Powell helps clean drug market in city "badlands"

By Randall Mikkelsen

PHILADELPHIA, April 27 (Reuter) Residents around the threeway intersection
of 10th St., Indiana Ave. and Germantown Ave. call this neighbourhood of
gutted homes and vacant lots ``The Badlands'' an openair drug market
abandoned by hope.

Retired Gen. Colin Powell and dozens of others came here on Sunday with
rakes, shovels, cans of paint, and ambitions of sparking a permanent
improvement.

Powell, chairman of a threeday ``presidents' summit'' in support of
volunteerism, marked the opening of the event by joining President Bill
Clinton, former presidents and more than 5,000 others to spend the day
sprucing up an eightmile stretch of Germantown Ave.

The north Philadelphia street corner Powell was assigned by cleanup
organisers was perhaps the most devastated site on the route.

Powell helped clean a lot littered with 40ounce bottles of potent Silver
Thunder malt liquor, syringes and decayed furniture.

On the far corner of the pungent expanse of dirt stood a vacant house with
empty window frames that residents identified as a ``shooting gallery'' for
addicts to take drugs.

As he hoisted litter into bags and chatted with neighbourhood residents who
joined outoftown volunteers for the cleanup, Powell mixed a message of
encouragement for Americans to volunteer with a stern message of
responsibility.

``What you've got to do is not let it get dirty again,'' Powell told a young
neighbourhood boy he was working with. Later, he told a local politician,
``Tell your constituents that now they have got to keep it clean.''

Seville Jackson, who had emerged on crutches from the shootinggallery house
and acknowleged a heroin addiction said he was impressed by a brief
meeting with Powell. ``This guy is so down to earth, I get a good vibe from
him.''

Some of the neighbourhood residents were sceptical of the cleanup effort,
while others thought it might do some good.

``That lot will be just as trashy, if not trashier, by next Saturday,'' said
Wali Muhsana, who echoed others in saying the neighbourhood's real need was
good jobs and housing.

But Woodie Sturgis, 77, who owns a bar on the main intersection of the
neighbourhood, said he would make his contribution by getting a dumpster for
the bar so others in the area would have a place to put their litter. ``We're
going to get it together,'' he said.

Powell, while he worked, brushed off speculation about any possible
aspirations to the Republican presidential nomination in 2000. Area resident
Lynthia Barnes, 17, came up to Powell after a short news meeting and asked
him his motivations in taking part. ``Is it for the community, or is it to
make the politics?'' Barnes asked.

Said Powell, ``I don't have any politics. I just want to see you all live in
a nicer community.''

Also arriving at the site was Elizabeth Dole, president of the American Red
Cross, wife of 1996 Republican presidential nominee Robert Dole, and a
possible rival to Powell for the nomination in 2000.

As she served food to volunteers at a Red Cross booth, Dole was asked if the
Republican presidential ticket for that year was making its appearance.

Avoiding the question, she said: ``I didn't realise Colin was coming to this
corner. I'm looking forward to seeing him.''