Even in the darkest of days, community is our superpower

I know our summer schedules fill up quickly, but this is a late addition you’ll want to include.

On Saturday, young people from throughout Philadelphia are expected to come together for the first of what organizers hope will become an annual Philly Youth Music Festival. Aspiring artists from more than 15 city organizations are expected to gather to make music — from drummers and guitarists to singers and rappers across all genres.

In addition to scheduled performances from noon to 6 p.m. at the Venice Island Performing Arts and Recreation Center in Manayunk, the festival is also welcoming young people (and their families and friends) to come, and if so moved, to showcase their own talents. So bring it, Philly!

“This is an opportunity for celebrating,” Matthew Kerr, director of Beyond the Bars, a music education program based in West Philadelphia, told me when we spoke this weekend. “Celebrating our young people’s art, but also celebrating them as people, and also having an opportunity for them to all meet each other and collaborate, gas each other up, and all of that good stuff.”

The more I heard, the more necessary “all that good stuff” sounded — especially in the wake of another bloody Fourth of July when a gunman opened fire into a crowd in Southwest Philly, killing 19-year-old Maurice White, a recent Bartram High School graduate, and wounding eight others, including five teenagers ranging in ages from 14 to 18.

Gun violence in our city may be down after three years of record numbers, but the daily drip still overwhelms.

Regular readers of my column may recognize Kerr and the organization he codirects with Christopher Thornton. I’ve written about them on a few occasions, including in January 2021, when the program won the prestigious Lewis Prize for Music: a game-changing $500,000 grant. It was, as I wrote, a big deal.

Except — and no journalist worth their salt likes to admit this — I was late to report that news back then because, like so many of my fellow reporters, I felt obligated to put local stories on hold to focus on the all-hands-on-deck national calamity at hand: the Twisted Trump roller coaster that was 45’s presidency, and its nauseating aftermath.

You know the ride — the one we thought had stopped when Donald Trump was finally exorcized from the White House, but that we’ve somehow been strapped into again.

So much feels familiar: The steep incline of fragile hope that Trump might be held accountable, the stomach-turning curves and dips filled with lies and enablers — I mean, have you read about Project 2025? — and, of course, that moment when, fearing for your life, you just want the ride to stop and get off.

But then, this isn’t 2020, and we’ve learned something — I hope — including the need to step out of the foxhole every once in a while and celebrate the power of community.

Community, I’m more convinced than ever, will show us the way. Hasn’t it always, even through the worst moments of our history? It’s one of the things that caused so many of us to be shocked at some people’s combative and self-centered reactions to COVID-19. A crisis is supposed to be when we come together. Community is where we have seen our greatest strengths.

“A lot of the heaviness, and the heavy things that happen in life, work to try to make you feel isolated. And when you feel isolated, you feel overwhelmed,” Kerr said. “The only way through is through community.”

Those aren’t just words. In 2023, I squeezed into a packed studio inside the organization’s Lancaster Avenue headquarters as the Beyond the Bars community dedicated the space to Khalia Robinson, a community advocate and a founding board member of the organization who was shot and killed earlier that year.

“We can create healthy things that our communities deserve,” Kerr said. “But the only way it happens is communally, and making sure that we all realize we’re not alone as we fight this fight together.”

Lucky for our city, he’s not alone in that belief.

“Community and collaboration really [are] the key to making sure that our young people are able to thrive even through the difficult times,” said Aisha Winfield, director of the Blues Babe Foundation, a Philly nonprofit founded by musician Jill Scott whose students will be manning a podcast station on Saturday. But, Winfield added, what excites her is the ripple effect a sense of community has on young people.

“I look at them as a catalyst,” she said.

None of us knows for sure where this latest chapter in our shared history will end. But unity is our superpower, and our superheroes have always consistently been those who never lose sight of that.

And if you, like me, need a periodic reminder of that power, grab a free ticket for the festival and, for an afternoon, shut off the noise of the world around us and enjoy the beautiful music we make right here in Philadelphia when we stand together.