Author: Marc Stier

There are reports that The Valley Swim Club is offering the Creative Steps Day Camp an opportunity to return. I know nothing more than what is being reported in the Daily News at http://tinyurl.com/moea74. That’s a good first step. But I don’t know whether the club has offered an apology for its actions or is willing to take other steps to undo the harm it has caused. In the meantime, while things remain unsettled, the pastors, and people in the neighborhood, and those of us who have been organizing protests to this point, believe they should continue. Continue reading

First the critical news: Protests at The Valley Swim Club will continue Saturday, July 11, at 12:00 noon at 22 Tomlinson Road, Huntingdon Valley. Please join us. Yesterday about 45 people joined at various times in a hastily planned protest that lasted for a number of hours. We stood and marched around the entrance to the swim club chanting “Jim Crow Swims Here” and “No Justice, No Peace.” I was really gratified to see that most of the people protesting came from in the neighborhood. There were about four or five of us from West Mt. Airy. Continue reading

You may have read or heard or yesterday that a Huntingdon Valley swim club decided to cancel an agreement with a Northeast Philadelphia day camp to allow campers to swim at the club two time a week because, the black campers would “change the complexion…and atmosphere of the club.” Kids who came to swim were summarily asked to leave the pool and told not to come back? What is there to say to decent people about the existence of blatant racism in this day and age? It’s grossly immoral. It’s enormously ignorant. It’s a throwback to days most of us hoped were long gone. And it can’t be allowed to stand without legal action and protest. Not to stand up and say that this sort of behavior is beyond the pale, is to allow it, and the attitudes behind it, to survive one more day. Continue reading