Community Challenges

WHAT WE BRING TO THE PHILADELPHIA COMMUNITY

We listen to individuals to understand their circumstances and do not judge them on the basis of their education, income, race, gender, sexual orientation, skin color, height, weight, hair style, wardrobe, etc. We offer affordable payment arrangements and reduced fees on a case-by-case basis.  Until we offer walk-in services, we post a wealth of information on our office door.

We built a community message board outside our office to keep neighbors informed of social services and important events as well as to allow them to post notices to each other.

Our goal is to be a good neighbor to everyone in Philadelphia, starting with Brewerytown and the rest of North Philly and Center City.  Here are the most important current flyers.

WHY BEING A LAWYER IS IMPORTANT

Alson (Al) Clayton Alston became an attorney to go far beyond his 15 years of community activism in his native North Philly. Neither he nor his associates around the city could ever find a lawyer to represent their causes, so they directly fought entrenched power to protect the housing, property rights, human rights and economic well-being of their respective communities. Al and his allies learned to excel in the paralegal arts, but they had no authority to represent anyone when it really mattered. 

By becoming an attorney, Al could formally represent community organizations, non-profits, small businesses, the elderly, the unhoused and anyone else facing daunting challenges surviving in a town dominated by special interest politics and lip service to the people who really need government to work for them.

WHY THE BREWERYTOWN LOCATION - A PERSONAL NOTE

We are building a law firm for the entire region. 

However, Al decided to locate this first office just one block from his childhood home. While he continues to care greatly about the history and neighbors of his Brewerytown community, the most important reason that he stayed to fight in the venerable building once owned by Fidelity Bank is that he must complete a journey that only he can. 

He knew of that battle and has been preparing for it for decades. He was caught off guard, however, by the ferocity of the sudden attacks by criminal elements that have been just as entrenched in his community as the corrupt politicians (more below).

Al was blessed to have a gracious and attentive mother who taught all of her 7 children the value of hard-work, good citizenship and education. He recounts that he doesn't have one lazy brother or sister and every one of them was or is a contributing member of society. Unfortunately, he was to learn that his father was among the worst human beings alive. 

The violence and cruelty that his father exacted upon his mother, his older female relatives and others destroyed the precarious happiness that they had built before his arrival. They never recovered from the damage he inflicted, though the relative peace and successes they would, ultimately, attain remain a mark of their triumphant individual and collective spirit. 

As is so often the case, the sins of the father are visited upon the sons. As his father's victims gathered their strength, they punished his father's children, particularly Al's older brothers. These young men never had the chance to live free and achieve their boundless aspirations. Yet, they did what older siblings so often and so effortlessly do: they protected their family from external harm and taught their siblings, particularly Al, valuable lessons that gave them the kind of head start in life that a child from the poorest family on one of the city's poorest blocks would normally never have. Al is in debt to them for their sacrifices and prays that the Universe will be kind to them in their remaining days, wherever they journey. 

Al is not on a mission to cure the evil deeds of his father, but hopes to alter the balance of good and evil remaining in his family and beyond, so that peace and opportunity become the primary inheritance his generation leaves behind. If there is karma, he will replace as much of the negative energy introduced and cultivated by his father as possible -- not attempting to undo the past (which is impossible), but to help carve out a positive and sustaining path for current and future generations. 

Cryptic Closing: The name on the sign outside his new law office begins with an invocation of his father, 

but ends with the journey of his mother, a concept familiar to his family, though not yet completely understood and embraced by all of them.

BATTLING ENTRENCHED CRIMINAL ELEMENTS

[For a catalogue of videos and still images depicting the continued harassment and threats to the law firm by criminal elements in Brewerytown, please examine the videos on our YouTube playlists, pics of the ever-present Usual Suspects (moved to a law enforcement site) or look through our Harassment and Threat Evidence Pack on this site.]

Al's work to carve out a new course, while unrepentantly and unabashedly bearing portions of the very name of an inherently evil man, has taken a nearly disastrous and not entirely unexpected turn. 

It would seem that criminal elements that have always plagued his old neighborhood are firmly aligned against him and his intention to establish a first-rate attorney's office on his beloved Girard Avenue. 

He had never interacted negatively with any of them -- indeed he had employed several of them for many years and leased an apartment to the family of another. But, he recently began to insist that they not congregate or sell their illegal items in front of his building. That seemed to have triggered an unbalanced barrage of envy and contempt. 

They gleefully firebombed his office on July 4th, 2023 with an M80 (1/4 stick of TNT) explosive, causing thousands of dollars of damage. 

The building shook so suddenly, Al thought he was back in California experiencing yet another earthquake. 

When he informed the police at the 22nd District that he was being targeted and that this explosion was just the beginning, one Sgt. Rhoads dismissed his report as mere vandalism and mischief, then refused to allow Al to meet with higher-ranking officials there. 

Al has since bypassed the 22nd District to make certain that law enforcement has knowledge of what is occurring there. Al has had to rely on frequent calls to 911 to prevent other injury to his office and to him. He has had more than one close encounter that could have spiraled out of control quickly. He undergoes a barrage of insults whenever the criminal elements feel so inclined. 

After each act of terrorism by the criminal organization infecting Girard Avenue, Al fortified his building with expensive security cameras, bright lights, alarms and other measures. (Perhaps some of the upgrades are visible in the photograph below....)

Installing bright lights and a few cameras...

Boarding up windows to protect against next firebombing...

It is at night that he believes there is danger to his building and to him. He will not invite clients there, even during standard business hours, without full disclosure. Al is unclear whether the bad intentions of criminal elements, intermittent police responses and the fact that he sometimes appears to be more intimidating to thugs than they are to him are the ingredients that will allow his office to get past its infancy or whether this is a battle that he can never win. 

He continues to move forward, carefully documenting everything that happens on the 2800 block of West Girard Avenue with inordinately large numbers of surveillance images from all possible angles.... In any event, it seems clear that Al cannot get to the mission he was prepared to fight until and unless he defeats the scourge of criminal elements and the pervasive indifference (or occasional pro-criminal sentiments) of much of the population there. 

Fully aware that there are many good people in Brewerytown worth fighting for, particularly the elders, he takes heart. Please review the videos and still images of events that currently threaten his ability to establish a law office on Girard Avenue in Brewerytown, North Philly.  Any and all support and ideas are welcome.

Peace and Blessings to All!