January 10, 2023 — Sometime in the 1970s, once a week every week, along the narrow streets in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, a fish truck came around. It came to neighborhoods of North and West Philly, their brick row houses one room wide, set tight against each other right along the sidewalks; some houses with a little grass and trees, some with concrete; some with porches, some just with steps on which people can sit and talk.
The fish truck stayed gone, but in the Philly neighborhoods, the fresh fish came back. An outfit called Fishadelphia buys fish from the New Jersey docks, then drives it to a high school in North Philly where it’s packed into coolers, which people take home to their own porches, where neighbors pick up their assigned fish. Fishadelphia’s founder and executive director is Talia Young, whose PhD is in ecology, who’s a visiting assistant professor in environmental studies at Haverford College in Pennsylvania, and whose goal in life has never been to sell fish.
“I’m sort of a scientist,” she says. “I’m not doing science but I can. I’m an academic by default, I’m a teacher for sure, I’m sort of an activist, and technically I’m a business person but I know nothing about it.”
So why is she selling fish? “I’ve spent my professional life figuring out how to occupy a space that includes the environment, science, and social justice,” Young says. Scientists don’t usually combine science with activism, worrying that the combination would undermine a reputation for unbiased research. Young, however, has only ever cared about finding the nexus between her three interests and, she says, “Fishadelphia is the closest I’ve come.”