Saving Chinatown’s Legacy: Ginger Arts Center’s Recent Win
As of January 12, 2025, the proposal to build a sports arena adjacent to Philadelphia’s Chinatown – a move that would have displaced nearby people of color and working class communities – was finally abandoned, fulfilling the hopes of the vast majority of the City of Philadelphia.
Since the proposal was announced, organizers rose to stop the erasure of Chinatown. Among these organizers were Kaia Chau and Taryn Flaherty who founded Students for the Preservation of Chinatown (SPOC) in October 2022 and later established the Ginger Arts Center in June 2024. A member of our Ending Racism Directory community, Ginger Arts provides community and education to uplift Chinatown’s youth. Read more in their introductory Action Report.
When moving the 76ers basketball team from South Philadelphia to Center City was proposed, big businesses and billionaires cheered while locals responded with disbelief. Years later, Mayor Cherelle Parker, the city’s first woman mayor, publicly expressed full support for the proposal despite citizens’ protests and studies proving the damage that the proposal would cause. Philadelphia has had to fight such threats to Chinatown since 1973, and the fight continued.
That is, until Comcast proposed a $2.5 billion South Philadelphia redevelopment proposal, which the 76ers quickly accepted. Merely weeks prior, City Council members voted to move the Center City proposal forward in addition to allowing for a $30 million payout in lieu of property taxes. Some reported feeling blindsided and betrayed by the 76ers’ decision to remain in South Philadelphia after the vote. The most common response was: “How do you think your citizens felt?”
The decision left the entire community with much to consider, from the behind-closed-doors anti-Asian rhetoric that arose in response to the proposal, to the newly-renewed consideration for what will happen to the Center City space where the arena would have been located.
As we move forward this year, let us draw lessons from Ginger Arts and their allies, who resiliently advocated against blind trust in billionaires and biased policymakers. They remained united despite efforts to divide them. Often, fascism, oppression, divisiveness, and forced displacement are disguised as the “greater good.” Let us resist the pressure to simply accept revisionist history and false realities.
If you have not already, check out their Instagram, and to learn more or get more involved as a volunteer, visit the Ginger Arts Center website.