Students for the Preservation of Chinatown is hosting a range of initiatives to celebrate Lunar New Year and continue its ongoing efforts to preserve Philadelphia’s Chintatown.
SPOC's various programming is in collaboration with local businesses and residents of Chinatown and its surrounding communities for Lunar New Year. Show Your Love for Chinatown, an event series running from Feb. 16 to Feb. 25, aims to bring attention to Lunar New Year traditions while raising awareness about the challenges faced by the neighborhood.
The event series aims to give participants the chance to show "love for this community by patronizing its small businesses and learning about the deep roots and history of the neighborhood." Planned programming includes lectures on Chinatown's resistance efforts, film screenings, and behind-the-scenes tours of several neighborhood restaurants.
SPOC will be conducting walking tours of Chinatown, with the hope that people “walking through Chinatown really just can see how close the arena is to all the businesses and all the residents,” College junior and SPOC co-founder Taryn Flaherty told The Daily Pennsylvanian.
On Feb. 16, SPOC will also be tabling at a celebration hosted by the Asian Pacific Islander Political Alliance. The event will include a block printing activity, which will give attendees the chance to learn an East Asian print-making technique.
SPOC is a part of the Save Chinatown Coalition, which is dedicated to preserving the cultural heritage and community spirit of Chinatown. Other members of the Coalition include Asian Americans United and the Save UC Townhomes Coalition. The Save Chinatown Coalition has been protesting the proposal for a new Philadelphia 76ers arena since its initial announcement in 2022; the proposed site would be located one block from Chinatown.
Flaherty was introduced to the Coalition’s efforts at a young age, and she introduced a movement to mobilize college students after realizing Penn’s ties to the arena developers. She now helps disseminate information on the fight against the arena development to Penn students and youth throughout Philadelphia.
“There’s a lot of misrepresented information,” Flaherty told the DP. “[The developers] weren’t putting a lot of information in Chinese media or doing outreach in Chinatown. Within SPOC, I serve as an education arm."
SPOC recently received a grant from the Leeway Foundation, a community organization supporting artists and cultural producers working at the intersection of art and social change. The group plans to apply the funds towards launching the Ginger Arts Center, a youth-oriented community center that operates free of charge.
“We hope for [The Ginger Arts Center] to be a hub for art marking, teaching, and community organizing,” College senior Alyssa Chandler, who is also involved with SPOC and Save the UC Townhomes, told the DP.
Flaherty told the DP that youth centers played a large role in her childhood, noting how they provided an outlet for her energy. SPOC hopes to provide an accessible place to support children and provide similar opportunities.
“That [youth center] was what really helped me foster my creativity and allowed me to be a young kid and just [have] all these resources,” Flaherty said.
SPOC is currently in the process of securing a location for the community center and planning workshops.
“It’s going to be free, it’ll have a place for kids to lounge,” Flaherty told the DP. “We’ll be hosting workshops for youth on art and oral histories.”
Chandler told the DP that SPOC has been able to retain the screenprinting unit from the fall workshop thanks to her thesis advisor, Weitzman Director of Undergraduate Fine Arts Matt Neff. "We hope to include that in our workshops," she said.
Chandler, who is also spearheading a project to create a mural in Chinatown, worked on creating a zine about SPOC and its activism for her senior thesis. She also led a successful screenprinting workshop for SPOC during Chinatown's Mid-Autumn Festival in October.
Through SPOC, Flaherty hopes to create an archive of oral history interviews and photographs that document the individuals and groups behind the fight to preserve Chinatown, as well as those who find a sense of community in Chinatown.
“It’ll give a system of education and a support network for people who want to be more involved and to advocate for what they believe in,” Flaherty said.
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