The 76ers made waves last year with the announcement that the team is interested in building a new arena on Market Street in Philadelphia, four blocks from the heart of the city’s historical Chinatown. While the local government supported the idea, the arena proposal received immediate and widespread backlash from community members, particularly Chinatown residents.
Students Kaia Chau (Bryn Mawr College '24), Kenny Chiu (University of Pennsylvania ’25), and Taryn Flaherty (University of Pennsylvania '25) heard the plans about a potential new arena in mid 2022, when news that the 76ers would move forward with the build first hit headlines. Like many other Philadelphia residents, they were worried about impacts the new arena could have on the city, especially Chinatown, and began volunteering with the Coalition to Protect Chinatown and LES.
It didn’t take long to find out that practically all the developers leading the project have ties to Philadelphia universities. For example, David Adelman, the real estate developer spearheading the project, is the CEO of Campus Apartments, a large provider of UPenn’s off-campus housing. He sits on Drexel's real estate advisory council, Penn Medicine’s board, and, along with both Penn and Drexel’s vice presidents, he is on the University City District’s board of trustees. Then there's David Blitzer, global head of tactical opportunities at Blackstone and co-owner of the 76ers, who is a Wharton Business School alum and currently sits on Penn’s board of trustees. He’s also on the Wharton advisory board, along with Josh Harris, another developer for the 76ers arena. Like Adelman, Blitzer also has business ties to student housing, in his case, at Drexel. His company, Blackstone, purchased American Campus in 2022, which owns a large housing complex at the University.
Recognizing the unique power college students in Philadelphia have to advocate for the protection of their city, Chau, Chiu, and Flaherty started Students for the Preservation of Chinatown (SPOC), which aims to mobilize Philadelphia students of all ages against the construction of the arena. Since its founding, the group has hosted many rallies, teach-ins, and marches in Center City. In December, the group attended a meeting of more than 200 people interested in Chinatown’s preservation and developer representatives. In June, the group drew in thousands of participants for a rally in Chinatown’s center. Most recently, SPOC has worked on the No Arena in Chinatown Solidarity group’s postcard-writing campaign, where it has encouraged the writing of almost 5,000 postcards to government officials in protest of the arena construction.
Teen Vogue recently spoke to SPOC organizers Chau, Chiu, and Flaherty about generational activism, protecting a cultural legacy, and the continuing need for communities like Chinatown.
This conversation has been condensed and lightly edited for clarity.
Teen Vogue: How did SPOC come about?
Taryn Flaherty: SPOC started as an informal group. Kaia and I are both daughters of longtime activists in Chinatown, so when the proposal first came out, both of us attended the initial meeting with community leaders about the proposal. As we were doing more research, we realized that our universities, specifically Penn and Drexel, are very connected to the developers of the arena.
Kaia Chau: [Our moms] both organized against the stadium, in 2000, and the casino, in 2008. Some of my most vivid memories from childhood are the protests against the casino in 2008. That's the environment that [Taryn and I] grew up in.
TV: What kind of impact has growing up in that environment had on you as activists?
Chau: At least in our families, there is definitely a tradition of activism work being passed down to the younger generation.
Flaherty: They're not the first developers to try this in the country, but also, specifically, in Philly's Chinatown. The first organizers [to gain widespread media attention] in Chinatown were against the Vine Street Expressway in the '80s. Even though the Vine Street Expressway was built, [those activists] really built the foundation of organizing against large developments in Chinatown. They started the rhetoric about how large developments can harm neighborhoods.
Chau: My mom said, during the arena fight in 2000, in this documentary called Look Forward and Carry on the Past, “I'm fighting this fight, and my kids are probably gonna have to fight it too” — and that was before I was even born. And here we are, in college, doing exactly that. Chinatown is so important that this tradition of activism keeps getting passed down.
Kenny Chiu: I wouldn't be here, I wouldn't be in this fight, I wouldn't even be able to have enjoyed Chinatown if these people before me hadn’t [fought to protect it]. I’m joining this fight to continue the legacy of Chinatown's resistance to predatory development and land grabs.
TV: What makes Chinatown such a target for these kinds of developments?
Chau: Chinatown is always the target for these large developments because [many residents are non-English speaking]. It's very easy to streamline projects when the community doesn't read English media. It's also easy to bulldoze over a community that's low income. When communities are low income, a lot of people don't have time to pay attention to anything other than going to work and focusing on how to feed their family and how to pay rent. Also, it's [historically been] a majority immigrant community. That means, potentially, there are some undocumented folks who would be reluctant to speak out at all because being undocumented in the US is so scary. It's just very hard to navigate a country where none of the resources are really catered towards you.
…After the pandemic, we really saw [anti-Asian racism] manifest into a lot of violent crimes. I think that made us realize the importance of having communities like Chinatown, where young people and elders especially feel safe walking around.
TV: Why do you all feel it’s important to protect Chinatown?
Chau: Taryn and I went to Folk Arts-Cultural Treasures Charter School, which is in Chinatown and caters to immigrant families. We grew up with other kids who looked like us and learning about our history and community. Growing up as a Chinese American, I never really felt ashamed of my identity. I was always surrounded by people who made me proud of who I was, and I'm lucky to have that experience. For the next generation, our generations’ kids, they also deserve a place to feel comfortable being Asian American, just as we did, just like my mom did.
Flaherty: People don't realize that Chinatown is a regional hub for a lot of ethnicities. My family is Korean; we're not Chinese. But my family has been involved in Chinatown for so long. If you look at the leaders of the Chinatown Coalition, obviously, you have the Chinese business owners, residents, Chinese Americans, all that, but then you also have a multiethnic coalition of South Asian, Southeast Asian, other East Asians. All of them are speaking out about the importance of this neighborhood. It goes to show that it's not just Chinese people that Chinatown serves. It serves resources for tons of Asian Americans, tons of immigrants. Chinatown is serving a community that is so much more than this small minority.
Chiu: This is where people have spent their whole lives, building their small businesses or going to church or bringing their children to school. I have roots in Chinatown because when my dad and mom first moved to Philly, Chinatown was the home they found away from home. If they had no money and no English, this was the place where they could get their first jobs. This was the place where they could buy their groceries and finally have a taste of home or go to the restaurants and have a life that's somewhat resemblant to what they had in China.
This is a city within a city, and we think that the Sixers — if they want to build this new arena — can build it anywhere else except next to one of the United States’s top-10 most endangered places.
TV: What has organizing through SPOC been like?
Chiu: We organized an action at the board of trustees meeting at Penn. David Blitzer sits on this board of trustees, and these meetings are open to any member of the Penn community, whether you're a student or faculty or worker. So we thought that we were going to be able to go in and pass out some information to all the trustees about their arena and Penn’s relations to the arena. But when we got there, security did not let us in, which I think is the first time that they haven't let students into a board of trustees meeting. [The board has a rule that members can observe but can't disrupt proceedings.]
Flaherty: The arena gets built if no one hears about it. If no one says anything, the arena gets built. I don't think Kaia and I can count how many [teach-ins] we've done. The ultimate goal is to bring people into the fight, but I also think we still win if a lot of people realize how important this community is for so many people.
When Kenny and I are giving our teach-ins or speaking at a rally or yelling at some UPenn administrators, even though the situations are very different and sometimes harsh, our message is always the same and it always comes from a place of love: [This community] has given us so much that the government or schools or other adults have never given us. We’re trying, at every action, to showcase our love and care for Chinatown.
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