Kuhn

Emergency rally at 3pm in Clark Park to protect the Clark Park Vigil and follow official account . Call the mayor too (215) 686-2181. And dress warm!

For transparency, this is the email we wrote today to and head of Parks and Rec Orlando Rendon.

RE: Short-term permit request for Clark Park vigil

Dear Commissioner Rendon and Councilperson Gauthier,

As West Philly community members we write to request a short-term permit for the vigil art installation in Clark Park.

This site is currently serving as a peaceful space for mourning, community healing, and gathering where all are welcome. As you know the humanitarian crisis in Gaza and the West Bank is ongoing, with 15,000+ civilians dead and more dying daily; and so this memorial continues to be relevant. Many members of our community, including faith leaders with Calvary Church and Kol Tzedek, mental health professionals, and trauma-informed artists plan to continue a schedule of public programming (music, poetry reading, meditation) while violence abroad is ongoing.

We intend to continue to maintain this space as one of providing safety against both antisemitism and Islamophobia in our community.

This site has enormous support in the West Philly neighborhood. We invite you both to a rally today at 3:00pm where supporters will gather and offer testimony for why this space should be preserved.

We would be honored to meet you there or at any other place to discuss possibilities for extending this site through a permitting process with the city.

On behalf of our community,
Bennett Kuhn
C. Yang

please return to clark park thurs 1-2pm for rebellious mourning in support of the call for ceasefire and a just peace to follow in palestine.

the community vigil space is now under threat of removal by the city’s parks and recreation department, even as the iof’s murder count in gaza grows every day, surpassing 12,300.

we meet thursday also in solidarity with the national day of mourning, a protest ritual initiated by wampanoag leadership in 1970 to dispel the settler-colonial misinformation campaign bitterly called ‘thanksgiving.’

come with candles, flowers, poems, announcements, calls for action — any article of your grief is welcome.

**this week we will have free hot soup and beverages provided by

thank you for the birthday wishes.

i had planned for the last year or so to release a full length album today, but i recently decided to shelve the release in order to guard the energy i need to stand in solidarity with the call for a ceasefire in gaza and a just peace to follow. drumming at rallies and improvising at the park vigils are my main ways of making music for the time being.

there’s much to report about the downs and ups of becoming a social worker; the thrill of starting a private practice any day now to provide mental-health related music services in philly; and the entrance of mucca into my life (the spotted kitten pictured in these photos). over the next year i hope to engage more frequently and vocally here to tell you about how much is happening in my head and heart. for now, know i’m grateful to be growing older with lots of folks in community who are proud of the ways i’m shaping, and being shaped by, the changes.

thank you for having my back—it makes going even farther on my path imaginable, probable, or even, by grace, inevitable.