Bethany Wiggin, Associate Professor of Germanic Languages and Literatures, community partner Tammy Reeves, and Susan Robinson of Germantown Friends School tour the Gray’s Ferry neighborhood (Photographer: Alex Schein)
The typed note was pinned to a cork board inside a basement meeting room in the Donatucci Library in South Philadelphia, where city residents gathered along with climate activists, public health advocates, artists, and Penn students on a frigid December day to talk about the Philadelphia Energy Solutions Refining Complex (PES). An explosion and fire on June 21, 2019, had resulted in the shuttering of the 150-year-old refinery, leaving the site and its surrounding communities with an uncertain future.