rampant as they were in the 80’s,” said Christina Gonzalez, 39, President of Centro Musical.

The economic recession has also hit the community hard.

“We are going through a crisis right now, but little by little we are starting to come back” said Wilfredo Gonzalez, owner of Centro Musical.

Marta Diaz, 63, of Diaz Meat Market has worked hard to clean up this undeserved bad publicity by performing social work with local business owners to promote the area. Diaz has lived in her artfully decorated home above her husband’s meat market for 38 years and says she has seen the rise and fall of the area.

“Someone made up the term badlands to refer to our community because there was a lot of controversy and problems for a while,” Diaz said. “This was because of all the new people coming in and out who had no perception of how to take care of their neighborhood and the traditions that we keep in this community.”

The Hispanic Association of Contractors and Enterprises is working to revitalize the area with a vibrant, Latino-themed design. They predict that repairs of the signature golden sidewalks and street lamps designed as Caribbean palm trees will create a safer and more attractive commercial district. Business owners are positive about the changes and hope this will bring in tourism and boost up the rich cultures that enliven this commercial district.

According to Diaz, there is a unified sense of cultural pride and passion in the neighborhood, and business owners urge people to look deeper and see what truly lies at the heart of their community.

“We think that one day this will change and I feel satisfied with the people who have worked with the community for many years and seen it fall and rise.” Diaz said. “We aren’t giving up and we continue lifting ourselves up and keep working hard.”

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