Philadelphia: Drug crisis in Kensington calls for reparations
www.workers.org
Philadelphia From around the East Coast, a flock of drug users gather in the Kensington section of Philadelphia. From as far away as Puerto Rico, users come to get the Kensington drug fix. This open-air drug market spans chunks of Kensington Avenue and its side streets.  This writer has be

While the wave of gentrification in Philadelphia has come close to Kensington — in the area near the former El Campamento — the neighborhood itself has faced racist and class oppression and divestment. Kensington became an open-air drug market because of this divestment. Many neighborhoods in Philadelphia and the tri-state area (Pennsylvania, New Jersey and Delaware) force drug users to go to Kensington.

The NIMBY (not in my back yard) forces in other Philadelphia neighborhoods attempt to push every addict, treatment facility, sober-living home, and methadone and buprenorphine clinic out. Every effort to help addicts is met with protests and petitions to remove them from the neighborhood.

In the early 2010s, organizations such as NO METHADONE Holmesburg-Mayfair, businesses and individuals came together to block a methadone and buprenorphine clinic from being opened in Philadelphia’s Holmesburg neighborhood. The opposition to clinics in Northeast Philadelphia meant that a methadone user needs to travel fairly far to get to a clinic, making it easier to go to Kensington for a fix than to travel to other parts of Philadelphia to get a methadone dose