"Each Sunday, people (mothers, seniors, children) just kept on coming out, cleaning [the lot] up. Until it was clear of all the trash and mattresses and tires and drug paraphernalia and everything else you could probably think of that would be like in a land dump. And that was the start of the Peace Park." -- Pili X

"So, we [NPPP] were like big proponents of local development and people being developers. We call ourselves developers, um, because we have plans to develop our own community, and we call it Peace Town. You know, developer or development has like a negative connotation to it... But we are using reverse effect where as though we're telling people go out and come up with plans to develop you know, your block into better neighborhoods or whatnot." -- Pili X

"Our official mission statement is you know, we're an intergenerational, neighborhood managed and campus championing, food education and community. And our work is largely to provide  reliefs to a lot of these social issues because you know, the solution isn't gonna come overnight but our programming is relief site programming to these issues." -- Pili X

"If you come out of your house and you see vacant lots filled with trash every day that does something for your mental health. So even if you don't recognize it, um, you shouldn't be living like that, in those conditions, seeing vacant lots of trash." -- Pili X

"The obstacles that have been put forth against us only makes us go harder with the work. You know, COVID and the lockdown was an obstacle for a lot of organizations... But we just doubled our work. I think over the years, the obstacles that have come up come our way, we just use that as fuel to keep going to work." -- Pili X

"So we've been like a big advocate of the seizure of land. And we know that due to advocating that, we've been told by, you know, people high up in a city that they don't want to set that precedent, because if that spreads, then you have thousands of people [rather than developers] taking over thousands of vacant lots that have been left to just decay and exist in a blighted state... On that vacant land, people should do a fence free garden and independent institution building-- so that could be anything." -- Pili X

"Yeah, so at the park, we have two houses that are adjacent to it. And for years, we kind of been complaining and putting in reports to the city and to PHA who owns them, about these houses, because they're falling apart. There's a lot of drug activity in these houses, homeless people, prostitution, and it was bringing like a lot of bad energy and negative activity to the park. And for years, these reports have all been ignored. So early this year, we went into the houses and we cleaned them, because they were basically like cesspools of trash and filth... a homeless encampment. Then there were protests in the city over the summer, about the homeless encampment in North Philly. And we suspect they [PHA] used this as a reason to you know, raid the houses. When I say raid, I mean, like, they kicked in the doors and busted the windows." -- Pili X

"People have went through the process of trying to do something with a lot of these vacant spaces properly by trying to find owners or going through the city and going through the land banks. But there's a lot of bureaucracy and people were getting held up for months and years, and aren't able to do stuff with the land because they're trying to go to the different agencies or owners. So we've been advocates of immediate seizure of vacant land." -- Pili X

"Because what happened when COVID hit, was that a lot of organizations kind of went offline and they stopped programming, they stopped services. A lot of people who were being serviced by a lot of community organizations or city agencies kind of were out left in the cold. We felt as though, you know, we couldn't stop our programming... We kind of like started doing it [our food programming] every month [instead of] just doing it four times a year... And it was like a great help for a lot of people." -- Pili X

"And, you know, in the Black community, a lot of the stores are not Black-owned. So our Black dollars that we make, doesn't stay like in our community for very long because we're spending it at stores owned by people that are from different races or nationalities. At the same time, a lot of Black businesses don't have brick and mortar storefronts. So, with COVID happening and a lot of businesses taking hits, we opened up our space, and we called it the Black Market, or African American Marketplace. And it's a space where once a month, Black businesses can come vend for free, which is unheard of. Because usually when you vend at a space or an event or somewhere, you need to pay a vending fee. Um, we felt as though a lot of Black businesses need the help, needed the space." -- Pili X

"When it comes to like organizations, we [NPPP] are a vanguard organization. We feel as though a lot of the work that we do and the moves we make, um, influences other organizations and influences city officials/city agencies and offices." --Pili X 

"And, with a lot of schools closing because a lot of the buildings are old and they [the School District of Philadelphia] just don't want to fix them. But also just to educate you know, Black children on with an independent curriculum provided by Black educators. It's really important to us because we know that a lot of the students that are going to the public schools aren't getting an education based on you know, our history, or true history. Teaching children, the knowledge itself, was really important to us with all of the schools closings and with the level of quality of education in Philly." -- Pili X