In election season, people care about Kensington. Then we become invisible again.

At 10:30 on a rainy Sunday night, I started hearing a repeating thud near the front of my house. When I looked out my front door, I saw two people in raincoats and boots, emptying a pickup full of firewood onto the sidewalk across the street.

It was pouring rain, but I went outside and asked what they were doing. They said someone had told them this was a good place to dump a truckload of firewood for unsheltered people to burn.

I asked where they were from, and they said they had driven an hour from West Chester to get to my neighborhood in Kensington. I said, “I get that you want to come and do a good deed, but do you see any unsheltered people?”

No, they said.

I asked if they saw the child who was standing across the street, confused about what they were doing, or if they saw that they were dumping the wood in front of a playground that is in front of a library. They said they had not noticed until I said something.

These people were as sweet as could be. They were trying to do something good, but had not thought through the unintended consequences — by leaving a pile of wood on our sidewalk, they were creating another dump site in a neighborhood already treated like a city landfill. They were inviting people to build fires in a public park. After I explained, I helped them load the wood back on the truck, and they left.

I was so disturbed after this encounter. It took me a few minutes to realize why: My neighbors and I had been invisible, and then decisions were made for us. These folks had come to see something and someone else, and so they couldn’t see what was really there — a library, a playground, us.

Even with all my privilege, I know what it’s like to feel invisible. When I find myself in rooms full of people who assume that I — as a Black man — don’t have the same title or the letters after my name that they have.

The exchange with the West Chester couple made me think of the other “invisible” people I encounter every day — the small-business owner putting in long hours, alone, or the child who works hard at school, but their family doesn’t notice amidst a swirl of outside problems.

This happens over and over in Kensington.

A few months ago, an out-of-state missionary group knocked on my door and asked, “Do you have kids to send out to play?” They were walking up and down the street saying this to everyone, as if the parents were invisible and wouldn’t find it odd to have strangers ask for their children.

I know what it’s like to feel invisible.

Just a few days ago, I came upon a woman who had overdosed. Cars drove by and barely looked, an ambulance passed five feet away and didn’t stop, and the half-dozen people around her went about their business as if she wasn’t lying in the gutter. To most people, she was invisible. A few of us did what we could: Narcan, oxygen, sternum rubs. An ambulance eventually came, she survived, and I finished my walk home.

One of the impacts of living and working in Kensington is that we all experience intense trauma. One of the results of trauma is a scarcity mindset. That mindset tells us there is not enough for everyone. Everyone is in competition; it’s us vs. them.

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It’s easier to compete if we pretend others don’t count. If you erase neighborhood children, you can build a bonfire in a playground. If you erase unsheltered people or low-income homeowners, you can build a luxury building on the ground where someone was sleeping.

It is also easy to advocate for a single issue when you close your eyes to everything and everyone else. But the reality is every situation has many truths, and we can’t untangle complicated problems until we acknowledge all of those truths. We are connected; no one can be erased.

And we are stronger together. If we shift from a mindset of scarcity to abundance, we can see that there is enough for everyone. Actual solutions lie in comprehensive approaches that equitably lift everyone. But we only get there if we start advocating for everyone, not just ourselves.

I wrote this before Philadelphia’s primary and before we knew who the winners would be. By the time you read it, the primary will be over. In campaign season, a place like Kensington suddenly becomes visible and relevant because all candidates are expected to have answers for the issues that have been imposed on our community. But afterward, scores will be settled, debts will be paid, and in many cases, as plans are made, previous efforts will be erased. People who remain unconnected to the new power structures — including most Kensington residents — will become invisible once again.

There is an old proverb often attributed to the writer Chinua Achebe: “Until the lion learns how to write, every story will glorify the hunter.” Winners define who can be seen, and therefore who will have their needs met.

Unfortunately, if our election winners move forward with a scarcity mindset, their victory will not be for all of Philadelphia, but just for a few. But it doesn’t have to be this way. We don’t have to be a city where, because of trauma, we succumb to a sense of scarcity that leads us to stop seeing our neighbors and fellow residents.

I ask the political victors in this contest to model how to carry multiple truths and not find a path forward by erasing others.

Because, of course, when you start erasing what’s around you, you don’t just erase the bad. You also stop seeing the beauty. And Philadelphia, despite its blemishes, is beautiful.

Bill McKinney is a Kensington resident and the executive director of New Kensington Community Development Corp.