Williamsport has better racial relations nowadays but has a way to go with housing and discrimination against people recovering from addiction, attendees at a seminar said this week.
“There is a lot of discrimination here. I was born and raised here but it (Williamsport) became known for drug addicts trying to do better by coming here,” local resident Clifford Williams said. “This town became more of a rehabilitation for people when helping the community open up the arms towards employers. The employers are having trouble dealing with it.”
Williams was one of several Williamsport residents who spoke Tuesday at the Pennsylvania Human Relations Commission's Beloved Community Tour at Lycoming College. The commission, founded in 1955, tackles discrimination based on race, sexuality, religion, disabilities and other factors.
Commission executive director Chad Dion Lassiter said the commission welcomes all opinions.
“Come in if you're a Trump sympathizer, come in if you're atheist, come in if you're a Scientologist, come in if you're LGBTQ plus. Whatever you are, come in but there has to be a level of civility,” he said.
The commission follows four Ls - learn, listen, lead and love, Lassiter said.
“Once we listen, we learn. Once we learn, we lead. The fourth L, I know not everybody likes what I'm going to say… For me, my teaching is that we have to love the people. We have to love the people with the highest form of love, which is agape,” he said.
Agape is love rooted in “selflessness, sacrifice, and unconditional care,” according to christianity.com.
Melodie Shaw, a member of the county’s NAACP, said many people of color are in addiction rehabilitation.
“It's a fat chance if you look like this. White people can come and have the same issues but they assimilate into the community,” she said. “But if you look like me, no, it's automatically assumed that I came here for recovery.”
The city is home to Williamsport Family Medical, one of the region's few methadone clinics. Other treatment centers are CleanSlate Outpatient Addiction Medicine, AppleGate Recovery, White Deer Run, UPMC and Geisinger rehabilitation facilities.
Lassiter said people from Philadelphia are known to relocate to Williamsport for treatment. The city has been known as a recovering community since the 1970s, Shaw said. Former Mayor Jessie Bloom opened Williamsport to recovering inner city residents in the early 1990s. The city then continued treatment services.
“Our then mayor, Jessie Bloom, caught a lot of flack for trying to embrace people trying to start a new life,” Shaw said.
Attendees also raised housing availability and homelessness.
Church organizations such as Family Promise of Lycoming County have helped prevent homelessness through volunteer efforts. Most places can only offer temporary nightly stays, however.
“They allow people to come in and sleep at night but have to leave in the morning and be out in the community all day without having a place. They’re suffering,” Shaw said.
Shaw recounted her experience with Williamsport’s homelessness and said it’s a real issue for the city.
“I saw a gentleman one day. I don't know whether it was his mother or not, but she was in a wheelchair and he had a tent and everything on his back. It's a real issue and it's a silent issue that people are really not talking about or addressing unlike when you go into Philadelphia, other major cities,” She said.
Shaw also raised education. Schools have difficulty dealing with inner-city children who move with their families to Williamsport, including children of color, she said.
“Children of color, especially children who are assimilated here from other areas - like urban areas - they're deemed already (discipline problems). They're disruptive in classrooms,” Shaw said. “Instead of finding a new way to deal with these young people, they're sending them to psychiatrists, prescribing drugs for them to keep them under control.”
State Rep. Jamie Flick, who attended, agreed. It can take months to get a child the help they need , he said.
“Through the school districts, sometimes it takes to send a kid to six months which is ridiculous, right? A kid goes in and has a problem, he takes a knife to school and you can't get them into a facility for six months,” Flick said. “That kid is in limbo and all the school districts sort of brush over it.”
Even with a diverse group of children, Flick said, local school districts have still improved.
“I grew up here… I'm a little unique, I have six kids - two of them black, a redhead, a left hander and one that doesn't fit in and an LGBT kid. I've got a pretty diverse family here," he said. “Do I think my black kids in school are treated the same as my white kids? No, they're not. But has it improved in five to 10 years? Yes.”
Williamsport Area School Director Tom Adams said a big problem is families without fathers.
“A big problem in society in the black community is fatherlessness and that causes a lot of problems. When you have this thing going on, and a high percentage of that makes people suspicious… I don't think drugs are the answer for any of that,” Adams said.
He urged for constant communication between kids, parents, administrators, teachers and school boards.
“That's the best thing and it's going to help the students and the truth in their education,” Adams said.
Lycoming College and Pennsylvania College of Technology have diversified their staffs and student populations, attendees said.
“The current president (Kent Trachte) and his staff are pretty progressive thinkers, and they've done a lot of recruiting,” Shaw said.
Flick said Penn College hired a diversity and inclusion officer, Dr. Nate Woods, Jr.
“I do think it's got students from all over the world to trade school enrollments up 11%, more than any other school in Pennsylvania. We need trade, whether that's black, brown or white people, we need trade,” Flick said.
When it comes to the county’s overall race relations, Adams sees positivity.
“I think they're great honestly. That's why we do see people coming here from outside the community, so we can maybe recuperate and get tighter, and they don't leave,” he said.
Shaw called Williamsport an “individual landscape.”
“If I'm a decent person, nine times out of 10, even if I encounter someone that is contrary, this is going to be a decent interaction,” she said. “Overall, I think that there are clear lines of demarcation - we have a little section of town called Brown Town. Wow, I mean it's affectionately deemed that but come on it’s 2024.”
The tour will visit all 67 state counties and has reached about 20 so far.
Victims of illegal discrimination can file a complaint with the Commission.
