Dear Philadelphia:

You are dubbed "The City of Brotherly Love" due to a very literal translation of your name, which comes from the Greek words philos (love) and adelphos (brother). When you were originally founded by William Penn, your state's namesake and the figure atop your City Hall, you were to serve as a beacon of hope to all those who had been persecuted for their religious beliefs in Europe. You're considered to be the birthplace of modern democracy. To many—and not just Elton John fans—the name "Philadelphia" is synonymous with the word "freedom." These are all things to brag about.

So just what, might I ask, is going on here?

The Daily News this week featured two cover stories about Starbucks: the first, about how half of our notorious Bonnie and Clyde couple is now working at one in Marin County, California; the second, about the assault and death of Sean Patrick Conroy, who managed one. The first story isn't the issue here, other than to say that perhaps we probably have more noteworthy coverage to put on our front page.

It's the second story I want to talk about here. Because honest to God, Philly, what the fuck is going on here? The manager of a coffee shop in the center of Center City was attacked—seemingly at random—in the middle of the day in a highly-trafficked stretch of the SEPTA concourse by a bunch of teenagers who targeted him "for no reason," and all but one of them somehow managed to get away? This scares me, Philly. And not in a "I'm packing up and moving to the suburbs" kind of way, but rather in a way that makes me wonder, really wonder, what happened to the brotherly love. Clearly, we're failing ourselves and our fellow residents, but what's the origin of the failure?

Is it our police force? Not really: they're taxed as it is. Is it our schools? Well, they don't really help, but it's not like your American History teacher is going to effectively convince you that violence is bad, unless she does a great job describing the Battle of Gettysburg. Is it the parents? It's easy to place the blame on them, but they can't watch their children's every moves—at some point, they have to leave the house to go to work. Is it peers? Well yeah—a recent study revealed that peers have more influence on adolescents than family or genetics—but what's wrong with the peers that they're influencing each other to behave this way?

The answer, however unfortunate, may be all of us. I don't know how we've done it, but in three hundred or so years, we've managed to transform the City of Brotherly Love into a divisive, socially-segregated, all-too-violent city of very little love at all. And whatever it is we've done, we've passed on to the youths of our city, so that instead of hanging out at the mall (which is what I used to do as a teenager), they decide to jump an asthmatic on his way to work. Things seem to be getting worse, and something needs to be done. What? Well, if I had an answer for how we could stop it, or make things better, I'd tell you. And then I'd probably run for mayor. But I know I don't have all the answers. I don't think I even have an answer. But I think that maybe, just maybe, if we all worked together, we could come up with one, and finally be able to once again live up to our name.

Who's with me?

Image Credit: Flickr user paul_everett82